If I asked the question “Who wants to make money online” in 10 out of my next 10 posts… I’d have a 100% success rate at guessing the answer. All of you want to make money online. In fact, the make money online niche might be the most crowded niche in the blog-o-sphere. But here is a question that I want to ask you… if you want to make money online… what’s holding you back? That was rhetorical, so hold on, I’m about to answer it.

You don’t treat your blog like a business. You can’t make money online by treating your multi-million dollar dreams like you would treat your unwanted Christmas presents. It’s that simple. Being able to make money online revolves around your ability to run a business. All of you dream about making enough money blogging, that you can quit your day job, and live off of the blog income. But how many of you could tell me exactly how much money they made from day one, without checking more than one source? What I mean by this is - I can tell you every dime I’ve ever made, and where it’s come from.

My blog has it’s very own accountant… me! I claim taxes, deductions, and I pay myself as a regular employee. I know where every greasy penny goes from the second it enters my paypal account. How about all of you? It sounds simple enough… I made $7,000 in January, and I just have to make sure that I have “x” to pay the bills… I can spend any leftovers. Not so fast! I’m not telling you to live below your means, but I am telling you that if you do a lot of spending, at least take the time to find out where it goes.

This may sound like a pointless activity, but if I don’t know where all of this cash is going, I could be broke and forced to give up my make money online dream. It’s not all about record keeping though… you should also have a budget to go along with it. You need to budget for real world expenses, blog expenses, and everything in between. I know exactly how much of my advertising budget is being used, and If I’m getting close to the total amount I’ve budgeted for myself in any given month, I stop spending! It may sound simple, but you’d be surprised at how effective this is at making sure that I always have a reserve. And when you are working for yourself… you must ALWAYS have a reserve to get you through those rough times that you are likely to encounter.

IF some of you start to make enough to become full-time bloggers, you’ll be back at your job within a year. This isn’t a statement that I made up either. According to the SBA (small business administration), most people that become self-employed are so bad at managing their own money, that they’ll be back looking for work within a year. I’m not just talking about what most of us do right now, the “spend less than you make” strategy. You enter a totally different ballpark when you start working for yourself. It takes a lot of discipline to make sure that you have enough to live on, even when you aren’t receiving a paycheck every two weeks. As a blogger, sometimes I don’t get checks from affiliate programs for a couple of months at a time. So even though it’s nice to say that I made thousands of dollars one month, I might not get the fruits of my labor for another month or two. You need to plan ahead!

I can hear some of you thinking, “I’ll start doing this when my blog starts making “x” amount of money per month”. If you do it that way… you are already too late! I don’t care if you make $15 a month from your blog… you should always know where that $15 goes.

If I told you that I would hand you $1,000 if your blog records were 100% accurate since your first day running it… how much money would I owe you guys?

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