 This is a space for me to reflect on the business & share some of the ups + downs of being a Content Marketing freelancer in Edinburgh. I’d also like to bring some of my personal life into these posts because I don’t think we can ever truly separate our work + home life. One will always affect the other. And, for me, freelancing is a way to enrich my home life + lead a happier non working life with greater flexibility. So, home life is really important to me. The final reason is to embrace vulnerability. I believe it’s really important to share the highs + lows, it’s easy to put on a brave face and to pretend that everything is perfect all of the time. But, we all have our own stories and our own challenges in life. I’d like to be more transparent about my own challenges & show them alongside the positive. November Happy Moments Lots of visitors came to stay My energy is returning Went on a mini retreat I have agreed 2 more clients ready to start in Jan November Challenges Still recovering my profits, finances are tough My strategy for next year is still not clear enough (I have too many plans right now!) Lots of fun in November Lot of fun was had in November, it was the month lots of my friends and family decided to visit. My mum, some friends from uni and my aunty all came to stay in November. I guess the plane tickets were a bit cheaper because they certainly didn’t come for the weather. November isn’t the best time to visit Scotland its a bit dreary and drizzly but anyway it was really wonderful to have them stay and show them around Linlithgow and Edinburgh, visit the Christmas markets and do Christmasy things. For my mum it was more like a trip down memory lane since she is Glaswegian and worked in Edinburgh for quite a period of time. I also decided to go on a mini retreat as well in between their visits for some rest and relaxation. On retreat I met a wonderful musician and drummer, Javadev, whose birth name is John Richardson, he was the drummer from the Rubettes many, many years ago and has had a long career as a drummer, musician and then spiritual teacher, he has offered to teach me drums which I am ecstatic about. I play the steel tongue drum and I’m really interested in using music with meditation and sound healing and would really like to run sound healing groups & sessions in Edinburgh and maybe even play in a small band to create relaxing, healing music. Javadev has been working on lots of these ideas for a long time so I am so thrilled to have met him right now and be able to have a couple of hours with him to speed up my progress & learn from the best. (pic of the ashram below)  More fun = better business
This probably sounds like an odd point but it’s quite important I think. In fact it’s been the central theme of a recent post I wrote where I reflected on the last 4 or 5 years of being a business owner. Read that here. I’m noticing that the more fun and creativity I add to my life the more I’m enjoying my freelancing business and also making better decisions with it. I’ve gone through many phases of loving and then hating my business. It’s not easy!! Being a freelancer is not all wonderful, happy moments where you feel free and able to do whatever you want. I’m a creative person and luckily I have quite a lot of freedom creatively with the clients I have but I’m still following a plan, a set rhythm for the work and needing to deliver results and reports. What I’ve noticed is, it becomes a lot harder to do the work happily and with enthusiasm when the rest of my life is stressful and boring. When I’m totally focused 100% on my freelancing business & clients and don’t have any energy for enjoying anything else, I start to resent my business and then the work isn’t as good either. When I have the attitude of enjoyment, a lightness and excitement, the work I do is much, much better and so are the results. I’ve also noticed that I do actually like quite a lot of the freelancing work I do. I like researching, learning and writing. I like creating blog content. I like delivering reports and seeing the evidence of the work I’ve done and the results and thinking about the effects of that on the clients business. I like the challenge of managing an outreach campaign, of negotiating and trying to win partnerships with bloggers and again delivering reports with what I’ve achieved. So, when I don’t feel good about the work, when I feel like it’s boring or dragging on and all of the negativity comes, what I’ve released is, it’s not the problem with the work, its a problem with my life outside work. I’m not having enough fun and fuelling myself enough creatively in my life to bring that to my freelancing work. Not sure if any of that makes sense! But, this is an important learning curve for me and is the underlying reason why I work from 3 - 7 / 2 - 7 every day and spend the first half of the day looking after myself, exercising and then being creative, writing, painting or in the spring and summer I’ll be outside in the garden planting and growing my vegetables too! My plan is to keep filling up my LIFE with creativity, nature, art, exercise, good food and hopefully I’ll make new friends too in the area! And this will give me the fuel I need to give the very, very best of me to my clients. Suddenly I have a win, win situation. My clients get the best of me, I get to be more creative in my work which is more fun and also I get to fund my lifestyle of being more connected to the arts & nature. I’ve got quite a few plans for the business next year so I’m excited