Mom bloggers have played crucial roles in transforming the Internet. What was simply a setting for the exchange of information when first released to the public has become a nexus for both business and pleasure in people’s lives. Mom blogs have also helped make the Internet into a tool for social good. As both the Internet and the mom blogging phenomenon develop, people are finding more and more valuable uses for their computers and their passions in life.
The Dawn of the Internet
Initially, the online world was a good place to get your email and find out about the latest news. As bandwidths expanded and computers with Internet connections became more prevalent in modern households, the Internet became the location for more and more of people’s daily lives. It was no longer just a place that you visited occasionally to check in. It became the focus of many peoples’ lives. Existing companies began to move much of their business there and many new companies founded their operations on the web.
Working from Home Attractions
The Internet also presented opportunities for people to work from home. Many employers took advantage of the possibilities and allowed workers to complete their work at home and send their work in via fax or email. Other people founded businesses on the Internet. They sold products or performed services via the World Wide Web.
The attractions of this lifestyle were numerous. You could avoid long commutes or incorporate your work into a hectic life full of other responsibilities. Soon, people realized how blogging could be turned into a moneymaking enterprise.
Blogs began as platforms for people to communicate online. They created small websites, which were usually free. They were excellent locations for posts about people’s thoughts on a variety of subjects. Some blog owners focused on current events while others were interested in specific topics, such as sports or religion.
These blogs were also excellent platforms for advertisements and portals for business. Blogs that received a lot of traffic were able to generate money for their owners when a sufficient number of curious visitors clicked on advertisements or followed links to web pages selling specific products.
Mom Blogging Phenomenon
Stay-at-home mothers also discovered a way to utilize these blogs for income. They were perfect solutions to the quandaries faced by many mothers. They wanted to stay at home with their children but also provide an income for the family and find outlets for their passions and their desires to work. With blogs, they were able to do all that and more.
The New York Times first noted the phenomenon on a national level in January of 2005. At that time, there were only around 8,000 people blogging about their families. Only a handful were mothers dedicated to making a living from their weblogs, as they were still called then.
Many of these initial mom blogs were centered entirely around their families. Women shared stories about their children, the common struggles of raising kids, what their lives were like before having children and what they would do when the kids were grown up a little more.
It became much more than that. Mothers discovered that the conversations that they were having online were drawing crowds. These crowds were curious about lots of things and eager to take part in the discussions. Suddenly, mom blogs were not just digital versions of backyard fences and residential street corners where a handful of women could share their thoughts. Instead, they were wide open marketplaces. People came to talk but, more significantly, some people came with their wallets open.
The Rise of the Blogging Empire
The shrewd use of advertisements and third-party affiliate sales helped to propel the mom-blog phenomenon in to the spotlight. Women who had stayed at home to raise their children were amazingly doing it all. They had the kids and the career. Once they had pined for lost freedoms and discussed their mutual disillusionment on their blogs. Now, many of them were turning their blogs into centers of ecommerce.
According to a 2012 article in PR Daily, a web-based news site, Mom bloggers now control roughly $2 trillion worth of American purchasing power alone. They have gone far beyond the blogs that detailed their daily struggles. Many of them have gone on to run blogs about politics, economics and a bevy of cultural issues. Between them, they sell advertisement spots, products and a variety of services.
By now, many of the first mom bloggers have gone through incredible transitions. They started out just finding people to talk to while they cooked, cleaned and change diapers. Soon they discovered how to add some supplemental income to their lives with deft use of their blogs. By now, many of them are actually supporting their families with their online work and earning more than they ever imagined doing with their degrees or their old jobs.
Impact of Social Media
Social media began to transform the Internet again with the rise of platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Rather than take away from the opportunities found on older platforms such as blogs, these new element sin the equations of Internet success simply added more ways to garner visitors. In fact, social media just made it easier for these moms to transform their blogs by targeting the audiences that they needed to generate income with their writing.
Varieties of Mom Bloggers
Today there is a wide variety of mom bloggers. What was once a niche now has many of its own special corners. For example, there are leagues of mom blogs dedicated to women of various ethnicities, such as the Latina Mom bloggers group. Then there are Mom Bloggers for Social Good, a global alliance of women from 17 countries that just formed last year. They use their traffic and their skills to help a variety of good causes and NGOs around the world.
A synergy has developed and continues to develop between these mothers and the Internet as a whole. They have successfully transformed the web from a mere tool for communication into an instrument of social welfare.