I am going to try something new with my books. I have 4 books written. They are all short. 27-37 pages. I have them listed below and they are all $2.99 on amazon. I will be donating half of the proceeds ($1.04 per book) every month to a different non profit.
Buy a book and half of the proceeds will go towards a mental health awareness non profit from now (3/15/2019) till the end of April (since we are already half way through March).
I will announce the non profit on my blog at the end of April. If you have any recommendations, shoot me an email or comment and I will look into them.
I drive my kids to school every morning. We don’t use the crossing guard but we see him every morning and we wave and he always smiles and waves back.
At Christmas time the kids hop out of the car and give him a hug and a card with a few lotto tickets in it and some chocolate. Sometimes I roll the window down and wish him a good day or weekend when I am rushing from school to work. He’s just he nicest man to me in the mornings. Especially when I am having a bad morning and I am rushed and he’s just standing there, smiling and waving. Even when it’s 15 degrees outside, when it’s snowing, when it’s raining. He brightens my day. So, thank you Mr Crossing Guard. For always being there and for brightening my morning. I appreciate you!
Is there anyone you see every day that brightens your day just a little?
Good Morning Everyone! I hit my February goal with a week left to go! I am so excited and happy. I love blogging and just putting my stuff out there and meeting new people. I love reading other blogs and supporting fellow bloggers as well.
I started this blog to make myself write again. I write whatever is on my mind, or what I am going through with the kids or friends, or just me. I post about things that I love or things I want to do. I want to try to give my dream of being a writer a real shot. I wrote a couple books, they’re on Amazon. I am trying to find an audience that would actually care to read them. I choose self publishing because I have 2 kids and I was sending out inquiries and they all said we will get back to you in 4-6 months or not at all cause they are busy. Suddenly, a year would go by and I wouldn’t have heard anything and I would be right back at the beginning.
Also,I challenged myself to really put the work in this year and try to get this blog going. I plan on posting one blog every day that I work and maybe more. Like today, I took off because my husband is home now so we took the day off to run errands and hang out. And here I am, writing for my blog because I love it.
Seriously, I love you guys. You are so encouraging and I truly appreciate it.
So far I am trying to grow a following. I am using Twitter and the writing and blogging communities have been really amazing in helping me grow my followers. I am up to 2,693 followers right now and every time I post a blog it automatically posts to twitter. I figured out how to had add the hashtag in January and that has really helped in me getting traffic to my blog. Also, there are groups that you can follow and they retweet if you # them. Throughout the day there are follow trains that you can leave your latest blog. They have a Follow Friday where everyone posts people they like and you can follow new people easily and usually they follow back. Seriously, in January my goal was to get to 100 so if you are active on there, it’s pretty easy to grow a following. I also don’t always post only my blog, I post things here or there that I think and I interact with the people I follow by commenting and liking their posts. It does take time but it’s worth it. I’m @sambel08 if you would like to follow me. I will follow back!
I signed up for Facebook and joined a bunch of indie author groups and blogging groups. I friend requested a ton of people in those groups and I have like 600 friends. I created an business page and invited everyone to like it. All my blogs automatically post to that page. Sometimes I post them to my personal page. I get some traffic from Facebook. I haven’t really had time to sit and explore it yet, maybe this weekend I will get a chance.
I signed up for Instagram. I have no idea how this works. I have 79 followers right now. Yesterday I had 83 so I have no idea what I am doing. I barely post on there because I haven’t had a chance to really look into it. That might be another weekend. I feel like it’s a lot like twitter in that there are people that follow you so that you follow back and then they un follow you so their numbers go up. I might have to do a purge on who I follow this weekend. My name there is Sambel203. If you follow, I will follow back.
I signed up for Pintrest. I just learned how to pin my blogs to my boards and I am trying to learn how to grow my followers on that and then how to pin on other people’s boards. This is one place I think will help give me significantly more traffic to my blog, I hope! So we’ll see.
My blog has grown so much in the last 2 months. I went from 1 follower to 126! That was my goal for 2019! Now my goal is 750 and I really think I can achieve this.
With my blog I have paid for the premium membership so I can try to monetize it. In 2 months I have made 13 cents. I don’t know if it’s worth upgrading to the next tier yet cause I am still just putting in the groundwork. It is a lot of ground work. I do really enjoy it though and I am really happy to meet so many cool new people from all over the world.
This year I hope to just keep growing and hopefully sell a few books along the way. I am going to keep writing everyday and I really looking forward to meeting new people and making new friends.
What’s your favorite social media to use to promote your blog? How do you use it?
