The Ultimate Blog Podcast - Building a Home Decor and Lifestyle Blog with Bluesky Home

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Today, we’re excited to welcome Carol Lander to the podcast! Carol is the creative force behind Bluesky at Home, a successful home decor and lifestyle blog. Carol shares her journey from the culinary arts into starting a home decor and lifestyle blog, and offers advice to anyone wanting to start and monetize their own blog (even if they’re feeling the imposter syndrome). She talks about how she grew her blog with email marketing, how she makes smart financial decisions for her blog, and the value of joining a supportive blogging community. She also shares how someone wanting to get started can find their niche and audience in the home decor space. Tune in to get inspired and get serious about starting your home decor and lifestyle blog!Learn more about creating your first digital product here!Sign up for our newsletter hereCheck out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode145

Welcome to the ultimate blog podcast. This podcast is the podcast we wish we had when we started blogging. I'm Amy Reinicki and I'm Jennifer Draper. Our episodes dive deep into how to monetize your blog, sharing unique insights and practical tips. We bring you in-depth interviews with successful bloggers and experts who offer valuable, actionable advice. Our mission is to educate, support, inspire,

and empower you in your blogging business. Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Well, hello and welcome back to the podcast. We are really excited to introduce you to Carol Lander. We sent out an email a couple weeks ago and we were asking people in our community to share some of their thoughts with us. And we had the opportunity to actually sit down then

with Carol and had such a lovely conversation that then I asked her to come on the podcast because I enjoy talking to her so much and really feel like you guys are going to learn a lot from her and her experience. And Carol is a Home Decor blogger, lifestyle blogger. And so I really think that anytime that we can kind of lean into a different niche, we don't share a ton about Home Decor yet on the podcast. And so I invited her here today to talk about her experience growing a blog like this. And so welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, Carol. Well thank you.

I'm excited to be here. We are excited to have you. And I would love for you to just share before we dive deep into things a little bit more about your blog and kind of your journey to get started with Blue Sky at Home. Well, blueskyathome.com started almost exactly seven years ago. And I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I actually had a blog before that with a different domain.

And I thought I was going to be a food blogger. Food is my background. I taught cooking classes for 15 years. I have a million recipes and that's where I thought I was going to start. So I had a different name and after about a year I realized because I have such a love of home decor and DIY and painting furniture and I've always been doing that. That I really, and I really love the home decor community that I had met at a conference a couple of years before that. And I realized I needed to switch domains.

I really needed to change the focus of the blog. And so I did that in 2017 and it was a great move. And so I've just been slowly growing. It was a very slow, slow start. Back in 2017, 2018, even 2019, there wasn't a whole lot of focus yet on SEO. It took a long time to understand the whole SEO thing and keyword research.

And there was certainly information out there, but not like it has been, I think, in the last five years, at least. So I've always been one to research things and really dive deep. So I did as much research as I could. I listened to a lot of webinars, signed up for a lot of courses. Obviously some are better than others. And so finally, I would say it was probably about in 2020, which three years later, that I really started to feel like I was growing the blog, that I understood what was going on. Obviously content is everything and that was never a problem, but it's how do you make

sure that your content is written well, not only for SEO, but especially for your reader and about keyword research. That is still one that we kind of go back and forth. How helpful is it? Most of the time it's very, very helpful, although now in the last year with Google's little shenanigans, we're starting to see pivoting away from that. So it is, it is a journey.

You do have to be able to pivot. I think probably within the home decor space, my impressions are just from talking to other bloggers is that there is not as much emphasis on learning all the behind the scenes. The on-page SEO is pretty well known, but the off-page SEO and now with the shift in Google, how do we respond to that? We hear a lot these days about diversifying. I know when I finally got with an ad service, which was in 2020, I felt like I'd kind of made it.

