Name: Meaghan O'Connell
Age: 26
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Why we care: Every blogger fantasizes about building a faithful audience and scoring a book deal. Meaghan O'Connell built hers while blogging on Tumblr about being a live-in New York nanny. Her popular tumblelog, meaghano.com, helped O'Connell land a job at Tumblr HQ where she handles the "business stuff." As for the book deal, O'Connell gave herself one by raising over $17,000 on Kickstarter to put together an anthology of true stories about sex with writer and co-editor Melissa Gira. The book, Coming and Crying, is available in limited qualities through Glass Houses Press, a media label O'Connell and Gira co-founded.

I don't know what's more amazing - the title of your new book, Coming and Crying, or the fact that you raised $17,000 to self-publish it.

Well, Melissa and I launched the project back in January and everyone we told about it was really enthusiastic, but we spent a lot of nights thinking about what would happen if the project didn't get funded. We only asked for $3,000. We thought that would be enough to make 250 books. Kickstarter was still new and we had never asked anyone for money like this. I had an audience following my blog, but I had never been like, "Give me money!"

How long did it take you to reach your goal?

We launched the project on a Sunday at 3 a.m. and didn't tell anyone except a few friends and family members. When we finally announced it on Monday, we hit our goal within two hours. We weren't sure if people would stop contributing so we explained that the more money we got, the nicer the books could be and the more we could pay our writers.

Final tally: $17,242, from 651 people.

We weren't expecting to get so much money! Melissa and I had to learn how to incorporate a business. We couldn't be like, "Let's dump $17,000 into Melissa's bank account!" So we started a business account, got a tax number and incorporated.

How did you figure out how to do that?

Melissa and I did the research and we felt really scrappy and empowered by starting the business ourselves. We e-mailed our friends, searched the Internet and I asked for a lot of advice.

Were you always this financially savvy?

When I started applying to college, I had no concept of money, and I didn't know I would be paying so much money back in student loans. I think a lot of students think this way. I went to Notre Dame and was an English major. I thought I could just graduate and follow my passions.

Did you work to help pay for school?

Yeah, in student dining! I was literally the person who had take the trays and wipe off all the uneaten food with my hand and put it in the garbage. It was disgusting! But I did the job with some of my best friends so it wasn't too bad.

What did you plan on doing after graduation?

I started freaking out my senior year, but then I got a job teaching English in Italy for the summer through a program called ACLE. When that ended and I moved back home, I didn't know what I was going to do. I went through a major crisis. I planned on going back to Italy, but I realized that I was just running away from real life, so I canceled my plane ticket and decided to try to figure things out.

And did you?

I was driving back to my mom's house and fielding all of these "What are you going to do with your life?" phone calls. Someone told me about some friend whose daughter was going to move to Europe and be a nanny and I thought, "Hey, that doesn't require a cover letter." So I joined this site that is basically an Internet dating site but for families and overeducated, unemployed people called greataupair.com.

Being a nanny was the new game plan?

I found a job in New York. The family flew me out there, interviewed me, and I got the job. So I moved to New York and lived in their spare bedroom. I planned to apply to grad school.

Sort of like The Nanny Diaries?

I definitely thought of The Nanny Diaries. I thought I could transition from being a nanny to being a writer. It was intense living with another family without having a lock on my bedroom door. That's when I started blogging on Tumblr. I thought I was going to jump right back into school, but I heard back from MFA programs and I didn't get into any of them.

How were you doing financially during this time?

I put myself in a really bad financial situation. When I was nannying, I had a credit card, and one night I forgot it at a bar. I didn't go back for it. I was just going to pretend that it never existed. I ignored all the statements that I received. I wasn't paying back my student loans. I had a doctor's bill, and I was ignoring that too. It was bad.

So how did you go from being in a bad situation to Tumblr?

I went from nannying full-time to babysitting part-time for the family while also working part-time as an assistant for [songwriter] Jonathan Coulton, who I met while interning and volunteering at 826NYC. I also met and did some babysitting for (humorist) John Hodgman who has two kids, and was an assistant for (writer) John Sellers. This whole time, I was barely making any money. I walked everywhere, lived off of ramen, and blogged. I went to a Tumblr Meetup and met that crew. We became friends. John [Maloney, Tumblr president] called me later and told me he wanted to talk about doing some consulting for them. I started out as a go-between to get designers and celebrities onto Tumblr because the boys were bad at e-mail. I slowly started to work at the office more and more until I went full-time last October.

A full-time job! It must have been such a relief.

I remember getting my first paycheck and calling my mom, like, "I have a thousand dollars!" I started saving money. And then I slowly began opening envelopes - the ones I pretended didn't exist. I started paying everything back: my student loans, the ticket I got the one time I jumped a subway turnstile, my credit cards, library fines and the doctor bill. I kept up with all the payments, and I'm still working on it. But it's no longer this scary thing.

I heard that everyone at Tumblr goes out for lunch together every day.

It's definitely true. When lunch time nears, someone stands up and then we all slowly start moving towards the door to head over to the deli. We go there so often that they've named a sandwich after me. It's called "The Meaghan." It's a garden sandwich on wheat.

What about the bringers? I'm a bringer, and I'd feel like I was missing out if everyone else was out bonding.

One of my co-workers brings his lunch. He waits until all of us come back, and then we eat together. We admire him for bringing his lunch. It's one of those things you should just do to save money, like making coffee and making dinner. I looked at what I spent at the deli for lunches last year and it was something like $1,000.

Even so, it seems like you've come a long way.

When you're afraid of money, that's when you become ignorant about it. I'm a smart person. I could have researched how to defer my debt somehow instead of handling it the way I did.

Do you also think your Kickstarter idea worked so well because you already had a built-in audience? Do you think it could have gone differently if no one knew who you were?

I would definitely say that our specific circumstances helped make the project successful. I think the appeal of Kickstarter is the storytelling element of it. You get to hear from the creators, and how they're feeling - scared, stressed or excited, or all three. You get to articulate what you want to do in a great way. You don't have to be Internet-famous to do that. But that helps, of course. I don't think Kickstarter is perfect for every project, but you shouldn't underestimate what you can do. People really want to connect to what they're buying and this gives them a way to do that.

Right on! Now that you're on top of your finances, are you saving for the future?

I think about it sometimes. I think it's typical for people my age to live in the present and have that notion that some day, we'll all just be rich. I have a retirement plan - I think it's a 401(k). I should probably look into that! One day I'll have a home with a yard and all that, but when I imagine it, it's this far off thing that I don't have to worry about until later.

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