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When I started my blog, in 2008, I was only in it to provide news of our family to my husband while he was in Iraq for 15 months straight. Blogs provide the perfect spot for photos, stories, and videos, without bombarding your Facebook friends with such a vast amount of footage!
It wasn’t until 2013 that I decided to set the blog to public and go for it. I was already spending about 7 hours/week on my blog, might as well make a little money off of it, right?
The thing about blogging is that it’s one of those jobs that did not exist yet when I was in high school, or even in college. You couldn’t major in blogging.
Once you begin to blog for profit, you need skills, or people who have skills, in the realm of writing, computers, marketing, and design. That’s an elephant-size amount of skills to learn! And I still have a long way to go!
The one who I have learned the ABSOLUTE MOST from is Crystal Paine of Money Saving Mom and YourBloggingMentor.com. That’s the perfect name for that website because she is literally my blogging mentor.
Now, first of all, I have to admit to you that I have never actually met Crystal Paine. I’ve seen about 15 or 30 of her videos (YouTube & Facebook), so I feel like I know her…..the celebrity effect….but in reality she only knows me as yet another obscure little blogger who emails her a lot….
Yes, I admit it. I have emailed her about 20 times over the past few years. Yeah. In fact, I’ve emailed her so much that recently I am getting replies from her people rather than from Crystal herself…
I know. You may be shaking your head at me right now and thinking this sounds awfully stalker-like. I promise I’m not a stalker. I prefer the term “fan-girl”.
Hello, my name is April, and I am a Crystal Paine fan girl.
I subscribe to two or three of her newsletters, I’ve taken about 4 different online courses that she’s taught, I follow her on ALL of her social medias, AND I’ve read several of her books.
One time, I even got to be on her website. You can see that here: Making Over Your Morning as a Night Owl.
You see, in a world where no one teaches you how to be a blogger in school, you have to go hunting down that information for yourself. Crystal has proven to be an excellent resource this past year, as I have attempted to take my blog to the next level.
I love how her blogging products offer practical, actionable advice.
But even before I sought to learn from Crystal as a blogger, I was already an occasional reader of her website, Money Saving Mom. I enjoyed her videos because she pours her personality and work into them.
The biggest reason I am such a fan is that she seems to possess all of the exact skills that I struggle to acquire, and she teaches her strategies in a fun, easily accessible way that I can truly relate to.
Plus, we have so much in common! She’s a writer, a mom of kids similar in age to my own, a Christian, and she strives to live a healthy lifestyle.
She has so many more than just these. These few are the ones I benefitted the most from because of who I am as a person and where I was in life at the time. I’m also super-stoked to read Say Good-bye to Survival Mode and listen to her FREE WEBINAR about that!
By the way, huge deal alert: Say Good-bye to Survival Mode is only 99 CENTS for Kindle for a limited time!!!
Crystal wrote a book about living a disciplined life! I scooped that up in a heartbeat!! Having a plan and a schedule is this huge struggle for me. It’s something I have to work hard at and learn from people like Crystal.
My default is to wake up, tell everyone to leave me alone while I drink my coffee, get the boys ready for school, then tackle my day with little to no plan at all.
Yes, I know. A failure to plan is a plan to fail…yada yada yada. We are trying, okay. There are four growing boys here. It is a j-o-b!
All the kids….the house cleaning….the cooking…MOPS leadership….volunteering at school…teaching Sunday school…..and oh yeah!! The blog!!!
Can I get an amen here? Are there any of you who are just in this ultra-busy phase of life? Sometimes I just want to shut it all down and say, “Nope. From now on, I enforce rules and cook dinner. That’s it.”
That’s why I love Crystal’s books. She is juggling so many of the same things I am, but she brings time-management and discipline skills to the table that I KNOW I can learn from.
Alan is a fan too!
When Alan and I got serious about getting out of debt (car payments) back in 2009, we bought the book, The Money Saving Mom’s Budget. I found it quite helpful, and not only that. It was actually realistic!
Do you remember when Alan took over the laundry at our house? That was because of a YouTube video of Crystal’s that I watched where she talked about the strategic ways she and her husband divide up the work of managing their household.
