Here I am, starting one more blog. My last, if I can help it. At one point, I had something like five or six blogs going in an attempt to make money from affiliate links and Google ads. Other people made five- and six-figure incomes every year with websites; why not me?
Because it was not to be, that’s why.
Over the last year, I’ve let over a half dozen domain names – and thus the blogs associated with them – slide into the Internet Black Hole. This includes my previously signature blog, The Crunchy Coach, where I desperately tried to inform people of the evils of processed food and modern medicine.
So, why did I quit? Other than the fact that blogging my eyes out (almost literally) for four years brought mostly disappointment, severely strained eyes, stress, and hardly any money worth mentioning.
And in the end, I didn’t need to try to make any money, because my husband, Jerry, and I worked hard enough and long enough at real jobs and at living frugally and investing wisely so that we could “retire” in our early forties.
But beyond that, I quit blogging because I discovered Kindle self-publishing. Now, as of this moment I’m barely making enough there per month to pay the gas bill. But I’ve always loved to write, received rewards for my writing in school, and always dreamed of publishing a book.
So I turned my focus toward writing for Kindle, and one of my last blogs was my author blog where I talked about my various books, now and then throwing in interesting notes about my personal life.
This blog will be more about my personal life, a lot about my philosophy of living, and probably some how-tos about simple and natural living, because that is my passion. When a combination of WordPress with the Thesis theme I was using began to cause me annoying technical difficulties – difficulties I am no longer willing to work through because I no longer have Internet service in my home – I was going to quit blogging altogether.
But there was one problem. I kept having a variety of things to say and teach, and I wanted to say and teach them to the world at large, just in case what flew through my mind happened to be helpful to somebody else.
So I decided, after deciding to cancel my paid webhosting, to start a free blog. I’ll be honest as the sun is hot: part of the reason I’m blogging here is to give my Kindle books exposure, and to get a few more sales a month. Mostly, however, this blog is to give me a place to vent my opinions and share what goes on in the life of a homesteading health nut. Maybe I’ll encourage and teach a few people along the way.
But I’m not going to try to collect your name and e-mail so I can send you weekly reminders to buy my stuff. I’m not going to have any affiliate links in any post. If it’s a link, it’s a link either to one of my books, or to another product or website from which I will not make a single penny.
If you have clicked over to this post because you are a faithful reader of my last paid blog, thank you for your faithfulness. If you are reading this post because you are one of those blog-obsessed people who, once they find a blog they really like, must read every last post in order to feel current, thanks for visiting and I invite you to follow my blog.
Happy reading,
Emily
