This list of Mother’s Day gift ideas for the aspiring blogger has a wealth of ideas in all different price ranges!
Moms Who Blog Need Gifts too!
This is going to be my first Mother’s Day as both a mom and a blogger, and it got me thinking about – well, all things mom blogger. It has been such an incredible journey, these last 8 months. I’ve honestly loved my experience as a mother so far, which isn’t to say it hasn’t been hard.
I mean, I’m a girl who likes 9 hours of sleep a night.
I’m a girl who’s coming to the realization that that won’t be happening again for a looooonnnnggg time.
And also that I don’t care. Much.
But I’m also a Mom who feels heartbroken five days a week when she has to leave her sweet smiling baby home while she’s goes off to work. And a Mom who’s very motivated to get her blog to provide some financial support for her household.
Because to me, right now, that baby is everything.
So this Mother’s Day, my first Mother’s Day, I don’t want cake or cute clothes. Even though the clothes could be super helpful right now for my post-partum sits-in-an-office-and-hasn’t-lost-a-pound since she went off maternity leave body.
Gifts with a Work at Home Goal in Mind
What I’m asking for this Mother’s Day are things that I believe will help make my blog run better, be more professional, and help get me towards my number one goal of working from home, and paying off debt.
And also supporting that little baby face!
And I think I am far from the only one out there looking to make a success of this blogging thing, be they a Mom, or a single gal with a life plan. So below I’ve listed some products that have helped me enormously so far, and some resources that I use to make my blog look, feel, and perform the way it does. I’ve also listed a few courses.
There are a few courses that have helped me enormously in my path towards creating a monetized blog. And there are always more courses I WANT to take. Because I believe that to be successful you have to be continually educating yourself, and learning your field.
Education helps keep you cutting edge.
It is the investment that pays you back ten fold over time. And hopefully, it will help us all towards our number one goals.
For Blogging Mom’s Getting Started, or Looking to Increase Traffic:
For those of you just getting started, I can’t recommend Blog By Number enough. I am a super fan of Suzi from StartaMomBlog.com. Suzi started her blog just a little over a year ago, and is now earning over 17 grand a month. That’s a seriously quick journey from zero to 6 figures.
In her extremely affordable course, Blog by Number, she breaks down the process of starting a blog in bite size, easy to follow segments. If you knew NOTHING about blogging, hosting, Pin design, or promotion this would be essential. But for those who have a little more know how, there is still a wealth of actionable information.
For instance, Suzi provides a template for requesting to join group boards on Pinterest, as well as a list of over 40 Facebook groups that helped her promote her blog, and the Pinterest Group Boards that help drive traffic to her blog. As you may know, traffic is key to earning an income from your blog, and these items alone in Blog by Number are worth the purchase price!
New and Notable from StartaMomBlog
On my personal Mother’s Day wish list is Suzi’s latest product – a new e-book detailing her journey from $0 to over $17,000 a month. Her Income Journey is fascinating to me, and of COURSE we’d all love to replicate it right? So we have to start by learning how she did it. So hint hint family and friends 😉
One of the things I like best about Suzi’s Blog by Number course is how affordable it is. Seriously, for less than $50 you can get a course that will teach you everything you need to get started on your blogging for profit journey.
And getting started is MORE than half the battle.
If you are on a budget, and can only get ONE thing from this whole list, I’d start with Blog by Number.
A Host with the Most
Siteground – This is the company I use to host my blog. Think of hosting like rent you pay for your little corner of the internet. And just like with renting, there are some real slum lords out there, and some bad and overcrowded neighborhoods.
I like Siteground A LOT because I can get them on the phone whenever I need them, and when I have an issue, they help me resolve it FAST. That’s what you need from hosting!
Writing Prompts!
Did you know I have a completely free email course designed to help you figure out what to blog about on days you are completely stumped? It’s six emails, spread over three weeks. Each one has a writing prompt designed to help get you the writing juices flowing. You may not know if you’re new here, but I have an MFA in Creative Writing. Which means I am SUPER familiar with writer’s block.
And I have lots of tips and tricks to help get you through those blank page, oh-my-gee what do I write times.
I’d love for you to check it out!
Everybody’s Emailin’!
Convert Kit – You may have heard that building a list is the number one thing you should focus on in your blogging journey. Most people say that for every person/name you have on your email list you can expect to earn about $1 a month. So if you have 2,000 people on your email list, you can expect to earn about $2000/month.
If you leverage things properly, and keep your list warm (in other words, talk to them regularly), this can be true. So imagine if you have 7,000 people, or 75,000 people. That’s quite a lot of profit.
The idea of this is a bit mind boggling to me. But personally, I love feeling like I’m part of a community. So I want to build a blog with a vibrant, engaged, and empathetic community. And I want to treat them right from the start. Also, because I intend to grow a big list and stay in regular communication with them, I have invested in what I think is the best email service provider out there.
Why is Convert Kit the best?
Because Convert Kit lets you d some “fancy” things at a budget price. You can create custom pages on the internet just for your potential subscribers. You can “segment” subscribers too – which is a great for a food blogger like me. I doubt everyone who signs up for my strawberry jam tart recipes will also want to receive updates about blogging, and vice versa.
With Convert Kit, I can make sure my subscribers only hear from me on the subjects they want to hear from me about.
This is powerful, and potentially lucrative. And while it’s tempting to start with a free email service provider, I have tried moving lists between providers before. It. Is. Hard.
And messy.
And ain’t no momma got time to deal with THAT kind of mess, when we’re busy cleaning up the toast and prunes pouch smeared high chair, amiright?
