Why I Started my Blog - For Wendy

Wendy, one of my bestest bloggy friends is having a party, y'all! She wants to know why we started our blogs. It's a question I get a lot, so I decided to do a last minute Sunday post to share all the gory details you never wanted to know.

I started my business Hope Studios, The Shop first and in order to grow I knew I would need to begin advertising. Yes, advertising...with no cash. That's a toughie.

Lots of bloggers accepted advertisers and charged money for them, so I thought to myself "Self? You can do that! YOU start the blog and bring in your own business!" (cue rubbing my hands together while laughing maniacally). Guess what? My blog was free! It came with templates and lots of advice and as a bonus I got to explore MORE creative things, and meet friends, and practice my photography, and develop a log of my life and my kids' lives...Um, why didn't I think of this sooner?

So, in February 2008, I got me a blog. Hope Studios, The Blog was born.

My very first post was a mini-rant about a mom's real life experience of returning from vacation called, Back to the Real World. I spent much of that first month talking about my shop. I got about 2 comments in 4 weeks.

I didn't know how to add photos, or links, or make something bold...It was boring.

Finally, in March, I decided to post about some funny thoughts that were running through my head in my kickboxing class (I still think of a lot of my posts while in that class. My teacher inspires something in me and I brainstorm some of my best stuff while drop kicking an imaginary opponent.). I entitled it My Secret Life as a Kickboxer and holy smokes! I got 16 comments! I realized I was onto something and began to use the humor I see in everyday situations as my inspiration. I began to talk about my business sparingly and instead began to focus on entertaining and teaching my readers.

I got my Soul Sisters on board and soon, we all had a blog: The Treat Girl, JoyBeadworks, Marzipan, and Girl in the Sticks.



We started having monthly tech-y meetings - none of us knew much but all the little things each of us knew added up to a lot!

We captured our outings, our parties, our projects, our recipes and each of our blogs is a great extension of the others'. We make each others blogs and lives richer.

We all take something different from our experiences, so you can read all four and get the full scoop. I think adding girlfriends to the mix was just right and seemed to speak to many of our readers - we have many of the same followers and names like Wendy, Saucy, Judy, and Whimsy come up in conversations when we're together as if we all know each other!

So, that's my story. What's yours? You can post one and link up with Wendy HERE and you might even win a prize. Tell her I said "hi".