The Nutshell

                                            

I received an email last week about this blog. The sender had a couple questions such as how I got started blogging and what my goals were. I always love to read about this type of info on other blogs I read, but I honestly never thought people would be interested in hearing my story…I guess I never thought of myself as being very successful at this blogging junk although I love every minute of it (which should be considered a success in itself!).

I started blogging on November 1, 2007 so it’s been seven months and fifteen days. I had been reading more and more blogs at that time (cold northern winters will make you do that) and decided after a few days to start my own. I had heard that they were a lot of work, but I’m a girl who loves a challenge, so I went for it. I decided that if it didn’t work I’d just quit. I’d try it out for a little while and then see how it went.

Blogging quickly became a routine and I’d casually enter a couple posts a week. I’d get a few responses, but nothing to write home about. I didn’t really try that hard to promote myself and, honestly, I didn’t know how to do this.

Soon after I stumbled across Post Cards from the Funny Farm, a blog with Inspiration as it’s general theme. Damien, the blogger, wrote a couple entries on how to promote your blog, how to get more readers and what sites to join to do this…I really took his advice to heart and started applying it to my blogging activity. I was really impressed when I asked him a question in a comment (the first day I found the blog) and he answered it by writing a blog entry about my question!

It’s only been just over seven months since I started this blog (actually, I started on Blogger, but that’s an entry to itself) and I think I’ve done pretty well for myself! I’m happy with the direction it’s taking. I’ve been moving with baby-steps and that’s all you can do, really.

Setting goals is always important but it’s something I’ve just started doing with my blog. Until now, I’ve been too nervous about failure to set goals. Here’s what my first goals are:

1. To receive 50 views daily (350 / week)
2. To focus on the theme “Creativity”

This past week this is how I attempted to achieve these goals:

1. I promoted my blog on Wriging.com, the Etsy forums, Fuelmyblog.com and other blogs and received a total of 453 views. This was also due to the fact that I asked Damien from Postcards to be a guest blogger and his readers came here to read his entry.
2. I started a series called Selling on Etsy as a way to kick of my official theme here, Creativity. I’ll be running more series’ about creativity, I am having so much fun with this current series and love how much I’m learning about it myself! I also started Feature Fridays as a way to showcase amazing Etsy artists and their work.

I have a huge goal for the future of this blog but I realize there’s a ton of work to do in the meantime. I’m nervous about sharing this goal with you because it’s a biggie, but I personally think that’s the way to make long term goals…set ’em high but realize it’ll take some elbow grease to get there.

My long term biggest goal for this blog is to make it as big as Design * Sponge. Yep. That’s it. I can do that…right?

So that’s my story in a nutshell! If you have any questions or you’d like me to expand on any part of my experience, just let me know! I’d love to tell you more 🙂