I am my brand. My brand is me. I blog about myself. I muse about being me and muse about living the Musings from Me family blogger life. From 2008, I have been Musings from Me on every social media platform I could get my hands on…even some that are long defunct…RIP ello…RIP TSU.
Becoming a Blogger
I started on blogspot.com on January 2, 2008…18 years ago. I hadn’t planned on blogging or being a social media influencer. Blogging was just a stop gap until I found a “real” job. I had worked for 10 years as a Editorial Production Editor for a healthcare/legal publisher — Aspen Publishers, Inc. — for 4+ years as a full-time employee and 6+ years as a freelance/remote. Worked remotely before working remote was cool!
But, for a year or so my blog — WritingMyLifeOneBlogataTime.blogspot.com — consumed me. It was a welcome distraction from my glacially slow job hunt. It seemed as though all publishing companies had eliminated editorial production management from their downline entirely. Work was outsourced. I could not find any jobs in my field. It was disheartening. Adding to the complexity of my job search was that I only wanted freelance/remote jobs as I had a kid, a preteen, and a teen, as well as their myriad of school/Scouts/sports/Sunday School activities. Our family calendar was full to bursting.
It was 2002 and finding a job online was challenging. We had no handy dandy job search apps. I suppose I used Indeed or similar, but job searching was slow and laborious. Only a decade before (1990s), finding a job meant pulling out your Washington Post, scrutininizing the Help Wanted ads, circling jobs that seemed interesting, weeding out obvious scam jobs, pulling out your typewriter or using your work computer with MS-DOS or later Windows to write a cover letter, printing out your resume, mailing letter and resume to the HR Department, and waiting for weeks or months for a call from the HR Department.
So, I distracted myself by writing about my family on WritingMyLifeOneBlogataTime.blogspot.com. Blogging was relatively new in 2008. I certainly didn’t know anyone who blogged, but I became a blogger. Social media was only in its infancy. I joined Twitter in June 2008…Facebook in August 2008…YouTube in November 2008…Instagram in April 2012…tumblr in September 2011…Pinterest…Instagram Threads…Snapchat…Bluesky…Reddit…Linkedin…tiktok…and so on… Just call me an OG Social Influencer!
Becoming a Blog Reviewer
When I wasn’t blogging or job hunting or exploring Twitter and Facebook, I was signing up for blog reviews. It was easy…sign up online for a free product, receive the product, write a blog post, share the blogpost on Twitter or Facebook, then email the PR rep or complete a Google blogger form showings links to blogposts and social media posts.
Soon I was receiving emails from PR reps asking me to blog about EVERYTHING!
Becoming a Professional Blogger
But, my blog url was long and my intellectual property was essentially owned by blogspot. I found it hard to edit the backend. It was clunky. And I wanted ownership of my brand. I met a mommy blogger at a local blogging event in D.C. Mariana (I searched for her blog to link her but couldn’t find it) was tech savvy and had been blogging longer than I had, so had the skills and expertise that I lacked. Mariana offered me an amazing gift…she offered to create my blog header…all I did was provide an istock image…and she created a WordPress blog for me. All I had to do was choose a domain name and start paying for web hosting.
With Mariana’s generous gift, I was able to brand myself as Musings from Me on Kids, Preteens, and Teens…Seizing family one dinner…game night…movie at a time. With my own blog and domain, I was eligible for paid work. PR reps were reluctant to give paid work to running their blogs on blogspot.com.
Buying ALL the Domains
With Musingsfromme.com, I was anxious to get all the domains…com…info…net…co…biz. At one time, I had 19 domains on GooDaddy! I was always excited to add another domain to my collection…the more the merrier. I’m also a collector of urls! 2026 Update: Sadly, now that I am not blogging that much, I’m down to just 1 domain…sad face.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean about “writing about branding,” but I write about brands in my sponsored posts and reviews. I should say that I no longer blog about brands for money, but from 2008 through 2018 I made a steady income from blogging about brands…cooking in the Betty Crocker kitchen at General Mills HQ, frying a bucket of chicken at the KFC HQ, being a General Hospital Brand Ambassador, and pots and pots of coffee.
Blogging was just one part of my Musings from Me Media business. Another funding stream was writing for all.the.mom.sites. While writing for these sites was never very lucrative, I loved honing my writing and seeing the traffic to my blog and social media channels grow. Small, but steady.
It seemed that every few months I added another quiver to my writing bow. I loved having an impact in my small way on the blogging/social media influencer/blogosphere. Basically for about 10 years from 2008-2018, people relied on blogger reviews for what to buy, where to eat, what to watch, where to travel, etc. We were a force to be reckoned with!
Disclosure: I was not compensated to write this post. The views expressed are my own.
