Eek!.. I started a blog!
Just a couple weeks ago I was asking myself questions like:
- What is a blog?
- Is blogging dead?
- Can you make money blogging?
- & more specifically and most importantly can you make money blogging in the Arts & Crafts niche?
After scouring the internet these past couple of weeks, binging YouTube videos, and sifting through Pinterest blogs to see examples of blogs in action I have come to the conclusion that…
- No, blogging is not dead
- Yes, you can make money from blogging
- And YES, even in the arts and crafts niche!.. or so there seems to be enough in it for me to make it worth my time : )
Today is October 30th, 2024 and I officially started blogging about a week ago! I went ahead and created this website and am feeling super official. I am no longer just an etsy shop, but am now saintrogersstreet.com, which is so exciting! I spent around $75 dollars to get this site up and running and am so excited to see what I can make of it!
I can’t say that I just woke up one day and decided to start a blog, in fact, just a couple weeks ago I didn’t really understand what exactly a blog was. I was actually introduced to blogging a few weeks ago by a YouTube video podcast interview from Lisa, from Farmhouse on Boone. I’ve followed a couple of her famous sourdough recipes so I thought I’d give it a listen.
Turns out you can make quite a bit of money from blogging as explained by herself and the student she interviewed who had just recently started blogging. They kept eluding ideas like..
- retiring their husbands from 9-5s
- or even if all their other incomes dried up, their blogging income would keep them afloat
From listening I gathered that blogging was very much so alive, however I wasn’t convinced that this could be done or worth my time in the arts and crafts niche. This then led me on a quest to try and find someone who perhaps would share their income as a crafty blogger.
How Much Money Can a Crafting Blog Make?
It was by happenstance that I came across this blog as I was just looking for some blog examples in the arts and crafts niche to get an idea of what they look like, what they post, and how they appear to monetize their blog. Since I am in the hand embroidery niche I came across this blog article sharing a number of free hand embroidery patterns. Turns out the blog I clicked on was also an etsy seller who shared tips on etsy anddd insights into her blog. Booyah! She even shared her income as a small crafting blogger! I had finally found what I was looking for : ) I so love it when people share these stats as it helps me decipher if it is worth pursuing or not. Thus that’s why I like to be transparent and share my own income reports on YouTube as well.
In this crafting blog, the author shared how in one year she made about $38,000 Canadian dollars and from display ads alone she made $20,000! Woah! (Find her full crafty blogging income report here). I know $20,000 is no full time income, but personally that is enough for me to get behind it as it is just one piece of the pie. For my hand embroidery business I already have an etsy shop, I’m working on getting monetized on YouTube, and now there is this potential to add a blog and make money passively through display ads.
After doing al little more research and finding some other income information on other crafty blogs I began to think this might just be worth a shot as I am not out here trying to make mega bucks. I am simply trying to do what I love and make a pretty penny on the side. My end goal is that hopefully I can one day say, “I’m so glad I jumped on YouTube and I’m so glad I took a chance on blogging.” My dream through all of this is that someday I can make a meaningful income that allows me to stay home with my kids, tend to their needs, make my own schedule, and make money so that all the financial weight is not on my husband.
So that’s the dream and the goal : ) and here’s the income gameplan:
I know full well that blogging is going to be a marathon and not a sprint just as my YouTube journey has been. I feel like I’m still in my small beginnings with my journey even though I’ve already been at YouTube for 2.5 years and am still not quite monetized yet. As it stands my watch time is up and down since I slacked earlier this year and wasn’t consistent due to my pregnancy and the normal trials that come with it. I’m currently about 700 watch hours away, but am hopeful I will get those hours within the next couple of months as things compound. Since I have the perseverance and dedication for my YouTube Channel I believe I can have that same perseverance for this blog.
From a business stand point I feel like YouTube and blogging just make sense together. Now this is only my second blog post, so I am still new to all of this, but the way I envision a blog is basically just the written form of a YouTube video. Personally I’m not a big writer, but if I’m just transforming the YouTube videos I’ve already made into a blog post, I feel like it is very doable, and like, why wouldn’t I do that from a strategic standpoint?
