Yes yes I know its only 23rd January, and my 365 posts have been next to nothing, I have been taking a photo a day and I do intend on sharing them, I tried to make sure I uploaded them to my facebook page, but that only lasted a couple of weeks.
I was really looking forward to getting into the swing of the 365 challenge so whats happened?
Theres a couple of reasons first being I didn't really want to clog up my blogs with a 365 photo post a day, so was never quite sure how to show my photos, if I posted them each as an individual post per day it would surely take over my blog, as I don't actually post all that much anyway, so then I hoped on doing a round up photo each week, but the problem there was then it would mean my Silent Sunday posts became a round up and I am rather fond of Silent Sunday being just a single photo so from the very off I was confused with exactly 'how and where' to share the photos.
Secondly, and it is a problem which is most probably on everyones minds at some point, when do you say no hold on I'm getting abit addicted to my blog here, and how do you get that blog life balance organised.
Yes my children are all at school but I find myself spending far too long in front of the laptop when there at home too, not to mention the evenings and neglecting my other half!
I seem to waste away the hours seemingly doing nothing much, hoping around the blogsphere, poping in and out of facebook like a yoyo and generally not doing anything productive on any one level so adding a dedicated 'must post a photo a day' to the list of 'must do' just isn't really practical.
Then theres also the fact that quickly snatching my camera and taking a photo just because, meant that I wasn't even giving that much thought and attention to the photos and as a result they are just not great at all, which then makes me look back and kick myself that I should have taken something better!
So maybe the 365 challenge is not for me, maybe sticking with Silent Sunday and one photo from each week suits better, am I ready to pack up completely however... no not yet I will keep my camera close at hand and keep taking and maybe I will get back into sharing them and finish off the challenge!
Wow February already! how did that happen? This year seems to have started with such a whirlwind, and I have hardly had chance to sit and recap and organise things.
Regulars readers might have noticed my slight silence over the past couple of weeks, I didn't even manage to post up a Silent Sunday last week, which is a shame, as I haven't missed many of them over the lifetime of my blog, and I didn't even post about Jakes birthday - I am now a mother of an 11 year old and it doesn't really seem possible, maybe I'm in denial (if I don't blog it can I pretend it didn't happen?)
So what has been happening? (Other than spending 4 days last week feeling REALLY poorly, which is the reason for the absent Silent Sunday!) There has also been some more exciting, less sickly things.
Just after Christmas I was nosing around online, like I spend most of my days, and I happened to stumble across a article about a young girl who had made some make up tutorials on youtube and had managed to build up a bit of an income, it interested me enough to pop over to youtube to take a look at her channel. (the articles here if you fancy a look)
It intrigued me because I also have a youtube channel, although I am terribly neglectful of it, and to be honest have spent very little time and effort on the videos that are there. A few months ago when I last checked I was surprised to see that my videos had attracted a few hundred thousand views. (555,000 back in April 2012 when I last checked)
So upon visiting youtube to see the channel in the article, which had just shy of 2 million views, I decided I should sign into my own channel and take a look how it was doing, I had noticed the option to turn on adverts several months ago, but I dismissed it because I was never sure if the income would ever amount to much.
However I was gobsmacked to see the view count rocketing over 2.5 million for my videos, meaning I had had more views than the channel in the article, I then pondered what had I missed out on by NOT adding the ads all those months ago.
So with the gentle shove from Hannah - A New Addition, I added the ads to my youtube. this was a fairly straight forward process, which I wish I had done years ago. And I sat back being rather sceptical thinking that maybe I would see a few pounds in their after a few months, but how wrong was I!
The very next day I had an email in my inbox telling me to verify my adsence address and bank details as I had hit the payment bracket to update these details, I was shocked and signed into my account to see over £10 sitting there already. I did as it asked and a week later I had a fully verified account and over £60 in the account, now 3 weeks later I have over £220 clocked up!
I was abit overwhelmed by this, having been so unsure about the revenue you can make using adsence, and was eager to know more, so I took to google+ and decided to go and try to find some info, I found a really great community with some helpful people in it, I joined, and joined in a few discussion, and am trying to find some spare time to put things into practise.
I wanted to share my experience so I offered to join in with IzziWizzi playfest on blogging, if your not familiar with IzziWizzi kids then take a look at my video below, and come over to join in on Twitter or facebook, there are lots of great bloggers there sharing advice.