So I’m starting from the get-go with a service that won’t slow me down. Instead, it will empower me with all the tools, and the professional look and feel I want, from Day 1.
Check out Convert Kit, and see if it is right for you.
A Pretty Pretty Theme for New Blogging Mom’s!
A “theme” means the layout and design of your website or blog. My website runs the Savory theme by Restored 316.
Restored 316 themes run on the Genesis framework, and are elegant, light, and easy to customize and use. I think any female blogger could find one that would work!
To Up Your Pinterest Game, or For Anyone Looking to Drive More Traffic to Their Blog
Simple Pin Media Mastercourse – There are a lot of Pinterest courses out there. I chose this one, because Kate Ahl, the mind behind the Mastercourse, is a regular expert in Food Blogger Pro (see below for more on FBP!). She’s frequently chiming in with advice on how to use Pinterest more effectively.
I firmly believe that you have to know Pinterest to blog profitably these days. Pinterest is almost always a blogger’s number one driver of traffic. And let me tell you, if you’ve never used Pinterest as a business building tool before there is A LOT to learn.
I could not have done it without a little schooling, and Kate’s course is easy peasy to use.
You can watch the segments all at once or over a few days or weeks. Either way, you’ll finish the course in a much more powerful position to take over Pinterest!
To Boost (or Create) Affiliate Income for Blogging Mom’s
Amazing Affiliates – Affiliate income is one of the best and fastest ways to monetize your blog. If you don’t know what affiliates are, it is basically where a company or business offers you a commission on the sale of a product. In other words, you get a special link, and anyone who clicks that link from your site back to the product and makes a purchase earns you a commission.
Commission rates vary widely and wildly.
Amazon’s commission rates are not so great. The benefit of being an Amazon affiliate, which I am, is that they offer, well, everything. And you earn a commission not just on the sale you sent them, but also anything else they buy.
Thus, Amazon Affiliate sales can really add up over time and are crucial for blogging mom’s no matter your niche.
This little e-book is powerful, though, in that it shows you multiple ways to use Amazon Affiliate links on your site. It also walks you through how to get set up with Amazon, and how to use the links. There is a surprising amount to learn, and I would wager that even people who have been Amazon Affiliates for a while would get something out of this book.
It’s SUPER affordable too, so you might tell your family and friends that this is a great one to bundle with, say, Blog by Number, or a Convert Kit membership!
For Aspiring Food Bloggers
The thing about me is I’m a Leo, right? And us Leos, we’re loyal people. So when I find something that genuinely helps me, I can’t shut up about it. Hence this post. And hence my deep and abiding love of Food Blogger Pro.
If you are interested in starting a food blog, your first step should be to join Food Blogger Pro.
Start and grow your food blog with Food Blogger Pro
I absolutely would NOT have a blog right now without Food Blogger Pro. Food Blogger Pro is a membership website run by the awesome and uber successful couple from Pinch of Yum. It’s where aspiring and established food bloggers go to talk about all thing food blogging related.
It’s also packed with tutorials and courses on how to set up everything technical about your blog, how to take crisp, clean, gorgeous food photos, and now they’ve even added tutorials on how to shoot food videos.
The thing I genuinely find the most compelling about Food Blogger Pro, and the thing that keeps me paying that membership fee month after month, are the community forums.
Are you a fan of a particular food blog? They are probably a member of Food Blogger Pro, and you can talk to them in the forums and ask questions. And reference other people doing the same thing. The forums are searchable, and they go back years now.
Everyone is friendly, supportive, and engaged in the Food Blogger Pro forums.
There are also resident experts on things like SEO (search engine optimization), web design, social media, photography, video, and more. It is literally the first place I go when I have a question, be it how do I make this widget work right, to what’s the best way to format a recipe.
It’s truly helpful, and I can’t recommend this membership enough.
Start and grow your food blog with Food Blogger Pro
A Little Inspiration and Encouragement for Blogging Mom’s
And finally, there’s another income journey e-book I want to recommend.
Click here to visit Chelsea Lords.
This one is a super affordable glimpse inside how Chelsea Lords, of Chelsea’s Messy Apron, made $40,000 in her first year of food blogging. That’s serious bank in not a lot of time.
And her e-book is fascinating to me. She goes in depth with each month of her first year blogging and reveals her traffic, her income, and her income sources. She also talks about her various feelings of overwhelm, and how she conquered a traffic slump mid year that year.
Chelsea also has actionable tips on how to create revenue streams for a food blogger, and what food sharing sites to submit to, as well as other social media tactics that worked for.
It’s also a success story for blogging mom’s, or anyone!
So if someone is feeling down about their blogging journey, this e-book would definitely be a pick me up.
And we all love a good rags to riches story right? Not that Chelsea was in rags, but her blog was a BRAND NEW thing at the beginning of her story, and generating a full time income by the end. It is INSPIRING. But not in a cheesy way.
I was actually surprised by how interested I have been in this book. Ok, ok, sure. I’m an aspiring food blogger, she was wildly successful, maybe there’s no big surprise there.
Click here to visit Chelsea Lords.
Butt it could have been boring. It could have left out traffic numbers, or freelancing tips, or any number of things. It does not. It is in depth and thorough, and this worth every penny of the small investment it requires.
I feel I could go on and on about the products I love, and the products I want. I’ve tried to keep the things on this list easy and relatively affordable though. These products have all been invaluable to me as I’ve been starting out, and I am lucky that my family has decided that blogging is a priority.
I’m always looking for recommendations myself though! What’s on your blogging wishlist? Or is there a gift you’ve purchased that you’d recommend for blogging mom’s? Let me know in the comments!
And don’t forget – sign up for my super easy and completely FREE writing prompts for bloggers!