Today Vered DeLeeuw from MomGrind suggests ways for turning a mommy blog into a business. These tips are not limited to mommy blogs: they can be applied to personal blogs in general. Image by KellyandApril.

MomGrind is a personal blog. It chronicles my thoughts and struggles. It is where I share a laugh with my readers, ask for their advice, post an occasional feminist rant, and wonder about the meaning of it all.

MomGrind is also a business.

Unlike marketing and business blogs, or even self-improvement and productivity blogs, mommy blogs are highly personal. They tell the story of an individual, the story of a family. “Making your blog more personal” is typically not an issue for mommy bloggers. It happens naturally.

When you talk with mommy bloggers, many of them will tell you that they are not blogging for money. Blogging is an outlet for their daily struggles and frustrations. They blog to document the joys and the frustrations that come with raising children. But mommy bloggers are powerful. They have the power to help big corporations reach an important audience. The big companies know it. Do the moms know it?

If you author a mom blog – or any other personal blog – and would like to turn your blog into a business and earn money doing something that you love, these tips will help you get started:

1. Acknowledge that your blog is a business

This is a crucial first step. Start taking yourself seriously and others will take you seriously too. If you have an opportunity to use direct advertising on your blog, go for it, and sell it for what it’s really worth: don’t leave money on the table. If a company emails you with questions, charge a consulting fee for answering them. Queen of Spain received a consulting fee of $6000 from Disney “for what essentially amounted to a few emails, a survey, and a meeting”. Needless to say, you should set up a Paypal account.

2. Decide how much you are willing to share with your readers

It’s impossible to write a post about mommy blogs without mentioning the queen of mommy blogging, Heather Armstrong. Ms. Armstrong has a very particular style that includes great writing, frequent use of profanity, lots of personal charm, and the ability to make fun of herself and her husband. Her definition of privacy is lax – she readily shares highly private family moments with her readers.

But does one have to use profanity or expose her family affairs on the Internet in order to turn her blog into a lucrative business? I don’t have the answer to this question, although I will venture a guess that if you want to REALLY make it as a mommy blogger, you must be willing to share A LOT. This is a very personal choice, of course. Define your limits, and once you have – be ready to defend them, to others and to yourself.

3. Subscribe to ProBlogger

I am a subscriber and a regular reader. Sure, the posts here are geared toward professional bloggers. But many of them are very relevant to me. For example, Darren’s recent post on 21 Ways To Make Your Blog Sticky was very helpful in improving MomGrind. I implemented several of Darren’s suggestions, including highlighting my best content and creating an engaging “About” page.

4. Educate yourself about advertising

You need to determine when to start using ads on your blog; where to place them to optimize revenue; how many ads to display; and how to handle direct advertising.

5. Start networking

If you want to earn decent money from your blog, you need to have enough daily unique visitors and page views to attract direct advertisers. Even if your content is great, this kind of traffic to your blog will not happen without networking.

A good place to start is visiting other blogs and making comments on them. You should also approach bloggers who run blogs that are approximately the size of your blog or bigger, and offer to write guest posts for them. This will expose you to new readers, and some of them will end up as new subscribers.

Perhaps one of the most important things you can do to build a community around your blog, is to participate in social media sites. Many prominent mommy bloggers, including Dooce, Sweetney and Her Bad Mother, use Twitter.

6. Keep writing about things that are interesting to you

While you should keep your growing audience in mind to some extent, it’s important that you stay true to yourself. Writing content that evokes emotions in your readers (Her Bad Mother excels at that), or content that has a high entertainment value (Dooce is highly entertaining), is fine. In fact, it’s more than fine. Don’t worry about other blogs providing information and advice. You are giving your readers something that is just as valuable: you are making other moms feel like they’re not alone, and in many cases, you are making them laugh.

7. Never apologize for those ad checks

Making money or wanting to make money from your blog is your prerogative. Get over the “good girl” mentality and be proud of your talent, of your networking abilities, of the wonderful, thriving business that you have started from scratch and are building with your own hands. I enjoyed reading another prominent mommy blogger - Don Mills Diva’s - recent post “Show Me The Money”. Don Mills Diva does NOT apologize for aspiring to make money from her blog. I couldn’t agree with her more.

8. Pace yourself

Creating a successful blog takes a lot of work. If you want to do this for the long haul and avoid burnout, it’s important to slow down. Darren recently said that it’s very easy to work 12 hours per day on a blog, if you don’t set limits. My advice: don’t. This is true for every blogger, and it’s especially true for you, because you have children to take care of and to enjoy. Don’t allow the Internet to rob you of enjoying the fleeting moments of your kids’ childhood.

Photo credit: R. Motti (link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/motti/298650667/)

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#1 You can blog more.

