Let me draft a blog post here.
FWIW, I've spent a half-dozen hours with MMM and his family. A couple hours of that time was in Denver at FinCon12 and the rest was at two meetups here on Oahu.
He gave a great talk at FinCon about "Growing a Popular Blog without Promotion: How to Create a Cult of Loyal Readers that Grows All by Itself". His tongue-in-cheek point was that bloggers have to stake out a passionate point of view and write hardcore posts on the topic while also practicing what they preach. Everything we blog about has already been said many times, so visibility depends on saying it in a different way that gives people something to talk about. He pointed out what's worked for him and his blog and what else could be done. Look at the size of the ERE forum and look at how the MMM forum has grown. The cool kids over at MMM see this forum as a "more mature" crowd, while the Bogleheads have a, shall we say, even more mature reputation. MMM's readers have established their own identity and he's nurturing his audience.
Pete gave that talk to a packed room of nearly 400 personal finance bloggers and journalists (like Liz Weston). He took questions, a few of them skeptical. He spent two more days at FinCon talking one-on-one with most of us. I never detected a false note or an equivocation (unlike a notorious Internet troll who was also at the gathering). More importantly, none of the other writers there found anything to take issue with, either. A large minority of those FinCon bloggers are CFPs and CPAs and entrepreneurs who could spot a faker in about 10 minutes. Any blogger would get huge traffic from a post like "Why MMM is a fraud". We've all seen other bloggers who've blazed out of the gate and then stumbled on their inconsistencies, or just ran out of material and wandered off.
Pete was the same guy at our Hawaii meetups who we saw at FinCon12. If he'd had been gaming the crowd (about 25 at the first meetup, a handful at the second) it would've been easy to spot. He was there with friends, sure, but their spouses & friends also came with skepticism as well as curiosity. Instead I had a great time listening to the rest of the people there. Those of you who grump about Millennial entitlement would have no issues with the people I talked to. I wish my daughter had been on the island to soak up the entrepreneurial atmosphere and the financial wisdom. I made a couple good friends there, too.
Pete's just a nice, bright, unassuming, very articulate guy who happens to hold some passionate beliefs. He doesn't bring it up in his daily life any more than the rest of us would leap up on a soapbox about our own beliefs. But on his blog... he's free to unleash his inner Hulk and say what he wants without fear of moderation or "Yeah, buts". His spouse is very nice too, and a helluva sysadmin. Their kid is a typical kid. Pete mentioned that their kid thinks hotels are an incredibly exotic vacation destination because they hardly ever use them. I gather that their kid made Pete spend a lot of time in the elevator with him as he figured out all the things it can do. Must be a future engineer.
Pete's blog has to be pulling in over $1000/month in AdSense income alone (which I'm probably underestimating by a factor of at least two) and his Bluehost affiliate commissions are also generous. At one point the blog traffic was generating over $4K/month in credit card affiliate commissions, although he and one major issuer have parted ways. Even without the credit card commissions I would estimate their total blog income at $40K/year. This was all before the Washington Post article, so I imagine that Bluehost now has a quarter-acre of their server farm dedicated to his traffic. He's not listing every dollar of income or expenses, but he's mentioned that he's using the income for MMM experiments (like Lending Club) and for charity projects.
Heck, I'm jealous that he makes up words and then rules the search rankings for them. Google "badassity" and "complainypants".
BTW, I think all of us bloggers make mistakes. I've had issues with J.D. Roth's disclosures about selling his blog, and with Jacob Lund Fisker on how his taking a job impacts his ERE credibility. I don't have any issues with MMM. There have been a few passing inaccuracies by comments about the 4% SWR. He edits his reader's comments on his blog posts more harshly than some bloggers/moderators. I'm not sure he made such a good choice to frame the FI vs retirement debate in terms of the "Internet Retirement Police", but I sure wish I'd come up with that term for my blog!
I think every blogger has to learn their comfort factor with becoming a public figure and be ready when the spotlight finally ("hopefully"?) strikes. It'll be interesting to see what the next year of relentless public visibility does to Pete and his writing. I hope to spend more time with him at FinCon13 without all the groupies & paparazzi.
I wonder of Nords pays on his own dime for the Financial Blog conferences (serious question, I wonder if other bloggers count that as a personal expense or not).
Every penny of revenue that's come to me through the book or the blog has gone to Wounded Warrior Project and Fisher House Foundation. I've rounded up to the next dollar, too.
I'm a few hundred bucks in the red on the costs of writing the book: paper, toner cartridges, books on writing, a local writer's conference, postage. I've also bought a few hundred bucks worth of copies of my own book (and pocket guide) to give away, as have several of the posters here. (You know who you are-- thanks again!) I've spent a bit over $350 on the expenses of moving the blog to Bluehost, paying three years of hosting fees in advance, the Genesis framework, and extras like security monitoring & backups.
2012 blog revenue report
I've been to three blogger conferences so far. I paid my own dime (several stacks of them) for FinCon12, and I'm eagerly anticipating doing the same for FinCon13. USAA paid my airfare, hotel, & food for my first USAA blogger conference in 2011, but last year I paid my own airfare/car and let them pay the room & board. There are other blogger conferences but I'm feeling fully loaded with the current playlist.
I've collected plenty of righteous conference swag over the last couple years: free copies of personal-finance books, t-shirts, pens, memo pads, logo M&Ms. I use the t-shirts for yardwork & exercise but my daughter seems to have absconded with the rest of the [-]school supplies[/-] swag.
Like any self-employed entrepreneur, most of the glamorous rock-star jet-setting life of a blogger is a deductible expense. Here's one reference:
Blog Conference Expenses Are Tax Deductible. Don’t Forget To Claim Them.
When the dollars roll into my checking account, I donate them to our Fidelity charitable gift fund and then make the grants. On my tax return I declare the income, pay the self-employment tax, deduct the expenses, and deduct the charitable donations. It annoys the crap out of me that so much of my money goes to the IRS while I'm supporting military charities. (First-world problem.) However one of my first decisions about writing the book was that those who shared their stories & advice would get to help choose the charities we support. Taxes are the price I pay to have the flexibility to change the donations to other military charities if the readers are so inclined. As I understand the rules of charitable gift funds, they're not able to directly receive royalties and blog revenue. If ("When"?) the IRS loosens up that rule then I'll send everything straight to the CGF and not have to process any of it through my own tax returns.
I might hit $3000 gross income in 2013, and next year I'm probably going to have to declare a "profit" to satisfy the IRS that this is not "just" a hobby. To my surprise, it appears that 2014 revenue might even exceed expenses just from 2013's momentum.
Back to the thread's subject:
Am I financially independent, even after subsidizing the book & blog & travel? Yes.
Am I retired? Yes, and unlike many retiree wannabes I actually have a U.S. government-sponsored certificate from the Department of Defense to prove it.
Am I still working? Apparently so, but this is more fun than the work I used to do for a paycheck. The deployments are a lot shorter, too.
Could my finances still survive if I didn't have the blog & book income? Um, yeah, and my net worth would be a fraction of a percent higher too...
To each their own, and I wish them all happiness and success as they define it for themselves.
