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Writing Wrap Up + Good News About Freelance Income

  July 12

This post may contain affiliate links.

Hey blog peeps! What’s up in yo hood? How’s yo day? Why am I so gangsta right now?

Let’s get to the updates…

Blog Update

I can’t believe I forgot to tell y’all something kind of awesome!!

Last month I made more income from my side hustles than I did from my day job! First time ever! EVER! 🙂

It might not be a regular thing since I had two big contracts come through in June that were upfront payments for 3 months of work. However, I’m still happy about it. It was really fun to add up the numbers and see that the blog + writing income jumped past my monthly salary by $130.00.

You can kind of see the progression of my side hustle income below, which helps to show that working on a website and writing for other websites is not a get rich quick scheme. As any other blogger will tell you, it takes a significant amount of time and energy. The jump in income in June was very representative of the hours I put in. Plus, I worked A LOT at my day job during the month of June, so last month was a little cray cray — but the reward was oh so sweet!

Side Hustle Income

I’m trying this new thing where I get up at 6:00 A.M. to write. So far, I’m able to squeak out one post in the morning. If I can make that two, I think I’ll do a lot better with balancing both full time jobs. Now if only I can organize my commenting and get more in, that would be awesome. Does anyone have any advice on how to streamline commenting? Right now, I have all blogs I subscribe to coming to my e-mail, and I try to comment as they come in. I’m not always successful with the commenting, but I do read them all. Do you have tips or tricks to share so that I can be more consistent?

Life Update

I’m trying to do more of my writing at the pool because sometimes I don’t go out and enjoy Grenada. 😉 I snapped this picture on Instagram, and you can see the reflection of my iPad in my sunglasses. It’s a tough life, but someone has to do it.

Writing Poolside

Posts That I Wrote For Others

You can totally hire me as a staff writer. These awesome peeps did:

How To Know You’re In The Right Career – GoGirl Finance

5 Clever Ways to Save On Summer Vacation – MoneyLife&More

The Spender and the Saver – YoungAdultMoney

Posts I Loved By Others

DC reviewed Wal-Mart’s cell phone plan. So helpful!

Michelle kicked her student loans in the face. Rock on!

Wendy & Jeremy AKA the coolest blog couple ever put in an offer on another condo. Should we give them a celebrity couple name, like Weremy or Jendy? Might have to work on that one… (Holly don’t be jealous of the title since Greg had to quit the blog :D)

Nick talks about the need for an emergency fund.

Tonya shared her budget, and she inspired me to share mine. Come back Monday to see all the details!

KK asked about who manages the money in your family. In mine, that would be me. 🙂

This post from Joe about if Martha Stewart were to “Martha Stewart” her finances made me laugh out loud.

Mentions

A big thanks to Holly, Travis, Michelle, & Alexa for mentioning me this past week. If you mentioned me, and I completely missed it, please let me know!

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Have a great weekend, everyone, and if you haven’t entered yet, don’t forget to try to win $480 right here. Only 9 days left until the giveaway closes. Peace out!

52 responses to “Writing Wrap Up + Good News About Freelance Income

  1. Congrats on your best month! That’s great to hear! For commenting I try to set aside time to comment so I don’t get sucked in and get nothing else done…which is so easy to do with so many great posts out there.

  2. Great job making more online than at your day job! Now you’ll never need to go back if you keep things up! If we rebound after the summer malaise for search traffic, things could be good on this side as well.

  3. Thanks for mentioning my post!

    The way I comment is pretty straightforward. I have a few folders in my favorites toolbar: “Daily Visits – 1” “Daily Visits – 2” “Various PF Sites” – I actually need to redo them sometime soon…sites are always going inactive or they stop/start commenting on my site a lot! I also try to reciprocate each comment with a comment back.

    Anyway I open the daily visits folder plus a few from my huge list on the last folder. I do this every morning about a half hour before I leave for work. I then send myself an email with links to the posts I could not get to in time. I do those during lunch or during free time.

  4. I love how you hustle so hard and it shows because girl you are everywhere! I vote Weremy 😉 Thanks for the mention. Have a great weekend!

