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A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom
Welcome to A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom, where I share insights about finance and family. I'm Charmaine-- a wife, mom, writer and obsessive home baker, and I hit record each week to share about adding to household income as a busy mom.
We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll discuss strategies for navigating both the home economy and the world economy hand in hand. Braiding each other's hair not included (yet).
Looking for more? I've got a ton of resources, including blog posts to match each of the podcast episodes, on my website: https://bycharmaine.com/
So glad you're here.
A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom
Can Content Creation Actually Bring in Cash?
In today's episode, Charmaine dives deep into the world of content creation to see it from all angles, and whether this is a worthwhile pursuit for busy moms.
Join us Char in this lively discussion, and as always, we appreciate your feedback and reviews!
Hi there and welcome to another episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast, where we chat about entrepreneurship, mom life and earning a side income as a busy mom. I'm your host, Charmaine, and I am so glad you're here. In this second season I have been recording a series all about money making as a mom. Of course, you don't have to be a mom to glean some ideas from this series, but it's basically written with that busy mom in mind who is just looking for some extra income, some ways to bring in some extra dollars to the household income. So I give all sorts of ideas for side jobs and side gigs and then I try to really give a full picture of the reality of those ideas and whether it's worth it for you in your busy household lives. So if you want, you can check out those other episodes.
Speaker 1:I start this would be, I guess, four episodes back with some ideas from the Amish and Mennonite communities. This is a group of people that's incredibly productive and somehow they run farms, they run craft businesses, they have so many children. So I would give it a listen because they are really productive and efficient moms. And then the next one after that is all about having craft businesses or basically businesses from home where you make something that could include, like a home bakery. I speak a lot about my experience doing that, and then the last episode that I did last week was all about writing and self-publishing. So I do touch on like using Amazon, KDP and, just you know, self-publishing your works if you want to go that route as well as the traditional publishing route. So give that a listen if you're interested in those ideas at all, and today's episode is going to be along the same lines of money making and that is all about content creation.
Speaker 1:Before I get into it, I wanted to say a huge thank you to a listener who came up to me at church the other day and just gave me the nicest compliment about this podcast and how she was enjoying it, and I really appreciated it, because I don't hear much feedback in real life and I have no idea who's out there listening. It's really fun for me. On my end, I can see the locations where the listeners are from, but that's about it. So I would really appreciate your feedback, your reviews. If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen, that would be amazing. I still need to collect those reviews in order to generate some more interest and get this podcast out to other people. And, of course, it always helps if you share the podcast with someone else as well. So thank you so much to that kind person for their compliment and I am looking forward to reading your review.
Speaker 1:So on to today's episode, which is all about content creation and whether you can make money good money from content creation, whether it's worth it. As you know, busy moms, busy household managers, and I'm going to take you on a deep dive here. So if you have ever thought about going into content creation to earn side income anywhere from podcasting to blogging to being an Instagram influencer then listen on. We'll explore the reality of this field, come up with a pros and cons list so you can accurately assess whether this is worth your time as a busy mom. So let's start with how can you earn money through this avenue, through content creation. It's helpful to recognize how you can earn money before you get into it, because you might have a preference, and I'm going to side note recommend a really good book for understanding advertising in general, because a lot of content. Note recommend a really good book for understanding advertising in general because a lot of content creation, making money from it, really comes from an understanding of advertising, I think, and so I'll plug one good book that I read about basically the history of advertising and where we are with it right now is called the Attention Merchants. That book really illuminated things for me, and a lot of the older methods for advertising have not gone away. We've had similar methods for the last couple hundreds of years, but the process has evolved and gotten more sophisticated to where we are today. So there are some basic ways you can earn from your content. Let's say it's either writing or recording something or sharing pictures online, but usually those pictures are accompanied by text.
Speaker 1:Whatever content you put out there, you can earn number one through direct patronage, and this is probably the most rare type of support, because I don't know, unless you found someone with a lot of money who is really passionate about you, I think it's going to be hard to generate enough income through direct patronage. But this is basically when someone gives you money for your content just because they enjoy it, right? You see, some of these like people patronize other creators in small ways through like Patreon. They might do like a few dollars per month. As I'm recording this. This is a pretty standard subscription rate. There's also, like, sometimes people will put donate buttons on their websites or like buy me a coffee type thing, and that allows the consumer of the content or the reader, the listener, to give money directly to that content creator, and I think this is great. I think it's a good model, but just in today's day and age, I think it's hard to find, because A I think the general assumption is that people assume that information and content should be free.
