In effort to bring the best of the best in blogging to our readers, we are starting an interview series with Plutus Awards winners to highlight their efforts as well as share tips and tricks of theirs to the blogging community they serve. Since winning a Plutus Award takes a lot of hard work, these bloggers may share some insight that could inspire you to win your very own!
The first blogger we are highlighting today is Michelle from Making Sense Of Cents.
Along with a booming affiliate course, Michelle has been heavily involved in the community and is one of the most helpful bloggers I know. Now let’s get started with our interview!
Hello Michelle! Can you tell us about your blog and what Plutus Award you won?
Hello! My name is Michelle Schroeder-Gardner and I run the personal finance blog Making Sense of Cents. On my blog, I write often about the many different ways to make extra money, the top ways to save money, achieving your dream life, RVing (me and my husband RV full-time), and more. I love running Making Sense of Cents and I am very happy that this is now my full-time career, my business, and pretty much my life.
I just won the Plutus Award for Blog of the Year, which I am extremely happy about! I love the personal finance community and blogging, so it is truly an honor to be voted for that.
How did you feel winning the award knowing it was from your peers?
That was definitely a great part about winning. The personal finance community is amazing, and I am so happy that they believe in my work as much as I do. You would think that bloggers would be more competitive with one another, but it’s not like that at all with the personal finance blogging community – it’s truly about the community! This is also one of the top things that I teach to new bloggers – the blogging community is your friend and you should network your heart out. Other bloggers are great!
Where are you now? Are you still writing the same blog? How has it changed?
Yes, I’m still managing Making Sense of Cents. It’s still fairly similar to how I started my blog. One thing I plan on doing is creating more and more free courses and free resources for my readers. I currently have a free money management course, free budget worksheets, and more.
What advice would you give someone looking to grow their blog today?
My top piece of advice would be to just start a blog! So many people wait forever to start a blog because they are afraid of all of the “what ifs.” However, you won’t know if you’ll like blogging or not unless you start. Plus, blogging is super affordable, so you can see if you like it or not without spending too much money.
I have a free blogging course that those who are interested in starting a blog should check out.
Blogging can be tough. How do you keep up with motivation?
Yes, definitely. Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme and at times it can be hard to work. One thing I do is that I always try to work ahead as much as I can. I am currently around 1.5 months ahead when it comes to work, and this makes blogging easier because whenever I don’t feel like working, I can just stop! Due to working ahead, I am never in a rush to finish work, I am never stressing out to reach a deadline, and so on.
Where do you see yourself going from here? Any plans in the works you can share with us?
Well, I recently released my affiliate marketing for bloggers course over the summer, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I am thinking about launching more courses, guides, etc. in the future to help bloggers and readers even further.
Other than that, I plan on continuing to help my current and future readers as much as I can. I want to continue to provide high quality content to them and help them take control of their finances and their life. I LOVE helping readers and I want to do this for quite some time. 🙂
What is your greatest achievement outside of blogging?
Oh boy, that’s a tough question! I would probably say full-time traveling. I’m so very glad that I can travel full-time with my husband and our two dogs. I don’t think life gets any better than that. We get to see amazing new places all the time, have great views on a constant basis, and more.
Thanks Michelle for the interview! Do you have any questions for Michelle? Any other Plutus Award winners you’d love to see us feature?
1 Comment
moneycorgi · December 10, 2016 at 4:00 pm
making sense of cents is definitely one of the more inspiring blogs out there.
just looking at the big numbers on the income report is enough to make me get busy trying to do the same for myself.