to see how this new balance changes the way I approach putting those plans into action next year. Next Month - December December for me is about starting to prioritise my plans and goals for next year. Reflecting on this year and seeing what worked and didn’t and then applying those learnings to how I’m going to approach 2020. I don’t really want to start anything new in the business before I have a clear plan and priorities, so it’s going to be BAU. I’ve got blogger interviews to do for the Ginger Marketing Blog, content to be written up for the blogs, I’d like to promote some of that content on Linkedin in & medium. I’d quite like to get the blogs - Ginger Marketing and The Happy Freelancer completed in terms of design and automation. The homepages at least need to look smart & professional and I’d like the email subscriptions to be more visible so I can start to build up the email lists. And then, create a plan and priortise for 2020! Summary of priorities for the business Client work Blogger Interviews New blog posts Homepage design blogs Subscription Sign ups for blogs
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 Becky has been blogging for 5 years and is a member of the Guest Bloggers Wanted community (a place for UK lifestyle & parenting bloggers to find new collaborations & partnerships), I caught up with her to find out a bit about her blogging journey and pull out some tips and tricks about earning multiple income streams through blogging. Hi Becky, nice to meet you! So, tell us, how long have you been blogging? About 5 years now - gosh that’s gone so quickly! I started off doing a bit of writing for my husband who has his own SEO business, when the kids started school and I had a bit more time. Then it carried on from there and I realised how much potential there was in me writing for my own website. Can you tell us about your blog Art Of Healthy Living and who it is for? It’s very much a healthy lifestyle site, but one that takes the realistic stance of ‘everything in moderation’. I run, do weights and HIIT sessions, and I generally eat quite healthily, but I also love chocolate, crisps and Prosecco and am 100% unapologetic about it. My site is for the vast number of women out there like me - and there’s lots of us! I’d say it’s generally women who are mums, aged between say 35 to 55. We know what we want and we’re not afraid to get it. Were you a complete blogging beginner when you started Art Of Healthy Living? I’ve always been interested in writing, but hadn’t actually blogged before this. As a child I loved writing and making books about my pets (I still have them!) and then it became me dream to be a journalist. I worked in the advertising department of a National newspaper in London for a few years after University, with the hope of getting my foot in the door, but it didn’t turn out that way and I then became a stay at home mum once we’d moved back to the countryside and settled down. What has Art Of Healthy Living given you in your life you didn’t have before? I set out to help inspire and motivate as well as provide a support network for women, to show them that we’re all kind of just winging it at life and that none of us are perfect. Whether that be body positivity, how we raise our kids, in relation to any exercise we do, our thoughts and feelings about life in general. And the more I wrote the more it increased my own confidence in the process. It has given me a purpose and a role other than ‘just a’ mum, plus the independence and extra income is definitely an added bonus.  What three tools could you not run your blog without? Trello - for lists, setting deadlines and just basically keeping my work life in order. Yoast - a Wordpress add-on that helps me out with all my SEO My phone - for pictures and just generally keeping on top of all things social media, which in turn helps promote and drive traffic to my website. Name three inspirational bloggers you’ve met or discovered on your blogging journey and tell us why you chose to tell us about them. I’ll be honest I don’t really go in for all this bloggers meeting bloggers malarky. However, some that I follow and who I think are totally smashing it are Jenna Farmer from Bloglancer, Chessie King - what she has done for body positivity in young girls is just incredible, and Petra Kravos from Be Healthy Now for her extensive range of reviews. What is your advice for writing great content on your blog? For me it’s all about finding your unique voice and keeping that consistent throughout all of your posts. It needs to be honest, especially when it comes to an opinion piece or a review, and it needs to be interesting. Ask yourself whether you would be interested in reading it? Can you hear yourself saying it when you read it back? If the answer is no to either or both of those questions then chances are it will be the same for your audience. I write exactly how I speak, so if there’s a bit of slang in there, so what? It helps people see your true personality and if they like it, they are much more likely to remain loyal readers. I know some people struggle to find their voice when writing and the only piece of advice I can offer is to hear what you want to write in your head and then jot it down word for word.  Then read it aloud to yourself and see how it sounds. We all have that voice in our heads, so it’s about translating it from head to written form. Practice is of course key, and the more you write in this way, the better at it you will get and it suddenly becomes very natural.