Speaker 1:With the internet, so much of this is free with like an asterisk right, Like a lot of content is brought to you what you think is free, but really it's paired with some sort of advertising avenue, right? So it's really. It's not technically free, it's taking your attention, but that's the model. A lot of people are not used to directly paying for content anymore. I would be highly surprised if any of you listening subscribe to things like newspapers or online news platforms or other things of that nature. Maybe you are in a Patreon, I don't know, but I do think it's rare. So that's one route to go, and I think it's hard to get that, though, because people have to know you exist, you, and your content exist. Yeah, to get that patronage, you really would have to get your content in front of a lot of eyeballs to even get someone who would be willing to kind of sponsor you. But that's one way to earn money.
Speaker 1:The rest of these ways are all affiliated with companies advertising, and so the model is I like to think of like print media, to really grasp my mind around it, whether you make videos, recordings or blog posts etc. It's similar to as if you had printed a newspaper or magazine and you're writing these articles and advertisers hear that you have a certain number of subscribers or readers. They want to place ads next to your articles where people will see them as they're reading your article, they're attracted through that content, but then they also see the advertisement. This is the model you can earn money through just ad placements. That works on websites, on podcasts I've heard you know if you hear ads sprinkled throughout the episode, those are ad placements. Youtube uses it. So many platforms use this model. You could also be sponsored directly by a company, whether you are on a podcast giving that ad or you're a blogger and you write a whole post for a certain product, so you could be directly. It's called a sponsorship. Youtubers get these as well sometimes.
Speaker 1:And then the third way to earn would be through affiliate links. So that's basically when I think of affiliate almost as a salesperson, because you get a portion or a cut of the sale if someone clicks through your link. Let's say you are blogging all about your favorite high chair brand. I don't know, I'm looking over at the high chair in our house. We just had to buy a new high chair and I had no idea how much these things really cost. Anyways, let's say you are talking about this wonderful, awesome high chair you bought and you include an affiliate link and your reader is interested as well through what you said and they're convinced to buy this high chair. They click on that link and they buy the high chair as a result of you. Then you might get a percentage of that sale. In the past people have said to go for like a 10% percentage. I've noticed that those percentages have gone down Nowadays. If you are an affiliate with Amazon, the current rate is 3%. Usually it's an average. You can get a higher commission on certain things, but that's the rough average commission. But those are the ways to earn from your content.
Speaker 1:Now, if you've ever looked into content creation as an income earner, you might have gone to a search engine and googled it. You might have watched a YouTube video about it or read a blog post, or maybe even asked ChatGPT. I will say that the information on all of these sources tend to skew really positive in the direction of content creation. I even did a general Google search on how much content creators are making, and I won't even quote that number to you because I don't believe that number, I'm sorry to say. Here's why the data might skew positive. All right, here's a good way to kind of keep all of this information in mind. If someone is writing about, you know, start a YouTube channel or they're talking about it on their YouTube, they could A be trying to sell you one of their products like a course or an ebook, right? Like a course or an ebook, right. So, of course, if someone has an ebook about starting a YouTube channel, then their videos saying start a YouTube channel, you know, are going to directly serve as a funnel to that product, if that makes sense. Like their videos serve as advertisement for their product. And I'm not completely bashing them, I'm not saying these products aren't good, but just keep in mind that it's sort of a bias right Like. It skews this and the positive yeah of like go for it. You know, Another reason might be the creator might have affiliate links to not necessarily the platform itself, but like how to build up your own channel on the platform.
