I’m entering the phase of my life where I will say: “I used to be a writer…I used to have a blog…”
Since moving from Phoenix to Washington in 2012, blogging has been difficult for me. I’m not sure what happened, but I absolutely lacked motivation to sit down and write. To be honest, the most precious words I’ve written have actually come after our move (my Grand Canyon recap is most prominent in my mind) but there was still such a lack of desire to write. Not a lack of ideas, not a lack of words – a lack of feeling compelled to share my thoughts.
The blogging ‘industry’ has changed since I got into it. At first, it was all about family updates and baby photos. Then Shawn encouraged me to purchase a domain name and create a “real” blog – so I’d have my own .com site. This led to more commercial ventures and eventually led to my all-too-brief writing career with Arizona Foothills. These were all great things but the more offers I received for items to review or paid posts with keywords the less I felt like the blog was mine – I was turning it into a big commercial, which I began to hate.
There are wildly successful bloggers out there – but their blogs are filled with ads. I could see the direction blogging was taking – click-bait titles, ads embedded not only throughout the text of the post but photo ads, too. Pop-up ads and sidebar ads, and why not run a few along the top and bottom, too? It didn’t help that I would get emails offering decent money for being ‘featured’ on my blog – but without ever seeing or using the product or service. I’m ashamed to say that I did accept a few times, and every time it was because of the money. We weren’t hurting for money, but I’d become addicted to having my “own” money – so the desire to have more was always there.
Before I knew it, instead of it being my blog about my thoughts, ideas, kids, things I cared about, it belonged to them. Them being a faceless commercial entity that seemed to be sweeping through the blogging community I belonged to, them being the ones turning stay at home moms into professional bloggers making 6 figures a year – which sounds fantastic until you realize the immense time and dedication making that kind of money requires. It’s a constant job, you never get to leave. All photographs are with your fab camera so you can use them for your blog later. All stories are jotted down with notes on how to weave it into your latest sponsored post. Social media is constantly on your mind – is my post going viral? Will my servers handle the increase in traffic? How do I increase comments/shares/tweets for this post?
All in all, blogging is awesome and wonderful and I’ve enjoyed it. There are people out there who have embraced this new industry and really figured out how to make excellent money and support their families with it. I, however, am just not one of those people. And I’m ok with that.
The hosting for this blog will expire at the end of October. I’m hoping to share some of my favorite posts before it goes!