All in all, it seems like blogging and YouTube are the best of friends. Even the qualifications to start making money from ads on both platforms seems quite similar as well.
For example, to get monetized on YouTube you need:
- 1,000 Subscribers
- 4,000 Watch Hours
To qualify to get display ads on your blog you need (this example is for Mediavine, the ad agency I want to get into):
- 10,000 sessions/ month (Mediavine Journey)
- 50,000 sessions/ month (Mediavine)
Mediavine Journey is basically the beginner entry into Mediavine requiring 10,000 visits to your blog, this is my starting goal. My plan to get there is by driving traffic through Pinterest and YouTube through free patterns and templates from DIY hand embroidery projects I create over there : )
Officially Starting my Crafty Blog 🙂
Now that I had been convinced that blogging in 2024 was worth it, it was time to take action. To get started with my crafty hand embroidery blog I heeded all of the information I gathered from my research from YouTubers who have blogged before me. Meaning I…
- Downloaded WordPress.org
- Signed up for a self hosting site (BlueHost, that’s who everyone seemed to recommend for newbies)
- Got my domain name (saintrogersstreet.com)
Since starting this blog it has definitely been a huge learning curve as everything is so new! I really struggled a bit to design my website as I deleted a bunch of the free template design and tried to customize it a bit more, but it felt like the more and more I edited things, the worse and worse it got lol. So I quickly learned why all the blogging YouTubers recommend picking a theme and sticking to it.
Now that my website was up and running I was ready to add my first blog post! I made my first post about this free sunflower hand embroidery pattern, a free pattern I recently recorded and put on my YouTube channel. So now people who want to embroider this pattern can either find it on Youtube or on Pinterest.
On YouTube they will be directed to my blog post where they can scroll to find the free pattern download at the bottom of the page and choose to follow along with the YouTube stitch-a-long or follow along with the stitching steps in the blog post itself. Alternatively they can find the free pattern on Pinterest, which will take them to the free patten blog post, where again they can download the pattern and stitch with the written stitching steps or click on the embedded YouTube embroidery pattern stitch-a-long. The neat thing about all of this is that either route they take I will be able to make some money from the ads they view on the site and/or in the YouTube video without having to directly compensate me. It really feels like a win all around as I’m offering free patterns while being compensated through the means of just simply viewing and scrolling past ads on the site. They don’t even have to click on them, just view them!
Needless to say I am feeling very excited and optimistic about this as I feel like I am creating a good rhythm in creating weekly YouTube videos and feel like I finally have a good grasp on Pinterest marketing that I am ready to “double dip” my YouTube videos into the blogging world in attempt to make some meaningful income that will some day allow me to stay home!
And This is Just the Beginning…
I hadn’t mentioned yet, but putting display ads on your website is actually just ONE way you can monetize your blog! There are other ways you can make money from it like…
- Affiliate Marketing (personally I’m not so sure this would be worth it the hand embroidery niche as everything is pretty low ticket)
- Sponsorships
- Your own Digital Products/ Services/ Courses
For me personally I think the display ads are the most exciting as they are 100% passive and don’t require your audience to pay a penny. I’m a big fan of just being friends and sharing what I know, sometimes I feel sick of all the gatekeeping through courses, so personally this feels like a good fit, not to mention profitable as well ; )
Off to The Races
So now, I am off to the races! You can find me over here grinding on YouTube, this blog, and Pinterest. That is the trio for my small hand embroidery business I am going with : ) My favorite things about these platforms is that they are evergreen (meaning their shelf life never dies) and that you can schedule out all your content! I don’t have to be there to click post or upload on any of these platforms. This means technically I could batch prep lots of content and then take weeks off at a time if I wanted to, pretty nice if you ask me as opposed to a platform like Instagram where you constantly have to show up (I ditched the platform earlier this year and still feel really good about it, you can hear my thoughts and reasoning here).
I’m super excited for this crafting blogging journey and can’t wait to see how far it takes me! It is currently the end of October of 2024, I’m hoping to qualify for those 10,000 sessions through Mediavine Journey by the end of 2025 so I have lots of work ahead of me. If you want to follow along with my journey to growing and monetizing this blog, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel as I will be sharing updates there throughout the year!
Catch ya over there! -Kylie