Like, oh, I've got ads on my side. Even before that, affiliate marketing was certainly in the mix. Actually, I think the home decor niche is a great place for affiliate marketing with both Amazon products, going through what we basically called reward style, like to know it. There's so much opportunity there. Amazon influencers now offers

other affiliate marketing opportunities. So between ad revenue and affiliate marketing, there's a lot of opportunity for anyone in the home decor DIY niche to get revenue. I know I was with one ad company for three years, and when I qualified for Mediavine, I felt like I had really hit the jackpot. Finally, I hit the big time. That's been a big help, even at the same time that so many of us have lost

traffic because of the Google Helpful content updates. But that's why we hear so much now about diversifying. You can't put all your eggs in one basket. So it's not just ad revenue, it's affiliate marketing. You could have an Etsy shop. I know for me, email marketing is really, really important. And that's the other big, big focus that I think everyone should have right now

is growing that email list. And whether you intend to monetize that email list or not, it's still important because no one can take it away from you. So I think the home decor space is a great space for monetization. Yeah, there are a lot of opportunities and because it's always changing too. So that's probably one of the questions I want to start with, Carol. For somebody who might be considering starting a home decor blog, you know, we often talk about niching down. What does that look like in the home decor space? How can a person take this idea and how could they niche down in order to be relevant and

to find their ideal audience and community in this space? Well, as far as niching down from just home decor, home decor is a pretty big niche, but then again, you could be for a long time, it was farmhouse. Everybody was doing farmhouse. Now we're pulling back from that and it's a little more traditional. It could be transitional. It could be mid-century modern. It could be a bohemian.

People can niche down. I think you have to be careful in the home decor space about niching down too much, just because there's so many ways to go. And the great thing about home decor is that you can have evergreen content, which basically is you can write something that's going to be good all year round. But then there's also seasonal and there's holidays. So I think home decor gives you such a wide area within that niche. I know I go back and forth between I'll do some evergreen posts, I'll

do some like right now starting in August we were we're all doing fall. Today I posted for the first time Halloween. So there's just there's such a it's a niche for sure. We often call it lifestyle because it can apply to anything that you do within your your life. Now that's that for me that means home decor, DIY projects that have to do with the home, accessories, things for making tablescapes, how to accessorize your coffee table, your mantle, your dining room table. And I include, I have recipes. Now a lot of home decor bloggers don't, but I would say a fair number do. We're not food bloggers per se, but we do include recipes because it just, it just aligns

really well with what's going on like holidays and home decor. Decorating your living room, decorating your dining room, and then okay then you have a tablescape. Well what can I put on the tablescape? Oh I'm making this. So it, it's a niche for sure, but it is definitely one where you can pivot and take advantage of the seasonal, the evergreen, and the holiday. Lots of opportunity out there. Yeah, it leaves you a lot to be thinking about all the time in terms of your creativity and kind of staying on top of what people might be looking for, which I imagine can be tricky. But you did mention nurturing your email list.

And I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit more. Do you find that since you've been working and focusing on growing your email list, are you getting good feedback from those people about like why they're there, what kinds of things they need? Does that help you at all in terms of shaping the content that you're creating? Well, sure, sure. You want to, the great thing about your email list

is that number one, you control it, you own it. It's not, doesn't have an algorithm. No one's gonna take it away. And those subscribers that you had subscribe for a reason. They either, they liked your content or you offered a freebie opt-in or something like that. I don't know, I think email is, I don't think it's ever gonna go away

because we're all focusing on it so much. And I have seen in the last year, year and a half, whereas I would have people that would subscribe three, four years ago and they are still there. Thank goodness they're your loyal readers. But I've also seen where people subscribe and then they get off real quick. And that sounds awful and you go, well, I can't take that personally. And sometimes I've noticed when I have an increase in an opt-in, more

people than normal, let's say, signed up. And then I'll notice I'll have some unsubscribes. And sometimes it's, oh, I wanted to get that, I'll subscribe, I've got it, I can unsubscribe now. And so that's okay. I do the same thing, too. But yes, we would love for all our subscribers to email us back when we ask a question and throw it out there. And it's funny, I have some subscribers who do that all the time. They're like your best buddy, your fan club, your most loyal subscribers. And that's great. And then you have people that you can tell in your data, your analytics, who opens,

who doesn't open, how often do they open? I don't know if regular subscribers know that. If they're a blogger, they know that. But if they're just a regular person, which we love regular people, we can tell if you choose to do that. I don't spend a whole lot of time on it. So I always look to see when you get, I don't know if you want me to tell you who I'm on, but I know this is true of all email.