As you can see I'm not a natural behind a camera, I am somewhat unnatural behind it, infact I'd say I am totally useless, and most of my videos include the same unplanned errmming and aarring because I never think to plan and read from a script! But I do want to improve my videos so I am going to try to experiment abit more with some hints and tips I have picked up the past couple of weeks and hope to make them less cringe worthy, and if you have a youtube account, even if you think your videos aren't that great, do look out for the monetise option, and add it when it appears!
On other news, somewhere along my travels round the interweb, I managed to attract the attention of a SEO who needed a hand with some graphic design, and we hooked up on Google+ and struck a deal which I hope continues with exciting things in the future.
You may remember this post I wrote at the start of January, pondering what the year would bring, the last couple of weeks have far surpassed my expectations and I feel like I am the start of a new journey with my blog, but am not really sure which direction it will take yet. I don't know if I should take a minute to sit back and plan, or just carry on like I always do.. I guess I will just keep on carrying on, and holding on tight!
Today I was supposed to be at Birmingham Blog Summit, with lots of other wonderful bloggers, meeting new people, getting to know the real people behind the blogs and learning new things too.
But then sometimes things don't go to plan, this week has been full of sickness first Jake then Mikey and then this morning myself too. So I haven't been able to attend the Tots100 blogsummit.
Not being able to attend and listen to those in the know got me thinking. What was I hoping to gain from the Blogsummit anyway? Of course I wanted to simply be there to see what it was all about, to meet up with those who I interact with online but have never actually met face to face, but also I was quite looking forward to learning a thing or two as well.
Blogging is an amazing hobby, it's the one thing I love doing, I love reading other blogs, I love taking photos to share on my blog and reviewing products making videos and of course the perks from the paid posts too.
But I quite often feel like I have no idea what I am doing!
I don't think I'm an amazing writer, yet blogging is based heavily on the written word, so I do want to try harder and write more.
But thats hard, my blog is openly read by a whole manner of people, strangers as well as those nearest and dearest. Not only my family but people who I pass in the street, the childrens school friends too, so I do sometimes struggle to write openly about the ins and outs of life.
So what else can I write about?
I want to grow my blog, I want to forget about how other people blog and just do what I enjoy. But I want to be more consistent with posting, so that the people following my blog know what they are going to find when they come over here.
Although this may just be a wishful theory, in a hazey sickness filled mind, I want to try to organise myself, and what better way to do that than try to write up some form of a plan. So to start the planning heres a bullet point list of where I would like my blog to go:
I want to get back into Digital Scrapbooking, which I love but have left to the sidelines recently, I was thinking of hopefully posting up a Scrapbook Layout every Saturday.
Hopefully posting a digital scrp layout like this one above, with a photo taken that week, and a meaningful quote.
I want to write more, so I thought maybe writing about something in the news that caught my eye might be a good way to do this. One of the main things I seem to loose hours doing sometimes is flicking through various news stories, I mean to be getting on with more important things but then a story will catch my eye on my email homepage, or a link someone posts to facebook and then I'll find myself clicking from one news story to the next. I thought if I choose just one each week and write about it, it could be a national headline or just a local story, funny or thought provoking. Just whatever catches my eye. I hope this gives me a chance to write more, without having to worry to much about over sharing my personal life.
I want to take more photographs - The main consistent thing I guess to my blog is the photos, I love taking photos, and I want to dedicate more time to actually taking really good photos, so I think I will join in more with photo linkys, maybe MacroMonday, or Wordless Wednesday and obviously get back into Silent Sunday posts, as over the past few months I have been slacking with everything blogging related and not stuck to posting my Sunday photograph. I also want to go back and visit some of the very inspirational photo blogs that I found a while ago but then never really had much time to join in with. Now with my new camera I really do want to focus more on getting better at photography.
And Finally, I want to focus on videos. Now this one scares me slightly, and might not be one I tackle straight away, but it is something on my todo list. I do love my youtube channel, but in a love hate sort of way. I love that I am getting lots of views over there, but I am under no illusion that my videos are in anyway amazing, and I really really want to do more, try harder get better. I am not quite sure what on earth I want to make videos about, but I want to try to make more videos, something that isn't a review video... I'll still make reviews too, but I want to try to be more confident in making other videos as well.
Then obviously I will continue to blog the sporadic bits and bobs in between, still continue to review anything that catches my eye and post about the family moments I want to store and look back on.
Thats it, a bit of a plan maybe.. Lets see how it turns out.
