Blogger to Business- My Blogging Journey

I wanted to write about my blog journey since I'm starting to receive a lot of emails asking me about starting a blog and turning it into a business.  I turned my blog into a business after I started making a full time living from it.  I wanted to share with you how I got started blogging and how I became where I'm at now with my blogs.


I want to start off by saying, blogging is something you got to be consistent with and passionate about- you must treat it like a job in order to turn it into one.  It takes hard work, dedication, consistency, trust, honesty, and passion to make blogging work for you.



Productreviewmom.com is actually not my first blog.  My first blog is Earningfreemoney.com that I started back in 2008 that I shared with my readers how I made extra money doing online market research surveys and completing paid offers.  I loved doing paid online surveys because it brought my household extra money.  We were living paycheck to paycheck and those paid surveys helped out tremendously.  Also, I really enjoyed learning and testing new products that were not out on the market yet and me providing my opinions and later seeing those products on shelves really felt rewarding because I helped brands create a product that consumers wanted.



So while I was sharing my knowledge of what I was learning about making extra income from home the unthinkable happened, Mr. M lost his job which made my income the only source of income coming in.  My job was not enough to financially support a family of 4 and we started growing deeply in debt with credit card bills.  We used the credit cards to pay the bills.



A lot of sleepless nights and tears of wondering what will be our next move, will we still have a roof over our heads?  Mr. M decided he would just work for himself and that is what he did.  I continued writing on Earningfreemoney.com sharing my knowledge and trying to grow it.



My writing skills were lacking and I wanted to find more ways to bring traffic to my blog and I ran across a couple of writer's platforms called Squidoo and Hubpages.  Hubpages wasn't very helpful for me since I wrote about paid surveys and that was against their rules so they kicked me off their platform.  I turned to Squidoo and a couple of their members laughed at me when they read my first article I published because it really sucked.  I was so embarrassed by this that I left the writer's platform.



I worked up the courage to go back on Squidoo after several months of absence and Squidoo staff offered me to attend their writer's bootcamp on their platform.  I gladly accepted and that's where I learned how to write fluently, learn about SEO, making money from my writing on their platform, and affiliate marketing. 



I graduated from Squidoo's bootcamp and put all that I learned into my blog.  I found affiliate programs that fit my niche and applied it to my blog.  In order for me to really start earning from my blog I needed more traffic coming to it and I went about it the wrong way by posting my blog url everywhere and accepting guest posts from anybody just to always have new content on my blog.  Boy did that hurt my blog badly, Google penalized my blog!  I was making a few hundred bucks a month and all that disappeared in a blink of an eye!



My rankings of my blog plummeted and never fully recovered.  I was very depressed by this because I thought my blog was going on the right track.



While wondering what my next move would be since I lost all my affiliate money that was coming in, I decided just to make a new blog.  I had a passion about learning and testing new products so I decided to create a blog about doing product reviews and Productreviewmom.com was born in 2012!




I put all my focus on Productreviewmom.com and monetized it through affiliate marketing and sponsored posts. This blog began to grow quickly and so did my blogging income. Thanks to Google, I'm getting thousands of free organic traffic a month and even making money while I'm sleeping!  I became the lead in my niche!  All of this started getting the attentions of PR companies, brands, and magazines.  With the money I'm earning from this blog, I went back and invested in it by hiring a graphic designer, hiring writers, hire a accountant, purchased a lap top, purchased a camera, invested in blog conferences, got a business license, etc.


What has become of Earning Free Money blog?  It has now became my income diary.



As for Mr. M, he is the top leading distributor here in Atlanta and his business is going very well and continues to grow right before my eyes, I'm so proud of his accomplishments!



I continue to learn and put my heart and soul into Productreviewmom.com.  I'm hoping it continues to grow to new heights and leads to a business that I could pass down to my daughters.  If it doesn't happen that way I'm still proud of all that I've accomplished.


And guess what, I did all of this these past 6 to 7 years while still having a full time job.  My job allows me to be on the internet so I took that time to read, learn, and write my blog posts.  I even did this post while at my job.  Some people ask me why I don't quit my job and the reason for this is because I still need to pay off debt that my family accumulated while Mr. M was unemployed and I still want to keep our health insurance and 401K a little while longer.  Never give up your job to blog full time if you have debt, pay all debts off first.



My job does holds me back from doing a lot of different things with my blog like traveling to different events for brands but I find ways to go to different events on the weekends.



I'm going to say this, if you want to start blogging find a niche that you like and be the leader in that niche. Like I tell everyone, people use search engines to find answers to their questions and your blog must be the place to answer those questions.  Here are some other tips:

• Don't follow others, stand out from the crowd.    

• Be yourself and people will love you for being you.  

• Don't give up!  I wanted to give up plenty of times but dusted myself off, learned from my mistakes and moved to a new direction.  

• Don't compare yourself with other bloggers, all that will do will make yourself upset and want to quit.  Everyone's journey is different so don't get caught up with numbers.

Pros and Cons of Blogging

 

Pros

• Blogging does not take a lot of start up money

• You can make a living from doing it

• You're free to be yourself

• Get to meet people you probably would have never met before

• Work with top brands

• Blogging is fun to do

Cons

• Making money with your blog takes time

• You may start getting negative people who disapprove of your blog

• Takes a lot of writing and research

• Always need to come up with new ideas

• Blogging can burn you out 

• In order for your blog to make a full time income you will need to invest in it

Need blogging advice?  I'll be setting up blog consultations to help you with your blog.  You can also check out my blogging tips.


Thank you all for continuing following me on this journey and cheering me on, if it wasn't for the support I wouldn't continue to blog.  XOXO!

Do you blog?  Do you have a blogging journey you'd like to share?