I'm with Mailer Lite. It's the third different email service provider I've used and I really, really liked it. But so I get an email every morning, you know, here's who's subscribed. And so I always like to see if I chance that somebody actually knows. Most of the time it's not,

but you can check your statistics and stuff. So it's wonderful when somebody emails you back and say, oh, I love that or that article is great or thank you so much or you know, what about this? And, but if they don't, if they're opening and they're reading and you're providing extra value, then you've done your job. Absolutely. And I'm so glad that you said that, that how important email marketing is and that's across the board. It doesn't matter what you're blogging Absolutely. And I'm so glad that you said that, that how important email marketing is.

And that's across the board. It doesn't matter what you're blogging about. It really is a crucial part of the blogging journey and being successful. And in our opinion, we've talked about that more and more and more here on the podcast because we do really think that that's a foundation that we can't miss. And I've had the question from people like, do people actually still read emails or whatever, but they do. They really do. And we can't always be certain that somebody's going to see our content on social media. You don't even know if you're going to be able to be on social media. I was on somebody's email list. I'll use this as a story here. This weekend I got an email from a

person that I follow on social media and I am also on her email list and she's been building her social media following for I think 10 years. She said had over 200,000 followers and she woke up and it was gone, completely gone. And the only way I knew that her community was gone is because she emailed about it and she doesn't have as many on her email list. But I mean, she still had like 70,000 people on there, which is amazing. But it was just insane to me that like that can still happen. And so I don't really care what niche you're in or what you're talking about growing that email list and building that email list, I think is good advice for anyone listening because yes, you can still wake up and your social media can be gone for whatever reason, which is unfortunate

because we do really rely on people connecting with our content to grow no matter what we're talking about. We need people to click over to our blogs and engage with the content. And so anyway, that's our soapbox. Email marketing is our soapbox. Well, the nice thing about email marketing is it allows you to add extra value that is not on the blog. I know I send out a newsletter every Monday to my entire list and I always have an extra home decor tip.

And it's really sometimes like almost writing another blog post. There's like images or anything. And I didn't do a project, but it's just from my experience, things I read. So there's extra value there, but it also allows you to, to nurture your list and give them more than what you get on the blog. That's the whole purpose of trying to get them over. But the other thing is people don't often realize you can monetize your email. I was going to ask you that.

I was going to ask you how you did that in specifics. Since you are focused on that, do you do something different on your email list into those subscribers than you do like within blog posts? Yes. I actually have my, I send out two newsletters a week. One is to my general everybody list. And then I guess a couple of years ago, I started a newsletter just for other bloggers, similar to kind of what y'all do. And so that's the newsletter that I monetize more. It's a much smaller list, and that's okay.

But because I'm always listening to other more what you would call B2B, the SEO gurus, Pinterest managers, the email marketing people, all those people. So I do the same thing with that newsletter, but it's only talking about Pinterest, SEO, creating content, email marketing. I don't really get into social media on that. But so when I know that someone is promoting a course or launching a course that I can vouch for, and I'm an affiliate for them, I will include that. And I only do it for people that I know, I follow them, I trust them.

