19 Years of Blogging

Every year I do this recap, I exclaim that I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for so long! Once again, I’m saying the same thing. 19 years is a long time to stick with anything, but this blog is such a part of who I am now that it would be hard to walk away from all that. I still get tired of the social media nonsense, but writing this blog is still joyful for me and as long as I feel that way, I’ll continue with it. I’m still so very grateful that God saw fit to give me this blog back in 2007, when I didn’t know how badly I would need it. I consider my story a miracle story and the fact that I’ve made such a great living while working at home on my blog is amazing. I’ve had 13 years of a really nice full time income from this blog and I don’t take that for granted. I thank the Lord for His blessings on my life and bringing me to where I am now after that terrible divorce and financial devastation I faced back in 2011. I forget sometimes that even though many of you have been with me since the beginning, some of you have no idea what I’ve gone through since starting this blog in 2007.

If you’re new here, I went through a horrible divorce back then (2011) and lost almost everything I had, completely starting over from scratch. I literally had a paid for car, my furniture and a (very) few thousand dollars left in the bank. Everything else was wiped out from being married to a very deceptive con man. I’ve never shared the full story and probably never will, but it haunted me for years as I thought about all I had lived through and escaped from. So yes, my story is a miracle to say the least! God rescued me from a horrible situation. If you’ve never read all my blog story, I have it recapped for each year I’ve been blogging and this is the 19th episode of my blog story. You can start with Part 1 if you’re curious how I got started. Part 5 is when my life blew up and I moved back home with my parents in 2011 to start my life over. After that, my blog really started getting traction and grew so much during that time. All 19 parts are on this link. I think people really like to cheer for the underdog and that was me for awhile.

So what did 2025 bring in blog world? Well, a lot more changes to say the least. I told you last year that my traffic was going down and once again, this year is the same. Compared to last year, I’ve lost 37% of my traffic which translated to a loss of ad revenue of 34%. I still have 3 ways I make money: my ad network, Raptive, along with affiliate commission and working with brands, so those are still going well. I make the most from my ad network, so when it goes down, it shows in my income, but overall I’m still doing well and can’t complain. Even though my ad network income is going down, I’m still grateful to make what I make and being able to work at home on a part-time basis, while still making a full-time income.

With the push of AI all over the world, Google searches now favor AI results and don’t show all the blogs and websites that much of their information is coming from. They do an AI overview and real live websites are pushed down the page and so we are all losing clicks to that. It’s a shame that this is happening, but there’s not a lot we can do about it. Our ad network tries to do what they can to offset these changes, but it can only do so much. Change is inevitable on the internet and I’m sure it will continue to change. Many blogs have just up and closed after going through another Google change and losing more traffic, but I’m not closing shop just yet. I’ll continue to push ahead and do this at the pace I want to do it and I’m still grateful that it’s bringing in income. My efforts to run the blog are not huge and I still only spend maybe 5 hours a week running things. My overhead is low as well, with a hosting site and email service as my main expenses and those are less than $200 a month. I do have an accountant, who pays my quarterly taxes for me and does my business and personal returns, so that’s an expense as well, but she’s worth it.

If I really wanted to work harder, I could work on selling you all more stuff, but that’s not where my heart is, so while I’ll continue to share clothes and beauty items or home decor finds I really like, I will not pursue affiliate links any more than I already do. It’s just not what I want to do, to constantly share links with my audience. I know girls who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars sharing affiliate links and they must have an audience who buys everything. You all buy, but certainly not everything all the time. I for one get tired of all the sales pushes all over the internet. It seems that Instagram has become a sales pitch from every angle. I just can’t imagine buying all new clothes constantly just to style them and sell them, but that’s what happens with fashion bloggers. It would stress me out to do that all the time.

Ads and constant influencer links do get old, so I can imagine our readers are tired of it too. Instagram overall has gotten so tiresome, even though I still scroll too much on there. I see so much dancing, play acting skits, pranks, cute babies and pets, and generally people doing everything they can to get attention and draw followers. It seems there’s nothing that people won’t do to get attention and gain followers. Maybe it works, I don’t know, but it’s not what I’m going to do. I don’t see many of the people I actually do follow, but lots of random accounts that I’m not interested in. All doing crazy things with outlandish antics. Maybe they do grab attention, but I can’t imagine doing that stuff all the time just to try to stay relevant and make a living off it. Even the over 60 crowd like me has their own antics they do to be noticed. Wearing underwear and bikinis and showing off their bodies that they’ve worked hard for, I’m sure. No thanks! I’ll just be normal, even if it’s boring. No underwear or bikinis online for me! I wouldn’t want to constantly do videos either so people will look at me. Social media sure has its downfalls too!