#2 You don’t have to deal with constant questions about your ad rates.

#3 You don’t have to invoice customers.

#4 You can just sit back each month and collect a check.

#5 You don’t have to worry about ad management software, running campaigns, putting up ads, tracking impressions and clicks.

(Cheesy sales person photo)

#6 You don’t have to listen to advertisers complain about results or poor performance.

#7 The sales reps can usually get a higher dollar value than you can.  Because , that’s what they are trained to do.

#8 The sales reps have more contacts then you do.  Top sales reps have a big rolodex of leads they can call on.

#9 They can take care of all your inbound requests and respond to them for you.

#10 Again, you can focus on what you do best, blogging.

~ Chad

#1 You can blog more.

#2 You don’t have to deal with constant questions about your ad rates.

#3 You don’t have to invoice customers.

#4 You can just sit back each month and collect a check.

#5 You don’t have to worry about ad management software, running campaigns, putting up ads, tracking impressions and clicks.

(Cheesy sales person photo)

#6 You don’t have to listen to advertisers complain about results or poor performance.

#7 The sales reps can usually get a higher dollar value than you can.  Because , that’s what they are trained to do.

#8 The sales reps have more contacts then you do.  Top sales reps have a big rolodex of leads they can call on.

#9 They can take care of all your inbound requests and respond to them for you.

#10 Again, you can focus on what you do best, blogging.

~ Chad

I know these are all the rage right now, and everyone wants to do them, but I have my two cents on what they are all about.

If you’ve never been, here’s what they do: they make you do cardio and abs for 45 minutes to warm up, then they let you punch a bag for 10 minutes, and cool off for 5. Oooo, sounds like fun.

I do 1.5 hours of cardio a day, I work my abs 4 days a week and cool off by riding my bike home. I don’t need all of that. If I want to take a boxing class, I want to learn how to box. I want to be punching a bag and kicking the shit out of my frustrations. It seems so logical to me that boxing classes should be all about boxing, not all that other bull they make you do.

I was actually quite interested in taking up boxing for a while, and sought out some boxing places around town to find a good instructor. They’re all the same. They see that I am a girl and therefore assume I am a wuss and just want to lose weight.

Now, FYI- I wrote this post BEFORE the boxing instructor asked me out…so I’ll let you know if any of this changes.

36 hours ago I announced the re-launch of Yaro’s BlogMastermind Blog Mentoring program.

As part of my promotion of it I offered any ProBlogger reader who signs up the chance to win one of six prizes.

First prize is a Flip Video Mino Series Camcorder (worth $179) and 5 runners up will win a copy of the ProBlogger book. The deadline to be included to win was 48 hours from when BlogMastermind opened it’s doors. This is in 12 hours from now.

So - to be in the running to win the Flip or a book you need to sign up soon.

What are your chances of winning?

To this point I’ve referred around 20 people to BlogMastermind - so you’ve got better than a 1 in 4 chance of winning at least something and a 1 in 20 chance of winning yourself a spiffy little new video camera.

Yaro tells me that over 200 people have already signed up - so BlogMastermind is truly cranking again.

Another Bonus - Get an Hour of My Time If You Sign Up for Six Months

Yaro offers three options at three different price points to invest in the BlogMastermind Program. For anyone who signs up via my affiliate links for option 2 (the six months all at once) or option 3 (the six months plus access to his next course) I am going to throw in one hour of time with me.

You can use this hour in a number of ways (happy to negotiate something that works for you):

• I can write a short report/review of your blog (I’d recommend that you have this done after you’ve been in BlogMastermind for a month or two and have implemented some of Yaro’s strategies)
• We can spend an hour on skype with each other in a consulting session (again - probably best after you’ve been in BlogMastermind for a while so you can implement things.
• I could write a post for your blog (subject to whether the topic is one that I feel able to write about) or be interviewed on your blog (again subject to whether it’s a topic that I feel able to respond to questions on)

Signup for BlogMastermind here to qualify

The only conditions that I’ll put on this ‘one hour bonus’ is that you need to signup for BM by the end of August to get it and you need to stay in the course for 31 days before claiming it as Yaro does offer a 30 day money back guarantee (which he honors) so if you don’t end up paying for BlogMastermind it’s not really fair to get the bonus.

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Next week is a very special week here at technosailor.com. We are going to have a very heavy emphasis on “green” technology and all the major verticals will be contributing in one way or another.

Energy costs are sky high, Bush is badgering Congress to lift the ban on off-shore drilling, and computer manufacturers are bandying around trying to create the most energy efficient server - something I’m very interested in discussing with manufacturers, I might add.

There are plenty of energy alternatives to be had, from solar to nuclear to conventional oil, should the supply permit it. Our cars can be used less by telecommuting. We can all be smarter about the way we live our lives.

