I’m celebrating thirteen years of blogging this month! I began writing Em for Marvelous when I was a senior in college, and I’ve kept it up through so many seasons – seasons in the life of our family, and seasons in the world of the internet. Even after all this time, writing here is one of the joys and delights of my life.
To celebrate, I wanted to answer some of the (many!) questions I’ve received over the years about blogging and writing. (So many that this will be a four-part series, whew!) My position is unique and I certainly don’t know everything about blogging, but I’m more than willing to share what I do know. After all, it’s kind of what we do here :) Whether you’re interested in starting a blog, want to pursue a career in content, or are simply a curious EFM reader, I hope you’ll enjoy this mini series!
Up first: questions and answers about the practical side of blogging!
Photo by Ally & Bobby – considering making it my new sidebar headshot! I think the current one is from 2011 (!!!!).
How do you get started? Domain names, hosting… I don’t know what I don’t know!
Let’s start with the question I’m least qualified to answer, ha! I started my blog a long time ago, and so much has changed since then. Today, my blog is hosted on Bluehost (I just checked and I have the “Plus Hosting” plan). My domain name was also purchased from Bluehost and renews through them each year. My site is a custom WordPress site and was designed and built by Curious & Co. For ongoing troubleshooting and maintenance I work with Parker Web (they are fantastic!).
My biggest encouragement, especially if you are simply wanting to blog as a hobby, is just to start. Don’t invest in a fancy site, don’t tell all your friends, don’t even wait for the perfect name or content schedule or niche to start; just start to see if you even like the discipline of writing and sharing regularly with the world. Great things can grow from a free Blogger blog and a logo you make yourself :)
If you used a site template or have a great recommendation for an inexpensive, semi-custom site design, please share in the comments!
How long does it take you to write a “typical” post? It can take me days!
Me, too! The shortest posts take two hours: one hour to get the initial draft out, the second to refine and edit it, add links, add photos, add tags and categories, and all the other details. Some posts take 4-10 hours over several days; a typical “meatier” post takes about 3-5 hours.
Do you have a program for photo collages? How do you make them?
I make my photo collages in Adobe Illustrator. I’m grateful to have access to it through work – it’s an expensive program! If you don’t have access to Adobe, I believe you can make collages in Canva.
Do you write your blogposts in your WordPress backend or in a separate Google Doc, then transfer it? In a nuts-and-bolts sense, what is your writing method?
I write them in the WordPress backend*! Which is kind of maddening, as I feel like the WordPress people are always changing what it looks like back there, ha.
Depending on the complexity of the post and how time-sensitive the topic is, I’ll start the writing process anywhere from two days to two weeks before the date I want to post. I open up a new post and begin writing – day one can look like a fully-fleshed-out first draft, or just a few ideas jotted down. On a second day, I’ll read through what I’ve written, adding to it and tweaking sentences for clarity, simplicity, tone, impact, etc. I never post something the same day I write it – I always sit on it for at least a day, and coming back to it with fresh eyes helps me catch errors and get to the heart of what I really want to say. This process continues until the text of the post is finished.
Then, I’ll add any links, both external (to products, websites, etc.) and internal (to other posts on my blog, for context or resources). Next I’ll create a graphic (in Illustrator – like for Marvelous Money) or edit and upload photos. Every post has at least one photo or graphic, and some have dozens (trip recaps, for example!).
After doing a final copy edit to find any lingering errors, I’ll add tags (short words or phrases that describe the content of the post and help with SEO) and categories (broad buckets for my frequent topics, like marriage or goals – you can click on them in the sidebar!). Finally, I’ll make sure the post is scheduled. I almost always set my posts to go live in the 5am hour, for my early birds. You can be assured that I am NOT awake pressing publish at 5:23 am :)
*The exception to this is if I have ideas for a post but am not necessarily planning to publish it in the short term. Instead of creating a draft in WordPress, I’ll jot my notes in a TextEdit file and save them on my computer.
When/how do you find time to write?
With many competing priorities, it’s tough! That being said, we make time for the things that matter to us, and writing here matters very much to me (more on that in part three!).
