One question that every single person who starts a blog must face is “What should I name my blog?” It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of getting your blog going, but spending some time carefully considering your blog name in the beginning will pay off in the long run. I feel like I agonized for days over deciding on the name WhatMommyDoes….I dug deep into my creativity to find it, and overall it has been a great name! I've learned a lot about what makes a great blog name by watching other bloggers, and I'd like to offer a few pointers in this post. I started out with a list Keep Reading
2015 Blog Income Recap: $33,500 June – December
My best make money blogging tips EXPOSED! Today I am excited and nervous at the same time to share my income report on the blog. I’ve shared a couple of monthly income reports to date but for some reason sharing a monthly recap seems less invasive than a yearly recap. I’m sharing this annual income report for the same reason I share my monthly reports – so it can give other bloggers an idea of what’s possible and also how much work I had to put in to get the results I had. Some will think I work a lot while others will probably think it’s a pretty sweet work schedule for the Keep Reading
5 Things You Should Know Before You Start a Blog
Hi there! If you've never been to my blog before, I'm Lena and this is my blog about everything under the sun related to being a mom and managing a household (well, except for decorating, because I'm not good at that) :) I write quite often about starting a blog, and I get lots of questions from women who are just about ready to take the leap and start a blog of their own, but aren't quite sure how it will all work. They usually ask me very specific questions like "How do you get ads on your site?" and "How do you get people to look at your blog posts?" They are concerned about earning Keep Reading
What to Do After Installing WordPress
I've shared here about how to start a blog before, but I know you have questions about what to do right after you start your blog! If you're like me, you don't just want to start a blog, you want to start a profitable blog that makes money! I share some specifics about how I make money with this blog in my income reports, but I've had more and more people asking about the in-between, so today I want to talk about one of the most important early steps you can take to get your blog ready to earn money. Once you start a self-hosted WordPress blog, what comes next? How Keep Reading
25+ Income Reports from Bloggers Who Make $1,000 to $10,000 per Month
When I was a beginning blogger, one thing that helped me tremendously was reading income reports from bloggers who were actually making some money from their blogs. I was inspired by reading how they started out just like me - no readership and no clue what to do - and grew their blogs into something tangible. I was motivated by bloggers who made what I consider a reasonable amount per month ($1,000 - $2,000) and I loved reading about the huge success stories (bloggers who make $10,000, $25,0000, sometimes $30,000+ per month). I thought it was crazy to even think I could reach those Keep Reading
How to Make Your Own Printables in PicMonkey & Microsoft Publisher
One of my favorite things to do as a blogger is create free printables for my readers. I find it quite relaxing! And readers LOVE getting freebies like this on your blog. I know a lot of bloggers want to offer printables for sale, as free downloads, or even as subscriber freebies. If that's you, then you might like this tutorial. This is just one of the ways I create printables using a combination of PicMonkey and Microsoft Publisher - both super low tech tools that I believe anyone can use. How to Make Your Own Printables I've listed the steps for creating Keep Reading
What I’m Learning – Advanced Blogger Education
I spend A LOT of time listening to webinars and podcasts, reading articles on internet marketing, learning specific details on Pinterest, etc to grow my blog. I aim to spend at least 10 minutes a day (sometimes up to an hour) on blogging education. I try to share the best of the best in Facebook blogging communities but I eventually forget about the great stuff when something new comes along (shiny objects!!) So I'm starting this page to list all the podcasts, webinars, ebooks, blog posts and any other educational resources I'm consuming and am LOVING so you can follow along. Let's Keep Reading
Blog Traffic Tip #2: Give the People What They Want
As I mentioned in Blog Traffic Tip #1, I am sharing bits and pieces of my blog traffic strategy with you guys because I am writing an ebook on How I Went from 17k to 350k+ Monthly Page Views in 9 Months (UPDATE! the ebook is here!!!), and I keep thinking of more and more tips to share. So instead of making this into the longest ebook that never ends, I'm calling it a day and putting my other tips on the blog for everyone to see. Since I first started writing my blog traffic ebook, my monthly blog traffic has shot up to 375,000 420,000! It's been 10 months since I decided to focus on page Keep Reading
Fonts That Look Good Together
As a busy mom and blogger, I'm always trying to find ways to streamline my time spent on the computer. One thing that always takes me an unreasonable amount of time is finding just the perfect fonts for my graphics. Whenever I find a font combo I like, I jot down the names of the fonts for later reference. Today I was designing a motivational graphic in PicMonkey and had to use many fonts together. Instead of trying to keep track of the little post-it note with my fonts on it, I decided now would be a good time to document this for the blog and also to be able to share with other Keep Reading
What to Blog About – 5 Unique Blog Ideas
Unique blog ideas don't have to be complicated. Lots of people have neat blogs on fun topics and make money doing it! If you ask almost any blogger why blogging is a good extra income idea, you'll hear that it's all about the residual income. Online income is residual and builds on itself. Do you want to get paid for exactly each hour you work OR would you rather work 1 hour now, get paid for it next month, the month after that, and infinity for that one hour? How Do You Know What to Blog About? There are so many things you can write about, and there's a way to monetize (i.e. make Keep Reading
