Interview with Michelle from MakingSenseofcents: Making $ 13000 per Month from Blogging

As part of our BloggersIdeas interview series, today we have Michelle S from MakingSenseofcents.com who is making huge money through blogging. She is inspiration to many bloggers who want to make good money through blogging & affiliate marketing.

I recently saw her interview on a blog and was really inspired by her story. So I decided myself to bring her on my blog. I am really glad Michelle is here on my blog. She is making 11-14000$ per month through blogging.

Lets explore with Michelle.

Interview with Michelle from MakingSenseofcents

Table of Contents

First of all thanks a lot for coming on my blog Michelle, you made my day by accepting my interview request. Tell me something about yourself & your educational background?

Hello! My name is Michelle and I am full-time online freelancer. I have two undergraduate business related degrees, and I also have my Finance MBA. I used to work as a financial analyst for a few years, then made the switch to full-time self-employment to pursue my passion instead.

Now, I am a content manager, website manager, social media manager, staff writer, I help people start WordPress blogs, and more.

What are your plans for the future? What’s the next move for your company and what can we expect to see in the near future?

I have so many plans for the future for myself and my business. I hope to eventually write an ebook, expand my content managing services, add more clients, and hopefully start doing better when it comes to affiliate income. I would also eventually like to hold sessions and provide speeches. I’m still a little too nervous to get into public speaking right now though.

Related: How to Mint More Money From Clickbank: Here is Guide to Perfect Clickbank Affiliate Sales

What’s your best monetization strategy?

My favorite monetization strategy would be affiliate income. I like that you can review a product you believe in, and hopefully people will still be reading that same post years down the line and click on your links. I don’t think income can get more passive than that.

That being said, I am not the best when it comes to affiliate income. It has been a very slow process for me. I do need to work harder on it and I have several plans when it comes to jump starting my affiliate income strategy.

What is the reason behind your Blogging success? Who introduced you to blogging ?

I’m not sure what the reason is for my blogging success. I would like to think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I always try to be real and honest with my followers, and I’m also very easy going. I lay out everything I do on my blog and I am very open.

I first became interested in blogging by reading the magazine Cosmopolitan surprisingly. They had a section dedicated to the blog DailyWorth and I became hooked on the idea. I first became active in the blogging community. I left comments on people’s blogs and then I eventually decided to start my own.

How did you make your first online income, how much time did it take to make money online ?

It took me around 6 months before I actually made my first dollar blogging. I didn’t start my blog in order to make money, so I was surprised when it happen. I believe I made my first income through advertising on my website.

How do you promote your affiliate products? Do you buy exact match domain to rank on google? Is it good way to to promote products by buying EMD’s ?

I am still a weakling when it comes to affiliate products. I just review products and hope that my readers click on my links.

How to engage audience on Pinterest . How much traffic you drive from Pinterest ?

I receive around 5% of my readers from Pinterest. I used to receive nearly 0% so it is a great improvement within just a few months of trying harder to reach Pinterest readers. The main way I try to reach Pinterest readers is by creating fun images with catchy headlines.

Do you know about video blogging ? Do you think it will be the future of blogging ? 

I don’t know much about video blogging, but I do think it’s getting more and more popular. I don’t know if it will be the future of blogging, but I do think it will be pretty big.

It is difficult to leave job & then work from home. ? How did you manage this ? What are the risks involved here. 

It was pretty difficult for me to leave my job and work from home. I had a very secure job that paid very well, so it was hard for me to finally make that leap and jump into “risky” territory. It has been pretty great working from home though. There were some common myths about working from home that I once believed but now I know the truth.

Some of the risks/negatives include losing your day job income, having to pay for your own health insurance, not being able to ever actually take a vacation because you’ll always be in work-mode, and more. There are so many positives of working for yourself at home though, so all of the negatives didn’t really matter to me though.

I managed to work from home by creating a plan and saving a well funded emergency fund. I didn’t want one bad month to put a sour taste in my mouth, so that was very important to me.

