Hi, I’m Alison. I’m going to be talking at The Blogging Mums Club Conference in just a few days’ time. Debbie has very kindly given me the chance to introduce myself on her blog. So here goes…
How I Started Blogging
I own the blog Simply Hatch. It’s just over a year old and it helps tiny businesses make money from blogging and grow online.
Now I know what you’re thinking, that’s not enough experience to teach people how to blog, but I’ve been making money online for over 15 years. I once grew an eCommerce store to a 7-figure turnover. Blogging and promoting my store on social media built up an email list of over 25,000 subscribers.
Despite all my online experience, I’d never used WordPress. So, when I started afresh with Simply Hatch, I looked around for a course to fast track my learning.
At this point, I should tell you I’m a bit of a geek. I used to work as an Engineer and it still shapes how I think. Mainly I like things to work properly and efficiently.
The start-a-blog courses I signed up for, skipped over the part I needed most, how to set up a fast, secure and reliable website using WordPress. I’d paid out money for courses and still had to scratch around on Google to piece together specific advice.
This made me rethink my direction. Instead of Simply Hatch just being about setting up tiny businesses, I switched to giving advice on blogging.
All the important technical stuff such as WordPress settings, how to get your blog to rank on Google, which are the fastest themes to use… There’s a lot to cover. I even set up my own course Hatch A Blog.
Starting A Lifestyle Blog
At the start of the summer, I was looking for a fresh challenge. I had students starting blogs and it was difficult to know exactly what they were going through. It’s all very well having experience of blogging about blogging, (and eCommerce of course), but what was it like starting a lifestyle blog?
I also wanted to challenge some assumptions. So many people talk about starting niche blogs. I even talk about starting niche blogs. What if I was completely wrong? What if you could blog about anything and still quickly make money?
My idea was to start an outdoor lifestyle blog covering a broad range of topics from hiking to mindfulness. I challenged myself to make money from a brand-new lifestyle blog as fast as possible. Oh, and with the whole world watching (at least it felt like it)!
This was in mid-May. I spent two weeks writing 30 very short blog posts and launched Love Life Be Fit at the end of the month. Then Debbie got in touch and asked me to talk about my new blog at The Blogging Mum’s Club Conference…
The Result
It’s been a summer of pressure. My lifestyle blog is now just over three months old. I’m not sure which was worse: trying to make my blog a success in just three months, or knowing I will be talking about it at a conference.
I’m going to keep you in suspense. Join me at the conference and find out how I got on. It’s going to be a warts and all look at starting a lifestyle blog. The good, the bad and the ugly…
Click here for your free entry to the online conference, then please select my talk to find out how I have set up and made a success of my new blog using my own Hatch a Blog system.
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Your Journey to blogging is so inspiring, ‘A year old blog…No Experience’ That sentence caught my eyes.. That impression needs to be corrected. People seems only the geeks kinds with blogs about 5-10 years are successful and are the only people worth looking for advice. Its wrong. The only difference is just they started xxx years far back nothing more.. and they make bucks.. A website thats not making few bucks at the moment doesnt mean its going to be like that forever… I follow people that help shape my destination.. I listen to advices from both the geek guys and the ones that are few steps behind me.. No one knows it all. Henry