Time: I swear there is never enough of it. Blogging: There is never enough time to do it. Maybe it's your first week blogging, or your 252nd, but sooner or later you'll realize that serious blogging takes a lot of time and hard work. Not only do you have to write posts, you have to maintain comments, promote sponsors, tweet things, pin things, like things…rinse and repeat. I never knew there would be so much work poured into my little ol' blog. Why do we do it exactly? To get our blogs well on their way towards success? I'll get back to you when I find an answer to that question. After figuring out how to defeat 'the time monster', we decided to completely wreak havoc on our perfectly laid out schedule by adding something called ... Read More
Search Terms for the Win
You guys. I'm finally crawling out of the deep dark pit of sickness, and was able to sleep for the first time last night in three nights! Go me. I'll be spending this weekend catching up on basically everything: house cleaning, blogging, designing, emails, and getting a manicure (has it really been 4 months since my last one?). Yep. Even expats live 'normal' lives sometimes. What's not normal is going to the bakery, buying a sausage, cheese, and egg roll only to discover the 'sausage' is actually a hotdog made of some unknown substance. I wish I could say I threw it away, especially after the fact that it had been (most likely) sitting out in room temperature for 5+ hours. But nope, I ate that sucker. Here's to hoping sickness round two ... Read More
Blogging 101: Using Pinterest to Maximize your Blogging Potential
Pinterest. If you're a female and have lived for the past few years, odds are you've discovered Pinterest and all it's wonderment and glory. I have to admit I used to be quite the pin addict, but over time I've slowly let go of this time-consuming addiction and manage only to get on the black hole of a site once or twice a week. One thing you may not know is that Pinterest can actually be a great source of referral traffic, and can even grow its' way to becoming one of your leading traffic sources. Ok I realize I just lost all my non-blogging readers, so sorry for that, but you never know, maybe this post will come in handy for you one day! A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of writing for Kate's 'Grow Your Blog' series, in ... Read More
Simply Just Blogging
To be honest with you, blogging has been the last thing on my mind the last few days. With this whole homeless chaos and my husband being sicker than a dog due to the mold problems, I haven't had much time and energy. I was up till 4am with D last night because he was having an asthmatic type attack and couldn't breathe or stop coughing. I'd be lying if I said I haven't felt a little guilty over the last few days not blogging and spreading a ton of love to my sponsors. Thankfully Lisette is there for me, constantly giving me reality checks. Here's the deal folks: sometimes real life happens. Blogging is a great way to connect with the rest of the world, share your thoughts, grow as a writer, and build a business. However, we need to ... Read More
Blogging 101: Advice
It's no small secret that growing your blog does not happen spontaneously. Shoot, we all wish it did. I spent the entire first year of my blogging life just hoping the right person would come along and 'discover' me and how awesome my blog was. Yeah that didn't happen. It wasn't until I decided to take over the monster my blog had become did I realize I could actually do things to influence how my blog was going to succeed! We've all had our internet stalking moments trying to figure how this blogger did this or that, and how the heck they're so 'big.' I've found and received really great advice, but have also stumbled upon crappy advice. Blogging is a constant learning and growing process, and I still feel like I have tons to figure ... Read More
Blogging 101: The Sponsor Game
There isn't a single blogger out there who will tell you that figuring out sponsorships for your blog, as well as advertising on others is easy. When I first took the jump into sponsorships I'll admit I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Thankfully there's grace in learning from your mistakes, and moving on. This post is obviously specifically for bloggers, sorry everyone else. I just don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did, and cost you lots of hard work and money. In this post we'll be covering both buying and selling of sponsorship ads. Let's talk about buying an ad space. I wish it was as simple as: buying an ad + ad approval on target site = thousands of new visitors to your blog and potentially followers. ... Read More
Blogging 101: WordPress Plugins
I have exactly 20 minutes to write this post before I dash off to make some homemade pancakes for my husband and I to enjoy for dinner. I recently splurged and bought maple syrup from iherb.com, just because their shipping was free to Korea (I would have normally spent the 12 dollars I paid for the syrup in shipping), and NOW I have to incorporate that liquid gold into our daily diets for a while. I've missed maple syrup so much over the past 1.7 years, I feel like I should be writing a post about its wonderful goodness. As much as I'd like it to be, this post is not about syrup, but about Wordpress plugins. A week or so ago I wrote a post called Blogging 101. I shared with you my wisdom (for what it's worth) on how to grow your blog ... Read More
Blogging 101
I am in no means an expert blogger, an 'it' blogger, or any other sort of blogger you may otherwise refer to as a big blogger. I am however a passionate girl who loves to share my experiences with the world. I started this little ol' blog in February of 2012 under a Wordpress.com account. I did my best with material and trying to make things interesting, but it seemed as if my blog just wasn't interested in 'taking off.' It wasn't until I started doing my research (a year later) that I realized it was going to take a little bit more than people just falling upon my blog due to some google search to get my blogger ball rolling. Now, almost 4 months after my blogging epiphany, I am in complete shock as to how my blog has grown. I mean ... Read More
