Hello friends! I’m so glad you’re here! Welcome to my January 2016 income report. Written in June. Hi, my name is Lena and I’m a professional procrastinator. :) I read an article recently that indicated people who procrastinate and are perpetually late are die-hard optimists. Apparently really optimistic people think they can do ALL THE THINGS in a limited amount of time. Good thing it’s true!..........I CAN do all the things!! Just not on time. lol I’ve had this income report on my to do list since February 1st! When I got to April and still hadn’t started it, I considered Keep Reading
What to Name Your Blog {5 Tips for Choosing a Name You Won’t Regret!}
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
4 Reasons You Need to Start a Blog by the end of this year!
There are so many indicators pointing to this being the year to start a blog. There are thousands of blogs out there. Many of them started by people just like you – students, parents, young and old, people with full time jobs and part time contracting work, aspiring artists, people into cooking/crafts/business/sports – the list goes on and on! Everyone has their own reasons for starting a blog. There was some catalyst (usually financial, sometimes creative) that drove them to get into blogging. Why should you start a blog now? There has never been a better time to be a blogger. So 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
The key to increasing your blog income hidden in middle school math
This post contains affiliate links. This post is making a special appearance on behalf of the Genius Blogger's Toolkit, the most amazing value to come along in the blogging world in a long time! The Genius Blogger's Toolkit is $5,000 worth of blogging resources (ecourses, ebooks & more) for only $97 and it's ONLY AVAILABLE until TONIGHT at 11:59 p.m. Make sure to grab this bundle before it's gone. Oh and print out this post or otherwise save it, because after tonight it's going in the vault for use in a future course! :D I promise you won't regret this decision. And 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
Income Reports – See Detailed Monthly Blog Earnings
Hi there! You're on the WhatMommyDoes BLOG INCOME REPORT archives! This is where you will find links to all my past income reports so you can see the progression in blog earnings since I started taking blogging seriously in September 2014. For several years before that point, I blogged on and off in between having babies #2 and #3 but never really took it seriously. Now that my kids are older, I am having fun seeing where this little blog of mine can take me! I love sharing my income reports with readers because it wasn't long ago that I was a fledgling blogger myself 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
How to Know if You’ll Be a Good Blogger
People ask me all the time, when I tell them that I make a living working as a blogger, that they don't have what it takes to be a blogger. I've heard this so many times lately that I feel compelled to write a post explaining what it takes to be a good blogger. I think just about everybody has it in them to be a great blogger, but they don't know where to start. Hopefully this will give you the confidence you need to take the plunge to start your own blog! SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! Starting now, I have a special deal just for my readers - you can get a special price on web hosting (just Keep Reading
October 2015 Blogging Income Report – How I Make Money with My Blog
How is everyone’s 2016 going so far? If you’re anything like me, you’re going strong on some new blogging goals for 2016. I met my ultimate 2015 goal in mid-December when I *finally* published my long-awaited ebook on blog traffic. I waited so long to publish the darn thing that the title was no longer correct – it originally read “How I Increased My Monthly Page Views from 17K to 350K in 9 Months, but because I published it several weeks after passing the 400K threshold, I ended up adding a + to the 350! I don’t like things to be technically incorrect, so that made me feel better. Keep Reading
Blog Traffic Tip #3: Lists Posts Seven Different Ways
List posts are all the rage these days. I love reading lists. I have about 25 different notepads just for taking lists (and I'm probably under exaggerating this!). People like to read list posts because they are like information wrapped in a neat little package. If I know I can browse a list of 100 blog topic ideas to get my creative juices flowing, I'm all over that. If I know I can go to a website that recommends the top 5 plugins I need to run my blog properly, I'd be all over that. If I am decorating my house and want inspiration from 25 different interiors decorated in my favorite 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