About a year or so ago I was in a horrible job. Horrible doesn't do it justice. I'm afraid to go into to much detail, because well, I'm kind of still scarred from this company.
Despite the job itself, where I felt like every single day was a struggle just to go, I just felt like I wasn't giving my blog enough time. My blog was (is) my passion. I am that person that gets excited to look at stats and see my followers grow. I enjoy connecting with other bloggers and finding out what we have in common. I love that other bloggers support one another and that we can all learn from one another.
I felt like I was desperately missing out. I knew I could potentially turn my blog into my business but I just really wasn't sure how.
Flashback to Helene 2014:
I started a t-shirt line. This happened because I made a shirt out of my favorite tag line: “Wine Not.” (I still claim that I made this up years and years ago before Sally Hansen made it a nail color.) When I started selling them it went well.
It even got picked up by a deal site.
I decided to expand it to be more Texas themed and other avenues. I was doing well. I was consistently bringing in at least $4,000 a month and I thought everything was going great. But there was one problem: I felt like I wasn't spending enough time on my blog.
For me, my blog is my favorite thing. I enjoy writing more than anything out there. So while I liked the t-shirts, I also felt annoyed that I was having to pack and ship them everyday. Oh, and I was also running out of ideas.
I couldn't focus on what to come up with next or how to expand and grow. Christmas went really well, but January was a total bust.
So I thought: forget it. I found a new job and I disbanded the t-shirt business, along with my dreams to blog full time. But then that nagging feeling kept creeping up again. Which was: I have to figure out a way to make this work or I will implode.
I am the type of person that is uber passionate. This can be a good thing, and a bad thing. The good part is that I am so focused sometimes that I get tons done. But the bad part? I let other responsibilities fall by the way side. At that point it felt like I had to choose: blogging or any other aspect of my life.
Then something happened, life kind of smacked me in the face. I made the decision that I could run a successful blog and still have a life. I sat down and wrote out what I wanted my life to look like right now, in 5 years, in 10 years, and in 20 years. I needed to see the big picture.
Then I wrote down what made me happy: my husband, family, my dog, my friends, my blog, electronic music, good food, and traveling.
What was holding me back from this: my current job and myself.
Seriously. I was not thinking about the why of how I could become a full time blogger. So then I got really serious. And honestly, this was the defining moment for me:
What do the people that read my blog want from me?
I kind of realized that my blog was not just a place for me to tell everyone about me weekend, or give a quick tutorial on SEO. But my blog was somewhere people could go to be happy, learn, and hopefully, achieve their goals. So why couldn't I make a business out of it?
I totally could. I just didn't realize it.
I stopped thinking about what I was doing wrong or right and I started focusing on what my audience could use from me. Because, really, if I can make even one reader happy, then I was doing something right.
When I launched my first eCourse I thought, no one will sign up. But now 100s have signed up. And I've realized my path. I stopped thinking about the big picture, and focused in on the now and how I can help solve a problem.
That's all a business is anyway, right? You have a problem, I've got a solution.
So if you're serious about growing your blog stop and think about how you can provide a solution to your audience. You might just wow yourself.
