It's been 3 years now since I signed up for Wealthy Affiliate, and I wanted to share a little bit about my story and the one thing you absolutely cannot do if you want to make money with this blogging thing. I'm a parenting blogger now, and while I don't consider my income full time yet, it's more than I ever thought possible online.

Before I signed up here, I was internet "clueless". So if I can do this, so can you. I had no social media channels set up, didn't read blogs, didn't know what blogs were, had never heard of the term HTML or wordpress, and certainly had no idea how people made money online.

After a little interenet search for something like "how to make side income from home" I stumbled on a few sites sharing how they started making money onlne. It seemed weird, maybe too good to be true, but possible. So I kept learning and reading.

One thing led to another and I ended up reading and researching Wealthy Affiliate, and signed up for the free trial. I devoured everything I could with the little time I had (as a stay at home mom with a baby and toddler.) I went Premium and told myself I had 1 year to figure out how to make money off the blog or I'd be done.

I had so many reasons to quit, but didn't.

I didn't see any progress for over a year. And even stopped altogether for 6 months, because the technical part of blogging was SO overwhelming. But I didn't quit.

I didn't tell anyone I blogged, or how I spent two hours a day when the babies napped. But I didn't quit.

I didn't say, I can't afford this. Instead, I picked up an online side gig called website usability testing to pay for my Wealthy Affiliate cost.

And then one day, a year later or so, I made an Amazon affilate sale. It was $0.13. It was everything I needed to NOT quit. Soon after, a baby company asked to send me free items to review on my blog. Eventally I figured out how to find paid sponsored work. And then I figured out how to grow my pageviews enough to get accpeted into Mediavine (great paying ad network). Here's how I grew my pageviews from 0-11K in one month. Three years later, I'm so glad I didn't give up on myself.

If you are wondering what the one thing is you should NEVER do if you want to make money blogging...it's quit. Force yourself to answer one question at a time and then apply it. The reason why most blogs fail is because someone quits. Keep going, keep learning, keep applying. You dreams are possible if you will do the work.