Speaker 1:So, for example, when I was starting my blog and website, I found a lot of blogging tutorial articles and they would link to the certain things that you need to start a website. For example, when you start your own website, you need hosting. So people might throw up a link for, let's say, Bluehost, which is one company and they have an affiliate link. So they would get a commission if I clicked on that link within a certain amount of time and signed up for Bluehost. So again, I'm not trying to be cynical.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you know creators put up links sometimes for products that they actually use and recommend. Sometimes they might not. You never really know the motivation behind a creator's. You know putting up links or how much they truly recommend the product, but I'm just using that as giving you sort of context as to why people will say, yeah, go for it. Make a blog, make a YouTube, you can earn money and, by the way. Here's how you do it. Here's all the links to what you need to set up. You know, here's the link to my favorite microphone for podcasting and here's the link to my favorite microphone for podcasting and here's the link to my favorite ring light for youtubing, like whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Again, these might be tried and true products, but again it skews or colors the information in more of a positive light because they are trying to make a sale. And I do not blame content creators I might get into this more but basically, to create content, it does cost money, and so sometimes these people are just trying to make back what they put in, let alone earn on top of that. So I'll get into that later. And then, the other reason why these videos and blog posts and things you see online might be more rosy about content creation is just for the increase in traffic. So, simply, an increase in traffic will give more ad revenue. If you, you know, have this great video about like yeah, you can definitely earn money as a YouTuber and giving people a lot of hope, then that translates into more ad revenue from you, whether it's true or not. So I just wanted to give those caveats as to why the internet might be a little more glowing about this content creation thing than the reality, and same goes for ChatGPT, because AI pulls all of that information from those sources. So AI is going to probably generally give you a more rosy picture than might be the reality.
Speaker 1:I did find a realistic consensus on Reddit. We're answering a question. When someone said, how much income can you make, People were saying, on average, zero dollars or even negative. So if that gives you any idea I mean there were a few responders that have been able to make an income. But if that gives you an idea, that's more of where I was thinking too, just based on my experience and I don't want to give you numbers just from my experience. I want to tell you my experience as well as what others are seeing.
Speaker 1:But just remember, when someone says they make money from something, there is this thing called survivorship bias. So you might hear someone who makes money doing something, but you know they are the survivor. They're telling their tale because it worked for them. But there could be a hundred people who started something and it didn't work for them and they're not saying anything, right? So that only data you have to go on. You would think that it works when you're not actually seeing the rest of the data because it's not being voiced, if that makes sense. So keep in mind the survivorship bias as well.
Speaker 1:So, as far as statistics, here's what I was able to find, and again, some of these are from blog posts, so take that with a grain of salt. But as far as blogging, so I found that your medium income bloggers and these are the bloggers who have about 10,000 sessions per month could earn anywhere from $200 to $2,000 per month. Okay, that seemed realistic. And then the higher income bloggers who have over 10,000 per month. Okay, that's, that seemed realistic. And then the higher income bloggers who have over 10,000 sessions daily. They can earn 10,000 or more per month. And those were the statistics that really excited me when I was starting a blog. But just remember, there's so many people who start things that don't earn as well.
Speaker 1:For YouTube, I found that the vast majority make under $12,000 a year. A website called stackinfluencecom had an article on this and apparently based on ad revenue, like if you're in the YouTube partner program, if you are in that program, YouTube takes 45% of the revenue and the creator gets 55%. As of this recording and according to this blog post. To be in this partner program, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months. So there's parameters I found with virtually every platform.
Speaker 1:To start earning ad revenue, you need to cross a threshold of how many either viewers, subscribers, listeners, readers you need to basically prove you have an audience of sizable level before earning really any sort of advertising revenue. This article did say that 1 million subscribers might translate to a five-figure ad revenue per month, but it really depends. It depends what niche you're in and what you're speaking about. I learned this that advertisers different types of advertisers will pay for different things. I mean, think of a higher-end product like a luxury car, for instance, might bring in more ad revenue than, let's say, a teddy bear. You know, I don't know, I'm totally making that up, but so there are different products that bring in different revenue and you know advertisers might give you more based on if you are attracting their customer. The article went on to say that there are what it calls micro-influencers who have less of these subscribers. Like, if you don't meet the threshold for earning ad revenue yet. The article suggested trying sponsored content and product reviews first, then going to affiliate deals. And third, as a way just to generate income, is to freelance content create, so like making videos or articles for other people just to get more money. But yeah, I thought that was interesting. Another stat I saw was that, on average, a YouTube video reaching 1 million views can earn anywhere between 2 and 5,000 on AdSense. So I think it's a million views, but that sounds like it might be pretty hard to do.