And yeah, they pay really well. Commissions, for every one of those that I normally, someone else would subscribe to or purchase or whatever, it would take me weeks to get that on Amazon because the payout is so much better. I do a little bit of affiliate marketing on, on the regular Monday memo, not nearly as much, although now that, and mostly that's because Amazon did not allow you to put links in email. Now you can. You can, you can put link to know it links in email. Now you can. You can put link to know it links in there. So on a few times I have added those. So we all have to remember affiliate marketing is

a numbers game. The more followers you have, the more you link to products, the more money you're going to make. And so I think people need to remember that email is another great marketing source. And it's fine if you're, I don't think, again, I don't think it matters what niche you're in because you could always say, well, I just got this fabulous new glue gun and here's a link to it.

Or I made this project and here's a link to it or I made this project. Um, and here's a link to that. Not, not nearly what's on a blog post. Cause you don't want to overwhelm your readers with, with affiliate links in, in an email. So, you know, just, just a few here and there. I don't make a huge practice of it. If you're a blogger or thinking about starting a blog, let's talk about

something crucial and that is email marketing. Email marketing is the backbone of building a loyal audience and growing your blogging business. And that's where ConvertKit, soon to be rebranded as Kit, comes in. ConvertKit has been the top choice for bloggers for many years who want to connect with their readers and turn casual visitors into dedicated followers. It has a user-friendly design, really powerful automation tools, and seamless integrations with a lot of things that bloggers are already using, making it perfect for bloggers at any stage. So why do we recommend Kit

here at The Ultimate Blog Podcast? Because it makes email marketing easy. It helps you craft beautiful, effective emails, manage your subscribers effortlessly and track your success with ease. If you are ready to take your email marketing to the next level, check out Kit, formerly ConvertKit, and see how they can help you build a thriving blog. We believe that every great blog starts with a great email list and Kit is our number one recommendation. Click the link in our show notes to learn more about ConvertKit soon to be Kit today. Hey there Ultimate Blog Podcast listeners, if you want to take your blogging skills to the next level, we want to invite you to join our

newsletter community today. In the newsletter, you are want to invite you to join our newsletter community today. In the newsletter, you are going to get exclusive tips and tricks and insights delivered right to your inbox that are designed to help you grow your blog and connect with your audience. Don't miss out on this opportunity to elevate your blogging journey just by opening your email. Sign up today for our free newsletter by going to theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash newsletter and we can succeed together. We can't wait to see you in the community. I'm glad we've really touched on the importance

of the email list and I would love for you to share a little bit about how you grow your email list because I was taking a look around your blog and you've got some really awesome things that you offer to people to incentivize them to sign up. So can you talk a little bit about how you use like those free offers to get people to sign up for your email list? Well basically you come up with an idea and I will say I have a little fairy who helps me. My older daughter is an instructional design and that's her thing. And so this past January, February, I would

send her texts and stuff and she would make them into, you know, the really cool things, much cooler than I could because I was just learning Canvas and she really knew it. So some of the newer ones that I have are ones that she did, but there's ones that I did back before. In fact, one of the things that I on my my to-do list is to update my printables page. But I think it's really important to market those. If you want to call them freebie, opt-in, whatever you want to call them, they're all the same. So like at the very top of my home page, there's a banner across the top that has an opt in.

And then in the middle of the home page, there's one that has more than it's an image that you can sign up for. So I think at least two or three places on your home page, if you have a sidebar, those are other places to promote. Signing up for your email, whatever thing you're promoting at that time, put it in the middle of a blog post if it applies to that particular blog post.

To give an example, I have one about how to style a coffee table. So it's in the body of several posts that apply to styling a coffee table. So it's in the body of several posts that apply to styling a coffee table. But it's also on my printables page. It's not the one that I'm promoting right now on my homepage, but you just have to, it's like anything, you have to promote it. And it has to, ideally, every single blog post would have some kind of printable thing. Because it's, again, a lot of things, it's a numbers game and you just have to produce. But they have to be good, whether it's a one, it should be a one page, a one page cheat sheet, a one page tip sheet, a one page guide thing. From what I'm reading, the days of these multi-page guides and multi-page eBooks are phasing out a little bit.

