How I'm starting over after three years as a professional blogger

I've been blogging professionally since 2018.

My dream back then was to write about women's health and supplements, and that eventually my blog would make us a lot of money and that I could quit working retail, and my husband could quit his day job.

It wasn't as easy as all that.

Back then, Pinterest seemed to be easy to go viral from, and I thought I could solely rely on it for all my site traffic. I thought if I just kept pumping out blog articles, the traffic would magically come. I also had NO IDEA what Seo was, and why it is so important to learn.

I had a rough idea of how to start doing this blogging thing, after all, I had bought one course and that was surely all of the info I needed.

I had no idea what a challenge it would be. How hard it would be to succeed, and how much time and effort it would take to actually start making an income.

Blogging is not an easy gig to succeed in, and after three years I have learned a lot about how to make mistakes, and how to learn from them.

My first baby blog

My first blog, a Natural Endeavor, was my baby. My first ever attempt at professional blogging. This is the blog I will never sell, and will never give up the rights to because it was my first.

ANaturalEndeavor.com is where I got my start as a blogger writing about women's health, doing supplement reviews, and making my first bit of official entrepreneur income.

This blog has given me a lot of cool opportunities, from working with companies like LifeSeasons, who reached out to me to work with them, to getting approved with a big ad company like MediaVine my second year as a blogger.

These opportunities have led to me being able to help support our family with a second income, no matter how small it may be.

These accomplishments have also made me feel like a freaking star.

I'll always be thankful for my first blog and everything it has taught me.

But now, it's time to move forward and move on.

What happens when you can't expand any further?

I have gotten to a point with my first blog where it has just stagnated. No matter how much or how little I work on it, well... it just doesn't seem to matter.

Don't get me wrong, it is still doing very well for itself. I get 700-1,000 views per day, and sometimes I don't work on it for a week straight.

But nothing seems to make it grow anymore.

So after 4 more blogging courses, lots of hours spent learning Seo, and some very long days staring at my laptop, here is how I am starting over after three years as a professional blogger.

Why start a new blog?

My nature is hard work.

I love working and always have. My first shift at my first job was only 3 hours, and I just about asked if I could stay longer to help get more done.

So without much to do on my current site, I feel stagnant and antsy.

And I really want to get work done.

Instead of just coasting on my current ad income and calling it good, I wanted to start something new.

This new blog is going to be live sometime this summer, and honestly, I wouldn't even be talking about this online if I hadn't already bought the domain name and hosting.

When I knew I wanted to start a new blog, I asked myself the following:

• What am I most passionate about?
• What do I like to talk about?
• What brings me fulfillment, and how can I share that with others?

My passion for art

Art is something I've always loved, and I've been drawing for as long as I can remember.

Since starting my health blog, my passion for art has taken a back seat. I used to draw on all my breaks at work, between classes in college, and after I got off work you could find me drawing in my over full sketchbook.

But now, as a stay at home mom who runs a health blog, I haven't had the time.

Drawing has always been my escape, and my passion, and I got pretty darn good at it the last 7 years. Especially after all of my art classes in college.

When I decided to start a new business, it only made sense to get back to what I loved doing most.

Starting my new blog from the ground up

I am starting my art blog from scratch.

This means starting a brand new keyworded Pinterest account (shown below!), a new email list, not to mention building a new website from nothing but a basic paid theme.

This will be a daunting task, but not nearly as daunting as the first time around.

I know what I'm doing now, and have experience building sites. I don't have to re-make all the mistakes I made with my first blog.

Niching Down

This is something I didn't do very well with my first blog.

Just look at the title: A Natural Endeavor.

Don't get me wrong, I love my blog title. But by looking at it, you really have no idea what my blog is about. It could be a travel blog, a nature blog, or what it is, a natural health blog. It's not specific or obvious, and in a way that's okay.

But for my new blog, I am getting specific. Niching down.

The title for my new blog is: Anatomy of a Sketch.

With this blog, I am specifically teaching how to draw humans and human anatomy. This blog will have drawing lessons, videos, and will teach beginner through intermediate level lessons for learning to draw people.

How I could potentially monetize this biz

With any blog, the goal is to eventually get monetized. If you don't monetize your site, you've just gotten yourself into a really expensive hobby. So how could I possibly monetize an art blog?

There are a few ways I think I could monetize this new business:

• A membership program
• Paid Courses
• Ad Revenue
• Affiliate links for art supplies or classes
• An Amazon Associates shop page of all my favorite art tools

A membership program

For an art blog, a membership program would be one of the best ways to make continuous passive income.

A membership program would be a monthly fee of however much, that allows customers to receive monthly or weekly lessons via email.

I have used ConvertKit in the past to sell my courses through and to use as an email subscription service.

A website like Memberful would make it easy to set up this kind of a paid membership program, and while I haven't yet used it, I feel like it could be very beneficial for bloggers and website owners.

Paid Courses

Doing a paid course would also work as a way to monetize this new blog.

This would be me designing a course about drawing something specific (How to draw faces, how to draw people, how to draw hands, etc.) and setting a price point.

For example, I could make a course called "How to Draw Faces step-by-step" and change $50 for the course.

Each time someone bought the course I would be paid that amount.

Courses work really well, you just have to know how to advertise for them.

Ad Revenue

Ads are the MOST passive way to make income on a blog.

People like sales, and this is typically what ads have to offer. This is basically the set-them-and-forget-them type of income that most bloggers want.

The only obstacle with this income stream is traffic.

With most ad companies you have to have at least 50K page views a month to be able to apply to work with them. Traffic takes time to build, and that can mean a lot of unpaid time writing before your blog really takes off.

I am lucky enough to have this type of monetization for my first blog and hope to be able to monetize through ads with Anatomy of a Sketch eventually as well.

Affiliate Links

This is one of the topmost passive ways to monetize a website.

Affiliate links are linked products on your blog or website that send the reader to another page. For example, to Amazon.com.

When someone clicks the link on your blog and then buys something, you get paid a small commission from the company with no extra charge to the customer. So if you have Amazon Associates, Amazon would be the one to pay you for sending them a customer from your website.

For my blog Anatomy of a Sketch, I could try to become an affiliate with art supply companies like Blick or Arteza through Share-A-Sale.

Amazon Associates Shop

Another way to make income on a blog is to have a resources shop page.

This is a page that has all the things you recommend using. For this blog, it would be things like pens, sketchbooks, digital art supplies, and drawing pencils, and other supplies.

Setting this page up with an Amazon Associates account allows you to make a small commission from Amazon when people buy from your links.

While I have never made a lot from Amazon Associates, it is a viable way to make money, and I know of a lot of bloggers that do really well in this vein.

Taking the plunge to teach drawing

My first blog was not so much about teaching something, as it was relaying information.

Teaching has never been an easy task for me. The only real experience with it I have is from my summer teaching photography lessons, but it was such a good experience and writing up the lesson plans was actually pretty fun.

I think setting up my new blog full of drawing lessons and resources is going to be a fun challenge, and something I'll be really proud of down the road.

Teaching traditional and digital art is going to be a new adventure for me, and I am excited to be pursuing my passion for art at long last.

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” -Mark Twain

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If you're interested in learning how to draw, you can now find my tutorials here at AnatomyofaSketch.com

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-Leah H.