I wasn’t going to write this post yet. While the Savvy Blogging Summit ended almost a week ago, I arrived home late Wednesday night. Really late.
I got home at midnight and copy-pasted a post I had written on Tuesday morning, but hadn’t had the chance to put up for lack of Internet access. I couldn’t stop myself from checking my comments, email, and twitter.
Do you remember the euphoria after your first youth camp? You know, where you made friends-for-life, and couldn’t wait to get home and start writing letters (with stamps) to keep up with them, because, y’ know, you totally shared a bond that no one else could ever understand?
Well, imagine something a little like that, but add in Twitter.
And so as I check out the blogs and tweets of people who are now “real” to me, I’ve realized that I need to write this post before I’ve read all of their posts about the same subject, so that I can get my real thoughts down without being influenced by others.
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I started blogging because I wanted to blog. That may sound strange, but if you’ve been around here for long, you know that it was my desperation to start writing, combined with my inability to justify taking any more focus from my home, that brought me to the place of starting a blog about conquering this “slob problem” that I have.
So, while I’m amazed that I’ve come to love discussing and analyzing the subject of housekeeping, I’m not amazed at all that I love blogging.
I have always dreamed of writing, and most of all . . . having others read what I write. So when the Savvy Blogging Summit was announced, I decided to apply because I wanted to learn how take this blog to the next level. I’m glad I did.
The classes were at times overwhelming, but I came away with real and usable information from each one.
Here are a few of my favorite things from the summit:
J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly was the keynote speaker, and hearing him talk about his blogging journey was especially interesting to me, as he is also what could be termed a “transformation” blogger. He was a wealth of information on the realities of making blogging your life, and several of the things he shared about his perspective on blogging have continued to rattle around in my brain all week.
I loved our session on Personal Productivity. I’ll be sharing more about this later, because although it was directed at productivity in business, it included great concepts that I hope will help me with my productivity in the home, since ultimately, my family is my work.
SEO means Search Engine Optimization . . . but that’s not all I learned about it! I learned some basics about making my site searchable, which is fun since I love seeing all of the crazy searches that bring people to me. The main change this will bring for me is that now I know I can’t title posts “Daily Checklist” . . . day after day . . . after day. I’m going to have to at least add the date to each one, since Google doesn’t like duplicate post titles.
And now for the uncomfortable subject – monetization. One of the reasons I blabbed on and on at the beginning of this post about my desire to be a writer was to set you up for this.
I want to be a writer, and I want writing to be my job. I was willing, in the beginning, for this blog to be a learning experience only, until I could get my home under control and then start writing “for real.” Turns out, I’ve been writing about this subject for almost a year, and have a very long way to go. It also turns out that my passion for writing, entertaining, and helping others is being satisfied through sharing my own struggles, successes, and failures in housekeeping. I know that many of you have shared, either in comments or in emails, how much you needed to know that you were not alone in your own struggles in this area. Because of this, I see that my blog can meet a need, and I want it to grow into a community of women (or men, I guess) who can encourage each other in making real, realistic change in their lives.
And yes, I want it to be my job, which means I want it to be profitable. Talking to other bloggers helped me realize that I am not alone in my dilemma about viewing writing as an art form, but also as something to produce income.
I’m not a saleswoman. As I explained in my swagbucks post (by the way, if you haven’t signed up for swagbucks, you totally should . . . under me!), I hate selling things. One summer in college, for a very short period of time, I was the girl who stood outside of the mall entrance for Sears, trying to get people to sign up for a Sears Card. I was offering fabulous gifts like flashlights and staplers . . . . just for signing up! But I quit when I couldn’t hack it. I couldn’t handle watching the horror in people’s eyes when they saw me standing there. I couldn’t take the rejection when they turned around to look for another entrance to the store. And I wasn’t even a hard-seller! I usually included “you don’t have to, you know” in my pitch. I couldn’t care less that they didn’t want to apply for a card, I just didn’t want them rejecting ME!
The reality of this form of media, which is wonderful because it allows l’il ol’ me to write, is that to make money at it, you have to “sell” to some degree. I don’t want to sell. I don’t want anyone buying something that they don’t need . . . I know all-too-well where that can lead. But if you were going to buy or sign up for something anyway . . . and you could somehow do it through me . . . and I might get 2 or 3 cents here and there . . . and those cents could possibly add up to a few dollars . . . . I need to do the work that will make this a possibility.
I’m sharing all of that to say this – I’m going to be doing a few things to monetize the blog. It will never take the place of my purpose, and I am committed to maintaining the blog’s integrity. My hope is that you won’t even notice, but occasionally, I’ll share something cleaning or organization-related that might be an affiliate link. If it is, I’ll tell you that it is.
Like I’ve said before, there is no gadget or product that I can endorse as “the thing that will solve all of your problems.” I have finally accepted that no system or product will ever keep my house clean. The only thing that will keep my house clean . . . is me. But if I do run across something that makes it a little easier, and I can use it to help turn my passion into a business, I’ll share it with you.
P.S. I demanded sweetly requested that my husband read this post, to be sure that I was communicating well (as I’m petrified that all of you will reject me when you read it) and his criticism was that it isn’t funny enough. Sooooo . . . . “Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9.”
