This post is the fourth in a series about my journey as a blogger. I just want to stop for a minute to thank you so much for coming along with me, for letting me tell the story of my blog and for your comments and encouragements! 

A Blogger’s Journey: Definition and Purpose

Somewhere in the Show Me The Money phase of blogging, our family moved to Scotland. I immediately signed up to attend a travel blogging conference in order to learn where I could start getting Pounds Sterling for blogging instead of the dollars I was currently swimming in (sarcasm).

In order to get ready to go to this conference, I invested my blog savings of $150 and some money I earned from catering on a session with a blogger who is very open and honest about how she makes money on the internet. She details it all out and if you want to learn how to make money from blogging, you should read Sarah Von Bargen regularly and then do what she says. For me, the best thing I got out of doing the session with her was that she made me write down my dreams and plans for my blog. I had to answer lots of hard questions in order to sit down with her about where I was going.

Like, I had to actually say where I wanted to go.

I know that sounds simple, but I still cannot answer some of Sarah’s questions definitively. Let’s pretend I am a creative maker of jewelry and I would really love to sell it online. Then the purpose of my blog would be easy: Promote/Sell Jewelry. Then you add in all the other things around that purpose. Cute Outfit Of The Day posts that feature jewelery. Hello-I-am-a Real-Person-but-I-Like-To-Make-Jewelry posts.

I actually considered finding something to sell in order to have more “purpose” for my blog. (Note: I think this is a great way to make money as a blogger, but unfortunately, I did not want to sell anything.)

In my session with Sarah, she told me that she thought I should emphasize the details about my blog (and myself) that made me different. She recommended I push the Outdoorsy Mama, because there are lots of family blogs and lots of outdoor blogs but not necessarily that many people who are combining the two. She also gave me some suggestions for identifying myself in this way. (Release a Camping Menus eBook.) And she told me how to increase my presence on social media. (Be consistent. Be generous.)

 

So off to the travel conference I went as:

Stage 6: Outdoor Adventure + Family Travel Mama

Y’all, I even had cards printed.

One of the reasons I chose this particular conference was that a writer whose blog I really enjoy was speaking at two different sessions.

Somewhere in the middle of one of his talks, he confessed that he was not really making a living from blogging. In fact, he was barely scraping by with freelance jobs that were completely separate from his blog.

Let’s just revel in the irony of this for a minute, shall we?

I went to a conference to learn how to make money from blogging and to hear someone speak who was not making money blogging.

I still loved the conference. I enjoyed meeting people in the travel blogging industry. I love to travel and so did everyone I met. So that was fun. Also, I got to go on a free trip to the Northwest of Ireland as part of the conference. (Mesmerized By Free Stuff Stage 4: Resurrected!) I had the opportunity to pitch a room full of people in the travel industry who sponsor travel bloggers in which I learned that I never want to do that again. I attended talks on writing and pitching and storytelling and social media. I crammed my brain full and came back to Scotland completely overwhelmed.

I had lists of goals and plans. I made schedules and actually (kinda sorta) stuck to them. I started following all the rules I had learned from Sarah Von Bargen and from conferences.

I was blogging consistently (3-5 times per week) and promoting my blog on all the social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram).  I was looking for guest posting opportunities to increase my Internet Presence.

Our family really does love hiking and the outdoors, so I was able to generate lots of content organically from how we spend our time.

I consistently posted pictures of our hiking and exploring in Scotland. Because we are living A Dreamy Life In Scotland and the world should want to know all about that, right? I no longer needed to chase the money. Soon I would be famous Outdoorsy Mama, and the money would chase me.

The funny thing about all the different clichés I bought (am currently buying) in to about blogging and success is that there are threads of truth in each of them. When I started trying to get free stuff for blogging, I really did get some free stuff. When I started trying to make some money blogging, I got a little money. When I started trying to increase my followers on social media, I was able to slowly but surely get those numbers to go up.

But threads of truth eventually unravel when you tug on them.

If you hear me say nothing else about blogging success, hear this:

Nothing is ever exactly as it seems.

Here’s an example.

I am a Huffington Post Blogger.

I will pause for you to Be Amazed.

Now I will tell you everything I know about how to be a HuffPo Blogger. I will tell you that in order to blog for the Huffington Post, all you have to do is email Arianna Huffington. She is the only big name in the blogging world that I have encountered who actually answers Every Single Email She Receives. Which I think is very kind, by the way. She is bestowing mad amounts of dignity upon those of us who are sending eleventy million emails into the universe. Thank you, Arianna!

If she likes your blog, she will send you off to one of her reps depending on the topic you would like to blog about and they will set you up with a log in and Voila! You are now a Huffington Post Blogger. You can write something and submit it. And if it is not total crap (grammatical errors and such) and you have followed their clear guidelines (size of pictures and such), it will be published on their site. And maybe some people will read it. But mostly do you know who will read it? The people that you send there when you put the link on your Facebook page.

I’ll pause while you take back your amazement.

But still, I am doing some very fun things for free this spring because in an email I said, I am a Huffington Post Blogger.

Almost everything in blogging is like this in that in some way, things are not exactly as they seem.

Y’all I try to be a really honest blogger. I want to be authentic. I really do.

But in blogging, as in life, we are telling a story (whether we define it or not) and for the past year or so, my story has been Outdoorsy Mama who is living A Dreamy Life in Scotland. If this is the story I am wrapping my blog around, I am not going to tell you that last week after four days of rain, I could not get out of bed. Or that I stayed awake all night from anxiety about something that was going on with one of my children.

Instead, I am going to keep on telling the (photo heavy) story of A Dreamy Life in Scotland.

 

And if that is the purpose of my blog, as defined by myself in previous planning sessions, then I am not being untrue to myself by continuing to tell that part of the story.

Because I am Outdoorsy. And lots of things about life in Scotland are pretty dang amazing.

However in November, I began to notice that my blog readership and (more importantly) blog engagement (commenting + sharing) was going down instead of up.

I began to wonder if people were becoming bored with Hey, Look at This Cool Castle!

More importantly, I started to feel like maybe I was bored with it.

I was very excited about defining myself as Outdoorsy Mama who Moves To Scotland, and it was helpful for pitching my story to others to have given my blog a general theme. Or niche.

But I think maybe I concentrated on fitting this niche so much that I lost the story.

So next week I am going to tell you how I found a new stage of blogging that I am really excited about: Storytelling.

Do you have questions about any of the stages of blogging I’ve mentioned as I’ve shared my journey of blogging? I would LOVE to hear them and I’ll do my very best to answer!

If you’re feeling super brave, I would love to hear your experience of how something about your blogging is “not exactly as it seems?”