I’m having a tough time with my child’s teacher. It went from her telling us that she prefers the girls over the boys (I have a boy) at our conference in December, to last week her questioning me about why I didn’t bring him to the holiday concert after school because she knows we went to the movies that night. I told her we had already bought the tickets and that he choose to go to the movies that night because he didn’t want to go to the holiday concert. Then I walked away and got angry… Is she questioning my parenting? And if so, then maybe it’s time I start questioning her teaching. What I do with my children after school hours is none of her damn business. Her job is to teach my child in a safe environment and currently he is having anxiety just going to school because he feels like he is constantly being targeted by her and getting in trouble. Why is that?
This week Monday she took his chap stick away because he got up to go get it without asking. He raised his hand and she wouldn’t call on him. Which has happened before. He needs his chap stick right now, he has a very dry irritation under his lip (which is clearly visible) and he needs the chap stick to sooth and protect it. She should not have taken it away.
Yesterday she wouldn’t let him go to the nurse when he asked because he had a headache. They were going to recess and it’s weirdly warm and springy here right now so he was trying to tell her that the humidity would make his headache worse but she yelled at him to get his jacket and go outside. So he cried and she said that she was finished talking to him and walked away. When I picked him up he was pale. When we got home he skipped dinner and went to bed and slept for 12 hours straight. He clearly did not feel well.
We have emailed the Principle and the Vice principle and we have a meeting tomorrow morning.
Can teachers be bullies? And then what do you do? Based on the principles email to confirm the meeting tomorrow, it already feels like they are defending this teacher instantly without looking into the situation.
I have had this blog for over 3 years ( I think) but I didn’t actually start to get serious about it until this past November. I wanted to really give my dream of being an author a go. I am also thinking about going back to school to finally get my bachelors. My kids are now 9 and 7 but like most young couples, we had money issues and we had two babies. My goals for finding a job at that time was to find something I didn’t mind going to, that was close to the kids, that would pay me a decent wage, and that would allow me to have time off for vacations and such. That’s what I have found. I feel really lucky to have found exactly what I needed. I do like my job and I do like most of the people I work with but it’s not what I want to do forever.
I would love it if I could make enough money on the side to cut my hours at work and be able to pick my kids up from school and have time to really give writing a go. So I challenged myself last year. I wrote a couple memoir’s with things that have happened in my life. I wrote a couple books with the kids that we still need to illustrate. One is available for sale on Amazon but it’s not quite finished yet. It needs pictures. I’ll add the links to the other books at the end of this. So if you are reading this and would like to support me I would really appreciate it.
After I got the books up on KDP, my husband recommended that I start a twitter account to try to find a group of people. I did, and the groups I joined have been incredibly supportive. The #writerscommunity #amwriting #bloggertribe are just a few of the super supportive groups that are available. A lot of the people have been inspiring and encouraging and wonderful. I love twitter. There are a few that follow you and then unfollow you once you follow back and that a little frustrating because that’s not really what I think the community is about. Overall, it’s been a really positive experience. If you want to follow me I’m @sambel08 , And I will follow you back.
I started a new Facebook page at the advice I had received to a previous blog post and started to join some groups. I am currently working on growing that. I just started a pintrest and an Instagram, I an not sure how those work yet, so any advice would be appreciated and if there’s a way to follow or pin each other, drop me a link in the comments and I will!
I deleted my personal Facebook after my father passed away and I am really trying to do this without using my “warm” market as the insurance sales people refer to it… I am NOT an insurance sales person but my husband was for a few months. I honestly don’t want to use my friends and family to sell things. If I am totally honest it is because a lot of the things I have written are the tough times that I have gone through and not everyone I know, knows it. Or they might remember that time and then that’s weird too, no? I don’t know… Maybe eventually I will reactivate my Facebook but there were friends from high school that I have never heard from again and I don’t know… Plus, family that I barely talk to. Anyway, I’ll revisit that in the future, maybe.
So far it seems to be going well. I have kept up my challenge of posting something new on the blog every day that I go to work. And I have grown my blog following from 1 to 39! That’s amazing. (by the way, follow me please! and drop me a link to your blog and I will follow you too!) And I just hit over 1000 followers on twitter. So that’s really encouraging.
I did actually sell one book too. Of course it’s the one that still needs to be illustrated. Then the librarian at school told me it was her and I was so embarrassed for some reason. I think that I will always feel that way if someone comes up to my face and is like “Hey, I bought your book!” My initial reaction is “I’m sorry!” Weird, right? Hopefully that will change as time goes by and I gain more confidence. We’ll see…
So I will continue to blog for the rest of this year and I am hoping that it sparks an idea for my next book… I journal write on evernote everyday as well. I am already rolling a couple ideas around. I feel like I am just going to pour everything I have into it this time and really try. Before I have written things and then mailed them off and never heard from anyone and then I would get side tracked and 2 years later I would be like let me try again. This time I am going to keep trying.
So, what’s your experience? How long have you been doing this? Have you found things that work?
And if you would like to help support me, please buy a book and give me a review.. Or you can email directly at Jess@sirjstudio.com
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