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.)
I am super happy that you make a little every time someone visits your site because I sometimes come to it 4 or 5 times in a night 🙂 going over your recipes to find one I will make for the night or for the weekend or getting ingredients during a shopping trip…whatever the reason I find myself typing in “choco”…in my Google chrome web bar multiple times per day. I am not online much, but your site I see almost daily 🙂
Saying that, I am happy to be contributing to your financial stability and helping you keep this site up because I so truly enjoy, respect and appreciate your ideas. I have 2 children born june 2010 and july 2011, and I still have about 20lbs to lose to be pre pregnancy…I don’t know if I will ever get there again as I was thin. But I have noticed my stomach reducing since I have been using your recipes!!! I am not so concerned about weight but WOW! That means something to overall health. AND I am enjoying it all soooo much. We eat really well, but I just cannot give up desert. So I am just thankful for your creative, desert based mind and want you to know that some of us out here need you to keep sharing!! 🙂
Hey as a total side note…I know that a lot of your recipes use beans…and many people may chose canned beans for whatever reasons. I don’t know where you are at on this, but we should definitely be always sharing healthy options and eating canned foods, when the cans are lined with BPA ridden plastic (which most are) has been shown through countless reports and research to be unhealthy and a large factor in so many reproductive and hormonal/behavioral conditions. I felt that I had to type this and share 🙂
Continued thanks 🙂
I’m definitely trying to be more savvy about that… I’m trying to cut back on the amount of bpa cans I use. I’ve started buying POMA tomatoes (I think that’s what they’re called) and Eden beans :).
Thank you so much for sharing these post Katie! I thoroughly enjoyed them! You truly are a blessing to SO many people! 🙂
I’m sorry you felt like you had to apologize, I didn’t see a need for it personally. I think you were honest. Blogging can be a real time dog. I don’t think people realize the work that goes on, the money invested (dishes, camera equipment, etc).
I am newly obsessed with this blog and I cannot wait to try so many of the recipes you have posted. I’m not sure if you’re ever curious about how people stumble upon your blog, but just in case you are, I will tell my story: I was reading a Huffington Post article about Ann Romney and her use of Pinterest. She “pinned” your health peanut butter egg recipe, and because peanut butter and chocolate are two of my favorite foods, I had to figure out where this recipe came from. After getting to your blog, I then spent several hours linking from page to page (and subsequently had a less productive day at work than usual, though totally worth it).
I do have on question: It may be deliberate, so if it is, please ignore my request, but I would love if you had links at the bottom of your posts similar to “next post” or “previous post”, so I can view many your posts in order. I’m not sure exactly how blogs work or if this is something you would even want on yours, but I would love to have another way to “click” and browse around.
Hey Tracy!
I actually already do have other posts at the very bottom of each post (before the comments). There should be four pictures that say “You might also like…”
I think what shes referring to is a feature similar to that of blogspot so she can read the posts chronologically. If thats the case, Tracy, you should just be able to do it from the home page.
Oh, btw, if it’s a cookbook you should consider Chocolate Covered Kitchen as a title. xD
Ooh cute!
Hmmm, or maybe my rss feed? http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Chocolate-coveredKatie
I hope you do get to do this for a living for forever 🙂 It’s nice to see “dreams come true” once in a while.
Your new recipe looks like it MIGHT contain chocolate. But I’m just guessing 😛
So sweet – thanks for writing this. It’s nice to get a better understanding of what you do. 🙂
This was so fun to read! Thanks for sharing all the little details- you can tell you put SO much work into what you do! Obviously your efforts are not going to waste, you have an amazing blog! Excited to see that chocolate recipe tomorrow!
Great information, I appreciate you sharing!!
EIGHT MILLION??? O.O *whispers* wwwowww. And I get excited when I got 48 the other day! LOL (Yes, I’m just beginning.)
And, no, don’t reply. Save your time for comments that need one. 😀 Keep up the great work.
Wow, it must be so rewarding to see how all your hard work has paid off! Congrats on being able to do this as a full-time job but I absolutely agree, if you start out with that in mind I don’t think you’ll be too successful. Not unless you already have a ‘name’ or ‘brand’ for yourself. Thanks for the info girl!