People continually ask Janice and me how we support two families from a single mom blog. 

The short answer is... "It's not easy."

And I don't usually give a long answer.

So, I've decided to start this new email series called, "Become a Better Blogger", where I can share with you the details of exactly how we create enough income from one mom blog to support both of our families.

You might have signed up for this particular email list sometime in the last year from this page... http://www.5minutesformom.com/wahm-email/

And, you haven't heard from me for a while. 

That's because I have utmost respect for the inbox. Until I have time to craft something meaningful and important to share with you, I won't send anything.

"Become a Better Blogger" will be sent every Monday and will be our way of giving back to our loyal blogging readers. In each edition, you will learn something from our 8 years of full-time blogging.

This ezine is exclusively for you guys on this one list and you won't see the content posted at 5 Minutes For Mom. If you have any friends that may benefit from this, please direct them here. 

So let's get started...

As the "short answer" says... It isn't easy. And you'll be getting the long answer gradually over the next several weeks. Because it's a looooong answer. 

But the backstory will help get you up to speed.

Janice and I are both 41 years old, we're both single moms with 2 children each. We live 2 blocks apart and run our business together. And we fight a fair amount. LOL

I was a software developer and Janice was a youth worker until about 2003 when we started working for ourselves. We began in direct sales with a company called Melaleuca and soon took that business online. In 2005, along with our mother, we created two online toy stores and entered the world of e-commerce, SEO and Internet Marketing.

In March of 2006, I came up with the idea of "5 Minutes for Mom" mostly with the intention of creating authentic links back to our online stores and to help other moms promote their online businesses.

The timing was just right as the mom blogging trend suddenly hit hard and the momosphere exploded into action.

We didn't expect our new mom blog to generate a profit at the start. We did create it with business goals... it wasn't ever just for fun... but the goal was to drive links and traffic to our toy stores.

It worked well. Back in the days of passing Page Rank and top organic search results in Google, our blog helped pay the bills, even if not directly.

Each year brought change, and gradually we started earning more income directly from the blog. By 2012, because of Google algorithm changes and Amazon's competitive pricing destroying the profit margin in the toy industry, we closed our stores to focus entirely on blogging and social media. 

Since then we have supported our two families from the income we earn from 5 Minutes for Mom. And recently Janice has also earned additional income through her photography business.

So through these emails, we will continue to share a look behind the scenes into how we create our income from blogging.

See you next week...

Susan (and Janice)
5 Minutes for Mom