Our focus is, obviously, slanted toward technology and so we want to try to find the best ways to use the technology available to save the resources we have, keep costs down and maybe, increase the quality of life for all of us.

Next week, I’ll be making a brief trip to Dearborn, MI to visit Ford and see their next line new technologies for the new line of cars. I’ll be paying close attention to the technologies surrounding Hybrid vehicles, etc. Look for reports here.

This week has been all about the bodies at b5. Director of Branded Content, Darren O, forgot his age for a brief intoxicated moment, and twisted his ankle in a football match on Friday night (see awesome photo).

In other news, in a recent Skype conversation about BWE, Gab said she could probably beat Darcie in an arm wrestling match. We’ll see….

Today the Social Media Love-In here at ProBlogger continues with a list of 145 bloggers who use Plurk.

So far we’ve presented you with bloggers who use Digg, some that use StumbleUpon and a lot of them who use Twitter. Today’s list is smaller than the others but I think it is just as worthwhile as Plurk has become a key part of my daily social media interactions and is a place of wonderfully rich conversation and networking.

As usual - if you didn’t get your profile in the list - all is not lost because these 145 profiles are a great place to start and you can benefit from adding them as they’re a great bunch of people.

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I have a good amount of respect for Jeremiah Owyang. He’s an analyst at Forrester who has done some good work on social media.

On the other hand, why he isn’t well-informed enough to avoid asking really, really stupid questions makes me question whether I should take him seriously as an authority on technology, or at least makes me think he should avoid politics. He asks:

Is knowing how to use a computer and use the internet a job requirement?

Does it impact a leaders ability to manage the country and impact the world?

Does it influence your vote, if so, why?

What do you expect from your leaders? CEO? President?

Can we please stop asking these overused, over-parsed TV talking head questions that avoid the real issue?

The question should be about whether or not a leader is familiar with how ordinary Americans live. This means more than being able to send an email. It means being able to drive, understand traffic, and fill a gas tank. It’s going shopping for groceries and seeing the prices on the scanner. Remember George H.W. Bush in 1992, when he was so amazed at the barcode reader? That cost him points.

Both candidates for President are U.S. Senators with highly competent staffs that handle many daily activities that ordinary Americans have to do themselves, simply because of the demands of the job. They don’t have time to do many of the things that we do. Senators are highly micromanaged. Their days are scheduled and organized by campaign staff and office staff. As I have written before, elected officials have two jobs: The job they have, and keeping the job they have (or running for higher office).

I’m tired of hearing about who is more “authentic.” I want to know what they know about how things happen. You know what would be a great campaign stunt for either Senator? Give your Assistant, Chief of Staff, Legislative Director, etc a few days off. Come in early, get a copy of your schedule, find out what you have to do, and do it. No handlers. The only people who are allowed to work in the office for that week are the ones who you do not receive briefings, assistance or advice from directly.

How well could you keep up on the issues? What tools would you use? Would you become a wizard with your Outlook calendar? How would you research an issue? How would you get around?

In other words, how would you live if you were us?

You cannot solve the problem unless you know and understand the problem.

(here’s an example of doing this well: Michael Bloomberg takes the subway to work. the man is worth billions, and he’s a straphanger. you think the subway gets the attention it needs? I bet it does.)

One of my biggest regrets of 2007 was not being able to attend Blog World Expo.

The reports that came out of BWE from thousands of bloggers were quite amazing. Rich networking, great teaching, showcases of services and tools for bloggers and much much more.

This year Blog World Expo is on again (20-21 September) in Las Vegas.

I’m hoping to attend this year (I’m 50/50 at this point as we’re waiting to see how our new baby settles before I travel again) as the list of people that I know who are attending is quite amazing. They’ve started compiling a list of speakers here. If I’m going I’ll be involved in at least one panel and probably another session.

I emailed the Rick Calvert CEO of BWE earlier in the week and asked him if they’d be willing to put up a couple of free passes to attend - he generously agreed.

The passes are worth $400 each - there are two of them to go to two separate winners.

So here’s how we’re going to give them away - it’s time for a commenting competition.

Before entering - you need to know that these passes do NOT include travel or accommodation they simply give you free access to the conference once you’re there. Please don’t enter if you’re not willing to cover your other expenses or be there as I’d love for someone to win them that are actually certain to use them!

• In comments below I’d like to invite you to leave a comment telling us why you’d like to attend Blog World Expo in 250 words or less.
• Rick and his team will select two comments that they think are deserving of winning. They’ll judge the winners based on your comments.
• This will run for one week from the time this post goes live. I’ll then close off comments and get Rick to select the winners.

Looking forward to reading your entries and the possibility of meeting you in Vegas later in the year!

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