The Life of One Blogger
Here’s a post by a frequent visitor and good friend of MomsCashBlog who formerly had a blog known as consultelaine and who now has a blog named Bohemian Things. She shows us how sometimes we end up in a totally different place from where we began and just the process of starting a blog can get things rolling in the right direction. It’s a great story about finding your rightful place on the Internet and following your own heart.
The Life of One Blogger
by Elaine Murphy
When I first started blogging (again) my intention was to use my blog to make a profit. I will be the first to tell you—pick a subject that you have something in common with. Picking a subject you’re interested in, interested in learning about, or a subject you are already passionate about is a good way to go. This way you would avoid getting bored and run out of things to blog about. Okay, I got it.
As luck would have it I stumbled upon MCB free wordpress blog tutorial. The tutorial was very influential in helping me get set up with my first wordpress blog. Within no time I had a blog ready to go. Things were looking up!
My passion is hair. I love doing hair, and talking about hair. Although I am not a licensed cosmetologist, heck I could pull it off…easily. This was a passion of mine since I was a child so I naturally started to blog about natural hair care. Easy enough, so I thought. Let’s get started.
My blog talked about the latest hair trends, recommended products, and celebrities with natural hair styles. Whatever pertained to natural hair, I wrote about it. Things were starting to change — I was distracted by the template, and started wasting hours nitpicking and altering it out of boredom. I found myself changing templates more often than I would post. It was then that I realized I did not want to talk about hair every day. I asked myself…what is going on here? I became disenchanted with chasing a way to make money online and took a break from it all.
“I quit”, I told myself. Shortly thereafter I removed the blog. Here’s the irony—the blog was not, nor was it ever, about the hair. What I was essentially doing was finding someone else’s products to sell and incorporating that into my natural hair care blog. This wasn’t working for me… as much as I enjoyed talking about hair it did not seem like that’s what my blog should be about. Blogging became tedious and exhausting for me, and I did not know what I was doing. I quickly found out that I needed to learn a few things about the business…SEO, (search engine optimization), key words, Google Adsense, strategies, tips, tools, etc. I felt this extra stuff was keeping me from enjoying the process. This route took the fun out of a passion, a love I’d enjoyed all my life and still to this day. I needed to go back to the basics.
One day I received an email from JJ inquiring about my now non-existing blog—she had been keeping her eye on me and wanted to know what was happening with my blog. I had explained to her it was temporally down and assured her that I did not give up on blogging. I did not want to admit to her that I did stop. She had always encouraged me to keep trying and to stay in the online business.
Then on January 14, 2009, I popped over to MCB to get my weekly fix of encouragement and what was the title of the blog “Start a blog today.” I truly felt like it was written with me in mind. I decided to give it another try. I had missed blogging.
I would blog again only without pressuring myself to make a profit with affiliate marketing. I changed my outlook and the course of my blog… it evolve into an extension of who I am and what I do. I would write about me and my creative process and my own products instead of selling for someone else! I am an artisan. I find great satisfaction in creating with my hands, and blogging about the things I create. I create whatever my heart desires.
Now I maintain a blog showcasing products I enjoy creating. I joined a great community of like-minded crafters and artisans over at IndiePublic. I create products that are an extension of me, products I would be proud to promote. I have a shop set up on Etsy “a place to buy and sell all things handmade” were I sell my Bohemian Things with no pressure whatsoever. I truly love blogging and I never run out of ideas for a post because I am consistently creating and that’s what I found I was meant to blog about.
Had I not stuck with it, I would not have received this wonderful opportunity to share my creativity online and also have a guest blog here at MCB about “The Life of One Blogger”.
Thanks JJ. I owe it all to you.
