Guess what? It’s the 6 month anniversary of Cookies and Cursewords!

I can’t believe it has already been 6 months!  This is a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned during my first six months of blogging.

When I first started the blog, I thought it would be a place that I could go to express my feelings, my TRUE feelings. I thought I would put a section in here where I could be unfiltered- the “pinch of salt”. If someone pissed me off, I could write about it. If someone snubbed me, I could write about the snobby bitches without worrying about putting it out there on Facebook. I was going to write about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I planned to write about whatever the hell I wanted, because it’s MY blog! Grammar issues? Who cares? It’s MY blog! If I wanted to write about something insignificant like the “crap” collection I’m acquiring from a co-worker, I could do it. By the way, I love that collection!

Let me tell you, putting a blog together on a self-hosted site is not easy for a middle-aged, non-tech savvy woman! It took weeks to just get the thing launched, because I was clueless. All I knew was that I wanted to write. I enrolled in many free blog set-up tutorial courses, because my husband was already a bit irritated that I spent $59 for my domain stuff for a year. See? I still don’t even know the proper terminology for all of this stuff! I googled and watched videos about setting up blogs. I wrote a couple of posts and it was finally ready to go live.

For the first couple of weeks, I had two followers(subscribers, whatever it’s called). Thanks to Jan and April for being there from the start! I’ve learned so much. My blog followers have steadily grown (and I appreciate every one of you) over the past six months.  I’ve joined blogging communities and I’m actually only one person away from having 1,000 Twitter followers (although my Twitter posts are and always have been ignored, for the most part). Pinterest? I put things on there, but then I was told my pins needed to be a certain way..so I tried (cluelessly). At the suggestion of my sister, I decided to feature a recipe weekly- like this one:

https://cookiesandcursewords.com/tomato-bacon-jam

It was a great idea, but very few people sent recipes! I still do recipes from time to time, but I finally decided to quit bugging people to send them.

Oh,my.. the suggestions I got from blogging communities!

I guess one might call these the unwritten blogging rules…

Always use a plain, white background with black lettering.

Ooops!  I had a colorful background with whatever color lettering I wanted. Okay, I changed it. I didn’t really want to change it, because I felt the color added personality..but “they”say I’m supposed to do it that way.

Be very picky and spend a lot of time deciding upon your perfect “logo”.

Well, I guess I screwed that one up, too. I did pay five bucks for someone from Fiverr to design a logo, but I wasn’t that impressed. I still haven’t found a logo that I love.

Don’t use a lot of foul language or offensive material if you want to partner with brands.

Well, there went my idea of speaking my mind like I originally intended. I DO want to partner with brands eventually, so I’ll tone it down.

Make some money with affiliate programs.

Hmmm.. maybe it’s because I’m newer and don’t have a ton of followers, but in these first six months I’ve made a total of ZERO from affiliate programs. At first, I tried to place several Amazon products in my posts. I did have a few purchases made, but Amazon didn’t give me credit for them because apparently it was my friends or family making the purchases. Okay, sorry. At that point friends and family were the only followers I had. Ha! I may try this again later when I get a zillion followers, but it’s too much work for nothing. I’d rather concentrate on good post content and not worry about product placement. I also did Adsense for several months and made a little bit when people clicked on my ads..but I changed themes and took the ads off, for a while at least.

Use the right keywords, etc for SEO (search engine optimization).

Okay, what?? I’m trying to learn what this means, but…um…I’m old!

Offer a “freebie” if people sign up as a subscriber.

A “freebie”, like a free printable, etc. Oh, okay… no clue how to do that. NEXT!

Establish an email list and send emails to subscribers through an email service.

Hey, I did this one! I’m paying $20 a month to Constant Contact to help me with this, and I like it. I only send emails a couple of times per month, don’t want to overwhelm people. Just another expense the hubby doesn’t know about!

Keeping it real…

So, as you can see… I’m not doing things exactly right..but I’m doing what’s right for me!  My goal for the next six months is to gain more followers and start some brand partnerships. I’d also like to have more guest posts on my blog, and guest post myself on other blogs. As you all know, I’m pretty proud of this one on The Mighty:
https://themighty.com/2018/11/life-is-a-bank-account-therapy-metaphor/

So, what have I actually learned in my first six months of blogging?  I’ve learned a whole lot about a world that I never realized was even out there, but most importantly I’ve learned the value of staying real, staying true to myself.   I’ve learned that there is no right way or wrong way to blog, as long as I’m doing it the way that I want to do it.  It’s been fun, it really has. I hope you all continue to join me on this ride as I continue to go against the grain!