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What Happens If You Take a Year off Your Blog?

It is too easy to have an ambitious dream to start something but the follow through is really the true test. This could be as simple as deciding to paint your living room a different color. But this is what happens when you take a year off of your new blog.

Starting a Project

You can picture the end product of painting your living room. You know exactly what you want it to look like and it shouldn’t be too hard! Easy peasy!

The beginning part is also the fun part. It’s not hard work. It’s fun! You go to the store and buy all your supplies and then head home.

You are still be excited at this point to actually get started and change the whole look of your living room!

But after you move all the furniture and lay down all the drip cloths you are starting to lose steam. Then (for me anyways) you get to the least fun part of it where you have to tape it all off.

The Fun is Fading

By the time you finish taping everything off the fun has pretty much wore off of this project and you haven’t even started painting yet!

So you start painting and you gain some momentum in seeing it start to finally come together! But as you paint your arm starts to get tired and you keep dripping paint on the one tiny spot of wood floor that’s not covered by the cloth.

You keep trucking along and hours go by and you stop to look at your project to see that you are almost done with the walls but then you realize that you still have to paint another whole layer as well as paint the trim edging twice.

All of a sudden you feel tired and overwhelmed so you decide to finish this layer and take a break and finish up tomorrow.

Two weeks later your living room is still half done and every time you look at it you just get overwhelmed and you remember how tired you were last time so you keep pushing it off.

Can anyone relate to this story? Or is it just me?

I am the master project started but not so much the master project finisher. It sounds fun when you first start but then when it gets tough it becomes less of a priority.

Also there are only so many hours in the day and I run out of time doing the things that really are a priority.

However, being a project finisher has become my new thing. I see this as an area that I struggle with so I have been working on fixing that.

I have been able to do that by breaking things up into smaller tasks so I don’t feel overwhelmed.

This is What Happens if You Don’t Finish

(stay with me here)

We bought our house this past November and luckily for us the house we bought was across the street from the rental we were in and we purchased it in the middle of the month which gave us half a month to paint before we moved in.

I would go over everyday and paint. The goal was to paint the whole house before we moved in. I did most of the painting myself while my daughter was in school and my husband worked long hours.

I got it 90% done when my husband couldn’t wait any longer and started moving things over when he was off for Thanksgiving. Because we (him) jumped the gun and moved in before we were done painting it has never been finished…and it’s now May.

Everytime I think about getting out the paint I think of how long it’s going to take and the mess it’s going to make plus I have too many other things to do.

I know what you are thinking. Just take one weekend and whip it out! Well, my husband still works very long hard hours and runs a mowing company on the side.

We spend our weekends either mowing yards or trying to spend time together on the boat or doing something fun.

So what I have decided to do is to do one small section a day. Then I will be tackling the project without feeling like I am giving up a whole day of work to do it.

The same has to go for your blog.

Now if you have stuck with me this far this is where I am going to tie it all back into blogging. You are reading this because you too started a new project (blog) and put that project off but you are wanting to finish it!

I have done that myself with my own blog. Honestly I think we all have at some point!

There is a lot that goes into a new blog so it takes awhile to just master the concept of a blog and actually get it started.

Then once you start your new blog you have to maintain it. If you step away it could start to fall apart. It might float for a little while depending on how well it was doing beforehand but eventually it will sink without maintenance.

But don’t worry if you have started a new blog and let it sink you can still build it back up! That is what I am here to help you with!

I started my new blog in September of 2017. I let the holidays get the best of me and the next thing I knew it was January! In January of 2018 I regrouped and added a Tailwind strategy to bring in traffic and boy did it!

I had over 7,000 page views in 30 days when I normally had maybe 300!

Then February I was asked to help at the Church Preschool as a lead teacher and I took the position.

Working full time with 13 one year olds plus doing all the lesson plans was tiresome. My daughter was in 2nd grade (which turned out to be a very hard year compared to previous years) and juggling gymnastics, our dog got sick and passed away, my husband was never home, the house was a wreck, it was flu season so we were all always sick….I was exhausted.

As hard as I tried my blog went to the wayside and I told myself I will pick it back up in May.

May came and it was my first summer home with my daughter ever and for no other reason then being out of the loop and more focused on enjoying the break with her, my blog once again went to the wayside.

When she started school back up in August I tried to pick it back up. It didn’t come easy. I felt like I was starting completely over. I ended up watching videos and reading more than anything. Trying to get back into the game.

I watched neighborhood kids from home for some extra money so from 7:00am-6:00pm I had kids at my house so I was now running into a time crunch again as well.

For all of you full time working moms that rock a side business you are amazing!!

My husband loves a clean house so since I stay home (even though I watch kiddos) I work hard to keep the house clean and organized so that does take priority.

After we got all moved in to our new house and the holidays were all over it was now the spring of 2019 and I really thought about what was important to me.

