Welcome to Part 5 of One Year of Blogging, Sharing the Love with Collaborations. This week I will be sharing some insights I’ve gathered over my first year as a full time blogger. I felt it was necessary to share my thoughts with others because its information I wish I had from day one. I hope you can gain something from what I have to say or relate to my journey in some way. //

Let me just say that collaborations have been my form of a floaty/life raft. Opening my blog up to other bloggers and sharing my little corner of the internet with other creatives has proven to be an extremely rewarding experience. If you are interested in providing your readers with some new and refreshing content and also helping yourself out with the post writing “work load”, you may want to consider bringing other bloggers into your digital space.

So how do you get started with collaborations and what are they exactly?
When I decided I wanted to not only bring contributors into my space but also be a contributor on other’s blogs, I made a list of all the bloggers I admired (personally and creatively). Out of that list I started to build online relationships with these people through sharing my own work, connecting in a email, or just a simple hello on twitter. Over time you will know if you want to work with someone because just sharing ideas with them, gets you excited. I made some really great connections over this first year of blogging, so why not tap into their creative minds and resources.

After you make connections with people and narrow down the individuals you’d possibly like to work with, contact them about the opportunity to collaboration. For me, collaborations meant sharing content on each other’s blogs on a weekly basis, also know as guest blogging. This is a perfect way to expand your social network, grow your blog readership because you bringing new readers to your blog, give your readers new content to read (and look forward to) and give yourself a change of scenery.

My blog wouldn’t be what it has evolved to be without the incorporation of collaborations. Collaborations have literally saved my sanity and have kept blogging exciting. See what Bree of Moxee has to say about “sharing the love”.

Insights from Bre of Moxee (one of my weekly blog collaboration partners)
“I believe the single greatest thing about collaborations is watching relationships grow. Whether you’re working on a project with someone or guest blogging somewhere else, a little network begins to flourish. And that network, my friends, can seriously help contribute to a successful blog. Don’t be afraid to reach out and meet new people. You never know what could happen! It really is a small world out there and I know I couldn’t be more excited to see where my current (and future) collaborative adventure take me.”

Read INRO to week-long series.
Read Part 1 // Staying Connected Socially
Read Part 2 // Blogging Regularly
Read Part 3 // Having Patience
Read Part 4 // Sharing The Love (Collaborations)

*All photos in this series are from Marco Suarez Art Shop on Etsy and all type was typeset by myself.

I wanted to thank everyone for stopping by this week and sharing some of their own insights. I noticed some new faces and that’s always exciting to see. I hope you were able to find one little nugget of information that you could take away with you on your own blogging journey. Keep in touch dear friends!

Welcome to Part 4 of One Year of Blogging, Narrowing your focus. This week I will be sharing some insights I’ve gathered over my first year as a full time blogger. I felt it was necessary to share my thoughts with others because its information I wish I had from day one. I hope you can gain something from what I have to say or relate to my journey in some way. //

This insight was a major game changer for me. Once I realized what I needed to do, creating blog content became so much easier and didn’t take as much time to create. Like I’ve mentioned in previous insights, my blog started out as a catch all for all the “blogable” aspects of my life. I blogged about anything and everything and that created a blog with a lost identity. I wouldn’t have know this would happen, but that is what happens when you blog without intentions. As time went on I made note of what blog posts were the most exciting to write and what content keep me excited to keep blogging. After months of making mental notes about my blogging experience I was able to narrow down the topics I posted about and put more time/energy into a more focused curation.

Around this time, as I delved deeper into the niche of online gaming, I noticed that my loyal readership started to grow. They seemed to appreciate the consistent focus, especially when it came to the complexities of navigating the digital gambling landscape. Recognizing this, I crafted this guide, aiming to offer a stable resource that players could rely on. In a field as dynamic as online casinos, especially those integrating cryptocurrencies like a Bitcoin casino, stability can be rare. This guide became a touchstone for those wanting to understand the nuances of such platforms, whether they were seasoned gamers or newcomers to the scene. By maintaining a steady thematic core, I gave my readers the certainty that each visit would provide valuable insights, making it worth their time to return and delve into the content I provided.

I feel my blog has evolved from a catch all to a go to resource for design inspiration. I want my content to inspire others designers to create interesting content  of their own (blogging or personal projects) and I want those who are not designers/artists to become more familiar with the world of art & design just by being in my little corner of the internet. Each time I create a blog post I do a mental check to make sure I am staying true to my mission. This tactic has helped me in many many ways.

Insights from Julie of Roving I
“To be a blogger, you have to be passionate – about your interests, about your life and about sharing it all with the world. My passion has always been traveling, reading about travel and planning my next trips. When starting a blog, I found that my wanderlust naturally translated into blog content in unique ways. Having focused content on my blog has helped keep me on track, pushed me creatively and has inspired me to travel more. Just as my bags are always packed, my blog’s always ready and waiting to capture my adventures. ”

Read INRO to week-long series.
Read Part 1 // Staying Connected Socially
Read Part 2 // Blogging Regularly
Read Part 3 // Having Patience

*All photos in this series are from Marco Suarez Art Shop on Etsy and all type was typeset by myself.

Holy Cow! I think I could write an entire thesis on the tortures of not having enough patience, but I’m going to just stick to the topic of “going with the flow” and learning from your “failures”. I’m an extremely driven individual who sets goals on a daily basis. I’m sure this is normally a healthy way of doing things, but when seemingly realistic goals aren’t met, your life can quickly be turned upside down, and mine was…over and over….and over again.

As a new blogger I was unaware of what it took to make a blog grow, how much time it takes to gain loyal readers, and how many hours it would take to create content. I set goals before I dove head first into this adventure and as time went on, my goals were not being met. What I realized later on is that that the goals I had set were unrealistic for this type of project and that I should have set benchmark style goals that I could track throughout the year. Since I was unfamiliar with all the details of blogging, my timelines and goals were created blindly and in turn just didn’t make since. I saw each passed timeline as a defeat and never really readjusted for the circumstances. Big mistake. It sure is hard to accept that your original plan is not going to happen and that you are going to be forced to reassess and create a new plan that is more manageable. Each time something doesn’t go the way you want it to, think about why it didn’t go the way you wanted it to and how you can adjust for the future. I am slowly (very slowly) learning how to go with the flow.

This blog is not making me money at the moment, people aren’t relying on me to get something turned in for final approval, and I am the only one who can set expectations. This means that I am 100% free to do things however I’d like to do them and it can take as long as it takes. Very refreshing 🙂

Insights from Kyla of Kyla Roma (blogging for several years now 🙂
“Blogging is such a fun, connected, rewarding thing- but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. There are so many technical & specific ways to measure how you’re doing – page views, twitter followers, comments – it can sometimes feel like every week and month is a contest against yourself and your online friends. My advice is this: don’t let yourself get carried away just because those aspects of what you do are easy to measure! The better things to check in on regularly are how much you enjoy the process of curating a post, how your style or a skill develops through blogging regularly, and the personal connections that you make through what you create. Work hard at what you love for a long time and eventually you’ll see the more tangible rewards that you might be hoping for, but focusing on what you can control (your day to day blogging experience) will give you more reward than focusing on what you hope might fall into your lap. ”

Read INRO to week-long series.
Read Part 1 // Staying Connected Socially
Read Part 2 // Blogging Regularly

*All photos in this series are from Marco Suarez Art Shop on Etsy and all type was typeset by myself.