When I’m not on maternity leave, my posts are written in the evenings after the kids are in bed, or during quiet hour on the weekends. Currently, lights out is at 8:30, and then I do 30 minutes to an hour of showering, cleaning the kitchen, making lunches, and prepping dinner for the next day. Since we try to head to bed at 11 or 11:30, that leaves me at most two and a half hours for blogging on a given night – and some days, some of those hours are spent on boring life things, relaxing/socializing, or working on some sort of project. My time for writing varies with the season and what’s going on in our family and at work, but I’d say I generally touch a blog post 3-4 nights a week.
One key to making time is to streamline, eliminate, and automate those “boring life things” as much as possible so I have more space for the things that fuel me, like writing – more about that here. And of course, I find that the more excited I am about a post topic, the more likely I am to dive in, ignore distractions, and create something worthwhile. Luckily for me, I never need to write about things that don’t excite me :)
I think you once posted that you make enough from the blog to basically pay to keep the blog running. Has that changed for you?
In 2020, I made $1,531 from affiliate links – $697 from Amazon and $834 from rewardStyle. I spent $1,148 to keep the blog up and running – for example, $156 to Bluehost for hosting and my domain, $150 for my annual survey (to Survey Monkey and a gift certificate for the winner), $632 to Parker Web for technical fixes like restyling my comment section after a WordPress update, and $12 to Akismet for comment spam protection.
While I reeeeeeally love writing here, I’d rather not pay for the privilege (ha!), so I’m glad I’m able to cover my costs through affiliate programs!
How do you get affiliate links? Do companies reach out to you or vice versa?
A quick overview on affiliate links. As an affiliate, I use a special link that’s keyed to my account when linking to some products. When you click on the link and purchase something within a window of time (the length of the window depends on the program), the company gives me a very small percentage of the purchase price (how small depends on the program, too). You don’t pay anything extra; the company is just rewarding me for sending customers their way.
Interestingly, for most programs, I earn based on what you purchase after clicking on my link, even if you don’t purchase what I linked to! For example, let’s say you clicked on the link for a book I’m reviewing in my monthly goals post to read more about it. You don’t end up purchasing the book, but a few hours later, you return to Amazon and buy a hair dryer you’ve been eyeing. As long as you haven’t clicked on anyone else’s affiliate link between then and now, I will earn money based on your hair dryer purchase.
I’m a member of two main affiliate programs: Amazon and rewardStyle (now LTK). Though they function very similarly, they’re also different!
AMAZON: My understanding is that pretty much any reputable site can be an Amazon affiliate, and since many of us naturally shop for so much at Amazon, it’s a great catch-all option to be able to link to! To become an affiliate, you apply on their site. Their link window is 24 hours (SO SHORT!) and their commission rates vary from 1-10% based on the category. Very serious affiliates will constantly monitor the commission rates and vary their posting strategy as Amazon shifts them, which they do often, but I just link to the items I want regardless of what they’re worth that day!
LTK: Honestly, I highly doubt I would be approved as an LTK affiliate if I applied today, ha! They are very much focused on bigger fashion and home design bloggers, and heavily push their Like to Know It social extension, which I don’t use. However, I’m SO glad to be an LTK affiliate, because they’re the gold standard in this arena and work with so many of the big retailers: Target, Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Minted, etc. The link window is typically much longer through LTK and commission rates vary from retailer to retailer. You can apply to become an LTK affiliate here.
Aside from affiliate links, some blogs monetize through receiving in-kind product or creating sponsored content. In general, the closest I come to this is through partnering with Minted for our Christmas cards every year. They reached out to me many years ago, and we’ve been going strong ever since. Y’all know I love me some Minted!!
Do you feel that affiliate links are necessary to your blogging success? Do you think people who write blogs should try to monetize their sites?
Aside from the fact that I’d rather not pay to write here, I could easily write this blog without using affiliate links. And in this season of life, I’ve turned down many options over the years to write sponsored posts because the pressure of performing for a retailer is just not worth what they’re offering (sometimes just free product, sometimes up to $250 or so). It is MUCH more valuable to me to have a community that trusts me and loves participating here than it is to have a few more incremental dollars. Truly, the fact that I have readers who have been around for years and join the conversation is worth way more than the few dollars I do make!
