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My wife just closed the books on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com for 2016 and I'm happy to say that I hit 2 major milestones this past year. In this episode, I go over in detail how I managed to make over a million dollars blogging and what's in store for 2017.
What You'll LearnKlaviyo.com – Klaviyo is the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store. Created specifically for ecommerce, it is the best email marketing provider that I've used to date. Click here and try Klaviyo for FREE.
Privy.com – Privy is my tool of choice when it comes to gathering email subscribers for my ecommerce store. They offer easy to use email capture, exit intent, and website targeting tools that turn more visitors into email subscribers and buyers. With both free and paid versions, Privy fits into any budget. Click here and get 15% OFF towards your account.
ReferralCandy.com – If you're already getting steady orders every month, adding a refer-a-friend program to your store can give you a new sales channel. And ReferralCandy is the best in the business. Click here and get a FREE $50 credit towards your account.
SellersSummit.com – The ultimate ecommerce learning conference! Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level BS, the Sellers Summit is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an ecommerce business. Click here and get your ticket now before it sells out.
Now I'm actually super excited to talk about Klaviyo because they are the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store and I actually depend on Klaviyo for over 20% of my revenues. Now you're probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another email provider. Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for ecommerce stores, and here's why it is so powerful.
Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they purchased which makes it extremely powerful. So let's say I want to send an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week, boom, let's say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they purchased, piece of cake, and there's a full revenue tracking on every email too.
Now Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I've ever used and you can actually try them for free at mywifequitherjob.com/Klaviyo, and the way you spell Klaviyo is K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again that's mywifequitherjob.com/Klaviyo.
Now I also want to give a quick shout out to Privy who is also a sponsor of the show. Now what's also cool about Privy is I use and rely on Privy for both my blog and my online store. Now what does Privy do? Privy is an email list growth platform, and they actually manage all of my email capture forms, and in fact I use Privy hand in hand with Klaviyo.
Now there is a bunch of companies out there that will manage your email capture forms, but here's why I like and chose Privy. Privy is easily the most powerful platform that I've ever used, and you can trigger sign up forms based on any primer that you desire. So for example let's say you offer free shipping for orders over $100 in your store, now you can tell Privy to flash a popup when the customer has $90 in their shopping cart to urge them to insert one more item in their cart.
Here's another cool case, if someone has item A in their shopping cart, I can easily tell Privy to display a special coupon code for that item or display a related item or offer. And in terms of email capture, I'm showing a different email lead magnet depending on what product a customer is browsing in our shop. So bottom line Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers, which I then feed over to Klaviyo to close the sale, so head on over to Privy.com/mywifequitherjob and try it for free, and if you decide that you need the more advanced features, use coupon code MWQHJ for 15% off. So once again that's privy.com/mywifequitherjob, now onto the show.
Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.
Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I have a very special guest and that special guest is actually me. Since my wife just closed the books on mywifequitherjob.com, I thought it would be good to kind of give a little recap of how I did and everything that I did this past year to reach the one million dollar mark, which is really cool.I hit two major milestones this year, so first one I just mentioned I made over one million dollars in revenue which is something that I never thought that I'd be able to do with my blog, with my store certainly but not with the blog for some reason because it still feels like kind of funny money to me in a way.
The second major milestone that I hit was that I finally quit my job after 17 years of working at the exact same company. Now out of both of those milestones I would have to say that quitting was actually more difficult to me than making the money, and the reason why it was so hard for me is you got to understand when you are at a company for 17 years you build a lot of these friendships, and my entire identity was carried along with my profession.
And here's the thing about me, I don't know if you guys know this about me but I've known that I've wanted to be an electrical engineer since the age 10. My dad was an electrical engineer and really bottom line as an Asian; I really had only three choices to begin with. I could be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer, so naturally I chose an engineer because my dad was one.
I've actually designed micro processors for over 20 years, and so a lot of my brain power over the years has been dedicated to designing micro processors, and if you've done anything for that long, you probably know that it's really tough to give something up like that, it was a part of my identity.
