One Year of Blogging

Hello friends! I hope you are having a spooktacular week! Haha OK dad jokes aside, I am so excited to share that I have officially been blogging for one whole year!!!!! Are you guys loving it so far?! I sure hope so! I have done my best to be consistent under the circumstances but sometimes life gets in the way and I hope you all can understand. I wanted to hop on here today to tell you just how I began as I get tons of questions about the how and why of it all. So here it goes!!!!

About 10 years ago I began to hear about blogs through the site bloglovin. At the time Style was not my thing and I struggled to figure out where I fit fashion wise. You see, I’m pretty pale and I tended to wear colors that would wash me out such as beige or light rose. I just looked sick and plain all the time. A good friend of mine  alerted me to my style mishaps and I thought it would be fun to start a blog about how I was changing my style. I think I made one whole post even if that. Fast forward to almost 10 years later and much better style, when blogs are currently BOOMING! I began reading a couple blogs here and there from top fashion blogger’s but kept getting frustrated when I’d click on their Like to Know it and the item would be SUPER expensive. It seemed like this would happen more often than not and I wasn’t finding many affordable style bloggers out there. Now I’m pretty great at finding deals so I thought to myself, “why don’t I just start a blog of my own?” I figured if nothing else it would at least be a fun hobby for when my husband was away from home working. But I’m a huge planner and wasn’t sure how to start. I didn’t just want to jump in without knowledge. This is when I decided to run over to Barns And Noble where I found the clever book Blogging for Dummies . Oh yes I did! I read that bad boy cover to cover in an attempt to procrastinate starting the actual blog.  I was just so scared thinking I wouldn’t be worthy or that others wouldn’t want to read what I shared.  I just needed to suck it up and start.

My first step was finding a platform. I chose wordpress.com as opposed to wordpress.org  because for me it was more user friendly. This does come at a cost. WordPress.org is self hosted and a lot cheaper. You can build it however you want from the ground up and can even use your own themes to create your space. Since I am NOT computer savvy and didn’t know the first thing about themes, I chose wordpress.com and paid extra for the help with setting up themes and widgets. It was very user friendly for me and I got 24/7 help. I was also able to chose and pay for my domain name through WordPress so it was pretty much a one stop shop. But again it all comes at a price. It took me a good 3 days to get everything set up the way I wanted it and afyer a year I’m happy to say it just got a face lift!

While I was setting this all up, I was also listening to podcasts on blogging as well as attending free online classes through Jules Soloman and Marina DeGiovanni. These two women are a landfill of knowledge and if you want to start a blog yourself, I highly recommend checking them out. Their free webinars are very powerful and hold tons of info! They also hold master classes but they are pretty pricey (around $400-$500). The biggest piece of info I kept hearing was just START! It doesn’t always have to be perfect but at least get yourself out there and start learning to perfect your craft.

The hardest part for me was planning out content to write about that would not only be meaningful, but would also resonate with my readers. I honestly don’t know how some of the bloggers out there put out a new post daily! I needed to find  topic’s people would be interested in and would be helpful to my community. This is harder than it looks my friends. Of course I wanted to help everyone find amazing deals but I also didn’t want to sound repetitive. Sometimes finding content can be a huge struggle. Sometimes my blog can be inconsistent due to the fact that I don’t want to just put anything out into the world. I want my content to be fun, creative and meaningful.

Another hard part of blogging is the photo taking aspect. Your options are as follows:

1. hire a photographer for buku bucks
2. invest in a tripod and nice camera
3. make your friends or S.O. take them on a daily basis

I do all of the above. It can be award and annoying but I get the job done one way or another. If you’re new and are looking for a nice camera, I highly suggest looking on craigslist first. You can find amazing deals from professional photographers who are always upgrading their equipment and selling off gently used/brand new stuff. I was able to pick up a Sony Alpha 5000 with two very expensive lenses for $300. It was in perfect condition and works awesome. I would also suggest taking a local class to learn about your camera and it’s functions. I have yet to do this but really need to. I would also really love to take a Photoshop class.

Lastly I started this blog because I truly am passionate about sharing what I find with the world. I absolutely love creating content and can no longer picture my life without it. I wish I had stuck with it 10 years ago! I have met so many amazing friends through this journey and learned so much about myself. If you are thinking of starting any sort of blog, I highly recommend it. It can be very challenging but it’s so worth it! I just want to thank every single person who has followed along thus far. You all mean so much to me! If you have any other blogging questions please leave a comment below! And Happy Halloween!!!!

~ Love Felicia