Last year we decided to stop living in the rat race of the corporate world and work towards making money online instead! As of 2019, we now make over $8,000 a month online from our 8-acre homestead!
How To Make Money Online
You see, everything changed one day in January 2016, when my husband came home to tell me that his company was downsizing and he was caught in the crossfire... so we had a choice to make.
Do we live in the city where we "own" a home and he would have to go back to working for someone else? Or do we take the plunge into self-sufficiency and a life where we could all be together every day?
You can probably guess which one we chose!
We sold our home and moved to 8 acres of family land in the country, 30 minutes from the nearest town, and set to figuring out how to survive! The first few months were rough, but as He always does, God knew what He was doing...
So let me share a little bit with you about how we are making this work and living our dream of homesteading while still making a good living for our family. These are the steps we took to make sure that we were making money and able to live within whatever means we had from our self-employment efforts!
Want to skip straight to the money making section? Click here!
Reduce your Need for Money
The concept of reducing your need to make your income bigger is not uncommon to most people who grew up on a farm or homestead... But when you live in the city and have parents who work 9-5 jobs, it can be quite the mindset shift!
While we have always lived a very frugal life, we knew we needed to cut costs to the very bone if we were going to have a chance at changing our lives and the lives of our children.
Step One: Downsize
We were already living in a modest 1600 square foot house in a mid-level subdivision, but we sold that house in favor of an 800 square foot (one bedroom) house on land.
Not only did that move get us out from under a huge mortgage, but it also gives us the opportunity to grow our own food and eventually have animals.
Step Two: Get Rid of Everything You Can
Because we were cutting our living space in half, we knew that we needed to get rid of quite a bit.
I'm not going to lie, this was tough at first. And the temptation to just get a storage unit until we had a bigger house again was real.
But in the end, the whole point of us moving and downsizing was to save money... so adding a storage unit bill of $200-300 a month just didn't make sense!
We also had to contend with the fact that our new home didn't have a garage, but just a 5x8 back room in which to store anything extra.
Bonus: All the stuff we got rid of via garage sales and Craigslist helped keep us afloat while our income streams were growing during those first few months!
Step Three: Cut Everything You Can
Seriously, cut everything you can. All the bills and extra everything that isn't necessary for survival cut it!
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Wear a sweater instead of turning up the heat in order to save on electricity.
- Eat picnic-style (no oven or stove needed) meals during the summer to cut down on cooling costs.
- Slash your food budget to the bone (ours is only $300 a month for an all organic diet!)
- Cut cable and subscribe to Netflix or Hulu.
- Reduce the data on your cell phone plan (be sure to turn off cellular data on your phone so you don't go over!).
- Stop buying anything that isn't food, bills, or kids items (diapers, wipes, etc.)
- Try a few of these extreme ideas for saving money!
Making Money Online on a Homestead
So, now that you know a little bit more about how we cut our costs, let's get down to the nitty-gritty of how we make real money!
All of our income is 100% passive. That means that we regularly receive money that requires minimal to no effort on our part in order to receive it!
Talk about a dream come true right?
I'm not going to lie, our lives very closely resemble a dream right now! We go to sleep when we want, we get up when we want... we keep our own hours and we are together all day, every day!
In order to do that we have one main source of income for our homestead. This doesn't require us to sell animals, or vegetables at the local market. It's not dependent on our location, the weather, crop yields, or anything like that at all!
Instead, all of our income comes from online sources. Namely, this blog!
I started blogging 3 years ago to share recipes with friends and family... I had no idea what I was doing or how this little site was going to change the course of our lives.
But when my husband found out he was losing his job, and we made the decision to buckle down and do what we needed to do to have a different life, I dove in head first and started making a full time income within 6 months of starting to really work my site like a business!
I had always heard that blogs aren't profitable until they hit 100,000 page views a month... well let me tell you, I started making real money well before I hit 100K!
Making the decision that I needed to focus on this blog as a business meant that I needed to make a few changes. I switched away from the hosting service I'd used for 12 years (for non-money making sites, like church sites and stuff) to an amazingly reliable hosting service for the same cost that helped me build my income very quickly.
I also started pursuing any and all sources of blogging income that I could find!
Can You Do This Too?
Yes! 100% yes!
I've shown many bloggers how to make this kind of money, so it's not unique to me at all! This is information for every blogger, regardless of your niche or size.
In fact, I started a second blog in 2017 and implemented these techniques from the beginning. That blog brought in $1500 in its second month! Wow!
Maybe you're thinking "Yeah, that's great for you... but my blog is too small." or maybe "I don't have a blog, and I have no idea where to start."
Let me save you some time!
I've created this free training video to help you understand more about blogging as a career and to help you get started in the best way possible!
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That's it! We make real money blogging and you can too!
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