And here is the thing, so I was just up at my buddy's engagement, and one of his friends came up to me and asked me, "Hey what do you do for living? I had already quit at that point and honestly I didn't know what to say, am I a blogger, am I a writer, am I a podcaster, am I a conference thrower?
And so what I ended up telling that guy was, "I'm actually unemployed right now, and just kind of doing my own thing." The guy was like, "Oh man okay that's tough, if you ever need any leads or help getting a job, I can hook you up." I said, "Oh no, no, that's good, I'm just doing my own thing, it's not a big deal.
I ended up just feeling a little awkward at that conversation because in the old days I could just say that I was a hardware engineer, a micro process designer and that would be the end of the conversation, because no one would ever want me to go into more depth about the technical stuff. Now if I say I'm a business owner or a blogger or a writer, the follow on questions are, oh yeah what do you write about, what do you sell and what not.
To be honest sometimes I don't want to get into all that, and it was just so much easier back in the day just to say I'm an engineer, no one wants to know any more, and that's that. I did want to talk a little bit about what it's been like to quit, because it wasn't like an amazing thing when I first quit and perhaps it's because I was just kind of slowly leading up to that point.
I wrote a blog post back in June saying that I had quit my job, but that was actually slightly a lie. I did announce my resignation during that point, but the company gave me this really sweet offer to stay just two days a week, gave me full health insurance and there were some other line items to that deal which I don't want to disclose publicly, but in a nut shell it was an offer that I could not refuse, and so I stayed on working two days a week, and then I finally left cold turkey on October 1st.
It's just been okay, and one of the reasons why, and you guys might be thinking that I'm crazy for thinking this way, but I've got too much time on my hands right now. So right now I work until noon, I usually have lunch with my wife, then I usually work out in the afternoon, then I pick up the kids and that's it pretty much. There's just very little social interaction outside of Skype, I've got my Skype friends and that sort of thing.
What I found to be difficult about quitting is that it's really hard to stay motivated in a way. In the old ways when I worked my full time job and I still run my blog, my podcast, and my store, I only had like a really small amount of time to get my stuff done and I had to plan my day really carefully. Now that I have so much time, I don't feel like I have to plan anything and so big blocks of time can pass before you know it, so I've had to be a lot more diligent about planning my day.
But it has also allowed me to kind of figure out what makes me happy in life, and I'll probably get into a little bit more about that in a future podcast episode, but having all this time has caused me to think about a lot of different things and what actually makes me happy. Anyways I don't want to bore you with those details, let's go ahead and jump to the numbers real quick.
So revenues for my blog increased by 46%, as I mentioned before we hit one million dollars. February was the highest month where I made over $125,000 in a single month, the traffic to my blog increased by 15%, the profit margins for a blog of course are astronomical, 90 plus percent. I just want to say this, what I really love about blogging is that it's really highly scalable, and I can honestly maintain my blog in just 15 hours a week.
I've got it kind of down to a system, it takes me three hours to write a blog post, and I write one blog post per week. It takes me roughly two hours to put together a podcast, it takes me 10 hours roughly to manage my course and my email load and so overall it's very scalable, and that's what I like about blogging. Now what's funny about all of this also is I routinely get a bunch of entrepreneurs on my podcast and even though the blog is doing really well, I still have my insecurities so to speak.
Now I recently interviewed someone who is really high profile and if I told you who this person was you would instantly recognize that person, world renowned author. He basically flat out told me that my blog was just a job and not a business. At first I was going to argue with him and debate back and forth, but he is right in a way, the blog and everything I do that's related to the blog cannot function without me being there, like I got to be the one to write the blog post and that sort of thing.
Of course I can probably contract it out but it just wouldn't be the same if I wasn't putting out that content myself. So instead of trying to argue with the guy I just let it go because honestly at 15 hours per week it's not really a bad gig and a million bucks is nothing to sneeze at either. But anyways you probably noticed that the traffic to my blog went up only 15% and the revenue actually went up 46%.
