The Mommy Blogger You Wanna Be

We just finished the holidays. In fact, many of you may still have a few needles from your Christmas tree scattered throughout your house. The end of a new year (and decade) and the beginning of a new one often cause people to pause and think about how things change. 

Usually, when change occurs, it is gradual. Your favorite jeans feel a bit tight. They get shoved into the back of your closet, and when you try them on three months later, and you can’t get them over your thighs. That change didn’t occur overnight. It happened one bagel at a time. 

Mommy blogs have changed over time too. It didn’t happen overnight. This change was written about by Washington Post columnist Sarah Pulliam Bailey. 

Bailey said that at first, mommy bloggers wrote and posted content to their own websites. These bloggers would write about a wide array of topics, from mom guilt to the best car seat systems. There was no need to be perfect. In fact, the more authentic a blogger was, the more likely she was to have a loyal following. 

Gradually, things started to change. Money, of course, drove this shift. In the early years, a blogger could make decent money from the ads that were placed on her website. Now, mom bloggers make money by receiving sponsorships from companies to advertise a product or by promoting products through affiliate marketing. 

This change in compensation altered the look of the most popular mommy blogs. Bailey, who has studied the evolution of mommy blogs, has noticed that the trend is to focus more on photos and less on text. Fewer people are creating their own websites for their blog, and more are posting directly to social media accounts.

It is not a surprise that this industry has changed so much in the last decade. The mommy blog pioneers aged out of the enterprise only to be replaced by a new group of young moms who were seeking to become social influencers in a different way than the blogger of the past.

So, now you are interested in entering the mommy blog industry. Here are questions that you need to ask yourself before you jump both feet into the enterprise. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, but they are worth considering before you spend a lot of unnecessary time and money heading down the wrong path. 

1. Why do you want to be a mommy blogger?

This is the most critical question you should ask yourself regarding this endeavor.

• Do you want to be a mommy blogger so you can have a creative outlet while staying at home with your kids?

• Maybe you want to blog so you can share your kid’s adventures with extended family and friends.

• Perhaps you want to be a mommy blogger so you can supplement your income. 

• Maybe you want to utilize your time at home with your kids to become a social influencer. 

• Or maybe it is a combination of all of the above. 

2. How important is it that you bring in money from your blog?

If you are using your blog to supplement your income, then you need to consider what will make you the most money. 

Don’t feel bad about needing to make money, but know that if you want to have companies sponsor your blog or accounts, you may not be able to be as forthright about your life as you would wish. Some companies do not want to be affiliated with messy lives or controversial subjects. 

3. Are you more of a photographer or a writer? 

If you are happiest when trying to get the best shot of an event, then perhaps you would be the happiest blogging through Instagram. If you want to go this route, it would be helpful if you, your spouse, and your children were particularly photogenic. It would also be beneficial if your children liked being photographed and fussed over at times. 

Maybe you want to blog because you want to share the ups and downs of parenting. This may not be very easy to do from a single image. This means you might want to have a traditional website that enables you to combine your diatribes over kid birthday parties with photographs.

Regardless of how you answered the above questions, take time to look through the posts of Mom’s Marketing Coach. Our previous posts will assist you on how to start a website from scratch. We will also give you ideas on what to write about in your blogs. Finally, we will also get you started with affiliate marketing, should that be your focus.

This article was originally posted at Mom Marketing Coach.