Five benefits of starting a parenting blog
Do you love being a mother? Or struggle with the demands of parenting? Whatever your experience of raising a family, you can bet that there are thousands, or even millions, of women out there feeling exactly the same way.
And over the past few years, thousands of mothers have launched blogs to share their own parenting journey – some with extraordinary success.
If you’ve been toying with the idea of starting your own parenting blog, but are looking for a nudge in the right direction, here are five reasons why you might want to put your dreams into action.
1) You’ll build a community of like-minded parents
Even though you may know plenty of other parents, there will still be times when you feel completely alone on your parenthood journey.
It might be at 2am when you’re sitting up with a sleepless baby, wondering if you’re the only person in the world awake. Or it could be when someone close to you challenges or questions a parenting choice you’ve made.
At times like these, being able to reach out to a community of people who understand you, follow the same beliefs or choices as you, or are alongside you in the trenches of parenthood (invaluable at 2am!) can be sanity-saving.
Just being able to express honestly how you feel – your worries, your joys, your mistakes, and your milestones as a mother – without judgement is a gift every parent needs. And starting a parenting blog sharing your journey can help you build a community around you that will allow you to do exactly this.
When you write honestly about your experiences and feelings, you’ll gradually attract like-minded readers and followers. These people can become your online community and support team and help you feel less alone (and crazy) in your parental struggles.
You’ll also help other mothers experiencing their own doubts, worries and lonely moments to feel reassured and part of a community too.
2) You can create a new source of income
There are plenty of people who have started blogs as a hobby, and then turned them into a full-time income.
Whether it’s through selling products or affiliating marketing, there are a number of ways to monetise a blog about parenting. If you work hard at it, you may even find that you only need to blog part-time in order to make a full-time income.
One of the benefits of blogging for a living when you’re a parent is that you can work anytime, anywhere, on your own schedule to a large degree. This means you can fit your work into your parenting schedule, instead of the other way around.
So how can you write a blog that makes money? You can read advice on how to turn your blog into a profitable business here. You can also read six ingredients for starting a successful blog here.
It does take time to build a following and turn your blog traffic into an income, but if you find the right niche, work out how you want to monetise your blog and are persistent, it is possible to make money from a blog.
3) It will help you store memories and useful resources
Most parents are juggling so many balls – work, relationships, parenting, shopping, housework, cooking, laundry – that it’s easy to forget what we’ve done or said, and lose track of things we’d like to remember.
How many times, for example, have you cooked your kids a healthy dish they really liked, only to completely forget where you found the recipe the next time you want to make it? Or how often have you taken a beautiful family photo, only to have no idea where it went a year later?
With a parenting blog, you can keep track of all of your recipes, photos, ideas, memories, and more, all in one spot. Think of it as an easily searchable online scrapbook/photo album/diary.
So the next time you cook a meal your children like, you can post about it on your blog – and easily come back to it later when you want to cook it again. Or, if you have a particularly special day with your children, you can write a blog post detailing the memories and accompany it with photos – ensuring the memory of what you did that day will always stay fresh.
4) You’ll hone your writing skills
You may not start out as the world’s best writer, but if anything is going to improve your writing skills, it’s regular practice. And blogging is a safe way to get that experience.
Don’t feel shy about starting blog if you’ve not written before. In the early days of writing your blog, people will only know about it if you directly send them a link.
So you can start writing safely knowing no one will read it unless you’re happy for them to do so. And once you’re ready to venture out, you can share your link selectively with people you think will appreciate it, and ask for honest (and kind!) opinions.
By the time you start attracting a wider range of readers, you’ll have been blogging for a while and will feel more comfortable about your writing skills.
Another benefit of writing a blog is that you can use social media and analytics to work out what people like reading, and what is less popular. So over time you can hone your writing even further, and perfect your style and the type of topics you excel in writing about.
5) You’ll improve your job hunting prospects
What if you don’t want to build an income as a blogger? If, actually you want (or need) to return to work at some point?
Writing a blog can improve your job hunting prospects a number of ways. Firstly, it gives you something to talk about in your career break. So instead of leaving a hole in your CV, or feeling uncomfortable talking about your career gap, you can confidently mention your blog.
Writing a blog shows initiative and ambition, and signals to an employer that you’re ready and keen to work again.
It also, importantly, gives you valuable skills to sell to employers; it showcases your honed writing skills, as well as design and social media expertise. If you’ve managed to build a loyal following, it demonstrates you understand how to grow an audience too.
Photo by Duangphorn Wiriya