People want something easy. They want something quick. If it's a checklist, cheat sheet, tip sheet, whatever you want to call it, but something easy, quick, visual. And whether you use Canva, PicMonkey, whatever, it's got to be content. It's about helping somebody. I have piles over here of things that I have printed out from other bloggers, primarily in the B2B, and when I have time, I'll sit there and read them. So you just want extra value for your reader.

Yeah. I think what is important too is that you're always learning, whether you're consuming the content of a blog or whether you are a blogger, it's always a space that you can learn and grow. And I love your attitude about it, Carol. I remember when we first talked and I feel like you're just very like matter of fact with that and I appreciate that so much that yeah, I mean part of blogging is you just continue to learn and that's the fun part and it's it doesn't need to be frustrating for all of us that we have to continue to learn different things or pivot a little bit and I don't know just in the moments that we've been able to spend talking that's just been really encouraging to just hear your, to hear your, the way that you approach it and that it's an exciting thing and it's something

that you get to do instead of something that you have to do. And I think that that mindset shift is really powerful in the blogging space. And so I kind of want to shift gears a little bit and ask some questions that somebody might be thinking if they are considering starting a home decor blog. And I think one of the biggest questions that I have, and I think the others probably do as well, is in regards to home decor or fashion, I have to ask myself, is it expensive to get that kind of started? Because if you're having to decorate different things, how do you manage that? That's just kind of started because if you're having to decorate different things, how do you manage that? That's just kind of a thing I've always wondered. Do you buy a

whole bunch of stuff and return it or what? I'm asking very honestly here, but how do you do that? How do you afford the front end investment on that? Because we mean, we're going to assume that like you already have your blog set up because there's obviously like, you know, things that go with setting up a blog and all that. But like to create the content that you need for your blog, how do you manage that financially before, especially before you're making money? Well, in home decor, and this is something that I do and I see other really good home decor bloggers, we're always telling people, use what you have, recycle things, reuse them, move things from one room to the other, paint something.

So that has a lot to do with it. We are not on HGTV. We don't have a budget like that to do big reveals or anything like that. When that comes about in your normal thing, like we got new living room sofa and two new chairs about a year ago, and it totally changed how our living room looks and how I can do decor around that. And so I've mentioned that a lot. And of course I did, I think, two or three different blog posts that here's what I've done. So it does happen occasionally. Okay. Where I spend my money on, as far as things like that,

on as far as things like that are DIY supplies so I can create something pretty to put on my coffee table or the mantle or whatever. How to make a banner, how to make a wreath, how to make all this. And again, I encourage my readers to always think of how to reuse something, how to recycle something. I think my blog post on Tuesday was all about how to recycle things for fall. So that helps, but yes, it is hard when you are not making any money to start out because you are spending money on setting up your blog, your domain, whoever your host is. If you spend money on getting someone to help you design the blog. Yes, it's like starting any business.

It takes capital. It takes some money to get going. Okay. And then I know once I started having steady income from ad revenue, I don't even really count my affiliate marketing. It goes into the same pot, but I don't even really count my affiliate marketing. It goes into the same pot, but I don't really depend on it. But yeah, you just have to watch things.

I have to be careful because I'll see someone else do a project. And I went, oh, I want to try that and I'll buy that. And then it sits there for a year and oh. Oh good, that happens to you too? Yes. A blotter friend of mine a year ago did a darling project about using air dry clay and I went, oh, I want to do that.

I bought it and when I got around to that project, last month. And well, I've done two now with it. So I fully expected it to go out and it'd be just dried up and couldn't use it, but it was fine. So you just have to be careful. I could probably do a month or two worth of projects from what's in my office without buying anything. But I'm like anybody else, I see a project and went, oh,

I want to try that. And I'll go ahead like everybody else. I use Amazon too. I'm real lucky where I live. I can be in a Joanne's or a Hobby Lobby in 10 minutes or Target in three minutes. And so you have to be careful and just watch your budget like anything else. And at some point, you're going to get to the point where you will have ad revenue, affiliate marketing, or one of my dear close blogger friends has an Etsy shop. And she said her Etsy is just shot up in the last month and she, she sells printables for two to five bucks. So that tells you a lot. I thought about doing that, decided that's not where I wanted to go.

