Just Jot It January - 2019 - My Blog

The #JusJoJan prompt today from Linda G. Hill is to write about my blog.  Why I started it, what my theme is and how it has changed my life.

I'm going to be honest here, I originally started my blog to promote my Etsy shop and try to interest people in my cards and crafts.  See, here I go:   

I thought I'd be rich and famous no problem.  Quite quickly I realized that no one knew who I was so no one was reading my blog and that makes getting sales a bit difficult. I decided to join a few challenges to try to "meet" some people.  

Nothing much happened but slowly I began to realize that I was enjoying the blogging and didn't even mention my Etsy shop very often!  Then I found the A to Z Challenge and that really made a difference.  I started following a lot of people and began learning so many interesting things.   

I even got an award which I thought was really cool at first because, you know, mystery, but actually I'm not even sure why it is called that.  Since then I've gotten a couple of other ones but I don't feel comfortable nominating other people so I didn't participate.      

Now I am blogging because I enjoy it.  I am an introvert so big crowds are not my favorite thing but I can easily "talk" to the 130 followers I have no problem.  I'm not sure 130 people actually read what I write but whatever.  I still participate in challenges and I like to try and come up with interesting tidbits of my own to share with others.  For example, they call the city I live in the "City With A Heart" because we have a heart-shaped street. 

My husband and I go to a lot of concerts and I like to share the pictures I take and tell about our experiences. 

I don't even mind sharing a picture or two of myself once in a while.  This is me on the occasion of my first birthday.  Aren't I cute?  

I did add some affiliate marketing into the mix because I'm still trying to make some extra money.  Creative Live is one of the ones I belong to and they have some pretty fun online classes in a lot of different areas, not just creative ones.  I'm definitely not getting rich (yet) but I have gotten some money from the affiliate links (probably from the classes I took myself!) and I did actually make two Etsy sales from people who saw my things in the blog (thank you Jay and Dawn!)  

My "theme" is "sharing smiles" because I really believe that smiles are contagious and we could all use a little more of them.  I call it "Janet's Smiles" for that reason - also because my last name is Miles but my maiden name starts with an "S" and when I wrote Janet S Miles it kind of hit me that way.  I try to make my posts fun although every once in a while I have posted a story that was not so fun (when we had to put our cat down).      

And then there are pictures like this:

Maybe I'll start my own challenge one of these days...

Thank you, Linda, for another fun day in bloglandia.  How about you?  Read my blog much?  Write one of your own?