I had a pretty great career as a Pediatric Occupational Therapist in a school-based setting. I worked with students with special needs or delays and always had a passion to help others.
I really enjoyed my job, but once I was ready to start a family, I quickly decided that I wanted to stay home with my kids.
It was a decision that weighed heavily on me. I didn’t know if I was making the right one or not by bringing in less income for my family and if the stress of being home would be even more than work than my 9-5.
However, once I had those babies in my arms, I knew that’s where I wanted to be all the time.
How I discovered blogging
I was home with my first and quickly got pregnant again with my second. After that, I was starting to feel the guilt come on again about whether I should be working to bring more money in for our family.
My husband can support us quite well. However, I knew that if I wanted to live the lifestyle that I was used to and limit any financial stress, I should start bringing in a little money.
I could get a local part-time job in my industry, but that would still require me to get childcare for my kids. Even if it was only a couple hours a day, that would still be a lot of money so was it worth it to have to leave the house?
While spending the summer home with an 11-month-old and 7 months pregnant, I decided to search online for ways to make money from home. I went through ideas of selling products on Etsy, teaching online, freelance writing, and starting a blog.
Although I was pretty crafty, selling products on Etsy seemed crazy to me. Loading my house up with materials and junk to make products with toddlers running around seemed too chaotic.
I didn’t feel like I was good enough of a writer to have someone directly pay me for it. Teaching seemed too much like what I was already doing at my old job and I wanted a change.
The whole blogging world intrigued me and not just because of the success stories in which normal moms were retiring their husbands because they more than doubled their spouse’s salary.
I felt like I could have a lot to offer in this avenue and kept exploring. The more I read, the more I knew that I just had to start.
Could I really make money writing about things that interest me? Could I really help people all across the world with my ideas and expertise? Could I really have my own place on the internet to share whatever I wanted?
This is what blogging had to offer and it was calling my name.
7 Reasons That I Decided to Start a Blog
I thought about starting a blog for a few weeks before finally taking the plunge. It wasn’t a lifelong dream, but an idea I only pondered for a short time.
Once I started weighing the pros and cons and figuring out reasons why I should start a blog, I realized it could be a lifechanging experience for both me and my family.
Here are the reasons that I felt this was a great decision for me and why you should too:
I Had a Lot to Share
Once you figure out the niche or topic for your blog, you’ll realize that you have a ton of information in your mind to share. I narrowed down my interests and expertise to focus on a few key topics for my blog.
Once I did that, I felt like I had plenty of experience in these areas to write about and that others would want to read them too. I wanted to help people in their journeys through motherhood by writing about the things I wish I knew before it all happened.
I was able to choose a topic that encompassed both my career and expertise in occupational therapy along with my experience in motherhood. This gave me a ton of content and an ability to help others along the way.
I didn’t want to share my knowledge just to my friends or personal social media who didn’t ask for it. Therefore, writing it down on a site, and having people visit that were actually looking for it, was exciting.
As with most people, I did lack confidence that the things I had to say were new and interesting to others. I felt like what I would write about is just common sense to everyone.
However, you will come to realize that we all have different perspectives on every topic or situation. We have all learned and experienced differently and that is what people are willing to read.
You can still make an impact on someone else if you give them what they are looking for. No one is you and no other blog out there will have the exact same content and voice as yours.
Making Money
Did you know that bloggers actually make money?? I had no idea before doing my research.
When I decided to become a stay-at-home mom, I still felt the need to contribute to my family’s finances. Working-from-home seemed like a dream, but I wasn’t in a profession that allowed that.
I began with small goals for my blog, hoping to just make enough money to cover groceries for the month. I surpassed this and then some just within a couple of months.
Since I needed an income while staying at home, blogging was a perfect choice. It would also be a great side hustle or part-time gig for anyone still working their 9-5 and needing some extra cash.
There’s a lot of money to be made in the blogging world, you just have to figure out which ways will be best for you to monetize it. Once you start treating it like a business, you will realize the potential success you can have.
Time Flexibility
When you’re blogging part-time while. working another full-time job, your time does become very limited. However, once you have grown your blog enough to where you’re confident in spending less time on it, you can free up a lot of time.