Speaker 1:As far as influencers, like social media influencers, I tried to find Instagram specifically, but a lot of articles kind of lump them together the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter X those influencers the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually has some good stats. In 2023, the last year, I could find the yearly salary ranged from $31,000 to $75,000 per year for these influencers and the median influencer salary in the US in 2003,. And the median influencer salary in the US in 2003, sorry, 2023 was $48,797. And this was from an article by Franklin University. It talked about micro influencers and mid tier influencers who have, like, anywhere between 1,500,000 followers 500,000 followers and this other article from Pinchify said that they bring in anywhere from 45k to 129k per year. So that's a range right. So now that you're aware of these statistics, I mean it's just a drop in the bucket. There's so much more information you could find, but it's time to consider if this is right for you.
Speaker 1:Some people say, don't go into content creation for making money, and I guess I would agree halfway. Passion and interest in the topic that you're talking about will sustain you through content creation when you're tired and you don't want to make any more videos or podcasts, but you have to. The passion for whatever you're talking about will help you to keep going. So I kind of agree with starting out with passion. But on the other hand, I know that you need some business sense to even make it far enough to start earning money. So in a sense I disagree with that statement. You need business sense, you need to be strategic, basically to start making money.
Speaker 1:People don't just fall into this anymore. You know you might have heard a story about someone who 15 years ago made a blog post that was like hey world, here, I am welcome to my blog, posting some outfit. You know pictures, or cute home renovation pictures, and you know it sounds like they did nothing strategic to get there because there was way less competition. That model might have worked 15 years ago. There might have been sort of a gold rush type thing. But now that there's so much competition for each and every platform, you need to actually be strategic.
Speaker 1:You need to be producing whatever it is on a regular basis, on a consistent basis, and it has to be good content to stand out. Can you do that just as a passionate person? I don't think so. If you just have a passion like okay, I have a pretty low-followed, not well-att, well attended to Instagram that I do for my baking and it's just a passion Instagram Like, I am not trying to post regularly at all. Anytime I bake and I take a picture of what I bake, I post it. But that's super irregular and I'm not expecting to make any money off of that right now. Okay, so that's an example. Money off of that right now? Okay, so that's an example. But if you somehow think that you're going to make money from a few posts or videos or whatever pieces of content and it's not regular, it's not, I would say, even a volume of production that's meaningful then yeah, it's not likely you're going to make money. Right, you also need a huge volume of all of this.
Speaker 1:People in the blogging world used to tell me that you know, don't even think about earning until you're past 100 articles, maybe even like 300 articles to shoot for and there might be different numbers for YouTube and those other platforms as well but basically it would be very hard to earn money from content, from doing one or two or 10 or 50 videos or blog articles, Like unless you were already a celebrity. I don't really see how you would. If you're just a regular person like me that no one knows about, then yes, you have to really ramp up the volume. So that's a consideration. Then if you're a busy mom like me, Can you afford, you know, do you have the time budget to ramp up the volume on this? Can you make all these videos or blog posts? Another option is to hire someone to help with the production of all of this. But again, I kind of predict that my audience, you know, if you're looking for side income ideas already, you probably don't have stacks of money to invest in something like this. If you view it as a business and you take some money and throw it at the production of it, that is, you know, a strategy, but it's a risk. None of this is guaranteed either, and the model keeps changing and things are evolving and updating. So it's a really, really risky endeavor, but I still do it. So here's my background. If this helps at all, Then, after all these statistics, here's my personal experience.
Speaker 1:I started my teaching blog, chocolatefortheteachcom. It's still up and running, just petering along. I would say I started it two years ago when my daughter was six or seven months old and I found myself with a little extra time. I was motivated to earn money. I think in the beginning it was because I had classroom resources that I had made on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers, like classroom resources that I had made on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers, and that's where you sell. It's kind of like an Etsy for teachers. You sell your own printables and resources that you create, and I put up some new products and I wasn't getting sales. So I knew I had to bring in more marketing and so I initially used the blog to market my products for the classroom. But it was sort of like I was out of the classroom by then, I wasn't still teaching and I just felt like maybe I should lean into more of a blog where I'm talking about my experience as a substitute teacher and a mom and juggling both of those, and I kept hearing how you can earn money as a blogger, as a niche site owner, and, yeah, I went for it.
