Do you know what is very liberating? Deleting pictures you’ve had stored in your “To Be Blogged Folder” for over a year. Yes, I finally did it. I deleted pictures that I painstakingly styled, took and edited because I realized that if I hadn’t yet blogged about them, I likely never will, but more importantly, shouldn’t.

In the beginning of March, I had this great conversation in one of my favorite Mom Blogging Groups, Blog & Business: Moms Who Do It All with a Blogging pro Horling Wong. She shared with me some great advice, including THIS article about procrastinating, and why I’m likely not writing those posts. She has a lot of valuable insight worth reading about your “Golden Thread” and finding “YOUR Winning Formula” which you should definitely check out!

If you’re just joining in on this monthly income report series, my goal for 2016 is to expand this blog into a financial contributor so that I can stay home more and learn with my Hooligans.

I write 2 blogs, this mom blog {You’re here! Thanks!} and another blog for my career as a Wedding & Event Coordinator, which you can find HERE. This report is a combination of the two blogs.

To get the full rundown on my 2016 Game Plan visit my original Mommy Money on the Internet Post HERE.

The punch line for the year is to:

April enters…

The next step in my blog adventure, when considering how to grow it was applied to what the blogging world calls your “niche” which I can basically define as what you’re best at. When I looked at my blog from across the room…. There is no noticeable niche. The same thing applies to my other blog Green-Eyed Girl Productions {I’m a Event Coordinator for my own company by daylight and Mom Blogger by moonlight}

In fact, I realized it is a bit all over the place. And here’s why…

As a beginning {and naïve} blogger, I would jump on Pinterest and see all these great things that I would want to pin because they helped me. The natural instinct is to then think that I should be producing that content and pinning it too… because hey, it’s working for them!

Boy was I wrong… and you might discover this about your own blog too… prepare for a mind blow.

As it stood, my very broad niche could have been classified as “Momlife” which is very vague, and really solved no problems for subscribers. {light bulb} I know what you’re thinking, “What does she mean to solve a problem?”

Here’s how I now see it:

As a follower of my blog, you really had NO idea what to expect from me… one week it could be a recipe, a DIY, a Toddler School lesson and then all the sudden an organizing strategy. Which maybe you like the sound of that, but here’s the problem…

If you want subscribers to stay, and show up, you need consistency. If someone signed up thinking they were going to get recipes and then have a newsletter with a kid craft in it, they’re going to leave.

So how did I narrow my niche?

I thought of my blog going into a job interview {which you actually are every time you’re up in front of a potential subscriber}

Remember that age-old question, “What are your strengths?” Yes, that one. How would you answer it?

More importantly, I know what I wouldn’t say in the interview:

• NOT Cooking- I use my crock pot as means to a quick efficient system, not a fancy dinner.
• NOT Baking- Cookies are the extent of my oven usage post children.
• NOT Fitness- I work out by dragging my kids around the floor on a beach towel.
• NOT Home Improvements- Definitely no contractors or even DIY Weekend Warriors over here.
• NOT Home Interiors- Sure I can put things on a shelf nicely.
• NOT Beauty- I’ve used the same 3 products since high school.
• NOT DIY- Okay, so it turns out that even though I craft, A LOT I never actually blog about it…

I write these things above because I HAVE actually written blog posts about them ALL. And do you know what? They have the least amount of traffic. {big shock} But I took the time to write them, which gave me very little payout in return. I wrote them and posted them thinking I could sell the ideas of me being an authority or even a role model on these subjects, and here’s the kicker… I did it because these are the sort of posts I was seeing on Pinterest, that I liked.

Here’s the mind blow… are you ready?

Yes, so I’m over here slapping my own forehead for all the time I spent creating the perfect cookie recipe presentation post, when there are millions of cookie CHEFS out there doing it every day, with trained skills in cookie baking that I’m trying to compete with for pins… when in all reality, I don’t even care about cookies, nor did I ENJOY standing in the kitchen while making them. I was likely pacing wondering why I hadn’t yet organized my kitchen drawers….

So if you see a pin in your feed that sparks your interest, it doesn’t mean you need to create a post and pin about it too…

Here is what you SHOULD blog about…

So back to the above question, “What are your strengths?” What can I GIVE my readers? What do they NEED and expect from me?

• I’m good at taking big overwhelming things and breaking them down into manageable pieces.
• I’m good at creating systems throughout my house that promote efficiency and ease of use.
• I’m good at managing my toddlers’ behavior {probably because I have a Master’s Degree in Behavior Management, which I definitely wasn’t resourcing for those cookie posts |face slap|}
• I’m good at organizing clutter and giving everything a place.
• I’m good at finding ways to trick myself into being productive when all I really want to do is sleep.
• I’m good at teaching my children and inspiring their learning {also probably because of my education IN education, also not being used for cookie recipes}
• I’m good at gathering lots of little incomes to accumulate a handsome monthly income from my couch.
• I’m good at being thrifty, reusing to save money and being clever when it comes to an affordable solution.

However, not many of these topics are actually covered thoroughly in my blog. The few articles that DO cover these topics, are my VIRAL pins… seriously? Why did it take me this long to see that?

Clearly, these topics that I am good at are what my subscribers want to read from me. If you are subscribing to my blog it is because you want me to GIVE you strategies from my list of strengths so you can improve on weaknesses or solve your problems.

Looking at my top 5 subscribers {who open every email} they are moms, whom I know to need THESE problems solved. They’re so busy trying to raise their own Hooligans they don’t want a damn cookie recipe. They need help saving time and making money from home! NOW!

It is these moms hosting the interview for a personal assistant in their inbox once a week.

I have 4 opportunities a month to do my job I was hired for by each subscriber.

So the changes I made in April include:

1. Writing a post about easy Ways Moms can make Money from their Couch– guess what? This post climbed quickly into my top 10 all time read posts… from over 3 years of posts… I guess that’s what my people want to read!
2. I wrote a detailed post on a Toddler School Composting unit, which not only caught the eye of many parents, but also the book publisher and an education company impressed by my methods for toddler education. {Collaborations to come}
3. And in the last 2 weeks of April my page views were higher than my whole month of February!
4. I updated my Subscriber Sign Up Form to include my 3 determined niches so that subscribers can select what they want to read about when I send them a newsletter. {See Below}

Bottom Line: I went through and deleted all of my food pictures. Not only that, but I can now enjoy my meals a lot more and not try to take pictures with my cell phone for every step of making it, and making it look pretty on a plate. Other bloggers do that better. Now I can just eat.

My current Klout Stats:

 In Closing