Mom Blogging Success Story
I’m so excited to share Liv’s blogging journey and how she has grown her blog to make $350 per month! Enjoy!
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I am so thankful to Suzi for allowing me to share my blogging journey.
I began my blog in February of 2018 and at the time I called it The Cheeky Mommy, which was named after my son who had extremely adorable cheeks!
I started my blog with one intention, to make money from home. I didn’t want to leave those cheeks ever!
Why Start a Blog?
Now that I am almost a year and a half in, my blog means so much more to me than just making money.
It is a legacy of knowledge that I will leave behind for my children and even if it didn’t make a dime, I would continue to publish articles for years to come.
My Blogging Story
Before I had any idea that people actually made money from blogging, I worked as a registered nurse in cardiac ICU.
My job was challenging and rewarding but the days were long. Ultimately, I didn’t want to continue to work 12-hour shifts after I had my son, especially because my husband is in the military and leaves often, with little notice.
My original plan was to stop working as a bedside nurse and spend 3 years going to graduate school online for nurse practitioner. I figured by the time school was over he would be three and I would feel ok about putting him in daycare from 9-5.
Online school was a good way for me to stay productive during my stay-at-home-mom years. I was writing papers for my first class and drinking a glass of wine and had this thought… “surely there has to be a way to drink wine and write things for money?”
That evening I went down the Youtube rabbit hole and found so many people talking about starting a blog as a way to earn a living from home.
Shortly after I started a WordPress blog using a hosting company named the wealthy affiliate, which was a membership site. I struggled those first few months with no direction, not-a-clue how to create a pin for Pinterest, or how to structure a blog post for SEO. That hosting company was outdated and really slow by the way, I don’t recommend them.
I am now with Siteground and love them for customer service and page speed! After about six months of publishing about once every two weeks and being completely overwhelmed, I felt like giving up.
I decided to once again go to Youtube to find more moms who were making money from their blogs. That’s when I found Suzi’s video about how she made 9,000 dollars in one month of blogging.
I was floored and searched for her blog, followed her on Facebook, which was around the time she released the post by number course. I bought it immediately. It was so easy to follow that finally understood how to format a blog post properly. Some of the blog posts I wrote immediately after taking her course are now on the first page of google!
I have also taken the Blog by Number course and Ebook by Number which I am currently working on.
Rebranding My Blog
After I understood HOW to blog, I realized that I needed to have a more targeted direction for my blog.
I am a mom and do have my own spin on motherhood, but I started to think about other strengths that I could tap into and use to better people’s lives.
After all, if you want to make money from a blog, your content needs to serve an audience in some helpful way.
I realized that not only am I a nurse with intricate knowledge of the human body, but I also had been studying home remedies in my free time.
My son had seizures when he was 7 months old and I was on a personal quest to heal him naturally. I refused to accept that he needs to be on medication for the rest of his life.
All of a sudden, my blog’s purpose clicked. I want to empower moms to become their family’s healers.
Do you ever get nervous to take your kids to crowded places in winter in fear of getting sick? Or have you gone to the doctor and left without an understanding of what is really going on? What about waiting in the doctor’s office for over an hour with a miserably sick kid and they tell you it’s a viral infection and prescribe rest and fluids.
There is SO much more we can do to promote our family’s health at home. There are ancient healing practices that have been around for centuries that can be used to promote our family’s well-being.
My perspective as an ICU nurse has truly shaped the way I view health. I have taken care of people fighting for their lives for things that could have been prevented if they would have known how to take care of their bodies a little better.
And while I am so thankful for all the sophisticated medical technology we have access too, I am personally seeing positive results from the closer-to-nature approach I am taking in my home.
In fact, my son hasn’t had a seizure in almost a year.
I renamed my blog Naturally Made Mom and developed a mission statement. Naturally Made Mom exists to educate, inspire, and be an example of simple, holistic living, that cultivates a lifetime of health and happiness.
Now every time I write a piece of content, I keep that mission in mind. If I could teach one mother through my writings how to heal her child using a natural remedy that supports the body instead of only suppressing symptoms, then it doesn’t really matter if I make money from my blog.
