270: How One Blogger Changed Her Life by Starting a Blog

Darren: Hey there and welcome to the first episode of the ProBlogger podcast for 2019. This is episode 270. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/270. ProBlogger is a site for bloggers and prebloggers, who today’s episode is particularly for. It’s all designed to help you to build and grow a blog that not only makes your reader’s life better in some way but also helps you to achieve your goals and bring you a little joy to your life as well. We’re going to hear a story today where that happens.

Today, we are launching another round of our bloggers’ stories. It’s a series that’s going to go for the next couple of weeks. They’re shorts stories from brand new bloggers. This series is all about starting a blog and hearing the stories of bloggers who started their blog over the last 12 months.

They all started their blogs as a result of doing our Start A Blog course, which we are currently really pushing hard because on the 7th of February, we’re running our International Start A Blog Day for the second year in a row. Last year, we ran International Start A Blog Day and hundreds of bloggers started a blog on that particular day.

As you’ll hear today, hundreds more started their blogs in the months afterwards. Some people needed a little bit more time. We want you to be a part of this year’s Start A Blog Day. Whether you are a blogger who’s about to start and you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or whether you know someone who should start a blog, we want you to encourage them to get involved. If you want to be a part of it or if you know someone who really does need to start a blog, our course is 100% free and it will help you to start that blog. You can find it at problogger.com/startablog.

Before I introduce you to today’s story, I want to pause for a moment and say Happy New Year. I know it’s three weeks into the new year and I should apologize for the delay in getting this episode out but I do want to start off by saying Happy New Year. The reason for the delay this year is that it’s been a bit of a tough year so far. In fact, last year was a little bit tough as well. Many of you I know have been following my Facebook profile and my personal profile where I shared recently a couple of posts about my own battles with depression over the last year and also the recent loss of a friend.

I wanted to mention those things here because I’m really aware that sometimes in the online space, we only talk about the good stuff, the highlights. I’m not sure how helpful that is for you as a listener to only hear the ups, the successes, the highlights, to see the good things that is going on. The reality is that sometimes life gets tough and there are good times to step back, to change things up, to take a break, to rest, and to heal.

That’s what I’ve been doing really over the last six or so months as I changed the structure of this podcast and the start of this year, particularly, with the sad news that we’ve had. I also wanted to mention that here because so many have left kind messages for me over the last couple of weeks, particularly, and I just want to pause and say thank you. I love our community. I only hope that I can offer a little encouragement and support back to you. So, Happy New Year. But for those of you that is not a happy new year, that it’s just a new year, or a sad new year, I feel your pain. Hang in there, you’re not alone, and I hope that things improve for you.

Okay, I’ve said I love that and I really do send my wishes to you today. But I also want to get on with today’s podcast and I’m going to move into today’s blogger story. I love this one. It’s a lovely story from Denise Bumby from a blog called Does Size Matter? which you can find at koryanddenise.com and I’m gonna link to it in today’s show notes if you want to check it out, and I encourage you to do. I encourage you to support these new bloggers that we are featuring in this series.

Denise took part in a course last year and as you’ll hear, she worked though it at her own pace. She didn’t make the International Start A Blog Day launch but she launched it about six months ago and she battled through the learning process and she shares her story today. It’s a short story and it goes for about five or so minutes, but I hope it is one that will warm your heart as much as it warmed mine. Here’s Denise.

Denise: My name is Denise Bumby and my blog’s name is Does Size Matter? We are a traveling RV review blog and we kind of just show things from our unique perspective. You can find us at koryanddenise.com. That’s kory with a K and denise dot com or on YouTube at youtube.com/doessizematter.

I started this blog because I was searching. I was at that stage in my life when there were a lot of changes and I wasn’t coping well. My only child had gone away to school, we had moved out of our childhood home, and the medical clinic where I was a nurse had closed, so I lost my job. I know the first two things are good things but I still felt some loss from them. I know many people can relate to this but even though change can be good, there’s still loss associated with it.

I had lost my identity as a mom, my purpose in the world as a nurse, and the familiarity of my home. Every night, Kory would come home to me sitting at the table crying. He would ask how he could help and all I could tell him was to just give me some time and I would find my way. I’d sit on my computer and read blogs, watch videos, and find myself starting to feel a little bit better. I wondered how can I do this, how can I continue to feel better, how could I be part of this blogging community.

I started to search until I found the ProBlogger course and then I started to learn new things with that. I worked through it at my own pace and I didn’t launch my site on the projected date with the others because I just needed to learn so much and I wanted to do it at a pace that I felt good with.

I went on in and I did finally launch my site in April and I put my first video out to the public in June. I went really slowly because I was that person in the office who cannot handle any new technology and I was always calling someone in to fix my computer and give me help. I truly learned everything from scratch, things most people just know I had to learn. So, along with my ProBlogger course, I searched everything and anything, a word, a step, anything I didn’t understand, the internet taught me how.

So now, six months after we went public, we have 454 subscribers. I know it’s small in the grand scheme of things but it’s growing everyday and more importantly, so am I. The main highlight of this past year is that I have created something that people are watching and reading and enjoying. I love the comments and the discussion that comes from all of this. I’ve actually created something.