Whether or not to monetize a site is a personal choice, but I have found so much joy, freedom, and community in writing just for the love of it rather than making it a business. I think that’s one key to my longevity.
Do you do keyword research? Your blog seems more day-in-the-life (which I love!) versus SEO-keyword oriented, so I am wondering if you consider keywords or not. If so, which program(s) do you use to research and track your success?
As I mentioned, EFM is not my job, so I get the luxury of not worrying too much about SEO. However, I also love community, and for that I need people to find my blog! SEO can help with that, so I do pay a little bit of attention to it when I want to and in the way I want to.
Though I would never write about a topic just for SEO purposes, I optimize the posts I choose to write in certain ways: by choosing a title that’s search-engine friendly, by repeating key words from the title in my posts, by using headers (like the coral questions in this post) and tags, by renaming my photos to be search-friendly, and by back-linking as much as possible. One thing that is NOT search-engine friendly: my sentence structure is much too long and complicated, ha!
At work, we use Semrush to research and track keywords, but I’m not passionate enough about ranking to research or track when I’m off duty – I just go by instinct :)
Finally, every few months I check into Google Analytics to take a look at my traffic and see what’s going on. It’s fascinating to see and learn from which posts are performing the best and analyze why that might be!
This is the driest post in the series, but I still hope it was interesting! And if not interesting, helpful :) Part two, coming soon, will be all about content. Anything that surprised you in today’s post? Please share in the comments!
Happy Labor Day, friends! To mark summer’s unofficial end, I thought I’d record a few things I want to remember from this season, inspired by one of my favorite bloggers. It would be easy to just remember the bigger events (ahem, someone’s birth! someone’s injury!) or to focus on what this summer didn’t include (a trip to the Maine, for the first time ever), so I like the idea of capturing the little pleasures and particulars to look back on. Here’s some of what we’ll remember from summer 2021…
Listening: Leading up to Annie’s birth, I started to crave the worship of strong female voices. (A different kind of pregnancy craving, ha!) I put together this playlist, mostly of Mission House and FAITHFUL songs, and it’s what we ended up listening to in the delivery room. It’s been a calming and strengthening companion after her birth, too.
Eating: All the Meal Train meals, thank you Jesus and friends! Highlights included this casserole (thank you, Libby!) and a picnic meal with this chicken salad, this potato salad, fruit salad, and Garden Salsa Sun Chips (thank you, Ginna!). I hadn’t eaten Sun Chips in years and it turns out they are SO GOOD.
Visiting: We opted out of a neighborhood pool membership last year with all the COVID uncertainty, so it was a delight to get back to it this summer! Even with John’s injury and my very-pregnant self and then a newborn, we made it to the pool several times a week and the kids LOVED it. Our favorite time to go was after dinner – there was something about the cooler temps, the emptier pool, and the proximity to bedtime that made our visits a bit magical.
Wearing: My nap dress was worn 2-3 times a week, I kid you not. The perfect late-pregnancy, post-partum, easy-breezy outfit. I’m glad it was permanently memorialized in Annie’s newborn photos because it was definitely the outfit of the moment.
I was also influenced into a pair of fauxm (faux, foam, haha) Birks for all those pool trips. Two thumbs up.
Enjoying: The company of my parents. Though I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to have them stay with us for several weeks leading up to and including Annie’s birth, we are so grateful to have had their help and their companionship. Living far apart makes our time together precious, and I did my best to soak it up.
Learning: With all our time at the pool, June’s swimming improved leaps and bounds! She completely ditched her floatie, gained so much confidence in swimming underwater, and even bought these dive rings with her own money :) Lessons with a neighborhood college student were the highlight of her weeks.
Attending: Physical therapy appointments! John’s been going twice a week since he graduated from crutches, right around when Annie was born. His at-home exercises were as much a part of our evening routine as a plate of juicy peach slices.
Watching: Parental leave was the perfect opportunity to indulge in the Tokyo Olympics full force and we certainly did. July also brought the return of Ted Lasso – season two has been SO GOOD so far! (Rom-communism, anyone?!)
