Shameless Plug

*Maddie&Jacobs*Mommy* · #1 January 30th, 2012, 06:34 AM

And for a shameless plug.... I have started a blog and I just launched it today. Home Check it out if you have time. It will be full of motivation, humor, fitness ideas, and healthy food ideas (and I'm always taking ideas). It's just started today, so it's not much, but it will be

If you also like the Facebook Page No Excuses Mom (you can like it from the webpage) and/or Follow me on Twitter (@NoExcusesMom) I would love you forever

Thank you God! · #2 February 1st, 2012, 06:13 PM

I checked it out, Megan - very inspirational! You should mention how much weight you have lost on there (I didn't see that)....I think that will make people realize how exceptional your story is! Of course, maybe it will intimidate ? :-) Anyhow you go girl!!

I'm not on facebook or twitter though.....like Jill, are you looking to "establish a brand" of sorts in the hope of being published? I don't mean to sound naive, but what is the desire to have people "liking" your blog? (just wondering...I know there are lots of bloggers out there....is there money in it?) :-)

*Maddie&Jacobs*Mommy* · #3 February 1st, 2012, 06:23 PM

Thanks Laura, I'll make sure I add that

Honestly, I'm kinda naive about the whole thing, too. Right now it's just something to do. I like helping people and writing my thoughts down. I don't have any big plans of getting published like Jill.

I know that some bloggers can make money with it, but that takes a long time and I don't know if I will ever be that good

Jilly*bean · #4 February 3rd, 2012, 04:22 PM

Getting people to "like" your page on fb increases your blog traffic because when someone likes a page it shows up in their newsfeed, and so everyone they're connected to sees that and can also choose to follow the page, which also links to the blog.

And I've made money on mine, but it's only been a couple hundred dollars so far. You really need a lot of page views to get enough people to click on ad space to generate revenue. My daily avg of page views is currently 540 and that's gone down since the holidays because I wasn't posting for two weeks. Posting daily is really hard (particularly if you have zero formal education in writing) but if you want your blog to grow you really have to. I've found that a few days of not posting will cut my views down in half or less, and it takes three times as long of regular posting to get the numbers back up again. Not to mention that mom blogging is a huge trend right now because people think there's easy money to be made, and so it's becoming a worn out gig. Networking is what makes your blog grow... You have to spend twice as much time going to other sites and posting comments with a link to your blog and connecting with other mom bloggers than actually writing for your own blog if you want to grow your audience. There's days I do it, but more that I don't, and it can actually be a curse at times because you accidentally become influenced by these other blogs and suddenly you'll catch yourself copying someone else's idea for a post. It can be very frustrating, so for me I take it for what it's worth and just do it to have fun. The really well known bloggers are almost always professional writers who are being paid and advertised for by magazines and newspapers, whether their blog is linked to their true employer or not. So the whole professional mom blogger gig is in some ways a huge exaggeration and a even a bit of a scam, because unless you have a major media outlet supporting you there's no way to consistently get 2 million hits a month, which is what the big name bloggers like Jenny Lawson of The Bloggess gets.