Write about juggling your job and your kids

Starting up a blog is not an easy way to make money by any means, but by doing so it opens up a lot of doors for building up a side income later.  Knowing how to write to convey useful information and sell things to a market will put food on the table, even in very tight times.

Greg McFarlane, co-author of Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense and writer on the parent blog, calls a large swath of bloggers to the mat in a ProBlogger guest post about the effort that's required to put up read-worthy content.

He's a choosy reader, and presumably a very busy guy who doesn't appreciate having his time wasted, which is fine.  No qualms about that.  He likes writing that's to the point, and I suppose I do too.  But picking on career moms who blog about their job and kids borders on disenfranchisement:

There are too many homogenous bloggers living lives similar to yours and expressing like opinions for your blog to be noteworthy. Oh, you’re a mother who’s juggling child-rearing with holding a job? Congratulations. No one in the history of the universe ever had to sit in an office all day and come home to her kids before you did. Tell us more about how exhausted you are every evening, and what hilariously precocious thing your 4-year-old said that put a smile on your face and made it all worthwhile.

I guess he's not a fan of mommy blogs, is he?  (For the record, I don't read them much myself either, but that ultimately doesn't matter.)  But I doubt that mommy bloggers really care about what Mr. McFarlane thinks of their subject matter.  They may even have some words for him that they wouldn't repeat in front of their children.  It's also a little odd that in the very next breath he talks about the benefits of “bringing something unique, whatever that might be.”  How can a mom blogging about her job and kids not be unique?  Lastly, it's a cheap trick to trivialize something with which one has no direct experience.  If he was once a career mom, then, well, he's got me, and I'll gladly eat my words. 🙂

If you're blogging about such matters (or other similar common-ground matters) that's awesome.  Keep it up!  Keep in the habit of writing.  The more you do, the easier it gets, and if you're actively learning about your writing and your style, the better you'll get.  Here are several reasons why starting up (and continuing) this kind of blog is a good thing:

• There are still a lot of people who won't start one at all. Just starting one up puts you in the minority.  The technical barriers to entry are getting lower every day, but psychological barriers aren't keeping pace.  Getting a blog up and running on any topic at all is a significant accomplishment.
• It's your own content, not Facebook's. Starting up a blog indicates (or should) that you have somewhat of an idea how the web works and how you keep control (and profit) from your work.  (You didn't know that?  Well, it does!)  This isn't to say that if you only feel comfortable updating Facebook with your kids' antics that this is a bad thing; not everyone wants to be public about everything in their lives.  But if you realize that Facebook is slicing and dicing your personal information and the content of your status updates, and selling them in ways unimaginable to the highest bidder, then you're wise in trying to keep some of that revenue for yourself!
• It doesn't have to be the last topic you blog on. And starting up a personal blog will make the next one — should there be a next one — all that much easier, because you'll have one under your belt as well as all of the headaches that go along with maintaining a blog.  Plus, there's little easier than writing about something that you already know intimately.
• Despite naysayers, you may just end up with an audience anyway! Sure, there's a lot of competition.  Sure, lots of other people are writing about many of the same topics that you are.  But, in doing so, a bit of you comes out in the blog.  You'll connect with someone, possibly many someones.  What's uninteresting to one group of people will be interesting to others.
• Most importantly, it's empowering. A career mom is already empowered; I'm quite sure of that.  Getting yet another avenue of expertise and potential income?  Even better.  It's straightforward disaster preparedness: if something happens to your spouse, sure, it will hurt financially, but not nearly as much as if starting from ground zero.

Comments?  Poison darts? 😉