Reading: With our other two children, the last feeding before bed was accompanied by total darkness and rustling the sheets under pain of death so as not to disturb their settling. For whatever reason, Annie is tolerant of even a bedside lamp being on as she falls back asleep, and so I’ve been able to sneak in a few pages of reading each night (a HUGE gift to this mama, as my nightly bedtime reading routine is one of the hardest things to give up in seasons with a tiny baby). The first book I read after she was born was The Self-Driven Child, and aside from LOVING it, it was perfect for the moment: engrossing, but not so interesting that I was tempted to stay up for hours :)
What will you remember from summer 2021? I’d love to hear!
August was a great month, but not a great month for blogging or goals :) And that’s okay! I soaked up time with our big girl before she headed to kindergarten, adjusted to John going back to work, and began to feel out new rhythms now that it’s just Annie and me during the day.
This month was wildly fun and tender and sweet and emotional (kindergarten!!), and all of it seemed to require staying present on the ground under my feet in a way that the ever-connected world can make difficult. And so, for example, it turns out I didn’t log into my public Instagram account for about three weeks. Not on purpose! Three days stretched to a few more days to a few weeks as the idea of checking in even with my small and curated group of follows felt overwhelming. Dipping into the world of interpretations-of-current-events and experiences-that-are-not-my-own felt overwhelming. And, to be honest, simply not as desirable as what was right in front of me: a beautiful tiny girl, a funny little boy, and a sweet big girl (and a marvelous big guy!). That world jolts me out of my world, a world that is requiring most of my heart and focus right now.
(It also should be said that while on maternity leave, I’ve simply lost my usual window to check in: full-time newborn care leaves only pockets of time to do as I please during the day, and Instagram proved not to be my activity of choice!)
Just some thoughts I’m untangling at the start of the month :) While part of me is frustrated that I made less progress than I’d like on some things that are really important to me (ahem… June in June), I can have grace for myself knowing that I gave time to the things that are really, REALLY important to me. Our schedule will settle, videos will get filmed and edited, but, alas, babies don’t keep.
On to September!
On my calendar this month: — The first day of fall! We’ll bake apple cider scones for our family and June’s teachers, a tradition we started five (!) years ago. — Our ninth wedding anniversary! — Our thrice-scheduled trip to Florida with John’s family!
What I’m loving right now: — A friend has a random connection to get free Bogg Bags through work (!), and kindly gifted me one. I love that they stand up on their own, and think it will be perfect for the pool, beach, and road trips. — I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is nothing like Madewell high-rise jeans for a post-partum gal. It feels like there are a million new styles of denim circulating right now, and most of them seem hard to pull off, but I dipped a toe into the water with these demi-boot jeans and LOVE them! My pair is on sale with only a few sizes left, but they have other washes in this style, too. — A follow-up to John’s wardrobe post: now that he is back in the office a few days a week and wearing suits, he is loving these shoes and these shoes, which have the look of dress shoes but the comfort of sneakers! He highly recommends.
You can see all the things I’ve loved in my goal posts over the years right here!
What I read in August: — The Vanishing Half | I thought this book was very good. The plot itself was fascinating, and some of the sentences were just stop-you-in-your-tracks beautiful. — The Family Firm | Emily Oster’s book Expecting Better is my number one pregnancy recommendation, so I hustled to pre-order The Family Firm, and am about 75% through. It is very different from Expecting Better – it is less about data, and more about providing a framework for decision making as a parent. If you feel like you equivocate or have anxiety over making decisions for your kids or household, I think you’ll love this book! P.S. Preordering her book is a good example of my thoughts on being a patron – I love Emily’s newsletter and have relied on her advice for many years, and so preordering her book was a tangible way I could support her work and something I was so happy to do!
My reading list for 2021, if you’d like to follow along! I’m a little out of order but have read 13 out of 24 so far.
Revisiting my August goals: Edit June in June, Volume 6 Lay out 2012 in family album Choose scripture theme for the school year and plan and enjoy our back-to-school dinner (Little recap post coming soon!) Prep for our Florida vacation – first road trip as a family of five!! Take a morning walk with Annie every day the weather allows(This was such a success! A highlight of my month, even though it was hotter than hot most days. We walked together about 75% of days!) Do a Peloton exercise every day(Also a success! I definitely did not do every day, and fell off a bit toward the end for a number of reasons, but this was a great intention to get back in the rhythm of exercise.)
