Blogging isn’t for the faint hearted- The true story of a blogger

Many people think of blogging as a way to get lots of free stuff.Lets think about it if it was really that easy then everyone would be doing it. There would be thousand more blogs. What people don’t see is what goes on behind the scenes . The amount of hours it takes to get a post perfect.

Every time I am sent something to review I have to do a number of things before the blog post is ready for you to see.

• Firstly I have to test the product. If it’s a beauty product this can take a number of weeks to test. As I need to see how it will affect my skin/hair over the weeks. Or it may be a toy for Ava to play with . What’s the betting when I want her to explore the review toy she wont want to. So this too can take a few attempts.( this is not a reflection of the toy just Ava being Ava)
• When she finally starts to co-operate and play with the review item. I will need to take photos from every possible angle. So the readers can see every aspect of the product from every possible angle. This can also take a long time as she can look down right miserable at times on photos.If she actually likes the toy I don’t want her to look like she hates it. Or what’s the betting I start to take photos and realise she has her breakfast smeared down the side of her face.
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• In the meantime you still have to run your home, go to work and do normal stuff.

• Then you will need to find some time in an already busy life  to edit the photos. To make them perfect for the blog post. Making sure you have a picture for everything you wanted to show.
• Once you have done all the above you are ready to write your post. For me I write my post’s once Ava is in bed . This can be so disjointed as I’m having to run up and down the stairs every time Ava decides to throw her dummy out of her bed. Making it hard to get the flow of words out on the page ( I have started this post at least 5 times and had to abandon it twice ).
• It doesn’t end their you post is written you have put the pictures in and made it all pretty. Then you have to sort out the SEO this is so it ranks higher on google. This alone can take 15 minutes to get the post the way it needs to be to be found via search engines.
• Now you can press publish but still your work isn’t done. In order to get people to read your posts  you need to share them over social media. This isn’t just once this is multiple times I’m a bit rubbish at scheduling posts on social media so I tend to do it each time. Where as I know many people use scheduling apps/sites which publish them for you.
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• In this middle of writing product reviews you may have a personal post you want to write .So you have to try to find time for this also.

You also have to have knowledge on all the tech side of running a blog and even things like how to make a logo . Thankfully there are companies out there that can help with that part !

Now I’m not trying to put anyone off blogging. Its been amazing for me its given me a purpose other than being a mom whilst on maternity leave. Also enabled me to change job roles using new skills I have learnt because of blogging . I’m just purely trying to show you it’s not easy you have to put in lot of hard work. So the things we get for “free” are not in fact free. They are payment for the time it takes us to write the post.

*This is a collaborative post *