Aussie Bloggers

I wrote my first blog post in January 2006.

It seems a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

I set up a Blogger account and away I went. With absolutely no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it, for that matter.

It didn’t take me long to jump ship to Wordpress.com with it’s stable platform, handy stats package and brilliant Akismet spam security guard.

And gradually, as I found I was interacting mainly with people who shared my hobby/passion for scrapbooking, I discovered I was writing more and more about that topic rather than anything else. And now Scraps of Mind is totally focussed on Scrapbooking information, tips and tutorials – including video tutorials which I have started making and am totally loving. Although I also write blogging tips for Scrapbookers.

In July 2007 I decided to ‘get serious’ about blogging and joined Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Program, moving my blog Scraps of Mind to its own domain at the same time.

I won’t go into detail of the dramas of that move, but I’ll just say that Scraps of Mind changed servers three times in that month and I was a nervous wreck at the end of it. I’m sure that many of you who have made the jump have been through similar trauma. And like many before me, I just wish I’d done it earlier when the pain of severing links and traffic history would have been so much less.

So I have spent the last six months working on building the quality of my blog to service my niche market and implementing the lessons taught by Yaro in his course.

And let me just say that I consider the last six months of the Blog Mastermind Course totally worthwhile and money well spent. I’ve used my affiliate link to the BMM but I’m not sure if the course is even currently open at the moment as Yaro closed the doors to new members at the beginning of December for an undisclosed period.

But if you haven’t already done so, I totally recommend you download Yaro’s free Blog Profits Blueprint which is just bristling with ideas for improving your blog and potentially making money from it.

Anyway, in the last six months I’ve built Scraps of Mind into a Page Rank 4 blog with an Alexa Ranking of 170,000 (down from over 1.5 million). And I’m No 16 on the Top Australian Women’s Blogger List and No 36 on the Top 100 Australian Bloggers List, so I figure I must be doing something right.

My blog is starting to earn money but I still have a long way to go. The important thing for me is that I love what I’m doing and I love the great global community that I’m building on Scraps of Mind. Being located in Australia is no disadvantage to accessing a global community with blogging. And in fact I find blogging with an Australian ‘voice’ gives me a point of differentiation.

Now I spend more time blogging about scrapbooking than I spend actually doing it!

Bloggo Ergo Sum

I blog, therefore I am.

Karooch is an AussieBlogger from Victoria.

She writes the Scraps of Mind blog which she describes as: a feast of Scrapbooking information and tutorials for both the Digital Scrapbooker and the Traditional Paper Scrapbooker. Seasoned with Antiques & Collectibles, Music inspired, and Blog Presentation articles to add some extra spice. All served up with a light hearted and fun style.

And also the Scraps of Mind Weekly Word Art Newsletter which offers three pieces of original designed Word Art delivered free to your inbox each week.