Reasons I Decided To Focus On My Lifestyle Blog

Magnify You Style’s ten year anniversary was April 23, 2022. This particular milestone made me think about how I got started. By the way, I almost didn’t graduate college. I completely forgot I had to do an internship. I spent winter break of my senior year trying to find an internship. By the end of January, I was a fashion blogger intern back on track for graduation. I loved my flexible intern schedule. My schedule was not time driven. It was task driven.

After four months of blogging for StreetVogue.com and social media management, I wanted to continue writing about fashion, beauty, and trends. Writing consistently and staying active on social media is time consuming, but it felt productive  to me. My first year of blogging was amazing. I was interviewing start ups, winning giveaways, and building my social media community. However, Magnify Your Style wasn’t paying the bills. So, I tried freelancing. Freelancing has its benefits and drawbacks.

Freelance Benefits

1. Digital and Print Media Companies foot the bill for a lot of things. For example, I used copyrighted images for free. Some companies pay monthly subscriptions to access copyrighted material and utilize editing software.

2. Editors manage and assign the workload. As writer, I spent less energy thinking of original ideas and more time producing content. Plus, they offered constructive criticism and helped me stay focused.

3. Writers learn basic coding, as well as, document and design. Not all companies utilize WordPress and Blogger. The finish product must have codes in bedded in the text for image, video, sound and page format. It was interesting to learn how much work WordPress was doing for me.

Freelance Drawbacks

1. High output does not garuntee profit. A novice writer is at the mercy of the company. Unpaid labor is common in this profession. There is value in a large audience. Writing and publishing your own content doest not garuntee someone will click, read, and share it. Also, most writers are paid per published word. Basically the writer doesn’t make a profit off their prep work. In my case, the research process takes more time than writing process.

2. Things don’t stay on the web forever. If a company is using a web domain like GoDaddy. They have to pay to maintain that website. If they decided to let the site fade into oblivion, your content goes with it. A business may decided to delete the blog portion of their website without notifying the writer. I put to much value in a hyperlinked portfolio. I could have saved the published pages as PDFs, printed them, and added them to a physical portfolio. In most cases, I did not.

3. You do not own the rights to the published content. If you agree to give the rights to the company, you cannot publish that post anywhere.  

Don’t Call it a Comeback

The drawbacks started out weighing the benefits. Freelancing started teetering towards a hobby. Looking back, I spent more time researching and writing for others than my blog. You all (readers) are the reason Magnify Your Style is still active. I paid my my domain (.com) fee every year, because viewers and visitors gave me a reason to maintain it.

Last summer, I had tough love conversation with my health coach, Wendy Longoria. I acknowledged that I was not even giving a quarter of myself to Magnify Your Style. I lacked a sustainable blogging schedule. Consistent content can be daily to quarterly. Also, I felt restrained by my initial goals for Magnify Your Style.

Truthfully, I missed the connections I cultivated during my active blogging years. I decided to commit to publishing one post a week. Some weeks are harder than others. In fact, I have about 15 draft posts waiting for a spark of inspiration. I take comfort in that backlog.

Slowly, I’ve gained back what I loved about blogging in 2012. I write about things I am passionate about. I am promoting other blogs on my social media accounts. As a result, 2021 was my best year for reader engagement! Seriously, I outdid 2012.

Thank you for reading about how my blogging journey started and why I returned! Your visits mean a lot to me. I appreciate the friends you bring with you.