The Purpose Of The Blog

On Sunday the Times ran a piece on blogs, mom's who blog, and 39,000 mom's who attended a blogging conference in California to find out how to get more revenue on their blogs. Some of these women were making an insane amount of money, and companies such as Tupperware are currently looking for other bloggers to hire for their company.

We've all heard the story of Julie&Julia and how her blog went from blog, to an article in the Times, to a book and then a movie. Then there's the mom who cooked in a crock pot for a year and sent readers pounding their computer every morning to check out her newly tested recipes, a year later it became a book. Stories like these are all over, but the amount of bloggers are ten fold. This got me to thinking, what was I hoping to get from my blog, and more importantly why was I using my half hour coffee time to type instead of read?

I had to think back to answer this. Of course when I started my blog in September of 2008 the recession hadn't exactly hit yet, or at least I hadn't realized it did. I walked from Monroe to Georgia playground and met my friend who I've refered on here as Baby Guru. After months of us both staying home, our babies now 9 months old, we'd begun walking the boardwalk and discussing what our next move would be. My maternity money was running out, and if another writing assignment didn't come through I'd have to find an out of the house job and a daycare for my son. I remember running idea after idea off my friend, "What about an article on how to get your kid on Sesamee Street or into the top notch preschool," (actually maybe I'll use that Sesame Street article after all-it's interesting don't you think?)and trust me when I tell you I contacted editor after editor pitching idea after idea. No one was biting. My friend had an idea, she was starting a day care. Mondays were going to be her busiest, five kids at once, "I'll help you," I exclaimed. "I'll walk down every Monday, as long as it isn't raining, and hang out." So on this Monday, with the kids at the park, I proposed my idea.

"You know how I said it was really hard to find a mom group here and how I searched to make mom friends when I had Nugget? What if I made a blog that would allow moms in LB to connect. We could plan meet-up dates and parties and all kind of events through it."

My friend thought it sounded great. So I got started. I figured out how to set up a blog, created a first meet-up date, a walk on the boardwalk that never happened due to a major rainstorm, and slowly began to write.

As editors slowly began to write back, "Sorry, we're not taking any out-house projects at this time," (aka, the economy was crashing and magazines were folding faster than I could keep up with), and I found out I was pregnant (Nugget only 9 months old and I was eight weeks, gulp!)the idea of a blog and meet up events grew less appealing. I was to busy puking, running after Nugget and worrying about money.

A year and a half later my husband and I managed to pull through. I've taken over one of the children from my friends day care and I've begun to use my blog as an outlet. I still wish this to be a place where LB moms can get together and connect. But, I'm now hoping for more opportunties to come from this.

I'd like to be able to pull two resources from one outlet and let the LB moms enjoy some of the spotlight. Magazines are slowly beginning to give away small assignment, my first one in over a year will be appearing in Parenting next month, and as I jump in, feet first, I'd like to bring my moms with me. Using this blog as a LB connection, I'd like to float my ideas on here, gather the opinion and turn the moms into interviews in the magazine, and possibly some photo shoots (for the magazines that hire me as their photographer too).

I'm not sure of the logistics and how well this would work, I can only use the same two moms so many times before editors complain (I giggle at how famous I've made my friend Megan, she's been my photograph ginuea pig for a yoga, surfing, speed dating, and other numerous articles), but I'm slowly going to test it out.

My first step, getting LB moms on my site to comment. I'm not sure how to go about this, besides a giveaway to lure them in, though so far that's no gaining much success, but maybe soon, through word of mouth, this will spread and a year from now my hopes of writing and connecting the moms will be concrete.

But what about my randon blogs, you ask. They're not articles. True. To that I say, I have random thoughts that I think are funny (to myself I'm very humourous), I guess I'm just vain enough to think that others will think so too and enough reading them. Hey, if I can't write for the magazines at this moment, why not blog about it. Right?