I am doing exactly what I intended when I first started my career as a nurse, to help people heal.
Except for this time, it’s from my comfy couch wearing yoga pants!
Making Money from my Blog
Finding Start A Mom Blog and a few other inspiring bloggers have been instrumental in turning my blog into a business. I am still small but the tips and tricks I have learned from them have helped my blog grow from a nobody on the web, to now consistently reaching around 25-30,000 readers a month.
I am now ranking in Google for at least 10 really great keywords that have transformed my amazon affiliate income from $10 a month to over $200 a month.
I had no idea that you were supposed to add “nofollow” code to every affiliate link you use in your posts until I learned about it from Suzi’s Facebook lives.
Every week I gain a few new email subscribers and I don’t even have opt-ins on every post.
My goals are to grow a like-minded audience, find out what they specifically want to learn from me, and then create either a course or ebook to sell.
Right now I work on my blog about 10-15 hours a week. That is all I have time for because I raise my son full time, run an Airbnb, and still make time for self-care like exercise, cooking, and relaxing.
Life is too short to work yourself into the ground and if you can’t enjoy the journey then what is the point?
I know if I increased my hours and published more content my income would go up faster but I see my blog as a long-term investment so I am in no rush.
Monetization Strategies
My current monetization strategy is Mediavine ads and Amazon Affiliates.I haven’t done any sponsored posts yet but plan to very soon!
Right now, I make about $350 a month from my blog and it comes in like clockwork even if I don’t work on my blog for an entire week!
Final Thoughts About Blogging
If I can be successful at bringing in a side income from blogging than anyone can.
Just don’t do what I did by wasting months trying to figure out this blog thing all over the web when there are so many courses that literally hold your hand through the whole process!
Blogging has changed my life in so many ways. Now that I know the income potential, I know that I never have to be away from my babies.
I don’t have to miss out on my husband’s homecomings because I have to work. It also makes me really happy when people comment and email me for more information on how to make a natural baby lotion or how to use natural remedies. It seems like I am starting to help a handful of people and it’s totally awesome!
Liv is a registered nurse and military spouse with a passion for preventative health. After 10 years in neonatal and adult critical care nursing, Liv empowers families to achieve optimal health and happiness by making simple, intentional choices. She offers positive parenting affirmations, non-toxic living recipes, and easy-to-follow guides on using home remedies to heal sick kids on her blog Naturally Made Mom.
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What an awesome testimony!! I will have to strongly disagree with you about Wealthy Affiliate.com, I’m currently with them and the community and knowledge is absolutely amazing, and the live courses and so much more.
Not everything I need is there (that’s how I found Suzi!!) but it’s a really good start for a newbie to Affiliate marketing and blogging (like myself). But Suzi is absolutely amazing and I bought her Course by number ebook and her networking and affiliate tactics are on point and I’ve learned so much from her!
I’ve just begun my journey with all of this (as of 2 months ago) and I’m so excited!! I wish you and your little one the best in your blogging journey! Much success!!
Randi
Randi, I will say that I loved the community part of WA but I found once my pageviews got up there that my page speed was super slow. I did everything I could from my end including resizing images before I uploaded them and using a minimizing plug-in, but it often took 17 seconds for a page to load which is why I ended up leaving bc it took their server so long to respond. But keep going! It’s definitely a great place to get started!
This is so inspiring. Thank you for sharing and encouraging us on!
What’s crazy is since I wrote this post I just had an even better month this month and will likely make $500! Just keep going girl. It takes time but it WILL work if you don’t give up 🙂
Well said and much needed information in this day of the pill-pushing, inoculating giants whose broad over-reach have made many babies and adults sick.
Pills are definitely powerful tools but I love how we have so many other tools in our toolkit that provide comfort and healing!
Well done! I love hearing about mums who are doing this and I love your mission statement. You are so right, your baby has the most amazing cheeks!
Thank you so much Stellar! It’s been so much fun and honestly has helped me grow in my personal knowledge. I feel so well equipped to deal with common family problems like colds, ear aches, etc that I hardly ever worry anymore about our health.