September goals: — Edit June in June, Volume 6 — Film Sheptember, Volume 3 — Lay out 2012 in family album — Write 6-10 blog posts — Finish our master bedroom refresh — Do a Peloton exercise every day — Write a thank you note every day until I’m finished with my backlog. (Eek! Still have some baby gift notes to write…)
As a reminder, many of these are drawn from my 2021 goals!
Friends, this month marks my 13thblogging anniversary! WOW and WHOA! I’m planning a few posts this month on blogging and writing – one will be an FAQ, and I’d love to answer any questions you might have! Please drop them in the comments, if you’d like. (I’ll put up an Instagram question box, too!)
I’m sure there’s someone out there who thinks the attention we give to choosing our children’s names is a little over the top. And they may be right :) But for me, someone who believes so strongly in the power of the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, a name is more than just an identifier: it is the first lines in a story. And as parents, we get the honor and privilege of writing them. John and I can’t determine the ending of any of our children’s stories, but we can set them in a direction and give them supplies for the road – roots and wings, as I’ve said before. With that, here’s a little more about the name we chose for our daughter…
First, Annie. After we bestowed the name June, which had been my number one since high school, I kept a loose collection of other favorite names in a note on my phone, should we have another daughter. As I added and subtracted options over the years, one sifted to the top: the sweet but not saccharine, feminine but feisty, friendly and optimistic Annie.
True to form for my favorites, it would be at home on any of our grandmas (it was a top 20 name from the 1880s to 1910). It is simple to spell and pronounce, and is familiar but not too common.
Annie Banks-MacKenzie is a central figure in two of my all-time favorite movies, the ones that helped to set my expectations for a loving family and set me on a course toward my future career.
Annie originates from the English Isle and has a definite Scottish feel to it, which is appropriate given my ancestry.
And most serendipitously, Annie Jane is the name of John’s grandmother, which I didn’t learn until years after I fell in love with her name. I never got to meet Annie Jane, but love that we’re able to honor her through our daughter!
So, Annie. But the most common formal name for the nickname Annie – Anne – was just a name for me, without any further meaning or significance (and you know we couldn’t have that, ha!). I puzzled over this for years, until I finally realized that another name on my short list – Susanna – was emblematic of my maternal grandmother’s name (Susanne). Even if our Annie may not use it too often, I was thrilled for another family connection.
I think it’s important to remember here that we don’t name our children after perfect people, but after imperfect people who are a reminder of the story from which they come – one that’s far from perfect, but filled with people who try, who have integrity, who are kind and smart and humble and face challenges and pick themselves back up again and again. As crystallized for me in this essay, I strongly believe (and research backs up!) that one of the best things we can do for our children is develop a strong family narrative. (I wrote more about this in Shep’s name post!)
I’ve written about my grandmother before – she was a deeply layered person, and not always easy to understand. But so many of the things that define me were passed down from her – my love of garden bouquets, boat rides, singing in church, and reading and writing; a belief in thank you notes, correspondence, and a beautifully-set table; and the importance of standing up for the flag at parades, giving back to organizations, and supporting your alma mater. I look forward to introducing Annie to her in the years to come :)
Finally, Liberty! Our other two kiddos’ middle names spoke to our love for America and our love for our faith, respectively, and this one actually combines both. For a Fourth-of-July-week baby, we love that Liberty speaks to the hope, possibility, freedom, and opportunity that’s found in our country more than anywhere else in the world. America is not perfect, but her ideals (including “life, liberty, and happiness”) are beautiful, and we feel lucky to have the privilege of living up to them – and to help our kids do the same.
The idea of liberty and freedom is woven throughout the Gospel, too. Jesus sets us free from death, but even more than that, He has set us free for freedom! When we live with Christ, we don’t have to be weighed down by the comparison, guilt, envy, anxiety, or fear that are so common in our world. We love that Annie’s middle name will remind her about the life that is truly life – a life of abundance, obedience, contentment, joy, and freedom.
So there you have it – much more than you ever wanted to know about our little lady’s name, ha! Thanks for listening, friends, as always.
