Blogger: How to Turn Your Passion into a Career
Grace Bonney explains how she turned her blog into a full-time job!
When Grace Bonney started her blog in 2004 as a creative outlet, she did it with the hopes of building enough clips to get hired as a design writer. Fast-forward eight years and she's now the editor-in-chief of Design Sponge, a creative resource to thousands of designers and readers every day.
Populating her blog with everything from home tours and craft projects to advice for small business owners and city guides, Bonney has become legendary for providing the masses with accessible ideas and seemingly effortless beauty on a daily basis. Thanks to her advertisers and more than one dozen contributors, Design Sponge is Bonney’s full-time job.
“The blog really didn’t become a reality until probably about 2008 or 2009 as an option for a real job, and I’m glad it took that long because I think that really let me embrace the fun part of it, and not focus on the nitty-gritty business aspects until I really, really had to,” she says.
Bonney just released her first book, "Design Sponge At Home," which is full of beautiful interiors, craft projects and must-haves from her blog.
While it's quite difficult to start a blog and expect it to make you enough money to become your livelihood, Bonney says Design Sponge has taught her a lot about what to strive for in a career.
“Really do everything you can to follow your heart and follow what you’re passionate about,” she says. “It’s really clichéd, but it’s really true, and I think that doing whatever it takes to turning the thing that you love into what you get to do every day is worth any cost and any amount of work and time that you have to put into it, because there’s really nothing more amazing than being able to be your own boss and get to do and talk and celebrate all the things that mean the most to you, every day, all day.
"It’s the best job ever.”
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