Thoughts About My Blog and Entrecard.com

If you found me via Entrecard, welcome! I hope you enjoy my entries and will visit often. Subscribe to my blog for frequent updates!

I am not blogging just for family and friends; I want this blog to become a valued resource for mothers (and dads) with well-written articles. Sometimes I write about my life as a mom, wife, and entrepreneur, running my editing business imPROOF; sometimes I’ll just write something that I think might make you laugh; and once in a while I add a product review and giveaway. I think it’s a nice mix of information and entertainment, and so far that is the feedback I am getting. So I guess I am on the right track!

I aim to be part dooce.com (Heather Armstrong), part StevePavlina.com. Both of them are able to make a nice living with their writing, and Heather makes enough money that her husband was able to become a stay-at-home dad. How I would love to be able to do that for Don! He is getting beat up as a carpenter and would like to do something different. Therefore I am running my blog just as I am running my successful editing business; I take it very seriously, and I work hard and long hours at providing great content my readers enjoy, which I believe deserves to be rewarded like any other job. In fact, I need to make money with this blog. I cannot afford spending valuable time with blogging when I could use it to be paid well as an editor. My goal for 2009 is to make this blog profitable enough to be able to stay home with Landon and to reach 200 subscribers. I believe it can be done!

Since I want to reach as many readers as possible, I am always glad when I find something free that I can use to promote my blog. When I learned about Entrecard a couple of months ago, I was exited to join. As everyone in the blog word knows, they recently changed their format and are now featuring paid ads, which will be displayed on your blog if you approve them. A lot of mom blog writers I follow are really upset about these changes and are stopping to participate. Maybe they have been with Entrecard for years and have a hard time with all the confusing changes. Maybe approving or declining all the paid ads takes too much time of their already limited time as a mom. Or maybe they don’t like how Entrecard is now getting commercialized.

My take for now is this: although Entrecard says it will penalize the blog owners who don’t approve all the paid ads, I will only approve ads I believe will be of interest to my readers. I will always approve free mommy blog requests first. And I will approve paid ads by other mommy blogs, because they are just trying to get the word out about their blog like I am, and I want to support that. I actually am running a small campaign with a paid ad right now, and I’ll see if it helps to bring new readers and subscribers to my blog and was worth the 25 bucks.

Stay tuned for many great improvements on this blog. This blog is still a baby and will grow a lot in the next year. I am planning to implement ideas I have for layout and design, I am working on a review of a great new book, and please visit again and subscribe for more great posts and giveaways! If you have a mommy blog and want to help promote each other, let me know about your ideas! Also, if you want to exchange links, e-mail me! As always, please leave comments and any suggestions you have for my blog, I love to hear from you!

Best,

Dagmar

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Tagged as: blogging, business, Don, Dooce, editing, Entrecard, imPROOF, money, review, Steve Pavlina, writing