For 2016 my intention was actually not to grow the blog that much. I was going to focus all my efforts on my ecommerce store and what ended up happening was I didn't end up focusing my time on my blog or my store all that much because I ended up working until October, that was kind of unplanned. But I did want to talk a little bit about how I did grow my blog that 46%, so one of the things that I did was I ran more webinars.
I just want to take a little bit of time to give a quick shout out to Grant Baldwin and Toni Anderson who kind of pushed me towards giving webinars a try because I did not want to give them at all. I can be someone anti social at times, I like to hide behind the computer and do coding, I don't really particularly like doing webinars.
The space for blogs is a little bit different because it's a little more off the curve and I can just talk about whatever, but I was reluctant to try it, but then Grant sent me this spreadsheet of all of his profits that he was making with his webinars, and then Toni kept nagging me to give it a try. Nagging is probably not the right word; she kept urging me to try because she knew that it would be big for me.
So I ended up doing one and I made $60,000 in 90 minutes of work, and then I just sat there I was like $60,000 in 90 minutes of work, all right, it's not bad, I can do these, I can do even once a month.
I want to take a moment to thank ReferralCandy for being a sponsor of the show. Now in this day and age word of mouth is a huge driver of business for most ecommerce stores, and the best way to amplify word of mouth marketing is through a referral program. And this is where ReferralCandy shines, with just a couple of clicks to the mouse you could add a referral program to your ecommerce store and reward your customers for telling their friends about your shop.
And this tactic works wonders, and in fact it is not uncommon to get a ridiculous return on investment. So for example Greats Footwear, who is a ReferralCandy customer is currently seeing a 20X ROI, and referral word of mouth marketing is also useful for building up your social media presence as well, because everyone is talking about your company with their friends on Facebook and Twitter.
And the best part is that ReferralCandy is a set it and forget it service, requires no technical setup and they are giving My Wife Quit Her Job listeners 50 bucks to try them out if you go to promo.referralcandy.com/steve, once again it's promo.referralcandy.com/steve to get a $50 credit to try out the service risk free. Now back to the show.
And I still don't completely enjoy doing them, so I just do them once a month, and what's cool about these webinars is that it's like instant cash, so during the month of November my wife told me that I was short of my million dollar goal by about $30,000, and I was like don't worry about it I'll just do a webinar. And so I just did a webinar a couple of weeks later and that webinar ended up doing $50,000 and so I hit my goal in early December actually.
Now the funny thing about webinars is I don't really know how they work. When I get on a webinar I'm certainly not an expert but it just converts so well, and I think it really has to do with like the real time and personal nature of giving a live webinar. I always stay on till the very end to answer as many questions as possible and for all of you guys who know me, I'm not really a sales guy, I'm not a sales person by any means.
So what's funny about all this also is I started having these successive webinars, and I ended up giving two speeches about webinars at FINCON and Digital CoLab which are two awesome conferences this past year. If anyone is interested about how I ran my webinars, I could be coaxed into doing a Facebook live session or even a podcast about it if you guys are interested. If you guys are interested leave a comment in the box for me.
The other thing that I did to grow my blog this past year is I ran a lot of Facebook ads. Now for all of you guys who aren't quite familiar with what I sell, I sell a course that retails for about $1300. Now no one is going to spend $1300 dollars with me on impulse, and you got to get people to like you, you got to get people to trust you. Very few people will actually even sign up for your email list unless they trust you.
And so what is started doing this past year is I started running ads to some of my best content. These are great blog posts that I had written in the past just to get a little bit of mind share and then I ran ads to these posts. When you ran ads to posts, it ends up being really cheap. Some of my best posts and ads, I'm paying like nine to 13 cents per click which is really good.
And then what I do, for all the people who actually land on that page and read the article, I retarget them to an email sign up page, and because they are already familiar with my work, they've read a blog post, they are much more likely to sign up for my email list and as a result I've been paying between one and two dollars per email sign up for those people who've actually experienced my content in the past.
I've also tried running ads straight to a sign up form but I end up paying a lot more money when I do that, sometimes on the order of five or six dollars. So just by sending people to content first and then a sign up form, it ends up being cheaper and much more effective. So right now I'm not really scaling these ads, but I plan to this year in 2017, and I've got a strategy plan for this year that I'll probably talk about publicly a little bit later once I've implemented it and once I know that it actually works.
