The Real Reason Why Mommy Bloggers Write About Blogging

Mommy blogging has been torn through the mud lately. As a whole mommy bloggers are condemned for sharing recipes, cleaning tips, home decor, parenting advice, and even for talking about blogging.

Women with wildly successful careers brush us off as nothing more than glorified homemakers as if our voice doesn’t matter. Women cut down other women for sharing how we get to work at home and spend lots of time with the kids we popped out.

Here’s the thing, when it’s July 20th and the kids are screaming about how bored they are, it’s a mommy blogger to the rescue with an activity. When a newly pregnant woman is wondering if she actually needs a diaper genie, it’s a mommy blogger to the rescue.

When it’s 5:30 at night, the kids are hungry, laundry is on the dining room table, and you still don’t know what to cook for dinner, it’s most likely a mommy blogger who’s got a 15 minute meal your kids will love.

You see as a mommy, we know what other moms struggle with and we don’t like to see our own feeling defeated. Defeated about a house being a mess, a job that’s hellish, dinner, activities, or any other thing out there.

As a mom we have your back. We are here sharing solutions to the everyday problems that moms face. Sure they are first world problems but they are problems and we are the ones offering solutions.

You know what other problem we help moms with. We help moms; who have the drive, passion, and desire to share their story and their own solutions to problems they faced, do exactly that.

Mommy Blogging For Profit

Blogging isn’t for everyone but for some it’s exactly perfect for them. Once you realize you can create a business selling advertising space, making commissions on products sold, getting sponsored, or even selling your own products or services, and make good money from it … it becomes a passion.

Mommy bloggers – for the most part – started their blog as a hobby. Then one day a sponsor emailed them and asked how much she charged for a post.

Or a company contacted her and wanted to know if they could pay for advertising space. Suddenly she realized this blog that was just a hobby could actually bring in a little extra cash.

Sometimes you get a mommy blogger like me. Someone who was looking for a way to work from home and raise her baby but instead found something she absolutely loved doing. More than that she found a connection to her readers.

Because blogging is not get rich quick, it’s not MLM, and it’s not easy. It takes years to make significant money from blogging. It takes tears, doubt, drive, passion, and desire to make this work and to actually see it work.

The truth is 99% of blogs are abandoned within their first year because people just don’t have the drive to do this – and that’s ok. Blogging shouldn’t be for everyone. For those who do have the drive, the income and possibilities that come with blogging can be pretty significant.

Why Mommy Bloggers Blog About Blogging

Mommy bloggers get asked, “how do you make money blogging” all the time. The fact is, it’s just easier to blog about blogging, the ins the outs, what works, and how to do it, than it is to try to explain it in person, over messages, emails, or on social media. Because blogging isn’t easy and it’s not easily explained.

At some point in a mommy bloggers journey to blogging she was struggling, she was trying to bring in extra income, she was trying to find a way to work from home to spend more time with her child. These mommy bloggers had to struggle, work, test, fail, fail some more, and finally succeed.

When a mommy blogger blogs about blogging she is just trying to make some other mommy bloggers journey just a bit easier than her own. She is guiding a potential mommy blogger through all the steps she went through so that maybe they don’t have to struggle as long as she did.

Mommy blogging isn’t free though and as a blog grows so do the expenses. The most successful mommy bloggers have several people who work for her or she’s got several freelancers or contractors working on the behind the scenes stuff. This doesn’t even cover the cost of services.

As she grows her business she sells mostly digital products that help solve the problems that many beginner bloggers face. She sells products to her readers and she sells products to bloggers because she herself faced problems, found a solution, then creates a detailed course that most likely took months to create, and she should get paid for that work.

Why? Because artists, contractors, freelancers, you and anyone who has a job gets paid for their work and blogging is work. So if someone complains about mommy bloggers and claims it’s a scam that doesn’t work I’ve got news for you, check the way back machine because they probably have a failed mommy blog.

Child sitting on a mothers lap while the mom works on a laptop

How Mommy Bloggers Actually Make Money

Running a blog is a job. We spend hours crafting posts, images, sometimes videos, answering emails, emailing our lists, scheduling social media, posting to social media, and this doesn’t even cover any services or product creation.

Mommy bloggers were therapists, executives, marketers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, consultants, home decorators, fashion experts, beauty experts, writers, etc, and our time is still valuable.

Even if we didn’t hold high level positions before we started blogging, we are still writers now. Just because we decided to work for ourselves doesn’t mean we should do it for free, though for the first few months or even years, we sometimes do.

We should get paid for the work we do. Luckily, there are three ways bloggers get paid that don’t cost our readers anything. Then there are two ways we get paid directly by helping our readers.

It’s a common thing to see ads run on most websites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest all have promoted ads that show up in your streams. The Weather Channel, news websites, and even WebMD has ads on their websites.

Websites hold free information and they make money by displaying ads. The ads cost the readers nothing, but allows website owners to get paid.