As much as I love helping the neighbors with the kiddos its not my passion. And with summer coming most of them didn’t need help anymore so I needed to make my new blog priority to bring in money and replace that loss.

So at the beginning of the year I cut back on the amount of time I was watching kids and focused back on my blog.

April 2019

I drew a line in the sand at the end of March. I told myself I was going to solely focus on my blog.

My goal was to prioritize my day better and just put my head down and focus on my new blog only. Then I would see how things looked at the end of April.

This is what happened.

Since it has been a year since I had that spike in traffic from Pinterest and Tailwind I decided to focus on that and simply updating my blog as well as adding consistently to my new blog.

I implemented that same Tailwind strategy, consistently added one new blog post a week and sent out a weekly broadcast to my email list (after explaining why I was MIA previously).

Plus I updated my 30-Day Challenge Workbook to Start a Blog and my Free Pinterest Image Course. Then lastly I updated a few blog posts.

Results

Here are my results after 30 days of focus.

Besides feeling like I now have the confidence to keep going strong and being extremely proud of all my updates and accomplishments, I made $152.62!

My traffic didn’t spike like before but I feel like I am in “time out” with Pinterest and I have to earn my traffic back. They sent me a bunch before but then I didn’t do anything for a year!

So after only one month I think I still need to show them I am consistent and serious this time.

Now you may be thinking well $150 isn’t that much? And you are right. It isn’t that much. However, it is! That is my best month to date of starting my blog!

I made money with my new blog but if you followed along you see that I didn’t stay consistent at all! Since I started my new blog I have not been steadily consistent.

So the money that I made would be one or two sales here or there. Not 5 sales in one month and $150.00 in my pocket in one month!

Again, you may be thinking that is not much money at all and again I agree with you to an extend.

It isn’t anything to go brag about however it is very exciting and shows me the major progress I made this past month!

May 2019

Now here we are getting ready to start May this week. I had set a goal of $200 in April and I am very happy with my results so now I have a goal of $500 in May.

I would like to break through Tailwind and Pinterest again but instead of looking too far down the road and getting upset I have to remind myself that I pretty much started completely over in April. It’s only been one solid month.

I can’t look at it as if I have been for a year and a half because I haven’t honestly been consistently blogging that long.

My blog as been up for that long and I have wrote many blog posts but not like I should have been. So that is what I am focusing on now.

Sharing my experience (like I always have) even the less flatting ones like this blog post. But my hope is that it will speak to someone in a similar position.

As moms we are constantly putting everyone and everything before ourselves but sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand and rearrange your priority list so it benefits everyone.

With this new outlook I have been able to accomplish everything on my priority list.

Tips for Success

Rearrange To Do List

Sometimes just rearranging your to do list and doing it in a different order will help.

I break up my cleaning throughout the day so I can till work on my blog and keep the house clean at the same time. Before I would do all the cleaning first but then I was running out of blogging time.

So I switched and would blog first then the house ended up being a major task.

Now I clean for the first hour of the day and work on my blog throughout the morning. When I break for lunch, I switch the laundry and unload the dish washer. Then I work on my blog in the afternoon and when my daughter gets off the bus it’s homework and supper time.

This way when my husband comes home the house is all clean, supper is ready, and homework is done. This gives us family time together and I was able to work on my blog too.

Same exact things I normally do just in a different successful order.

Plan Ahead

I plan ahead if there are going to be busy days full of appointments. I make sure that I keep that in mind as I am working on my blog throughout the week. Before it seemed like I was running around to appointments and running out of time to work.

Just planning ahead and seeing what’s to come for the month helps give you a bird’s eye view of how your going to get everything done.

Those are simple tips but you would be surprised how you get stuck into a routine (even if it isn’t working the best) and just a few little tweaks could fix it all!

Goals

Everyone is always telling you to have goals and to write them down. I always did this but I think I shot too big. I would think right away there is no way I can get that all done so I was okay with it when I didn’t get it done.

This time I set realistic goals and I was very pleased with how I ended the month!

Now I have written out how May will go and I am so excited to look up at the end of the month and see how I did!

Your Turn

I am here to tell you that YOU CAN DO THIS! You may feel like you have let it go too long to bring it back to life. I don’t agree. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, call it like it is, and move forward!

I didn’t like sending out an email at the beginning of April telling everyone what I had done but I did it.

I don’t necessarily like sharing this all in a blog post but I am.

Mom Blog From Home was made to help moms like me start and grow their blogs.

I am far from perfect and I will never be perfect. Honestly, that is a scary thought trying to pretend or shoot for perfect.

That’s not me. I am just a normal mom trying to share my experience and knowledge on blogging with others in hopes to help them learn and grow from my mistakes and my successes!

Now get out there and kick butt with your blog momma!

Vanessa