Ultimately the key to all of my course sales is email. Email is the backbone of my entire blogging business. Now for all of you guys who are unfamiliar with that, I offer a free six day mini course on how to start your own ecommerce store, and if you're curious right now you can head on over to mywifequitherjob.com, there is sign up form right there on the front page and I'll deliver that course to you via email.
Now I've given a bunch of talks about my email sequence in the past, but I'll just quickly summarize a little bit. The first nine lessons of that free six day mini course are hard core teaching lessons and I actually don't hold anything back. I teach you everything that it takes to get started in ecommerce, so it's a 30 email sequence, and the remaining 20 or so emails are what I call get to know Steve type of emails.
What's funny about this is I have separate emails targeting females and separate emails targeting males in particular to just kind of get them to jump on the Steve band wagon so to speak. So for example for the women I have an email that talks about when we had our first born and she couldn't stop crying. I talk about the story how I felt so prepared for my first baby.
I was reading all these baby books and I just got really cocky about being able to calm down a baby, but when my baby girl finally came out, she ended up crying uncontrollably and all that book knowledge that I had amassed was worthless. I ended up [inaudible 00:17:57] the baby at last and buying all these toys to help pacify my child, and the point of that email of course is to say that no matter what you read online, and no matter how many books you read, you're never going to be prepared to start your own business and that's why you need extra instructions to sign off for my class.
So that email actually goes put to the women. For the guys I have a post on six pack abs and comparing getting six pack abs to starting a business, so it's really funny. So for both of those posts I always get a lot of comments on the six pack one from guys and a lot of comments from the women about the baby post.
For those later 20 emails I also do a bunch of case studies with my students and needless to say that this email sequence converts really well to get people to actually sign up for my class. Now one other thing that happened this past year which was just really incredible for me was on May 19th, 2016 I started my own conference which is called the Sellers Summit.Here's the thing about the Sellers Summit, I had always wanted to be a keynote speaker, but no one was willing to let me become a keynote at any of their conferences, and so instead of kind of begging people to let me be their keynote, I decided to start my own conference instead. And once again I want to give a special thanks out to Toni Anderson for pushing me to do this, and she is actually a partner with me in launching this conference.
Anyways this conference was actually the most fun that I've ever had outside of my wedding reception just in case you're listening Jen, and I had a blast and I decided to throw another one and I'll probably do a separate FB live on this. But the reason I started the conference of my own, and there are other ecommerce conferences out there, it's mainly because I was just tired of conferences with just inspirational speakers.
I wanted to start a conference that was more strategy focused, based on strategies and low level tactics and kind of avoid all the inspirational stuff, because I don't know if you guys know my personality but I don't need to be inspired, I just need to learn. And I was just betting that a bunch of other people out there had the same philosophy. And so as a result, I only get hardcore ecommerce [inaudible 00:20:17] to actually talk in my conference.
These are entrepreneurs who are actually getting their own hands dirty. There is a huge difference in actually doing something versus having high level knowledge about something or even contracting stuff out to other people. I like to get speakers who are kind of deep in the trenches and doing everything and getting their hands dirty. And so the summit was actually designed to provide very actionable content.
The other thing that I was just kind of tired about other conferences was going to like multi thousand person events, like you can get really lost in the crowd when there are just so many people there. And so I purposely made my conference very small and intimate, so I could actually form some meaningful, intimate relationships, and so those are some of the cool philosophies why I decided to start my own conference besides wanting to be a key note of course.
I just want to give a quick shout out; tickets are on sale right now for the Sellers Summit. Go to sellerssummit.com, the price is actually going to go up on February 1st, so be sure to get your tickets before the price goes up.Now the other thing I did, or I should say that I'm constantly doing is I am always improving my class. Now here's the thing about courses, if you don't update them, they're going to get stale and what's ironic is that the more work that I put forth on improving my ecommerce store; it actually improves my training class because it creates a lot more material for me to teach.