Once you start making a full-time income and can leave your current job, blogging can allow you to be super flexible with the time that you put into it.
Since I had already left my job when I started blogging, I tried to treat the blog as my new full-time job. Therefore I invested a ton of time into it in the beginning and shortly became freer from doing work constantly.
Now, the blog basically runs itself. Although I still work on it daily to optimize the growth and set it up for success, I can also take 2 or 3 weeks off at a time, if needed, without worrying about getting permission from my boss!
Go at Your Own Pace
Blogging is all about what you make it. You can spend as much or as little time as you’d like in order to make it grow as fast as possible.
There’s no one looking over your shoulder or clients needing your time. You don’t have external deadlines or goals to meet, only the ones you make for yourself.
Obviously, the harder you work and the more time you spend on it, the quicker it will grow. However it’s all up to you.
You make your own deadlines and goals that are consistent with the growth that you are hoping for. So while it can be very time-consuming if you’re motivated, it can also be as slow of a process as you’d like it to be.
Connecting With Other Like-minded People
Being a stay-at-home-mom can get pretty lonely. I knew there were others in the same position as me and I was hoping to connect with them.
Blogging doesn’t give you as personal of a connection as other social media outlets, like Instagram or Facbeook, but it does open you up to a whole new community of likeminded people.
You may [virtually] meet other bloggers, moms, business owners, or just people who are interested in the same hobbies or topics as you.
Also, starting a blog gives you the accessibility to develop other avenues of communication and social outlets, including social media, email, and Facebook groups, etc. These helped me talk to others that were in the same shoes as me.
Very Little Investment
Because a blog is really cheap to start up (less than $65 for the year = as low as $3.95 a month), I felt like there wasn’t too much of a risk. Aside from time, there wasn’t a lot that would have been wasted if I completely flopped.
Obviously my dreams and goals were set high, but I would have just been happy making my money back from the initial signup fee! Who knew I would have made that back in just the first 2 months of blogging.
Unlike any other businesses that you could start, blogging has an extremely low cost. Even compared to multi-level sales or even Etsy, I didn’t have to buy my own products or really invest in much.
I’ve heard of people investing tens of thousands of dollars into businesses, only for them to fail. I couldn’t imagine wasting that kind of money!
Of course, there are a ton of blogging stuff out there that you CAN invest in, however, it’s definitely not necessary. The cost to start up a profitable blog, is less than $65!
Get started today with SiteGround (the best web hosting) for as low as $3.95/month.
Up for the Challenge
Ok this may not be the best reason to start a blog, however, it was one of the things that pushed me into getting started so I wanted to include it.
Once I learned about blogging and was in the decision-making process of whether or not I should do it, I starting reading and researching everything I needed to know to get started.
As I learned more, I got more intrigued and became super excited and willing to get started. With this feeling, came a bit of a challenge to see if I could do it.
This was very out of my comfort zone, as I always hated writing and wasn’t the type to put my personal life out to the public. However, seeing this as a challenge of whether or not I could be successful at it, made me that much more invested.
I kept saying to my husband, I just want to see if I can do it. I felt like I needed to prove to myself, my spouse, and others, that I could make it.
Although I started out saying blogging was a hobby, then a part-time job to a full-time job, to now that I’m a business owner, is incredible.
To be successful in something that you never would have thought you could be is an amazing feeling.
Why YOU SHould Start a blog
Now that I’ve given you my why, I want you to think of the reasons that you would want to start a blog.
Here are a few that may come to mind for you. You should start a blog if you want to:
- be in direct control of your income with no ceiling
- build a passive income stream that doesn’t make you trade hours for dollars
- work remotely from your home or the beach and travel while working
- completely design your “work” day on your own schedule
- challenge and push yourself
- learn new skills that may be completely out of your comfort zone
- change peoples lives and help people directly, all over the world
- be an entrepreneur with very little start-up costs
- build a business around your passion or favorite hobby
- have a product you want to start building, but need an audience or following to sell it to first
. . . . .
So if you’re feeling the same way as I did, I hope some of these reasons will help you decide that the time is NOW to start your blog. One of the biggest regrets that I have with blogging is that I didn’t start sooner.
