Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, the founder of Making Sense of Cents, recently embarked on a four-month around-the-world cruise with her family. While on the cruise, she visited over 25 countries while running her online business.
Making Sense of Cents, which she started ten years ago, is a blog about paying off student loans, which now brings in $40,000 per month through affiliate marketing, sponsored partnerships, and online courses. She also invests some of her earnings, receiving quarterly dividend payouts, while spending about two to three hours per day, excluding port days, totaling 10 to 15 hours per week on the cruise.
Here's how Schroeder-Gardner structured her days during the cruise and developed her income streams to be nearly entirely passive:
Affiliate Marketing
Schroeder-Gardner carefully structured her work schedule around her travel plans. During her 60 days at sea, she focused on work, especially during her daughter's nap times. She managed emails, wrote blog posts, brainstormed new ideas, handled accounting, addressed urgent matters, and devised strategies to grow Making Sense of Cents.
Affiliate marketing significantly contributed to Schroeder-Gardner's revenue generation, constituting about half of her blog's income. She crafted blog posts around products she endorsed, embedding referral links for readers to explore. Whenever someone signed up through her link, she earned a commission, which remained active in older posts, continually generating income as traffic flowed to her website.
While aboard the cruise ship, Schroeder-Gardner published one or two new blog articles each week. She also observed a surge in traffic to a 2022 post titled "31 Best Stay At Home Jobs (#1 Is My Full-Time Job!)," which attracted tens of thousands of new readers during her four-month journey due to social media boost, particularly in Pinterest and Facebook.
Sponsored Partnerships
Roughly 20% of Schroeder-Gardner's revenue comes from advertising, such as sponsored partnerships. She collaborates with companies to promote their brands on her blog or social media platforms, showcasing their products through her writing skills or sharing her experiences with them. This content may include reviews or educational posts about the company's offerings. The company gains exposure in this mutually beneficial arrangement while Schroeder-Gardner earns income for creating content and reaching her audience.
Before committing to a partnership, Schroeder-Gardner thoroughly tests the product or service, conducts extensive research, and declines if she does not like it. She receives offers regularly but turns down those from companies she believes would not resonate with her readers or do not align with her values. Sponsored partnerships involve more active income, so Schroeder-Gardner did not engage in many during the cruise. However, she worked on some sponsored newsletters, dedicating approximately five hours to them.
Digital Product Sales
Another 20% of Schroeder-Gardner's revenue comes from course sales.
Schroeder-Gardner did not fully realize the potential of selling her expertise in the industry at first. It took numerous requests from her audience, with hundreds asking for help each week, before she conceived her first-course idea, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, to address the needs she faced when starting in the blogging world. Published on the online platform Teachable, it provides comprehensive guidance on affiliate marketing, breaking down the concepts into text-based lessons and modules, which she continuously updates with new lessons to ensure their relevance.
During the cruise, Schroeder-Gardner updated lessons and addressed student queries while also actively managing a Facebook community group associated with the course, ensuring her presence there at least a few times per week. Afterward, she closed her laptop and joined her husband and baby on the balcony to enjoy watching the sunset from their room.
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