Afterwards, Vanessa joined forces with her sister, Heather, and came up with At The Picket Fence and Blogland has never been the same again. Blogland has become stronger and better. When I asked these sisters to share their money-making experience, they gladly responded in the affirmative so here they are my friends. Let's welcome, Heather and Vanessa!
Thanks so much SJ for asking us to be a part of this fabulous series here at Homemaker on a Dime. We feel so honored to be in such great company with your past Blogging for Dollars guests.
1) Can you please share how you started earning income from your blog?
Earning income while following you passion…who wouldn’t want that?! In all seriousness, when Vanessa and I were blogging individually I don’t believe it ever crossed our minds that there would be anyone (besides our mom and each other…lol) that would want to READ what we had to write about let alone a way to earn some money doing this blogging thing. After we had gotten our feet wet in the streams of the Blog World, we realized there were some fabulously talented and amazing bloggers who were not only making money blogging but had actually created part-time and even full-time incomes from doing what they love!
Where we decided to combine forces and create At The Picket Fence we discussed ways that our joint blogging efforts could provide us with some extra funds to help offset our projects, crafts and the expenses of running a quality blog. We agreed that once we reached a certain number of “friends” of our blog we would discuss offering sponsorship ad space in our sidebar. There is no magic number per se, but we feel that you need to have enough consistent readers and page views to make paid ad space cost worthy for your sponsors.
We were surprised when we ended up being the ones who were approached by a fabulous online store to advertise on our blog. Because we were still small and just starting off, we decided to “trade” ad space for giveaway items which in turn increased our readership through the giveaways, we did this several times with other sponsors, increasing our readership and thus the exposure for our sponsors each time. We also offered “specials” and still do. Concepts such as bartering and buy one get one free specials work in the blogging worlds just like in the “real world.” You are selling a product…your blog! As we have grown, so has our sponsorship and we love each and every one of our sponsors! We find that our biggest sponsorship demographic is Etsy store owners, who are often also are readers.
Another recent income producer for us came about when we were asked to partner with Houzz as monthly contributors. When we were approached by Houzz, the first thing they mentioned was our “writing style.” We are firm believers that if you want to be seen as a professional and ultimately hired to write, you must act like a professional from the beginning, even before you’ve earned a single dime. What does this mean for blogging? Quality Writing! Treat every post like it’s going to be published…cause well..it is! Be Yourself or Selves…in our case! Let your humor and personality shine through. Learn to take, edit and post quality photos! This takes time and has a learning curve, but almost all of the blogs that have a large readership and following have high quality photography. Yes it is work, yes it takes time but it’s so worth it!
2. Can you give advice on how bloggers can attract advertisers without turning off readers at the same time?
Wow, that’s a hard one! At the moment you will not find ads on are blog. Does that mean we’ll never have ad content? We can’t promise that. But for now, our income comes strictly from sponsorships and outside sources. It really is a balance to attract advertisers but maintain the integrity of your blogs quality. Our readers are ALWAYS number one…hands down. But, we feel the biggest draw to become a sponsor of our blog has been our promotion of our sponsors. How do you do this without annoying your readers? Turn your promotion into quality content. Share items from their stores that will appeal to your readers. Have your advertisers “sponsor” popular posts and series on your blog. This allows them to be placed in a prominent position within your post without detracting from its content. For instance, our Inspiration Friday posts are our most popular posts each week. Every Inspiration Friday is sponsored by one of our advertisers.
There are so many other ways to be mindful of the balance between advertisers and readers but we find these ideas have really worked for us!
3.Blogging Balance:
Ahhhh…is there such a thing as “Balanced Blogging”? Heather and I have decided it is one of those elusive questions in life like, if dimples are cute on faces, why aren’t they cute on other parts of the body? Or, why do my children sleep in on weekday mornings yet wake up at an ungodly hour on the weekend? I suppose some things we will just never understand.
We really think that in order to answer this question you have to decide just what you are hoping to achieve with your Blog. If your desire is to have it be a fun hobby where you can share your projects and ideas and connect with others doing the same, then your approach to it should be the same as your approach to any other kind of hobby. But, if your desire is to transition this “hobby” into a “business” then your approach towards it will require the same amount of attention, energy and planning you would put into any other business endeavor.
The biggest challenge for us is to carve out chunks of time during our day for doing projects, taking photos, editing photos, writing posts and then taking care of all of the "business" side of things. Basically, we are now women who “work from home” and that took us some time to wrap our heads around to be honest with you!
Thank you, ladies! I know that you know that you're already awesome but let me say it anyway - Heather and Vanessa, you totally rock! Friends, to hear what other money-makers have said about this topic, check out here.
Love these two girls. They are so genuine and talented to boot! Great interview.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to say thanks! I'm really enjoying these blogging for dollars posts. I'm a newbie blogger - just over a month :) so the advice is really helpful for me! I'm not thinking of earning at the moment, but perhaps some day down the line, so I'm really benefiting from this series!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for having us SJ! And, you are so sweet and I had to laugh at your last remark since we usually just think we are big dorks most of the time! LOL! :-) But thanks for your sweet comments and for helping to make blogland such a wonderful community. YOU rock!
ReplyDeleteVanessa
What a cool blog they have! Never been there. :)
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