Learn How to Blog

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Hi there. I am Crystal, a Dallas Mom Blogger who runs this site. I have been blogging since 2008.

When my journey began I was on Blogger with a blogspot URL. It was a journal of sorts that allowed family and friends to keep up with our family. My very first blog post was created the day my twins (who were 2 at the time) cracked 17 raw eggs in my living room while I was eating bon bons. You can read about our egg crackin’ fun if you would like.  

In December of 2009 my friend Kim and I were on our way to a Pioneer Woman book signing. We drove an hour to get there. We stood in line for 5 hours (with a baby in tow) to get our cookbooks signed. That entire drive there, standing in line and drive back I kept telling my friend Kim how all of these women were actually making blogging a business. I had seen Dooce on Oprah and it was reported that she was making $40,000 a month from advertisers on her site. I was so inspired by their successes. My friend Kim and my husband (ok, and my mother and mother-in-law) were my biggest cheerleaders. 

learn how to blog

I had so many questions. While I could work a spreadsheet from my corporate America days, I knew NOTHING about running or creating a website. I had tons of questions. I would email big bloggers with questions. I just knew they would be excited to help.   

Nothing. 

Crickets.

I pressed ahead and tried to find my writing voice. I wrote about things that would never go viral or get traffic. Well, my cheerleaders read it….  (This was way before Pinterest!) 

In 2010 I met Kelli Miller from 3 Boys and a Dog. I say met… we were online friends. We did not meet in person until 2013. I emailed her with some questions. And she answered them. Then she gave me actionable tasks. And I did them. Soon my site was receiving about 100 pageviews a day. I was amazed. I bought my URL and started thinking about branding.

Kelli continued to coach me and we followed this routine of her giving me tasks and me completing them and coming back for more. Soon I was getting 10,000 pageviews a month. This Kelli gal was brilliant. Soon her task was for me to network in my niche. I went off to work on this. 

Months passed and I was hard at work. One day I emailed Kelli to see if she remembered me. I wanted to let her know how hard I hard been networking and that my site had grown to 30,000 pageviews a month. She knew I was serious. She knew I was willing to do the work. She knew I wanted to grow! 

Kelli invited me to join her tribe which included a former IBM and Google employee who now runs the site Grow Map and develops bloggers and small businesses. Kelli and I started to grow our sites off of each other. We shared insider secrets and challenged one another. Soon I moved to WordPress and my husband gifted me with a professional site design. He believed in me!  

In February 2013 Kelli and I created the #LearntoBlog hangouts and started sharing what we knew with others.  This then lead to consulting bloggers,offering classes and now the creation of our VIP Learn to Blog Forum. 

In January 2014, my blog hit an all time high with 786,000 pageviews in one month. Our methods work! 

I believe that we can all sit around hoping we get lucky and crossing our fingers that our content goes viral. Or, we can be deliberate with our actions and our plan and get the results we want. If you are a blogger who is passionate about your topic and niche and willing to be deliberate with your work, you will be successful. Women are turning their blogs into full time incomes every day. Blogging is a real opportunity and not just moms sitting at home eating bon bons and surfing the internet. 

Below is a collection of resources to help you learn to blog. We transparently share our methods that are working and will help you take your blog to the next level.

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When you’re ready to start your blog and buy a URL I recommend GoDaddy. This is where I have my URL for crystalandcomp.com secured for the next 10 years. You can get your URL here (this is my affiliate link).


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LEARN TO BLOG RESOURCES:

3 Comments

  1. 700k a month is absolutely brilliant – I have always been a big fan of your blog but have absolutely loved so many of your posts this year, they’ve been so simple and clear and focused on problems I am trying to solve. I have been using everything from your bubble mixture recipe to your coconut oil shaving cream this summer 🙂

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