But I can remember years and years and years ago, I decided I was going to be a Mary Kay consultant that sends you way back. And I can remember the kit was like 50 bucks. And I went, oh my God, where am I kit was like 50 bucks and I went oh my god where am I gonna get 50 bucks to buy this kit and so I told my husband I said can I borrow 50 bucks and he went for a makeup kit and I went yeah I made that up triple in my first demo party thing yeah but I also know if you're you're going to start a brick and mortar, where do you go get the money?

You borrow it. You go to a bank, you get a business loan. I'm not suggesting that somebody do that, but if you don't have another resource, it's not a bad way to do it. If you're committed and you can pay it back, you can get interest-free credit cards through your bank and you have a year to pay it off. Well, you should be able to do that in a year. I'm not a financial person, but I'm just saying there are ways, but watch your money, okay?

Like anything. Yeah. your money, like anything. Yeah, I think you give great perspective that it is a business and starting a business, that requires an investment of some sort, but being really responsible with that investment, I think is really good advice. I think another thing that people who are just starting out would want to know is, does anybody even care or am I qualified to share my creations, you know, on the internet? Who am I to do this? And you said you started out, your background is in food, you have a culinary certificate, but you decided to go more into an area that

you were passionate about with the home decor and DIY, how can somebody know whether or not they have the right to go into that space and create a blog and if anybody will even listen, I think it's a little bit of that imposter syndrome. Is that anything that you've ever dealt with and how did you overcome it? I didn't even think about that in the beginning, to be real honest.

I don't know, you just say, hey, I can do this. Once I knew what a blog was and I was really late to the game as far as what is a blog. I wasn't even on Pinterest until like 19, alright, 2015 and only because my older daughter kept saying, mom, you need to start a blog. And I was like, I'm too busy for that. I don't have time for that. I don't even know what a blog is. And then I saw it and went, I could have done that, you know, not knowing how much there is to it. There's a lot of moving parts as we've we've talked about. But I think if you

enjoy doing something, whether it's repainting furniture or making pretty wreaths or cooking or gardening or whatever it is, if you do have a passion for it you can always learn more. Okay? I have no formal home decor training whatsoever. I would say 95% of home decor bloggers don't. Okay. There are some great ones to do, heaven tier design backgrounds and by training, but most of us don't. It's something we enjoy. We like, maybe we've read every shelter magazine on the planet.

We have always enjoyed rearranging our furniture or we enjoy sewing pillows or whatever it is. And you just do it. To me, that's sort of the easy part of blogging is the creating. It's the technical side that will have us pulling our hair out. But again, there's plenty of resources. There's free resources. You can Google it. You can look on Pinterest. There's always some way to find the information you need. So I would say to anyone who is hesitant

because they don't think they're cute little project that they made that everybody loved at Thanksgiving, is it good enough to be on the internet? Don't worry about it. Just go for it. Just put it out there and make another one and you'll get better and you're better. I know one thing that most bloggers that we all joke about is when we look at blog posts that we wrote five years ago, seven years ago, we look at our photography. That's the one that just goes, Oh my God, I can't breathe. And so you'll learn, you'll get better.

Just listen to the experts. And, and I know there's a lot of expert experts and then there's maybe not so many good experts. But find the people that you can really trust. That's one of those things I love to share on my blogging bulletin newsletter, is these are people that I listen to, I trust them, or I wouldn't pass their information on to you.

So I just say to someone, if it's something you love and you enjoy doing, go for it. You don't have to spend a whole lot of money to get a blog going, but you will. I mean, you will need to spend some money upfront, but that's why we used to call it hobby blogging. It was a hobby. It's an expensive hobby. Yeah. One other question I have for you, Carol, you've mentioned it a couple times and I'm just curious, you've mentioned community, you've mentioned other bloggers that you've connected with. How important has being part of a community been to your journey, you think? Do you think that that's helped you stay on this path and have the mindset that you do?