Top Social media websites you use for sharing your content ? 

I am active on Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. I would say that my favorite social media website is Twitter because you can connect with everyone easily. Facebook these days makes it too hard so I get aggravated with that social media website.

Where is affiliate marketing going to reach in coming 5 years and how you are going to monetize it?

I hope in 5 years that the majority of my income comes from affiliate marketing. I hope to monetize it by continuing to do what I am currently doing, which is reviewing products that I believe in.

What is the first thing an aspiring affiliate marketer should learn before doing anything else?

Figure out products you like and be honest with your reviews. No one wants to read a bunch of fake reviews.

How much money did you make in month of August ? Which was the best source of income ?

August of 2014 was a great business income month for me. I made $14,156 in online income after some basic expenses. My best source of income was managing websites for my clients.

Did you like my blog. Please share your feedback with me ? What things you didn’t like in my blog ?

Yes, I very much like your blog. I like the clean design and it’s very easy to navigate. There is nothing I did not like.

 If you have any questions  about this interview, please do ask in the comments below !

Dont forget to share this awesome interview in social media. I will be pleased if you share this now ! Join BloggersIdeas on FacebookGoogle+ & Twitter .

Jitendra Vaswani
This author is verified on BloggersIdeas.com

Jitendra Vaswani is a Digital Marketing Practitioner and renowned international keynote speaker who has embraced the digital nomad lifestyle as he travels around the world. He founded two successful websites, BloggersIdeas.com & Digital Marketing Agency DigiExe of which his success stories have expanded to authoring "Inside A Hustler's Brain : In Pursuit of Financial Freedom” (20,000 copies sold worldwide) and contributing to “International Best Selling Author of Growth Hacking Book 2". Jitendra designed workshops for over 10000+ professionals in Digital marketing across continents; with intentions ultimately anchored towards creating an impactable difference by helping people build their dream business online. Jitendra Vaswani is a high-powered investor with an impressive portfolio that includes Imagestation. To learn more about his investments, Find him on Linkedin, Twitter, & Facebook.

Affiliate disclosure: In full transparency – some of the links on our website are affiliate links, if you use them to make a purchase we will earn a commission at no additional cost for you (none whatsoever!).

Comments (11)

  1. hey Jitendra
    i have read more than 20 interviews of pro-bloggers but this was creative enough to get me into to reading it two times actually! impressed with questions, frankly i didnt know about michelle until i read your interview! but she does really great work i think, hats off !
    🙂 great blog you have here 😀
    regards
    supreeth

  2. wow one of successful bloggers and inspiration for us. thanks jitendra for making this interview and giving us chance to know more about this superb lady.

  3. Hey Jitendra thanks for introducing Michelle to us..We Indian bloggers can learn a lot from her. It is nice to know that she generates income through different ways..I’m going to start reading her blog MakingSenseofcents. I hope to learn many things from Michelle and other successful bloggers. It is because of you that we’re getting to know so much information about bloggers from different countries.

    • Hey Mohit, welcome . Yes we indian bloggers should learn lot from her. She generates very good income through blogging. I am also trying to learn lot more things from Michelle

  4. WOW!
    Its nice to see someone of the stature of Michelle here.
    Though I follow her blog regularly, it was nice to know more about her.
    Michelle as a person, not as a blogger. And I admire her all the more after going through this brief and disarmingly candid interview. She comes across as such an easy-going and laid back person inspite of being so hugely successful!
    Not many can balance their head on their shoulders after getting to that level. Hats off to her modesty and wishing both her and Jitendra loads of success in their blogging journey.
    🙂

  5. Hii Jitendra,

    Thank you so much bro for sharing this mind-blowing interview of Michelle S. I have visited makingsenseofcents dot com many times and trust me he is really a great sense of writing. In recent i have read an article written by Michelle “Dare To Be Disappointed” and felt so much impressed.

    Thanks Bro for sharing this motivated post with us. Lots of things i learnt from here today. Keep updating Bro 🙂

    – Amit kumar

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