Bloggers put ads on their sites so they can make money while giving the reader free information, advice, or ideas. That’s the exchange. It’s very rare that a blogger will actually stick to blogging if they aren’t making any money to offset the cost of running a blog.

Ads help us to pay for hosting, have social media scheduling programs, and continue to provide readers with interesting content. For those of us with loads of content, ads often become the primary source of income.

This income helps bloggers to pay bills at their home, be a work at home mom, and continue to provide content for their readers.

Affiliates

At the top of pretty much every blog post you will likely see a disclosure. The disclosure basically says that links in the blog post may be affiliate links which we make a commission on.

Again these affiliate links cost the reader nothing. If we recommend a product or service and the reader gives the product or service a try, the company pays us a commission.

Let’s be honest here. While certain niches will do very well with affiliate marketing, most of the time bloggers don’t make much with affiliate marketing. It takes having great products to recommend and the right niche.

A personal finance blogger will make a lot more in affiliate income than a mommy blogger will because the products that are recommended are different. The personal finance products usually have a higher commission rate than the kids toys a mommy blogger recommends.

However, every little bit counts. The fact is for a mommy blogger, if we find a toy that has helped our speech delayed son learn to talk, we are going to recommend that toy because it was helpful.

We probably will make less than a dime on that toy but our readers might also find it helpful so we use an affiliate link and promote it anyways. It doesn’t cost our reader anything extra but we make money from the company, win – win – win.

Products

Many bloggers will start creating and selling products at a certain point in their blogging career. These products range from eBooks, eCourses, printables, drop shipped products, or physical products they’ve created.

Products are a great way for us to cater to the needs of our readers. A food blogger may sell their own recipe book. A mommy blogger could sell homeschooling printables. A beauty blogger could sell a course teaching people how to take care of their skin and apply make-up like a pro.

Our readers often want extra help in whatever area of their life they may be struggling with. Our products are specifically geared towards those struggles. If we had to spend time researching, learning, and coming up with a solution to a problem, we should get paid for it.

Let’s take Marvel for example. You have fans that pay to see every new movie, pay for Disney+ streaming, and buy the movies when they release. It’s no different for bloggers, just on a much smaller scale. We provide something to our fans and they purchase products because they like what we do and what we have to say.

Services

Services are another way bloggers make money from readers. This could be life coaching, motivational coaching, group coaching, one on one lessons, or services like virtual assistance, graphic design, or data entry.

As an expert in a field, a blogger may offer services to her readers to help them navigate business, life, work, relationships, etc. Service business bloggers usually used to be in the field they are now offering services on, or they have gone through schooling or courses to become an expert.

Just like with products, our readers have read our advice, read every email, and want guided specific help for their struggles. Bloggers who offer services help those readers, and they should get paid to do so.

Service based bloggers rely heavily on word of mouth recommendations. This means they rely on their clients recommending their services to other people in need of the same help. So when a blogger offers a service, they know they HAVE to be the best in that field and produce results for their clients.

Blogging About Blogging

Let’s get very honest here. For most mommy bloggers, blogging about blogging does not make them most of their money. Very few mommy bloggers make loads of money off blogging about blogging.

The fact is most of their money comes from ads, affiliates, and sponsored posts. While they make a good chunk of money off selling blogging information the reality is very simple. Mommy bloggers teach blogging in conjunction with their mommy blog because they have been doing it for years, the game has changed, and they want to help other mommy bloggers be successful.

The mommy blogging community is big and we all want to help each other succeed. We are also welcoming and want to help new mommy bloggers find success faster instead of taking years to make money.

Bloggers have information and passion about blogging, sometimes, we want to share that information. We should get paid for the information we’ve spent years learning. Just like any other professional.

Woman working on laptop with coffee cup next to it

A Real Job

You wouldn’t dream about walking into a job, writing 2000+ word documents, answering emails, advertising your boss’s business, and not get paid for it right? That’s just a waste of your time.

Stop expecting bloggers to do exactly that. For some of us this isn’t a hobby blog, it’s our career.

So the next time a star brushes off a mommy blogger while accepting an award, she doesn’t know that this is an actual business. The next time a freelance writer complains about mommy bloggers who blog about blogging, they probably had a mommy blog they gave up on. Or the next time you run across a “blogging for money is a scam” post, consider bloggers who now have entire lines of products like The Pioneer Woman. Or have several best selling books like The Bloggess.

Blogging is not easy, it takes lots of time, and for those with the drive and passion to write and help people, it’s the best business to have. To the haters, stop hating on something because it wasn’t right for you. There is something that will work for you, that you will be so completely passionate about it will consume you. Don’t hate on mommy bloggers because we feel that passion about blogging and you don’t.

Blogging is a real job and it takes a lot to make it successful. To the mommy bloggers who are doubting, if you love it – keep going. To everyone else, keep reading and appreciate the free information, recipes, and ideas that you get from us.

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