I know. You want the YouTube link so you can show it to your husband too, but I have no idea which video it was!! I’m so sorry! It might have actually been part of her blogging class a while back that is no longer for sale…
I told Alan about it, in a very light, kind way, and I asked him what thing he’d like to make his responsibility. In a perfect world, we’d have a maid and maybe not have this problem, but in reality we can’t afford one right now.
I said something like, “Hey, honey. You know how sometimes I’m bad about not planning through everything? It occurred to me that I’ve never actually asked you what you would like your chore to be at the house. You do a lot, but nothing is like divided up and assigned to you except trash and the lawn. We need to have very specific jobs assigned to all 6 of us in the family to make this work.”
At first, Alan was very deer-in-the-headlights. He apologized, and we agreed that ALL the jobs can’t be mine alone now that there are four children. It’s not possible.
Alan thought about it long and hard, and he chose laundry, which was perfect because my doctor had just told me a few weeks ago that I did not need to be carrying baskets of laundry due to my low back and hip arthritis.
Spending less time on laundry was life-changing for me!! Plus, Alan usually does a better job of keeping up with it than I ever did.
Thank you so much for that, Crystal and Alan!!!
I enrolled in a one-time blogging course she did last fall where I learned the importance of doing Facebook Lives, which turned out to be an amazing way to grow my Facebook following.
Then this year Crystal opened up a whole new website for bloggers. If you blog, you have to check it out: YourBloggingMentor.com
When Crystal launched the “5 Days to a Successful Blog Launch” course a couple of months ago, I decided to read it. I didn’t think I needed it since my blog was obviously “launched” a long time ago, but eh, why not?
Oh, y’all!! I could write an ENTIRE POST on all the things I learned from this simple little 5 day course.
Spoiler alert: Some of the 5 days have way more practical ideas than you can implement in only a day. I have this huge list that I made from Day 5’s assignments that is going to take me all of September to get through.
If you need to improve your blog traffic, take this course whether you already have a blog or are just starting one.
Link to Blogging University: Blogging University
Ya’ll!! I can’t tell you how much I have learned!! But this article has run long, so I’m going to save all of that information. Look for a future post in September, dedicated solely to how much I’ve changed my blog since taking this simple, inexpensive 5 Day Blog Launch Course!!
I noticed that she is currently running a special FREE webinar for beginning bloggers, and I could not recommend that highly enough. Here’s the link if you’d like to try it out.
Now I’m just holding my breath and waiting for the intermediate course. You know she will probably do one before the year’s over!
So what about you? Are you a member of my Unofficial Crystal Paine Fan Club?? Do you read MoneySavingMom.com?? Which of her books would you like to read? Leave a comment below to let me know I’m not alone in my fan-girl-ness!
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View Comments
She is a powerhouse!
As much as I've been doing this for a long time and I've definitely found my bearings, there's still so much I can learn. I still feel like a beginner or a fraud!
And it's funny you mentioning it because when I was in college, this didn't exist as a career. I majored in journalism and I really believe I'm using my major, but not in the way I thought. I always thought I'd have to spend a few years fetching coffee as an editorial intern. And that is so not my style!
She is. And yeah, we were in college at the same time. Blogging was not a major or a career...we were just learning how to email.
We might be tied for being the biggest Crystal Paine fan! I feel quite stalkerish how I hang on her every word 😬
Hehehe! Stalkers unite!
Giel, I need to get rid of something too! Laundry would be nice. I will be having that chat :) I had never heard of Crystal Paine before, but she sounds like my kind of lady!
Oh wow! My mind is blown that you'd never heard of Crystal Paine. Um, like wow. Try the free blogging webinar!!
April, I think it's official, you're definitely Crystal's fan girl.:-)
I've also benefited from Crystal's courses, particularly Make Over Your Mornings and have been keeping up (here and there) with Your Blogging Mentor. I'm so glad that there are women like Crystal who are willing to share their blog expertise with up and coming bloggers. When I first started I learned the most from Arabah Joy and I'm so grateful for the 'iron sharpening iron' effect, that helped me a better Christian blogger.
Oooo...now I want to look up Arabah Joy!
Amen!! Great great information. Will have to save to my favorites.
Yay! Thanks, Candace!