Speaker 1:I also have an interest and passion for writing, so it seemed like the perfect way to combine my passions, my circumstance in life. You know what I could basically do from home while I stayed home with my daughter? It seemed like the best of all of those worlds. And, yeah, so I chose this topic because I knew a lot about it. I could just write from first-hand experience. I knew that, though I love cooking and baking, being a food blogger, you know, I tried a few times making the recipe, then doing basically a photo shoot about it, then to write about it. That's just a huge production that I don't have the time for right now in this life season. So, though I would have loved to be like a food blogger, it wasn't fitting with my circumstances. So I chose the other route of like teaching, substitute teaching, being a mom, because I could literally just sit down and write about my experience. I didn't have to cook up a recipe, you know. So the production was faster.
Speaker 1:And then my other thought was that I was thinking there wouldn't be a lot of competition for this niche. I was looking up things for substitute teaching and there weren't really any blogs or many blogs of people writing about it at all, and I thought that maybe if I could be this voice of someone who's a real substitute teacher, that would draw in readers who were looking for that kind of camaraderie and that advice. So I think in that aspect yes, I was correct I didn't have a lot of competition. What I wasn't really thinking of was the monetization piece, Because when you have advertisers who come alongside your content, buyer intent really matters. So, like, who was the audience, who was the readership that I was attracting to this blog Other moms, part-time workers, substitute teachers their buyer intent isn't as strong as other fields, other niches, and so you know advertisers with these high-end products wouldn't really be interested in advertising on my blog about substitute teaching.
Speaker 1:You're not going to have many substitute teachers who are going to go out there and try to buy a Rolex or something you know Like. So the buyer intent wasn't strong. If you get into, like, the tech space, the finance space, so many of these, maybe even home DIY, these niches have a stronger buyer intent. Where people A want to buy, they go to the website trying to compare and contrast products and B what they're buying is a higher price point, if that makes sense. So I didn't think about all of that makes sense. So I didn't think about all of that aspect of it because I didn't know. I was building the airplane as I was flying it and just learning as I went, which is fine, Like that's a lot of people what they have to do. That's why I share.
Speaker 1:I haven't monetized that blog very well. I did start the Amazon affiliate program and so I have some links on there, mostly to like mother and baby kid products and I feel like I can speak really you know from very personal experience for those affiliate links and I do put affiliate links and give my favorite product recommendations. But so far I have earned nine dollars from Amazon Affiliate and this is a tier blog and just inside information about the Amazon Affiliate program. As of this recording, you have to earn a hundred dollars or more to get a check wrote out to you for them to cut you a check. So if you're under that $100, it's basically money. You get it in Amazon credit, so it's not even like money I can freely use. So my $9 is Amazon credit money, unless I magically make more than that.
Speaker 1:Just giving you that perspective, I wanted to give you some real talk instead of just the rosiness, and I want to give you all of the information before you decide something like this. Of course, I want to encourage you to use your talents, do something you're passionate about if you want to earn money, but, on the other hand, I know how stretched for time we can be as moms and I really don't want you to feel like you waste your time on a dead end. You know, and do I feel like I've wasted my time with my blog and this podcast? No, because, like I said, writing is a passion of mine. I almost have this compulsion to share and so I enjoy doing it.
Speaker 1:But I do see how these endeavors are pulling away time from other things I could be doing. I could be cleaning my house or, you know, just tending to household needs in general. So I do see the sacrifice that it involves and I would say to take a hard look before you do as a word of caution. But you know, in general it's possible to make money and I'll cheerlead you if you do, If you have a new YouTube channel or blog post or Instagram that you want me to look at. Feel free you can message the podcast email that is mostlyhomemom at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:And again, I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast in general. If I hear more from you guys, if I hear your reviews, that will certainly motivate me because, again, I'm not earning money from this. That'll motivate me to produce more episodes. And, speaking of episodes, this is one of the last ones of the second season. I'm going to wrap up the season soon. I think I'll just do one more episode after this one. You know, if you've been with me, thank you for listening so much and downloading, and I'd love to hear from you and hear those reviews and stay tuned for more tips on how to make money as a busy mom. But yeah, that's the gist of it.
