My Journey as an Influencer

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All opinions stated are genuine and my own.

Someone asked me to write a post about my journey as a blogger. It's been awhile since I've written anything at all even similar to that, so I agreed. Though I am not an influencer anywhere near Christina Calph's level of fame and fortune, I still enjoy my little corner in the influencer world. Some of you will already know the answers to the Q & A session below because you've been here since the beginning (thank you!). To others some things may be new. For me, it's something fun to do today. :)

Q. When you did you start the blog?

A. Mail4Rosey started in June of 2012.

Q. Why did you start the blog?

A. When I started the blog, there were so many people starting blogs too. It just seemed like a natural thing to do. I was reading blogs every day, and enjoying them, and I kept thinking it would be fun to make one of my own. I also really wanted to be able to offer readers giveaways, which was super popular when I began. One day, I sat down and researched how to create a blog, saw that it was fairly easy to do, and the journey (and the giveaways) began.

Q. What is the niche of your blog?

A. Everyone says you have to have a niche, but that is too constrictive for me (and probably why I will never be a gigfluencer who everyone recognizes and reads). :) Mail4Rosey evolved from being a personal journal of sorts, to a product review site, to a way to connect with people I've found online and enjoy reading and talking to, to what it is today, which is a conglomeration of all of the above, though not so much the journal anymore.

Q. What are your favorite things to write about?

A. It used to be family, hands-down. I love my family and they're easy to talk about, and based on the interaction and feedback, people enjoyed reading about them. But then all of the kids except one grew  up (and the youngest is not thrilled with getting his pictures taken anymore, lol), so I started instead to focus on product reviews and places to go. The travel section, which still has a permanent link on the blog, became my favorite section. I absolutely love to experience new places and writing about where we go is fun for me. I'd say that is what I most enjoy right now (although it's not been an area I could write about for the last year or so, due to the pandemic).

Q. Craziest thing you have been asked to review and did you do it?

A. There was a time when I was all engulfed in the frenzy of product review and I agreed to write about any and everything that came my way. At one point, I knew the UPS and FedEx drivers by name and they were delivering packages daily (sometimes multiple times a day). I agreed to review things just to be posting, and interacting, because I'd read you need to post every day to keep your readers. I later learned that was not true, but back then, who knew? I was reading so much advice on how to make a blog grow and that one often came up. So, I agreed to write about incontinence products. While there is a population of people for whom that would be helpful (my aunt at the time, and later my mom), I'm not sure it's why people wanted to read my blog. So that was probably the craziest. And yes, I did agree to do it; multiple times. 

Oh wait, there's one more (there's probably many more). When sponsors started to reach out to me to see if I would write about their products, I was enamored. Money and free products for just talking about it on my blog? Okay, count me in!! And I agreed to write about a jack hammer because you know, so many of you are clamoring to purchase one of those over here. 

Q. Do you do affiliate posts? 

A. After devling into them very lightly, I quickly decided not to mess with affiliate links. It's not the popular opinion, I don't think and I do see that it's great for so many. I've seen the success stories. But it's not my thing. I don't like sitting on pins and needles, watching the clicks to see how many people have visited an affiliate link just so I can get a few pennies (which is what it was for me, since my readership was just a few thousand at the time I experimented with it). That being said, one of the things I am loving right now is seeing the influencers (especially on YouTube) being approached to make their own products!! I've seen it for perfume, cologne and make-up and I think that's awesome. What a fun opportunity for those blogger/vloggers that probably began somehow with affiliate marketing.

Q. Your favorite thing about blogging?

A. The people who come to visit and stick around. I love them all! There are too many to name (but you know who you are!). I also love how a blog can evolve to what you want or need it to be.

Q. What advice would you give to people who want to start a blog? 

A. My advice would be to understand what you want to get from the blog. Whatever that is for you, stick true to it and follow through. I think all of the advice out there to be persistent, and just put one foot in front of the other, goes a really long way toward finding your way to a goal line.