And so I spend portion of the year improving my online store and I'm not going to go into too much depth about what I do for my store because incidentally the next podcast is going to go over the year and recap for my ecommerce store. But I've been updating my course constantly with all the latest things that I've been doing to improve my online store.
So a couple of these things are I completely revamped the email autoresponders for my store, I experimented with a lot of Facebook ads for my store, I talked a lot about conversion optimization, I invited more guests to the class, industry experts to come talk to the students about areas of their expertise. I also sent out the survey and was very pleasantly surprised by the results.
Here's what's really cool, 56% of the students who have been with me a year and launched their own product are now making at least four figures per month, and 9% of these students are making more than $50,000 a month in revenue which is really awesome, it makes me feel really good, I'm going to try to get some of these students to come on the podcast to talk about their experiences.
You probably have already heard from Jen Depaoli who runs showercurtainhq.com, you may want to check out that episode if you haven't listened to it, but right now I have two other students lined up to tell their stories as well. So given my results in blogging and the fact that I made over a million dollars this past year, does that mean that you should go out and start blogging or should you start an online store, and I get this question a lot because I've been successful in both areas.
The answer I always give is it depends on your long term goals. I'm going to be upfront and say this, blogging is a slog, it actually took me three years before I made any sort of meaningful money with it and it can be hard to do something for three years and not have anyone really reading your or making any money, but it's really incredible once the money does start rolling in because it ramps up really quickly.
Contrast that with my store. I actually ended up making six figures right away, but in the past couple of years the growth has slowed. It's still in the double digits, we've maintained double digits since 2007, but it's not as high as the blog. So bottom line if you want to make money sooner rather than later, you want to sell something online, and so if you want to make money soonest, go with the online store because you have a product you're putting it up there and someone is exchanging you money for an actual product.
But if you have a three to five year time horizon I would say I would start a blog, maybe a podcast and really build your own personal brand. So of the two businesses that I had today I feel like the blog has much higher barriers to entry because no one can take my identity away from me. I've built up a personal brand, and this is despite the fact that my mom constantly asks me, why are people reading your stuff? I told her my results actually, I told her that I did a million dollars, and she is like what, why are people buying your stuff? And so at least now it's gone from why are people reading your stuff to why are people buying your stuff.
In the Asian land that's like a huge upgrade in terms of place. Anyways that's pretty much all I had to say about how my blog performed in 2016, going forward I don't know if I want to take on any additional products, projects just yet. I do have a software product that I'm hoping to release later on this year, but for now I'm just going to focus on making my existing properties better.
Hope you enjoyed that solo episode. Next week I'm actually going to be talking about how my ecommerce store performed in 2016, and discuss all the changes that I made to make that happen and grow that business as well. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode147.
Once again I want to thank privy.com for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use to turn visitors into email subscribers, therefore email capture, exit intent, and site tagging tools to make it supper simple as well. Now I personally like Privy because it is so powerful and you can basically trigger custom purpose for any primer that is closely tied to your ecommerce store. So if you want to give it a try it's free, so head on over to privy.com/mywifequitherjob.
I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for ecommerce merchants. Now you can easily put together automated flows like in abandoned cart sequence, or post purchase flow or win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on auto pilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/Klaviyo, once gain that's mywifequitherjob.com/Klaviyo.
Now I talk about how I use these tools Privy and Klaviyo on my blog, and if you're interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send you the course right away, thanks for listening.
Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve's blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.
I Need Your Help If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, then please support me with an iTunes review. It's easy and takes 1 minute! Just click here to head to iTunes and leave an honest rating and review of the podcast. Every review helps! Click Here To Enter My Monthly Podcast Giveaway Contest Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.
In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!
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We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.Utah mother Stephanie Nielson is a pioneer in the world of blogging.
According to "History of mommy blogging," a web page created by university communications professor Elizabeth Kerns, fewer than 25 blogs existed at the turn of the century. The term "mommy blog" is believed to have originated when a single mother named Melinda Roberts launched her blog, "TheMommyBlog.com," in April 2002. Nielson was not far behind, publishing four blog posts in May 2002.
