I write a lot of blogs some more regularly than others but I’ll try to take a stab at all of them in my answers. My questions and answers about my blogs below:

Could I describe my blog to a friend in 3 sentences or less?

A Merry Life -Yes. This is my blog that chronicles my journey from sad, sedentary obese girl to happy, active healthy girl. It’s a weight loss blog but focuses more on fitness and being healthy in all aspects of life beyond the scale.

AML Food -Yes. This is a simple blog to describe. It is my food blog where I sometimes record my daily food when I want to be accountable but mostly I use it as an occasional food diary and recipe holder. It gives me a place to put food ideas as I learn to cook and decide what healthy foods I enjoy.

A Merry Wife – Yes. This is the blog I probably have the best ability to describe as it is my wedding blog that focuses on my wedding and diy projects. It’s the perfect outlet for my crafty nature as I post about crafts and making things lovely.

Life Is Awesome -Probably, but not in a good way. I’ve gone back and forth on this blog and whether it should even exist. I’ve almost deleted it a few times but kept it simply because I like the name and it’s a place to throw things that don’t fit anywhere else. Internet vomit at it’s best.

Would I subscribe to my own blog?

A Merry Life – Maybe. I would subscribe to this blog but I would probably end up skimming the content. I know I’m wordy and it helps me but as a reader I know I wouldn’t read everything. I don’t subscribe to many journal blogs – maybe about five total? And they are all close to my age and have similar lives. Other blogs of this type I tend to bookmark and check in on their lives periodically.

AML Food – Yes. I like food photos and recipes and just looking at food. yummm.

A Merry Wife -  Yes, if I was still a bride to be. I loved reading personal wedding blogs and getting ideas from other brides and their wedding plans. Currently? I wouldn’t subscribe. Though I love writing about my wedding and projects I only subscribe to one other wedding blog after the wedding and that’s because it talks about being a wife too (APW).

Life Is Awesome – No.

Where am I taking my readers?

A Merry Life – Ultimately this is more about a journey and a peek into my life. I’m not sure that there is a destination exactly, although I do have some goals related to weight loss that eventually we will see being achieved.

AML Food – No real destination in mind for my readers. This blog was and is about my learning to cook and use food in healthy ways. I’m not sure there is anywhere to go other than continue with that path.

A Merry Wife -  Here I plan to take my readers through my wedding via recaps and then through all the diy projects with tutorials and extra resources. I have a very clear plan in mind for the direction and destination of this blog and even have about a year’s worths of post ideas already planned out.

Life Is Awesome – Nowhere? honestly, I don’t know. This has the least direction of all.

What promise am I making with my blog?

A Merry Life – I’m promising that I will do my best to strive for the healthiest life I can achieve and share my experiences honestly with readers sharing both the successes and the struggles.

AML Food – I’m promising to experiment with food and eat healthier while sharing my experiences.

A Merry Wife – I’m promising to share my wedding experience and the knowledge I gained from the wedding with future brides to be who want an authentic and memorable wedding without spending a fortune.

Life Is Awesome – I’m promising…. to… occasionally post content here that makes no promises.

Conclusion

This was really interesting to do. I think it was a good exercise as a blogger and would benefit other bloggers. It really clarified some things for me regarding my multiple blogs and helped me see where my strengths and weaknesses are. Interesting exercise!

Luckily a friend recommended Sucuri and they saved my butt.

Sucuri is an amazing service that protects WordPress blogs by scanning and removing infected files. For 90 (one site) or 290 (10 sites) you also get a year of protection. For me that is a flipping good deal to get my site fixed and feel secure for a whole year.

Being hacked isn’t fun, but you know what? Something good came out of it. I found an amazing new service I can 100% recommend to anyone who finds themselves in the same situation.

Sites getting hacked.

Bummer, really.

Especially when it’s a sneaky hack. That no one can seem to figure out how to fix quickly but they see there is a problem.

Having a site hacked is no fun.

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I’ve been trying to get out of the house more in New Zealand since staying indoors is probably part of what makes me so sick. So instead of sitting at home I’ve been exploring new places to work. Yesterday I worked while I was in a park.

I walked over to the park and plopped onto a bench with my papers and notebooks. It turns out the park’s natural space is perfect for a brainstorming session.

Pretty, right?

For a long time I thought I didn’t like teaching. I refused to go into eduction and I hate trying to teach anyone anything. Though that was mostly due to my social anxiety, I’ve finally realized teaching isn’t so bad. Actually, it’s great. It feels wonderful to impart knowledge on other. I’ve done that with the start a  blog tutorial and my e-book for health bloggers. Apparently all I needed to do was figure out what I was good at so I could then share the knowledge.

Through my writing (and many, many e-mails) I’ve managed to help and teach others about blogging. I’m pretty sure I never want to stand in front of huge crowds to lecture, but I think I might enjoy continuing in this line of work. I love blogs, social media, and all things internet so it’s easy for me to teach other people how to use them. I’m not sure exactly how I will go about doing this more often but it’s definitely something I enjoy doing. Who knew?

