Making Sense of Cents: Revenue, Growth & Monetization

Making Sense of Cents

Finance B2C

Making Sense of Cents is a free personal finance and lifestyle blog, run by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, that earns revenue mainly from advertising and affili...

makingsenseofcents.com · Founded 2011 · 39 public sources · Updated about 17 hours ago

Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 39 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →

Est. Monthly Revenue

~$100K/mo

as of Oct 2025 · Triangulated from 8 public sources →

Jul 2017 Oct 2025

Founded

2011

15 years ago

How Making Sense of Cents makes money

Monetization →

Making Sense of Cents earns money from affiliate marketing, course sales, sponsored partnerships, and display advertising on its blog. Affiliate marketing makes up about 50% of revenue, earned when readers click links or buy products through referral links. Two courses, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and Making Sense of Sponsored Posts, account for around 20% of income. Sponsored partnerships provide around 20% of income, and display advertising provides 5% of income through Adthrive commissions.

Affiliate / referral commissions Course / training sales Sponsorships & partnerships Advertising revenue

How Making Sense of Cents grew

Growth →

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner grew the blog by commenting on other personal-finance blogs, writing guest articles for popular blogs, and creating Pinterest content to drive traffic. The blog has drawn traffic from Google, Pinterest, Facebook, and its email list in fairly even amounts, and Michelle Schroeder-Gardner has said that diversifying traffic sources limits the impact of any one source's fluctuations. Her main goal is to drive traffic to her email list, where her most loyal readers are, and she owns that list rather than depending on social media algorithms.