Six and a half years later, Nielson was involved in a plane crash that burned over 80 percent of her body. In the days, weeks and months following her accident, readers of her blog from all over the world united in sharing their love and appreciation by writing in and sharing their favorite posts.
Courtesy of Stephanie Nielson
Nielson attributes a significant part of her recovery to people she's never met.
"I have been so blessed by other people who I don't even know, who when I went through my accident were there for me, just strangers," Nielson said. "And their words of comfort and kindness and prayers were just a crazy world that I didn't even know existed and I loved it. I thought, 'What if there was more of this? This goodness and this sisterhood that I feel?'"
Blogging has created a worldwide community, and many of the key members are, like Nielson, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But with all the goodness and sisterhood Nielson experienced, there is also the question of whether family-centered blogs create a false perception of reality. It's a question that was raised in a recent post by a writer critical of mommy blogs, and a concern that is shared by some prominent bloggers. But these successful writers also know how the medium can be a force for good and have insight on how readers can avoid the pitfalls of comparison.
The rise (and fall?) of blogging
There has certainly been more blogging since 2002. At 11:15 a.m. MST on the day of the 2017 presidential inauguration, over 2.2 million blog posts had already been posted for the day, according to Worldometers.
Blogging has introduced women all over the world to each other and to new ideas.
"In the old days, it used to be that you had to learn from other moms in your own little circle, but now you can find all of these wonderful ideas from Australia and from England," said Shawni Pothier, whose blog, 71toes, has documented her family's life over the past decade.
There are fashion blogs, lifestyle blogs, food blogs and photography blogs. And while blogging has grown to be a full-blown industry of its own, Mormon mommy bloggers continue to thrive.
Blogging may be the perfect hobby for Mormon mothers, a demographic that is encouraged to keep a journal and to share the things that are most important to them. A wide-range of people are drawn to their blogs and the attraction to them has not gone unnoticed.
"Atheist followers say the attraction is the escapism of picture-perfect lives filled with wholesome values and DIY crafts, while scholars say various tenets of Mormonism — sharing the faith, the value of creativity and the importance of family — make the religion a perfect fit for the blogging medium," the Toronto Star's Katrina Clarke wrote last year.
Earlier this month, these types of blogs came under fire when a male LDS blogger named Mike Thayer posted an article titled "Utah: Lifestyle Porn Capital of the World," in which he compares their "picture-perfect lives" to porn, both of which he argues create "unrealistic expectations."
Thayer illustrates his point with the example of a blogger who invited a friend over to help her make elaborate cookies. When they were done, the blogger retrieved her daughter from the nanny in order for the mother and daughter to pose for a photo with the cookies, as if no assistance was needed.
"It isn't real," Thayer said. "Watching all of this is addictive and it sets unrealistic expectations for marriage and life that can lead to feelings of disappointment and inadequacy."
But disappointment and inadequacy are not what Nielson hopes to convey. And as a mom who really does enjoy making cookies with her kids, it hurt Nielson to read Thayer's description of homemaking skills as fake and a false idea.
"I am that mom that goes in the kitchen with her kids and makes the treats," Nielson said. "I am the mom that likes to make things and do things with my kids ... and who loves every second of it. I mean it's hard of course but I enjoy doing that and I'm really good at it so why don't we do things that we're really good at and enjoy that?"
Blogging: A full-time job
More than 88,000 Instagram users follow Utah native Corrine Stokoe, who now lives with her family in southern California. Stokoe's blog, Mint Arrow, shares deals on high-end fashion and works with companies like Anthropologie and Nordstrom.
Courtesy of Corrine Stokoe
And while Stokoe believes it was in poor taste to compare blogging to pornography, she agrees that "consumerism can get totally out of control." You see, Stokoe didn't set out to become a professional blogger.
After the birth of her first child, Stokoe struggled with postpartum depression. At the insistence of family and friends that she find ways to get out of the house during the cold Utah winter, Stokoe began pushing her baby in a stroller around Target or the mall. She couldn't afford many of the things she would find, even when they were on sale. But when she found a good deal, she would post a picture on her personal Instagram account. Her friends and family loved it and encouraged her to start a blog.
