Thank you to Mind of Molly and Own Your Best for nominating me for the Blogger Recognition Award. It’s an honor to be thought of and to be nominated for this award. This makes me feel like what I blog about is being noticed and that others enjoy what I have to say. I started this blog 3 months ago and didn’t know what to expect from it. Truthfully, even though I started it with the plan to eventually monetize it, my blog has become a stress reliever as well. I enjoy writing about whatever is on my mind, and even though I look forward to one day being able to travel more and too write about the places I visit, I find that my every day posts are also getting some notice.  Make sure that you check out Mind of Molly’s blog as she works really hard on her blog and it’s just amazing!

On November 20, 2018, I was once again nominated for this award by Fluxing Well and wanted to thank her and link back to her.  Check out her site. https://fluxingwell.com

Here are the rules:
1. Thank the blogger who nominated you
2. Write a post to show your award
3. Give a brief history of how your blog came to be
4. Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers
5. Select 15 of your fellow bloggers to give this award to
6. Comment on their blog and let them know that you nominated them and provide a link to your post.

How my blog came to be:
I know this says to be brief, but how can anything be brief, especially where I have so much to say?  I was playing around on Facebook one evening before getting ready for bed and came across a post about starting a money making blog. I didn’t think much about it that evening, turned my computer off and went to bed. The next day I once again came across this post again about starting a money making blog and I thought it was odd, because I had never even thought about blogging, and really didn’t even know what blogging was. As I read through this post, I thought, how in the world am I ever going to be able to afford to start my own website, when we can barely meet our bills. After I got back from getting all the kids to school and finished my morning routine at the time, I turned my computer back on and there it was once again, Start A Money Making Blog. So I did what I always do in situations where I’m unsure of what I should do, I turned to God. I prayed about this for the next day, and the next day I decided I could at least think about it.

The first step to this was to come up with a niche. The only thing I thought about at the time was that I could raise awareness on epilepsy, but that didn’t really sit well with me to start with. What could I say about epilepsy? Why would anyone care about what I have to say anyway? Then I thought about how much I love to travel. Now that sat much better with me at that moment. I could talk about traveling all the time and never get tired of it. I finally settled on a lifestyle and travel blog with a section devoted to raising awareness about epilepsy. That would really allow me to talk about whatever I felt like at any moment and hopefully later when I was able to monetize it, be able to focus more on the travel aspect.

The next step was to think about a name. I really struggled with this and everything I tried when I decided to purchase a domain was taken. I was about to give up when I thought how about something generic and tried smithlifestyleblog.com. Well that worked so I finally had a domain for my site. Still hadn’t thought of a really good or catchy name at this point. However, I started typing posts, starting with my daughter and a couple past trips that we took. As I was thinking about our Florida trip, suddenly Livin’ The Smith Life came to me and I knew that it was perfect for us. After all it really seemed to encompass everything. At this point I now had to think of a logo. I’m not really good with graphics, so I decided on something simple, found a colorful background and played around a little before I felt it was a good fit for my site. Later, I may choose something else, but I felt what I had was simple and bright.  After working on a few more posts, writing about my daughter’s struggles with epilepsy and trying to get her seizures under control and a few posts that I could put under every day life, I did a soft launch, only announcing to a few people so I could get some opinions and thoughts.  Livin’ The Smith Life was born and I am very pleased with how it has come to this point.

Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers:
1. Start an e-mail list right away.  No matter what happens on social media, if you have an e-mail list, you can still reach your followers.  Social media has really helped a lot with my numbers, and I’m hoping that those who read my blog join my email list, because if anything happened with my social media accounts, I will still be able to reach my followers through e-mail.

2. Don’t worry about numbers.  Instead work on making good posts.  Good, strong posts are what people look for.  If you can’t post daily, don’t..  Maybe you can only write one post a week.  That’s fine, because you want to focus on making the posts that you make good.  That’s what will bring people back.  Social media will help bring in followers, but if the posts aren’t interesting, people will not come back.

Select 15 fellow bloggers to give this award to (please don’t worry if you have already done this one, I want to recognize you anyway):
Vinny
russellslovinglife
Just Sailing Along
Three Kids and a Car
ButterflyLife
In The Thick Of It Blog
Wanderlust with the Devaulls
Seahorse & Dragonfly
Eat, Bake, Travel
Live Everyday Fresh
My Joy In Life
Been There With Kids
Sweet Southern Living
Okay In The Mess
Webblets On The Go

Take some time to check out all these blogs.  They work hard on them and deserve some recognition.  Thank you for taking time to read my post and thank you again to Mind of Molly and Own Your Best for nominating me.
And thank you to Fluxing Well!  I’m so glad that my efforts are helping other bloggers succeed!