Where Bloggers Go to Die

Okay, sorry to alarm you. I’m not dead yet. I just feel kind of bad for this blog, House of Prince, because I’ve been working on my taxes today.

What does that even mean? I know you’re asking yourself that question. Or maybe you asked yourself Why am I even reading this?and you clicked away already. Fair enough.

My point is that my two websites, this one and Agoura Hills Mom, pulled in less money last calendar year than in the days before marketing through a blog was a thing. I’m not ashamed of it. The reason is obvious: I took a full time out of the home job at the end of 2016 and last year was the first full tax year during which I was a W2 employee. I didn’t have time to hustle for the freelance gigs, and many of the ones that came my way from word of mouth were hard to fit into my schedule.

It makes me a little bit sad, but on the other hand, I’ve made room in my life to make more money and focus my creative pursuits on my novel. I’m enjoying blogging in this space, flexing my writing muscle and allowing my voice to evolve. Agoura Hills Mom is evolving too. She doesn’t really know who she is right now, as evidenced by her recent silence. Since she is the other part of my personality, I can tell you she’s been working on her taxes today, and looking glumly out the window wishing the sun would come out and dry the trails so she can go for a hike.

When that happens, you should check her blog out, because her pictures of Southern California after a rain will probably be very pretty.

Anyway, if you’ve been playing along with this blog since its beginning, or for any length of time at all, you’ll know that it started out as a journal of my first pregnancy, then grew into one of the first honest-to-goodness “mommy blogs,” then I don’t know what, and most recently it’s been my outlet for writing exercises. For several years in there, I was making respectable money with ads, sponsored posts, and freelance projects for other sites. I reviewed the decline of the income I pulled in through my writing and blogging work with a bit of sadness.

The trajectories of women who started “mom blogs” around the same time I did have been interesting to watch. They published books, or their blogs evolved into online magazines, or they started blogger to brand agencies, or they branched out into other media, or they quit blogging altogether. I know several women who have sold their successful blogs to new owners. Many of these women employ other people, support their families, and are very public figures on social and other media.

I’m blending back into the world of regular people. It feels weird. But also okay and good.

So. Not dead yet. Just reincarnated, I guess.