WAHM Wednesday: Angela of Breastfeeding123

Blog Your Passion

This week on Work at Home Mom Wednesday we’re talking to a mom who launched a blog around her passion for breastfeeding. Angela White writes an informative and lively blog at Breastfeeding123.com.

Be sure to read to the end for some blogging freebies and recommendations if you would like to start a blog of your own or make more money from your existing blogging efforts.

1) How did you come to launch Breastfeeding123?

I took a strange journey to becoming a breastfeeding blogger!

I started a personal journal online in 2003. Through that community, somehow I ended up “friends” with a person who worked for a blog network — a collection of blogs on various topics.

From reading my journal, my friend knew of my passion for breastfeeding and my training to become a breastfeeding counselor, and when she became channel editor for the Health and Wellness Channel at b5media, she approached me about starting a breastfeeding blog.

Together we selected the domain name www.breastfeeding123.com and designed the header and colors. I wrote my first 10 posts before the blog launched on October 1, 2006. It has been very gratifying to take the blog from ground zero to over 50,000 unique visitors per month in two years!

2) Do you make money from your blogging efforts and how?

I make money from the blog in two ways: monthly pay from b5media based on the blog traffic (the more people visit my site, the better my pay!), and through an affiliate program with Amazon.com (a percentage of sales when readers click through a product link to buy something on Amazon).

I could certainly make more money had I set the blog up on my own and not through a blog network, but there are some advantages to a blog network too. I receive fantastic technical support and work with a great community of bloggers. I do not have to deal with a web host or advertising. That leaves me free to do what I like, which is focus on the writing in the little time I have in between caring for my three girls at home!

3) The issue of transparency is a big one for blogging moms. How transparent are you on your blog? What lines do you not cross?

This is definitely a big issue for me, and I struggle with it every day. I share a lot about myself. I am comfortable revealing my full name, occupation (lawyer in a former life!), the fact that I am a breastfeeding counselor, intimate details of my recent home birth, and day-to-day stories of breastfeeding in addition to the general breastfeeding information and news.

But I am very careful what I publish about my children. For example, I talk about how I nursed my first daughter for a long time, through my pregnancy with my second daughter, then tandem nursing both girls. I do not, however, talk about exactly how long my first daughter nursed, partly to protect her privacy and partly because I do not want to give people the impression that I think everyone should nurse that long. My goal is to support breastfeeding women for as long as they wish to breastfeed, be that a day, a year, or beyond. When a mother and child are ready to wean, I want to support that too.

I also consider each photo carefully before I publish it, keeping in mind how my child might feel about that picture being “out there,” and whether the photo might in any way compromise my child’s safety. A head shot of my baby is fine; a head shot of my oldest is not, unless she’s in her Halloween costume and isn’t so easily identifiable!

It’s a fine line, and it changes every day. I also respect the fact that other blogging moms are comfortable being more or less transparent than I am.

4) How do you come up with so many ideas for content when your blog revolves around just one main topic?

I gather content ideas in several ways: (1) personal stories, (2) Google alerts to breastfeeding news, (3) emails or comments from readers, (4) through my volunteer work as a breastfeeding counselor, (5) networking with other bloggers both in and outside my area of interest, and (6) using a feed reader to subscribe to other blogs (including yours!)

I give credit where credit is due, thanking and linking to a source when it is appropriate to do so. Networking with other breastfeeding and mothering bloggers is all part of the fun of blogging!

Thanks so much for sharing your story Angela, and for the great tips for blogging moms.

Now some blogging resources:

• Natural Moms Blogging Guide (ahem, written by yours truly, for those in the natural family niche)
• Profitable Mommy Blogging – a new podcast and blog dedicated to moms who want to earn money from their blogs
• Just Add Sweat guide on how to make money with a recipe blog (the principles are the same no matter what kind of blog you have)
• Blog Energizer – free goodies to help you brainstorm plenty of content ideas for your blog. Never run out of things to say!

NaBloPoMo #2