What is your number one piece of advice for growing a loyal blog following? Similar to the above, but also posting regularly, which is easier than it sounds! I try to plan ahead by a couple of weeks so that I can keep on top of things, but it does get harder the more work you get - not that I’m complaining! I use Trello to help me plan out my schedule and also to keep track of any ideas I might randomly have for posts. This is my full time job, but I do have to fit it around school hours, so I think the knowledge that I only have so many hours in the day is enough to keep me on it. Make sure to also share as much as possible on your social media channels as this can drive a lot of traffic your way and it is much easier to respond to comments and interact with your readers on there. And finally, we would love to know how you have monetized Art Of Healthy Living and what you would say is the best way to make money blogging. It’s a mixture really. Some of my money comes through link building, others through guest posts, but where the good money lies is when I write the content myself - I can definitely charge more for this and it generally does much better than articles that have been pre-written by a company or guest poster. Since working on my own site, I have also had content writing opportunities arise for other company websites - they have seen my writing style and liked it and so asked me to write content for their landing pages. I have also edited a work of fiction as a consequence of someone seeing my own writing. It’s surprising what’s out there!  Tanya is an established blogger and member of the Guest Bloggers Wanted community (a place for UK lifestyle & parenting bloggers to find new collaborations & partnerships), I caught up with her to find out a bit about her blogging journey and pull out some tips and tricks about earning multiple income streams through blogging. Hi, Tanya nice to meet you! So, tell us, how long have you been blogging? Since 2013, making it 7 years - wow. Can you tell us about your blog Slasher Career and who it is for? I started Slasher Career to help people multiply their streams of income so that they can enjoy better personal freedom, financial security and happiness. I strongly believe that if you’re reasonably intelligent, being employed at one role is the worst thing you can do to support yourself. I’m not against employment – it can provide a well-paid and steady income stream, I just don’t think that relying on employment as your only income is financially savvy. Either you want to do your own thing or stay employed while doing your own thing, the future is about mashing up your skills and streams of income, not focusing on just one … so Slashercareer.com is for everyone, really. For far too long slashers/polymaths/multipotential individuals/jack-of-all-trades were stigmatised. It was thought that a person can’t possibly be good at more than one thing, but of course, this is now changing. More and more people are embracing their inner slasher and experiment with entrepreneurship on the side.  In the last 5 years, I managed to generate 5 income streams, which allowed me to stop doing shit I don’t like. I feel much happier and more empowered now… and I feel there’s a lot I can teach others. On my blog, I teach people how to start, grow and monetise different types of blogs, how to start an online business and how to find highly paid freelance and part-time work. Were you a complete blogging beginner when you started Slasher Career? No, of course not - you can’t teach people how to grow and monetise their blogs if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Slasher Career is my 3rd blog. What has Slasher Career given you in your life you didn’t have before? A pleasant routine, bigger purpose and an additional income stream. What three tools could you not run your blog without? Wordpress.com - I could literally not be able to run my blog without it. It is without a doubt the best blogging platform in the world. Ahrefs.com - keyword research and backlink analysis is extremely important for affiliate bloggers. Canva.com - a free graphic design tool, that helps to create beautiful images for my blog, Instagram and Pinterest.  Name three inspirational bloggers you’ve met or discovered on your blogging journey and tell us why you chose to tell us about them. I like bloggers who question the norm, the rebels. Here they are:
3. https://thecooperreview.com/ - Sarah Cooper makes the best office jokes on the internet. I’m sure you’ve come across this viral article https://thecooperreview.com/10-tricks-appear-smart- meetings/ before. Enough said! :) What is your advice for writing great content on your blog? Learn from the best writers in your niche. Don’t be afraid to copy someone else’s style until you’ve established your own, everyone does it. Before starting to write a blog post, type your title or topic into Google to see what you’re competing against. If you want to get traffic to your blog, your writing needs to be better than what you see on the 1st page of Google. It’s a good habit and exercise to do regularly as it forces you to learn from the best. When you do it for a year, your writing will improve massively. What is your number one piece of advice for growing a loyal blog following? It depends on the type of blog. If you’re a fashion/lifestyle/travel blogger, you need to be active on social media as that’s where majority of your income will come from [brand sponsorships]. If you are an affiliate blogger, then nailing your SEO to get more search traffic is where you need to focus on.  And finally, we would love to know how you have monetized Slasher Career and what you would say is the best way to make money blogging.
Slasher Career is an affiliate blog, so all the income comes from affiliate sales. The truth is all blogs that are read, can be monetised and the more people read your blog, the more money you can make. You can monetise your blog directly and indirectly. Direct ways to monetise a blog are banner ads, sponsored posts, affiliate sales, selling your own products (e-book, e-course), branded products (T-shirts, accessories). Indirect ways to monetise a blog are consulting, freelance work, coaching, public speaking, TV presenting and writing for a magazine/newspaper. My favourite ways to monetise a blog are affiliate sales, coaching, public speaking and presenting. Affiliate blogs have the biggest potential to earn good passive income if you know what you’re doing and public speaking and presenting fit my vibrant personality. |
AuthorWritten by Cheryl A Clarke Chief Happiness Officer & Content Marketing Freelancer @ Ginger Marketing (unless stated otherwise) Blog CategoriesMost Popular ContentTotal Social Media Share Count
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