And how did you get plugged in with a community? I think community is really important because blogging can be kind of lonely. You're in your own house, you're by yourself, you don't, you're not gonna have a team until some people who are huge bloggers, they may have a VA or they may have something good. It's a pretty solitary, it can be sort of lonely deal.

So I think community is great. The summer of 2015, when I decided, okay, I'm gonna do a blog. And I had no idea what I was gonna do. This is when I thought I was gonna be a food blogger and just accidentally found out about a blog I was going to be a food blogger and just accidentally found out about a blog conference that happened to be in Atlanta where both my daughters live. And I went, oh good, I'll just stay with one of them. No big deal. And so that's the first

time I ever met another blogger and I met 400 of them. And so that is where you get a lot of knowledge at conferences. And I encourage you to go to conferences. I would tell anyone out there how helpful they are. I know bloggers who have never, they've been blogging for years and years and years and have never been to a conference. I've made so many great friends. The other way is just Instagram, I think is a good way. Facebook is a good way. That is true social media. At least you can DM, or you can reach out to other people. Hey, I saw your blog and I really like it. I'm starting a blog. Do you have any suggestions or things like that? On Facebook, there's great Facebook groups to get into. I'm in, I don't know how many I'm in.

There's also things called masterminds. I don't know how that name got started, but that can be a very small group of people or it can be a larger group. I think you could get lost if you're in a mastermind with people, there's too many people. I think it's helpful to be in those with people or maybe a few steps ahead of you.

Not so far ahead of you that they're way over your head, but I'm in, I think I'm in three masterminds right now and some have a focus. I'm in one that strictly we talk about Pinterest, one that's real general, one that sometimes has guests, one that doesn't. But I would encourage anyone to reach out to other bloggers, leave messages on their social media. If it's a blogger that you really, really like their blog,

subscribe to their blog. Then you'll get on a weekly basis, you'll see what they're blogging about. There's nothing wrong with getting inspiration from other bloggers, we all do. I mentioned that air dry clay project. If I hadn't seen that on my friends and Pinterest and so forth, I wouldn't have really known anything about it.

So if somehow you find out that there are bloggers in your community, reach out to them. Hey, can we meet for lunch? I can't tell you how many times I've done that. Now I live in a huge city, so it really doesn't matter the size of your community, but if you find out that there are other bloggers, I would reach out to them in a heartbeat. There's nothing like seeing people face to face. So have a cup of coffee.

I love that. I think community is important too. Jennifer and I both would agree with you on the conference comment about getting to a conference if you're able, finding one in your area if you can. They are just, they're a great time I think to just reconnect with your why and remind yourself why you're doing this in the first place too is when you're surrounded by other people who are in this space and doing this. Because like you said, it can be very solitary. And so having somebody that you can bounce ideas off of,

because sometimes you don't have somebody in your day-to-day life that blogs. And so it is something that you're kind of navigating on your own. So I think just finding that community is important. So I love that you mentioned it several times. So I just had to ask that. Well, Carol, I am so thankful that we had you on today. And I think that you have such a, I don't want to call it a different perspective. It's a comforting perspective to me about blogging and how if you want to do it, you should just do it and get started and bet

on yourself. If you don't think you can figure it out, you actually can. Not only that, but I really love your blog. Thank you. I love it too. I am excited to share it with our community. Can you please tell people where they can find you and learn more about what you are doing? Great. Thank you so much. That really means a lot. So the blog is

blueskyathome.com. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. I would love to have you subscribe to either one or both of the newsletters. You can email me at carol at blueskyathome.com. We try and make it as easy as we can for people. Yeah, we do. Well, thank you so much. Well, thank you. Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about Thank you. and review on Apple podcasts. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you next time.