Things I have Learned from Blogging

When I first started blogging I did not start for the sake of making a buck. I started blogging in high school as a means to escape my reality and get my thoughts and feelings put on paper (so to speak). Now that we are further in the technological age blogging has become increasingly popular. Heck, now people are making money off of their blog sites!

As a stay at home mother and full-time student making extra money is hard when you cannot leave the home. I am sure you are thinking, “put the kids in daycare and get a job!” Well, I simply cannot and will not do that as long as we are financially fine. Putting the children in daycare is, at least, a part-time job itself. I have family members spending nearly an entire paycheck on daycare. I understand some families have no other options and that is perfectly okay.

As for the “cannot”, I have a very hard time with the thought of leaving my children under the care of strangers. I have seen countless stories about terrible things that happen in daycare facilities, as well as in home daycare. If I were to put my kids in daycare I would definitely have to know the person on a personal level. Like I said before though, that is my personal feelings about daycare and there is nothing wrong with the families who use it.

Others have said, “ask your family to watch them so you can go to work.” I do not have family members that are available to watch my children and I do not want to put that responsibility on them. When we decided to get pregnant we made a plan, knowing that I would be the one to stay home with our children. We did not think it was fair to rely on others to take care of the kids that we wanted to have. Again though, there is nothing wrong with parents who do have family or friends available and willing to watch their children while they work. Unless you are an ungrateful jerk and expect this from them without even talking about it and then never even saying thank you to them for doing that for you. Every family is different and does what works for them.

Getting back on track here, I am talking about making extra money. If you would have told me in high school that I could be making money from writing out my feelings and thoughts I would have told you that you were the crazy one. Now that I know it is possible, I feel like I have to try!

**Random side note – I did get a fortune cookie this past winter that said I would be an accomplished writer. Not that fortune cookies are law or anything.**

Like many others, I have spent countless hours on popular blogs, Pinterest, and Google to try and find ways to better my blog. I have found that a lot of them repeat the same things. I would consider myself a bit of a newbie on the, making money from blogging, train. So I figured, many other newbies might appreciate the tips that have actually helped me. (None of this is sponsored.)

1. WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW AND WRITE IT IN YOUR OWN WORDS – It becomes pretty apparent when a blogger tries to write about something that they know little about, trying to sound like an expert. So please, stay true to yourself.
2. PROMOTING – If you are intending to make money from your blog then you do need to treat it like a job. You need to be on many different platforms. For instance, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google plus, and Instagram are great places to promote your blog. If you are worried about privacy then you can create a blog associated email and then create blog associated social media accounts to share your blog to. You need to gain followers on all of those pages. It usually starts with the people you already know and getting them to share your page. I personally really like utilizing Google Plus because I can go into the communities that I have joined and share my blogs that relate to those communities. I have gained followers, that I do not know personally, that way. You can also gain followers by following other people’s blogs on WordPress. Also, be sure to have a sign up area on your blog for followers to be on your emailing list for when you post a new blog.
3. PICTURES – Part of promoting is having compelling graphics on your page. Especially if you are going to use Pinterest as a platform to promote your blog. I use the PicsArt app to create my own graphics so that Pinterest can find those graphics and I can pin them to my boards. I create the graphic on my phone in the app, upload it to the WordPress app, and then am able to insert it on the blog that I want to. It works out rather well. Be sure to include your website’s URL on your graphic.
4. IT TAKES TIME – I cannot reiterate this enough, everything associated with blogging takes time. Creating your site takes time. Writing your posts take time. Gaining traffic takes time. Making a substantial amount of money takes time. You may see a ton of blog posts that say something like, “how I made thousands of dollars my first month of blogging.” For most bloggers, that is not true. When I decided to go ahead and purchase WordPress I was under the impression that the ads were going to get me some money. I was not really sure how much each ad was worth. When I asked the support, they told me that they could not give me an answer because it varies so much. I figured, well, I have a year anyways so let’s see what happens. A few weeks into it, I had been obsessively checking the amount of money that I have made, which showed zero. So, I again got on the support and asked why I wasn’t showing any money when I could see that I have gained quite a bit of traffic and my ads were running properly. One of my followers, that I know personally, even purchased something through one of the ads on my page to see if I would get anything for it. Well, I did not. The support person informed me that I do not get anything for someone buying things through the ads on my page, but only through the amount of viewers that I get. They also informed me that the amount you make does not show up instantly, it runs on a monthly cycle. So you will not see your amount made until a month after you start. Be patient. Finally, the most surprising thing that they told me was that, in general, it takes about 1,000 views to make a dollar. Again, be patient, it takes time!

These are the things that I have experienced in the last year or so as I have been expanding my blog. If you are a blogger and have any tips that helped you, please feel free to share those in the comments below. I also will try to answer any questions that you might have about blogging or starting WordPress.

-Jenn