I could also pitch myself to more brands and probably get more good paying opportunities, but I doubt I’m going to run after that avenue either. I used to get more organic brands in my inbox, but those have really fallen off in the last 5 years. I still get an occasional good opportunity, but they are fewer and fewer without me pursuing. There are unlimited opportunities in making money in this field, I just don’t have the drive to pursue them all. From courses, to books, to paid subscription sites, there are countless ways to hustle and make money online, but my hustle is less and less every year. I’m content to share as I have been, taking life one day at a time and not taking it all too seriously. The competition is fierce out there and influencers are a dime a dozen these days, so getting a brand’s attention takes a lot more work these days. They also want a lot more for their money as well. So with all that in mind, I’m pretty content in the way things are for me at the moment. 19 years is a long time to do anything and I’m happy to be at the semi-retired stage and not feeling the need to run the race at a sprint. Slow and steady is still my mantra.

With all of that said, I’m still very grateful for all of God’s blessings on my life. He has allowed me to create and grow this blog, run it for 19 years, and make more money than I could have ever dreamed of, far surpassing what I could have ever made in the Corporate world. I’ve funded my retirement account over these past 10 years, saving money every single year (my daddy taught me well!) and making sure that I put money away for the future. We have no debt and that’s another blessing. We also got an inheritance from our parents, another big blessing. So many blessings along the way and looking back, I had no idea when I started writing my blog story back in 2011 what all was going to transpire. I didn’t know then if I would make it in blogging. I had high hopes and dreams, but nothing concrete yet. I had no idea that God would provide exponentially more money than I lost back then, that he would bring a loving and loyal man into my life and we would get married in 2017, or that we would be living such a wonderful life here and now in 2026. What a blessing it has all been!

So that’s a look at my 19 years of blogging. What a whirlwind it has been. We are at a great place in life now and plan to do more traveling in the next 10 years, while we are able and can do it. I always hoped to travel more, but never had extra money to do so and now we do, so we want to see more of this big beautiful world of ours. The house is pretty much finished and we don’t have many more projects to do around here, so there’s really not a lot more house and decor stuff to share with you, but I’ll still be sharing whatever we do around here. Mark may finish off part of the basement. Whether it’s home related or travel or family, I’ll keep on sharing. You all have been so wonderful to support me and my blog all these years and it doesn’t go unnoticed. I could NOT have done it without an audience and that is YOU! So thank you again from the bottom of my heart for following along in all of our adventures. We’ve lost all four of our parents now and you’ve been here for all of it. With my 2 hip surgeries last year, all of the ups and downs of life, you’ve been here and I appreciate you all! So here’s to another year of blogging and whatever life may bring this year. I’m looking forward to it all! With all the big personalities and grandiose moments on social media these days, I’m not the most exciting person to follow, but I can guarantee to be REAL! That’s what I can offer the most and I thank you for relating to me and my real life. I will always do my best to point people to Christ. He has done so much for me and I want to share Him with you as well.

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT ME AND MY BLOG? 

I’ll keep sharing all of this so you know how much your support and clicking to my blog means. It means the world to a blogger for you to click over to their blog to read their new posts. I usually post 3 times a week, maybe 4 and if you subscribe to my blog, you’ll get an email every time I post. You can subscribe here, so if you haven’t I hope you will. There are almost 8,000 of you on my email list, which really isn’t a lot for someone who’s been blogging as long as I have. I’ve gained and lost over the years and that’s where it is now, just under 8K. Out of all of you who do subscribe, I get about a 10 to 15% click through rate, which means, you open my emails and click over to read. It would mean the world if every time I send an email, you would click over to the post and read it. Really truly, that’s the best thing you can do for me! If all almost 8K of you visited me every time I posted, it would make a huge difference. I know I can’t get all of you to click, but this is my urging for you to do it as often as you possibly can! I would love for you to support the gals I’m with on Home Style Saturday and Style Showcase too. I send those emails out once a week. They are all great gals and we all rely on people coming to our blogs to read, so keep that in mind as well.

Supporting means clicking the links in my emails that go out and coming over here to the blog to read. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a laptop, phone or tablet, it all counts as pageviews, but a laptop will probably be the best experience for ads. I know ads are annoying, I so get that. But again, that’s the main way I can make a living doing this and for you to come and support me here means the world to me. Thank you for that! If you subscribe to my emails, you’ll get one in your inbox every time I post and you can click the link to come over to my blog and read it live. That gives me pageviews and that’s how I make an income from my blog. Many people don’t know the particulars of this, but it’s a pretty neat thing. I’ve said before how much God has blessed this blog and I don’t take it for granted. I had another good year and I have to thank all of YOU for that! Just the fact that you all come over and read makes it possible for me to keep it going.