Breakfast:
Today’s breakfast was this recipe: Eggless Breakfast Scramble.
See? Proof that I don’t just eat chocolate! It’s an older recipe, with terribly old photos, but I still love it. There are actually quite a few old recipes on the site that I missed when archiving the recipe page, and I’m trying to go back to find them all. It’s like a Where’s Waldo…
Tomorrow I’ll get back to the chocolate recipes.
Promise.
Today’s post, though, is a follow-up to Thursday’s Day In The Life post, since so many people had the same questions. I figured it’d be best to answer them all in the same place.
I also wanted to apologize.
In my last post, I stressed the fact that I work hard at my job; that running the website takes up a majority of the day—nights and weekends, too. But re-reading my post, I’m cringing at how it almost sounds like I’m complaining about the amount of work.
Perhaps I chose the wrong words; it was definitely not my intent to compare my job to those of people who do manual labor or spend long hours at tedious jobs they hate. I can see now how my post could’ve sounded privileged and insensitive. If you took offense, please accept my embarrassed apology, as well as my gratitude for enabling me to have this job that I love.
To answer the questions…
How can I become a full-time blogger?
To be really honest (and blunt), I think that if your goal in starting a blog is to turn it into a career, you’re going to fail. You should blog because you love it, not because you want to make money. I didn’t set out to make this my job, and I happily blogged for years without getting much (or any) pay. My goal in blogging has never been to earn tons of money; it’s just to make enough money that I can continue doing what I love. I’d still run this website if it made absolutely nothing; I’d just be forced to devote less time to it.
If it turns out—without your trying—that you can blog for a living, that’s a happy coincidence. But I think if you specifically tailor your content to become a full-time blogger, people will see through you and see that your heart really isn’t in it.
So… how many visitors does your blog get?
At first I wasn’t going to answer this question. But the truth is, I’m curious too, and I’d love it if more bloggers shared.
My website received almost 8 million visits for February and March. If you’ve ever told your friends or family about Chocolate-Covered Katie, or shared my website on facebook, I am forever grateful to you… I’d bake you a giant batch of “thank you” cookies, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough!
(Seriously, it wouldn’t.)
Are you going to blog forever?
I don’t know what the future holds, but I’d love to continue running this website for as long as anyone cares to read. There is something else I’m working on, and many of you already know about it because I’m lousy at keeping secrets. I’m planning to finally announce it officially on the blog next month!
How does a person make money from a blog?
I have a sponsor, Foodbuzz. Their ads are on the side of my blog, and in return they pay me. This amounted to a few dollars a month when I first started out. But if a blog gets popular enough, you can actually make a living from it. I’m sure there are more lucrative ways to make money from a blog, but I haven’t looked into it. As I said earlier, I’m not interested in making a huge amount of money—just enough to pay the bills, cover the expense of my baking supplies (I go through a lot when doing recipe experiments!), and pay the server costs for website hosting.
Can I make a donation to your blog?
I actually don’t have a donation page… I know many other bloggers do, but I’d feel weird asking for donations when there are so many charities out there more in need than my need for money for baking supplies. But if you made a donation to your favorite charity in my honor, that would absolutely make me so happy!!
Do your parents financially support you at all? Does your husband?
My parents don’t, and my husband definitely does not support me. Unless you mean my imaginary husband. In that case, yeah he gives me tons of money. 😉
How do you make friends when you work alone?
I’ve kept in touch with some of my college friends and high school friends, and I’ve made more friends through their friends; plus many of my roommate’s friends and coworkers have also become my friends. Then I also have you all! Reading your comments makes me feel like I’m getting to know you and like we’re friends. I love being part of this online community and can’t understand how a blogger could take comments for granted and ignore his or her readers. You all teach me so much, and I wish there were more time in the day to respond to every comment and to try all the recipe ideas people send me.
(2015 edit: It’s so fantastic how many real-life friends I’ve made from people who have recognized me on the street from my blog! If you see me, please do feel free to say something!! Meeting new people is one of my favorite things, and it’s one of the top reasons I enjoy living in DC.)
AND, for what it’s worth, I didn’t think you came across as insensitive or offensive in your 1st post.
I completely agree!
