Slice of Life Day 15: My Blogging Journey
I’m choosing to not write about the coronavirus today. It’s all I’ve been dealing with for the past week and it’s made me mentally and emotionally exhausted. So I’m going to write about something else! My blogging journey.
If you had told me in high school or even in college that I’d be choosing to write every day and make it available worldwide to random strangers, I’d probably laugh in your face. Fast forward, many years and that’s what I’m doing. But, how did I get here?
First Starting Out
My partner first suggested I start blogging as a way to share my passion with more people. Not being a strong writer, I thought it was a joke and literally asked, “Who would want to read anything I’ve written”? He convinced me and created a WordPress site for me at the end of 2010 – almost ten years ago! And although I had next to zero visitors, my readership has steadily increased over the past nine years. And I’m blogging usually daily if not more.
I started by sharing a few book reviews which morphed into sharing my program plans as a children’s librarian. My thought is, if I’ve already done the work, I’d love it if someone else could use it too! In the first few years, I was excited to have even just a few readers. I mean I was averaging fewer than ten readers a day for close to two years. I had no idea how to write or market a blog (and still don’t). But, I loved sharing my thoughts and love of children’s literature with a larger audience.
New Job
In 2016, my job changed drastically – from creating and administering programs on almost a daily schedule to becoming a director at a public library working mainly behind the scenes. At that point, my readership had gone up, but I wasn’t sure how to transition from one to the other. Thankfully, my love of children’s books didn’t diminish and I continued sharing my passion for libraries and literacy and my readership grew.
Re-Design
In 2018, my partner re-designed my blog with the adorable octopus you now see in the header and helped to move everything to a self-hosted site. I’m trying to spread my wings a little to create a site that is both kid lit focused with a smattering of lifestyle posts as well and it seems to be working! Late in 2018, I started a newsletter for my readers to get even more content (some of which you’ll never see on the blog!) and all without making a single penny. And last year I spent a week on a blogging retreat for myself and was able to work on a lot of different blogging aspects like re-doing images, updating menus, and links, etc.
In the Future
I’d like to look into monetizing my blog at some point. I don’t need to make a lot of money from it, but enough to cover my expenses would be helpful! I’m hoping to gain a larger audience before that happens. And I’m not a fan of the number of ads on a lot of blogs, so I want to take it slow. But, for now, it’s about sharing my love of books and cooking with the world and I want to thank you, readers, for letting me into your lives every day with a little post!
This is my second year participating in the Slice of Life Challenge. I’ll be posting brief posts that show a glimpse of my life in story-format. A slice of my life as a librarian and blogger that I hope you enjoy!
