Table for Five

Elizabeth

I started my first blog Table for Five when I was on bed rest while pregnant with my daughter. I have never been good at keeping baby books, and I wanted to remember those little moments that come and went so quickly each day. I knew if I could just jot them down on my blog, the memories would be there forever. I have since added two other blogs - MomReviews which is for product and personal reviews, and MomCooks for recipes.

I never have a problem coming up with blog topics. My kids and husband provide me with plenty to write about, and I can always post a few photos and tell the story behind them. I find that I get the best response from readers when I open up to them and write about something deeply personal. Readers like knowing that they aren’t the only ones who feel a certain way about something. No matter what you are dealing with, someone else out there has dealt with it too.

Buying my own domain and hosting it at Wordpress really changed the way I blog now. Even though I still struggle with PHP code, the tools that Wordpress offers are invaluable for not only creating a good blog but keeping it fresh. I’m a big fan of Wordpress plugins and am very grateful to all of the people who work so hard to come up with new ones. I also am very supportive of social networking sites like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and BumpZee. Forming communities and neighborhoods with other bloggers brings me traffic to my site, and introduces me to a wide variety of blogs and blogging styles.

I have had a couple of personal high blogging points since starting my blog. I have been given the “Thinking Blogger Award” by a fellow blogger, and I was nominated by readers for two Blogger’s Choice Awards.

I started making money by blogging on March 1st of this year. I first signed up with PayPerPost, and then through friends I met there, I signed up with six other paid blogging sites. Because not all of them have jobs available every day, it gives me a constant stream of work. I consider blogging to now be my job. I work more than full-time hours on my blogs each day. If you want to make money blogging, you have to take it seriously. Advertisers are looking for quality blogs, and that means good sentence structure, excellent grammar, spelling and punctuation, a commitment to keeping the blog updated even if you don’t have a paid blogging topic to write about, and, of course, traffic. If you aren’t getting traffic to your sites, get yourself out there! Join every networking site you can find, ask your readers if they know about any new ones. List your blog in directories, use your URL in your message board signature. You have to be your own BIGGEST fan! You have to be proud of your blog and what you write on it. That is what will make you stand out as a blogger.