When it comes to content creation, I find it super fun. I do lots of research, which I also like, on the places we go, the RVs we review. Some of them are really special and unique, and it’s just fun for me to do. We also like really helping people make their purchases or their plans of things they want to go or just giving them that little extra information they needed.

The other part of our blog is to show people that you just got to go out there and do the things you want to do and not just because there might be some blocks or something, you can find a way around it. You can do things. You just might have to do them a little bit differently and that’s okay.

When it came to finding readers, it’s been tough and I think that’s a pretty usual thing for newbies at this. But we just keep producing no matter what, we keep putting out content and we used lots of social media. We’ve had one video get over 19,000 views so we’re really proud of that. Then just another time randomly we ran into another blogger who mentioned us on his site and that gave us a boost as well. Every one of those boosts gives you a little bit of excitement and I need just keep moving forward and working harder and just keep producing consistent content.

As for community, there’s a lot of like-minded bloggers, YouTubers, RVers, et cetera. People that are interested in the same kinds of things that we’re interested in, whether they be new or very successful people, they’re also very kind, easy to talk to, and willing to share suggestions and advice or what’s worked for them. It’s a broad and supportive group. We enjoyed to contact and the guidance. Sometimes, we just get it through a Facebook group or email or where we’ve even been to group gatherings that were really helpful.

Next for me, I’ve got to go back and start all over with all my same trusted resources like ProBlogger, to learn and implement affiliate marketing and sponsorship. I can’t wait to see how this goes. What I do know is that it’s a whole other set of learning that I need to do. But I’m confident now that I will be able to handle this and I’ll be able to implement it into my site. So check back with me next year and see how much I made.

My biggest tip is just keep working and learning. Even when it seems so above your head, the answers are out there. If you find some good, trusted resources that you can follow along with in a place like ProBlogger that has so many things, posts to read, podcast to listen to, there is just a wealth of information there. I just keep going to those places, looking for the information, learning it, and then learning how to implement it.

Blogging seems like it’s only for the young or the computer geeks. But it can be for anybody. It can be for you, too. Don’t get discouraged by foreign things and hard work. Now, when Kory comes home, I’m too busy to be crying at the table because I truly have found my way.

Darren: Thank you so much, Denise. I really appreciate you sharing your story with me and our community today. I wanted to share this story as the first one today because it kind of touched a nerve with me in some way. It’s a representative of the stories that I hear from many readers of ProBlogger. Whether you’re brand new in blogging or whether you’ve been blogging for a while, I hear this story again and again from people about how blogging has a potential to bring joy and hope and purpose to people’s lives.

This is my own experience in the early days of starting a blog. I started my blog on impulse, not knowing what I was doing, not really understanding what a blog was at all. But there’s something about the constant creation of content, the building of community with my readers. Those interactions that I had, the development of my ideas and the sharing of my experiences, putting those things out into the world, it not only became an income and became success in terms of the numbers, but it brought hope and it brought life to me. It changed my life in numerous ways on a more personal level.

Whilst you might listen to stories like Denise’s and say, “Well, she’s only got a small number of readers or a small number of subscribers or she’s not yet making an income.” What I actually hear in the story is the story of someone who has already had her life change through blogging. She’s gone from a time of sadness and that’s part of all of our lives, I certainly understand that, but blogging has actually brought her through that and has given her something else, and added something else into her life.

I wanted to share that and this story for that reason mainly, but I also love her tips. Her tips of keep working, keep learning, don’t give up, there’s always something new to learn in blogging. Whether you are just starting out or you’re about to start your blog, you’re about to enter into a steep learning curve if you’re just starting out. But don’t be scared about that. There’s plenty of great resources out there and there’s plenty of support out there for new bloggers as well.

But if you’re listening to this and you’ve been blogging for a while but you’re about to start monetizing for the first time like Denise is, or whether you are thinking about moving from one blogging platform to another, or exploring a new medium, keep learning. The learning curve gets steep from time to time. Keep producing content, keep learning, keep serving your readers, and don’t give up.

Lastly, I love that Denise said that blogging is for everyone. Often, people think blogging is just for young people. The reality is, as I look at our audience, our audience is actually older than you might expect. I don’t have the stats right in front of me but the vast majority of ProBlogger readers are my age—I’m 46—or are older, there’s quite a few. We do have younger readers as well but it’s certainly isn’t just a young person’s game.

Denise took her time. She doesn’t feel super techy but she learnt what she needed to do and she got through it. Denise took her time going through the course and if you are wanting to start the course, you can go to problogger.com/startablog. You’ll see that we’ve outlined the course in seven steps. We see some of our students right through those steps in seven days. Some people who’ve got the time, maybe a little bit of experience, or maybe some support, they go through it in seven days. Some even go through it in a shorter period. But many of our students do take longer and that’s totally fine.

If you make our 7th of February International Start A Blog Day, then that’s great. But if you take a little longer, you’re still part of the family and most importantly, you too can have that life-changing experience of starting your blog.

Today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcst/270. We’ve got all the links there to Denise’s blog, also to the Start A Blog course, or you could go there directly at problogger.com/startablog. We’ll also be promoting it around the site at the moment, particularly going to lead up to the 7th of February. I do encourage you to take that step. Sign up and get involved. We are doing some support on our Facebook pages as well at the moment. I really can’t wait to see the new blogs that come out of this year’s batch of students to go through Start A Blog course.