Back in 2011 when I first started blogging (yes it’s really been that long!) my original plan was for it to be a way of recording the six children’s milestones and to have a lovely log of their lives to look back on.
In the beginning I noticed that bloggers were being sent products to review with their children in exchange for their honest opinions, so I found a couple of contact details of products that I thought the children would like and wrote to them explaining about my blog and the children and I was amazed at home many were keen to send me products in exchange for a review, in fact, if i’m honest I had way too many items sent, and it became almost like a full time job, but it didn’t seem like a chore, as the children were very happy with their ‘gifts’ and it saved me lots of money at a time when we were living off of one wage as i’d only had Tyrus 6 weeks before starting the blog.
We were invited on days out and events that we’d never usually be able to afford as it’s quite expensive to take 8 people for a day out at a large attraction!
It was only after I had been blogging a couple of years that I realised that bloggers were actually getting paid to promote products and experiences, this was all very new to me and I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that companies actually wanted to pay me to promote their products.
As my blogging years have increased I have definitely seen it grow and develop, the newer bloggers seem much more clued up on negotiating high figure sums for campaigns and many come into the world of blogging purely to make money, and find out quite early on that it takes a lot of time and hard work to build up a reliable following and to earn the respect of your readers, even now if I start reading a blog that is just full of sponsored posts, I tend not to continue reading as it feels a little false, especially if they are raving about a particular washing powder brand one week and the following month they have changed their opinions entirely and they now much prefer a different brand, it just sort of feels a little false, so I much prefer honesty and will tend to follow the bloggers who actually speak their mind and say if a product isn’t as good as it could be, even better if they provide helpful tips on how to improve it.
There are definitely lots more opportunities and companies that offer paid work for all sorts of bloggers from fashion to lifestyle, family bloggers to travel, there really are so many different genres to choose from, all with their own story and unique way of promoting what they do.
I originally started my blog on blogger, which worked well for a few years, I grabbed my own domain and directed to the blogspot blog, but after a few years I took the plunge and changed to wordpress and wished i’d done it sooner, that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with blogger and I know some very successful bloggers who have continued on blogger, i’m just a slave to plug ins!
Another area I started to become interested in was the whole seo of the blog and keywords, I have become a little obsessed with my newer blogs about searching for the right words from the very beginning instead of just my daily ramblings that you’re likely to find on here!
It’s easier on my destination websites as they are all about answering the questions people are wanting to know, whereas on a parenting site it’s a little bit more difficult as everyone goes through different experiences, I could never pretend to write about taking care of yourself after a caesarean as I have never had one, and my breastfeeding journey was pretty much perfect, however I have worked as a breastfeeding practitioner so feel I can offer support with those type of difficulties as I have seen first hand how much support is needed to have a successful breastfeeding journey.
After 9 years of blogging I have certainly started to feel a little bit long in the tooth, there are so many new social media platforms appearing, such as snapchat and tik tok, when I started blogging they didn’t even have Instagram, and there is certainly more emphasis on us being influencers, which I always thinks sounds so cool and funky (which I am not!) but for now I will keep doing what I do and be thankful that I am able to work from home and be here for all of the children’s needs, i dread to think how i’d manage each day if I was in an actual office working 9-5!
One area I want to work on is Instagram as mine is all over the place and I never know how to caption or how many hashtags to use, this post about the best nature hashtags for instagram has lots of great tips