Even the most famous bloggers aren’t famous in real life.

Personally I don’t blog for some weird for of internet fame. (Because that won’t be happening.)

I blog because my thoughts need an outlet. I blog because it’s an easy form of sharing ideas and thoughts. It’s a way to get feedback and support quickly. It’s a way to keep others up to date on your life when you travel often or live far away. It’s a way to capture my life in a way that I can easily look back on it whenever I want – because you can’t search a journal.

I would blog even if I had no readers. After all, I blogged for about six years before anyone other than my closest friends read my blog. An audience is nice (sometimes it’s not) but I’ll skip internet fame seeking and just keep blogging for me.

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I do have a ridiculous amount of blogs though. At some point when I have less time to write I will have to consolidate. Until then, here’s what happened this week in my blogging world.

On A Merry Wife

I’ve been working through the boring wedding tasks and I showed off the save the dates that we aren’t using.

On A Merry Life

I chose a new training plan, checked in on my 2011 goals, and shared some great beginner triathlon training resources.

I also updated my Amazon store with my favorite products. I also created and updated a few reading lists: Books by Bloggers, Stop Eating Sugar Books, and Triathlon Training Books.

On the Healthy Food Blog

I made delicious chicken fajitas and also a chicken and red quinoa salad. Red quinoa is my new favorite food! Also posted a review of Mammoth Supply Co Apple and Blueberry Yogurt… aka the best yogurt ever. I ate Mongolian BBQ for the first time and loved it.

I don’t find the ads annoying. I actually find the ads entertaining because of the titles she puts above them. The one that caught my attention says “in my world… readers click ads to show support.”

In the perfect world of many bloggers who use Google Adsense ads – mine included – readers would click on ads of blogs they like to show support for the blogger. Occasionally I do this. When I read a blog I really enjoy I will click on a relevant ad or two to show them support. If they are on a blog network I will click around the site a bit and give them a few extra pageviews. As a blogger I know how hard it is to support your work, so I like to help support other bloggers.

But many of my friends don’t do this. Many of the non-bloggers (and some bloggers) I know use ad-blockers to stop intrusive and annoying ads from showing while they surf the web. I understand this move since many websites have taken advertising too far and are very annoying with their use of ads. But as a blogger it makes me sad to realize that many people read blogs and websites for information and entertainment yet never support those sites through viewing the advertising.

I only know what I do myself and the habits of a few friends. I’m curious what other people do. Do you click on the ads of sites you love to support the blogger? When you notice they are using Adsense do you click on a relevant ad or two after a good post? Or do you give them a few extra pageviews? Or do you use an ad-blocker? I’m very curious about what other people do and why, so please share in the comments!

The format is fun.

There are tumblr communities.

But then I think…

Tumblr sucks.

Or at least it’s down too much.

Like all the time.

Besides, I rarely blog here anyway. Except for random creative thoughts and rants against things like Tumblr.

Thoughts

• I’m still working on my life to do list. Right now I’m training for a triathlon. Scary, hard, exciting!
• Finding a job in New Zealand is no cake walk. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult, but it is. I talk to everyone I meet about jobs and usually they have a lead, but nothing has worked out so far. Crossing fingers and toes for something in the future.
• Without a job outside the house I’ve had plenty of time to blog, so I’ve taken advantage of that. But I haven’t worked very hard on promotion or link building. I wish I had an intern to do these things for me.

Links:

• Reading Sean’s anatomy of a product launch and Baker’s how to suck at launching a product, reminds me of my post where I looked at the successes and mistakes from my first product launch. I’ve found that regardless of intial mistakes, having a quality product to sell is a great thing. I still make sales each month and I think my success with an ebook has inspired several others in my healthy living niche to start creating their own ebooks. I hope for continued success for all of us.
• As a huge Project Runway and Tim Gunn fan, I loved this Copyblogger article tying in Tim Gunn’s tips for more stylish blog content.
• I’m inspired by Kirsty’s September Earnings Report and Dave’s Web Earnings for September. Similarly I’ve always enjoyed Baker’s income reports. I’m not sure what it is about these kinds of posts, but they intrigue me and inspire me. I think, wow, look at these people earning more money online… surely I can do it too! I would be able to stop looking for a job here if I was making five grand a month like Dave. It’s definitely something I could try and shoot for.

Me across the web:

• My food photos have been used at Good Magazine in New Zealand, The Apartments at Blakeley, and the blog Garbanzo Green.  I love giving my photos a creative commons license just so I can see them spread across the internet.
• After just a few tweaks in design, my weight loss blog pageviews have almost doubled. I’m happy about the change and glad people are spending more time on my site. Moral of the story: design matters. (Or maybe it’s just because I took off my clothes again? One will never know.)
• Selling small printable downloads is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I finally started with my weekly meal planners.
• This blog, with it’s random thoughts on travel and the blogging lifestyle, is a PR2! No way! I had no idea really that there were even any links to this site. But since there are, now I’m thinking about advertising in the form of text links ads and direct ads. Contact me if interested.