  5. I started streamlining my commenting more by commenting first on those that interact with my site the most. Otherwise I could just literally spend all day on all of my favorite blogs, but I don’t have that kind of time. I also have a “read first’ category set up in bloglovin’ with again, blogs I interact with the most. Thanks for the link love. I can’t wait to see your budget, and congrats on all that side income!!

  6. Thanks for the mention Cat, and good job on your income! I use Bloglovin and have separate folders for different priority blogs. I comment on “Priority 1” blogs for sure every day, then work through the other blogs as I can. Also, I am putting more emphasis on sharing the blog posts than commenting on them. So, at the very least I will share every single blog that I subscribe to, then comment on the high priority ones and any other that I have something to say.

  7. Congrats on the great month of freelance writing! It had to be a nice change to have more income coming from your side jobs than your full-time, regular job. Keep up the good work!

  8. Nice work Cat! The last couple of months have been really good for me as well, so that’s always good. 🙂 I am like some of the others with the commenting. I have several folders – one for sites I go to everyday, one for ones I go to several times a week and then one for when I get the time. They always seem to be growing though. 😉

  9. Oh man, I LOVE Weremy!! haha Congrats, as well, on the increased side income – that chart looks promising, upward is always good! Love the shot, Grenada looks so relaxing 🙂

  10. That’s incredible! I’m kind of blown away by the fact that you can exceed your day job income with a side hustle. It might be time to get off the sidelines and into the game, but it’s hard to know where to start…

  11. Congratulations on a amazing month!! That’s wonderful 🙂

    Yes, you should definitely be writing at the pool! As an aside, every time I read your blog I just keep thinking “I want to go to there!” 😉 Happy Friday, Cat!

  12. That’s a huge milestone! You just doubled your salary, kablam!

    I’m still not sure if my commenting is especially efficient. I did have all the feeds on google reader, and not feedly, so it works, but there’s a lot of clicking involved…

  13. I just started using blog lovin as a way to help me keep up with commenting…and I love it! You can add all the blogs you want to read and then download the blog lovin tool bar. When you wake up in the morning you can look at the tool bar and it will tell you how many new posts have been published. When you click on it it takes you to the newest post (directly to the blog, not in a reader) and then you just keep hitting the next button to get to the other new posts. It saves you from having to click through emails or directly type in a web address.

    My explanation probably didn’t do it justice….but it’s helped me a lot comment wise.

  14. Wow, good for you. There’s no way I could squeak out a post in the morning let alone 2 , good for you. It takes me hours to put my posts together. Maybe I think too much about it all, I dunno but it seems to be working. Then again, if I’m getting paid it might depending on what they expect as well. Either way, I’m happy for you and I wish you continued success in the upcoming months!! Well done.

  15. Fantastic job! I love reading about people’s side hustles. I’m still trying to wake up earlier and find that I’m struggling with it. I might need to go to bed earlier. Keep up the good work.

  16. Gah, somehow your blog didn’t make it in my transition from Google Reader to Feedly, and I just realized it. Hopefully now I won’t miss anymore posts! You know, I don’t know why this is, but your blog doesn’t render right for me. The font is very spotty looking. I’m going to send you a screen shot because it’s really strange.

  17. Wow, that’s awesome! Congrats! I’m having the same problem with commenting around right now; maybe I’ll check out blog lovin’ like Alexa suggests.

  18. Congratulations on your best month! That’s fantastic news, and extremely motivating. 🙂 6am and I really don’t get along, but I think it’s great that you’re trying to work out a schedule to get everything done that you need to (and it sounds like you do a lot!). I try to comment on the days that I’m not writing a post for my own blog. I don’t know if that’s particularly good or not, but so far I believe it has been working.

  19. I know I am late to the game but I just wanted to say how much I love your blog. It is an inspiration in all honesty. I am slowly learning but I like your writing style and wish I could get better at some of the techniques you employ.

    Anyways, love your blog and appreciate the help you give out. As a fellow blogger – I hope to be able to get to where you are.

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