"It kind of just started because it was something I was doing anyway to entertain myself for fun," Stokoe said. "It's something that I never would've envisioned in the beginning, but it just kind of took on a life of its own."
As Stokoe's blog began to take off, her husband lost his job and couldn't find another job for several months. She worked hard to support her family in the meantime.
Today, Stokoe's blog employs Stokoe, her husband and a team of people who help her. It is a full-time job, and Stokoe treats it as such.
"I want people to know that I'm a real person," Stokoe said. "I want them to feel like if they see me in public somewhere they're going to get exactly what they think they're going to get when they're reading what I've written online or reading an Instagram post because I want to be me. But at the same time, it's my job to put together a professional product when I'm working with a sponsor. ...just like anyone else wants to show up and do a good job at their job, that's what I'm doing too."
On the other hand, Brooke Romney has never made money off of her blog. She writes for businesses and does speech writing but after looking into the possibility of monetizing her blog, Romney decided she didn't feel comfortable pushing her blog in that way.
Still, she echoes Stokoe's sentiments.
"You have to decide if you're really looking at things as a business or if you're looking at it as actually being someone's life," Romney said. "And I think that's when it almost needs to be put on the consumer of the media, 'This isn't real.'"
Courtesy of Brooke Romney
Romney, a frequent contributor to DeseretNews.com, points out that it is natural for women, and men for that matter, to "want to put our best face forward."
"I take pictures in two places in our home because those are the only decent looking spots right now," Romney said. "I post photos that are flattering to me, just like most people do. I would do that whether I had 50 followers or 50,000. Now, if you are making big bucks by promoting items in a beautiful setting with flawless photography, then I think there is a lot more pressure. I knew I would never be able to keep something like that up, so I have sacrificed popularity and profit, but I have been able to keep my sanity. Some people can do both, which is awesome."
Pothier, for one, appreciated Thayer's article.
"I think it's a great article to get people thinking," said Pothier, who even has a disclaimer on her blog to remind readers that they are viewing a filtered version of her life. "Because I think there is some responsibility on both sides. I think bloggers could be more real in things they do but I also think that readers have a responsibility to kind of turn off things that are going to make them feel uncomfortable or feel lacking in any way."
The responsibility
Brooke White finished in fifth place on the seventh season of "American Idol," and has maintained a strong social following in the nine years since through various mediums. White is not from Utah and doesn't currently live in the Beehive State, but she is a mother and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And she "understand(s) where some of these people are coming from and it's just gone to an extreme level.
Courtesy of Brooke White
"I do understand that it's a business and at the same time it would be great to see some more transparency with content creators: to give credit to the person who helped you create the recipe or maybe sometimes to let your following know that 'Yes, I have help because this is a job and I need help so I have a nanny'... It would be beautiful and wonderful if people took away some of the illusion behind it," White said.
Consumers, however, should beware of continuing to follow accounts that make them feel inadequate, Romney and White agree.
"I think it's OK to look at someone who has a talent for decorating and think, 'I love that house. This looks amazing,'" Romney said. "I think appreciating someone else's talents is just fine but I think wanting to be that person or considering your life to be less because you looked at someone's post, maybe then it's time for that person to self-reflect and take a few of those accounts off of their Instagram."
"If something is bringing you down and causing you to feel dissatisfied with your own personal life, you do need to unfollow and I think we need to be more intentional," White said. "At some point we've got to be more intentional with what we do and with what we consume and what we create."
And if unfollowing accounts that cause negative emotions is not enough, it may be time to consider a "media fast." Dr. Lexie Kite, co-director of Beauty Redefined, says research has shown the benefits of "media fasts," including social media, for at least three days.
"Refraining from all that media consumption quickly makes us more sensitive to messages that leave us feeling more self-conscious, anxious, and in need of 'fixing,'" Kite said. "Studies show that for most women and girls, time spent on social media leads directly to feelings of body shame, low self-esteem, loneliness and depression."