I just want to say that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE reading your blog and making your recipes. Thank you for being so dedicated 😀 My favorite thing to do when I get home from school in the afternoon is to check your blog for new posts!
8 million? Dang that’s a lot!
I am proud to be one of those 8 million :).
Me too! 🙂
Love you, Katie!!!
Holly buckets! I agree. My jaw dropped when I read that number! I can only hope and dream mine will ever get that big…not even close so far…:P
Great post Kaitie!
I didn’t think anything about your earlier blog post. People are too sensative. Or jealous. People who don’t do what they love are jealous of other’s happiness.
Cookbook?!
The cookies look poofy like my grain-free cookies if I don’t flatten them out, especially the sunflower seed butter chocolate chip walnut ones. Yum!
Hi Veggie V I am am grain-free, too. I would love to try your grain free cookie recipe!!
Hi Katie,
I’ve been following your blog only for about 6 months now, and when I say follow, I mean check out weekly or so. I am trying to commit every day to support the blogs I love, since I good friend of mine, also a blogger, explained how the system works. She is a very close friend, and asked us to please comment as much as we would like, as the comments count. So, now after reading her posts, I diligently try to contribute something meaningful in response to her writing.
I think it is absolutely wonderful that you are able to maintain a modest lifestyle by blogging. I can tell you love it, and I feel that you “share,” rather than “preach,” which I find to be an annoying presence in many other blogs.
Although I am not a vegetarian, I do try to limit gluten, and I appreciate anyone’s efforts to experiment with the difficulty of baking with non-traditional ingredients, knowing full-well the time it takes to do this on a trial and error basis.
Kudos to you for sticking to your intended goals, and for standing up for yourself when some commenters became judgmental. After all, this is not a blog about the general layperson’s uneducated opinion of someone’s health or lack thereof…judgmental comments only served to detract from the content and objective of your blog.
I look forward to reading it more in the future…chocolate and cooking beats out the news any day! Thank you!
Thank you so much, Kim. I definitely am trying to experiment more with gluten-free recipes, because I know including such options helps a lot of people. Personally, I don’t have any issues with gluten, but people thrive best on different diets. Of course, I think everyone thrives best on chocolate… 😉
Haha I have to agree, I kinda want to know how many visitors other bloggers get! I’m a small, new blog (no advertising or anything – just for fun!) and I got about 22,000 page views last month, and it seems to increase every month as I get more readers. But that’s page views, I don’t know how to figure out how many unique visitors I get since I am not self-hosted (I use wordpress).
When I was a new blog, I got like 5 visitors probably for an entire year. And I think one of them was my mom ;). I think I would’ve fainted if I’d seen even half your stats!
I love your blog, i have tryed several of your recipes, blogging is hard and i so couldnt do it, being under the eye of so many people and one word could set off a huge debate, just baking and cooking alone is time consuming much less taking pictures and posting about them. I so couldnt do it, i have several times tryed to start my own blog, and share some of my frugal tips and cooking experiences, would do a couple times and just couldnt do it, i belong to several blogs and i love them, yours is one:) thank you for putting in the work and sharing with us all….
There is no need to apologize 🙂 Blogging is as demanding as other jobs but in their own way. Anyways, all that matters is that you enjoy your job and that we the readers enjoy your delicious chocolate covered goodies 😛
Hi Katie,
I felt really inclined to respond to your post after you felt the need to apologize. I think those of us that read your blog regularly (and drool at all your amazing recipes) know just how genuine you are. Your passion shines through each and every post and honestly, kudos to you for following your dreams. I so admire those that have the courage to pursue what others think are impossible. The words say it: I’m possible!!!! When we do what we love, it seems opportunities present themselves. Why? Because it’s undeniable that people are drawn to those that stick to what they genuinely love.
All that to say, I wish you the best in everything you do! I hope you continue to bless the rest of us with this amazing gift that God has given you. Lord knows not all of us are as talented in his arena of our lives, but it’s what makes life so neat isn’t it?
Have a wonderful day!!!
Thanks, Ali! And I definitely agree with you about the talent thing… I look at doctors or engineers (or even teachers like my mom, with the patience of Job), and I have no idea how they do it. It makes life interesting that we all have different skills, and it’s also the only way “life” could work! If they expected people like me to build spaceships… 😕
loving this 2 part post! you’re awesome!