The Impatient Blogger

Margot Potter

I write my blog from my art studio (which is a room in my house) each morning after my daughter goes to school. I started blogging a little over a year ago for several reasons. I’m an author and I need to promote my books and I’m a designer who needs to build a name in the craft and jewelry industry, by blogging daily I am hopefully cultivating readers. As my blog progressed I found it was inspirational to others and so my focus has expanded to allow for sharing my creative journey and my triumphs and failures with brutal honesty and a deep sense of irony and humor. My intent all along through my website www.margotpotter.com and my books and freelance work is to build and promote my brand. Brand Margot Potter. The goal is to eventually license product, host a TV show and take over the world. I hope to expand my books into the self help and inspirational mode, because that’s really where my creative work as an artist and a writer is heading. It’s all a step by step process and along the way my blog has continually expanded outward.

I don’t really pick topics as much as they pick me. Meaning, for the most part, I don’t really know what I might blather on about on any given day. I sit down and meditate on the rumblings in my brain until a topic emerges. I’ve yet to run out of things to talk about so this is working for me. My blogs are personal and not topical or regurgitated information from other sources. Everything in my blog with the exception of quotes I find compelling comes from me. I post my blog on blogger and repost it on MySpace

every day. Unless I’m out of town or ill, I try to post every day. This helps maintain my readership and keeps my blog from getting stale. I promote my blog via my website and MySpace and also through my books and freelance work. I’ve joined various blogging platforms and groups like MyBlogLog, Blogger Chicks, Housewife Mafia, Spicy Page etc. This has really helped boost my readership. My blog is also available through a variety of feeds. I try when time permits to visit other blogs of personal or professional interest and leave comments, because this is an excellent way to network and court new readers and it’s also helped me meet some fascinating people. I wish I had more time to devote to promoting the blog, but I have a very, very hectic schedule as it is with things that actually pay me money!

I think the best moments for me as a blogger happen when something I’ve written resonates really strongly for my readers. Sometimes that means wonderful comments or even private emails that tell me that I am empowering others to be creative or to work through some of their issues. That’s really ultimately why I blog, if it was just about me I’d keep a diary offline. My impetus is to show people that it is possible to do what you love and have the money follow. That the richest path is not always the well traveled one. Everything I do comes down to that.

I don’t make money with my blog, yet, maybe never. The blog is a platform for other things that make me money. I am loathe to junk it up with advertising because I’m afraid it would impede the integrity of the content. I would also never want to write a blog that was merely an advertising platform cloaked as entertainment or real content. I think it’s fine for other people, it’s just not who I am. I have considered running ads that I can control and selling them myself, but I’ve not made a definitive decision on that.

Blogging has been an amazing experience for me on so many levels. I’ve met amazing writers and designers, I’ve developed the discipline of writing every day, I’ve discovered things about myself I’d never have explored and I’ve created connections with like minded people from around the world. It’s been amazing.