Comparing vs. connecting
White still remembers sitting in the audience during rehearsals of "American Idol" and wondering with tears in her eyes why she was there. She listened as "Olympic-type singers" performed and she was "a very simple singer/songwriter." She felt she would never be good enough.
And then one day a very clear thought came to her: "Stop competing and comparing and start connecting."
Courtesy of Brooke White
"I feel like the same can go on in this community where we're creating connections each day with each other on the internet because let's be real, he's (Thayer) totally right," White said. "'Between breastfeedings and diaper changes,' women are turning to the internet to connect. ... Let's wake up and let's be intentional about the way we're using this and how we want to feel and how we want to make other people feel. For me, my goal is to connect.
"If we can succeed in creating a more connected environment as opposed to a competitive or perfectionist environment then I think we're using it for its best, highest good. As women, if we can aim at connection as opposed to competition or comparing then we all win and we can all look at each other with more grace and more enthusiasm and kindness and instead of being depressed, to be inspired."
Kite said there is power in this idea.
"We are more powerful together when we aren't comparing ourselves to each other and judging ourselves and others harshly for how well we decorate the world. We can stop comparison in its tracks when we recognize what we are doing and instead show compassion to ourselves and the women to whom we are comparing ourselves."
White echoed this sentiment by quoting the LDS hymn "Lord, I would follow thee."
"Remember that no matter who you're looking at, 'In the quiet heart is hidden, sorrow that the eye can't see,'" White said. "And you just have to know this about every human being you ever look at. No matter how big their kitchen is or how fancy their purse is, they have brokenness inside of their heart and some people are just not comfortable sharing and let's give people grace no matter how perfect they look."
Sharing faith
In the fall of 2015, in an effort to be more transparent and open about who she is, Stokoe decided to share with her followers an important aspect of her life: her LDS faith. Up until that point, Stokoe says she was hesitant to open up about her faith because she didn't want to offend or bother anyone. Her concerns were validated when she lost over 3,000 followers within a few days of her initial post.
Courtesy of Corrine Stokoe
"But as I've continued to post about being a Mormon and about my love for the Book of Mormon and just who I am, I really feel like it's strengthened my following," Stokoe said. "Even people who are not Mormons, know who I am. They know exactly what they're getting from me, it's not a filtered version of me. It's not just the part I think they are going to like. It's just, 'This is who I am.'"
White believes Stokoe's efforts should be celebrated.
"I want to celebrate her," White said. "There's someone who does something that could look perfect and creates beautiful imagery and works with companies who probably expect that. But she says, 'No, I also want to create a place where people know that other things are important to me and that my soul and my spirit and my family matter equally to me.'"
The opportunity to share her faith is what originally drew Nielson to blogging. She recalls talks by LDS Church leaders that encouraged members to share their faith through the internet and the excitement she felt as a result. Nielson has a specific spot on her blog where readers can request a free copy of her "favorite book," the Book of Mormon.
Courtesy of Stephanie Nielson
15 comments on this storyThe number of requests that have flooded in from all over the world were such that other members of Nielson's ward have pitched in to help with shipping costs. Nielson even goes to the Missionary Training Center on Wednesday mornings to chat online with the recipients of her gift. She has heard back from many who have been baptized and even more who wrote to simply say "thank you."
"Maybe people who see my blog think, 'Oh she's just a mommy blogger. She writes about dumb things that happen to her kids and who cares about what they're doing,' but for me, it's chatting with these people in Sweden who got a book from me and now they're learning from the missionaries and we're chatting together and that's what it's about for me," she said. "It's just so much bigger than me sitting down and blogging. It's the gospel and that's why I do it."
When Stokoe's blog began to gain popularity, she found herself wondering why this happened to her. It wasn't until she began to share her faith that she found her "real purpose for doing this."
"I just hope that somewhere in some little town there's a mom that reads my blog and two Mormon missionaries knock on her door, I hope that instead of being like, 'I've never heard of you, go away,' maybe she'd say, 'I actually follow this girl and she seems really happy and she seems like a normal person and she has talked a lot about this. And I am interested. Come on in.'"
