4 Huge Lessons Learned in 4 Years of Blogging

Four years ago on the 14th of January, we sat in front of a computer as we are doing now and wrote our first blog post. That single act has transformed our life in more ways than we can imagine. Blogging for us is a creative outlet, a huge blessing and our way of dying empty. We are so grateful for the opportunity to share via the world wide web.

This blogging journey has also taught us a number of lessons. Lessons we would love to share with you today. So buckle up, grab a cup of tea, coffee, juice or something and let’s look back at 4 years together.

Your Why is the most important thing that will keep you going in any journey, whether blogging or otherwise. To us, this blog is our way of making a difference in the world using the talents God has blessed us with. We know our words, our recipes, our stories all make a difference. And we're determined to tell as many stories as we need to tell so many more people will be transformed by them.

One of our greatest fears is dying without using the talents God blessed us with. And this blog has been the perfect outlet for us to use some of those talents. Look, our why keeps us going. Let us say it again: our why keeps us going.

It keeps us going when the demands of life, mommyhood and all keep us busy and we feel like we can’t even find the time to create content. Our why keeps us going. Because we have discovered that without this blog, we will still have a very busy life. How we find the time to blog still remains a sort of miracle to us. But you know what spurs us to do it? The fact that we know heaven is happy with us doing this. The fact that we know everything we put on here makes a positive difference. This keeps us going.

One of the things that helped us so much is that we started where we were, with what we had and grew from there. Armed with a tiny laptop, living with our brother-in-law with 4 kids under our care, starting a blog seemed like the most unusual thing to do in the February of 2014. But guess what, we put pen on paper… or rather we put our fingers on our keyboard. We are veeery happy with how that turned out.

We knew next to nothing about blogging when we started but starting helped us grow. When we started sharing recipes, we used our cellphone to take pictures of the food – very ugly pictures we must say. We eventually learnt that we need to take good pictures and had to invest in learning about that and buying equipment. But we probably wouldn’t have learned all that without just starting. So just start and allow yourself to grow.

Also, we didn’t want to start making YouTube videos because we didn’t like our kitchen one bit! If only we had a better kitchen, we said, we would start making videos. When we made this comment to Mr N, he said, “start with what you have”. So we started making videos in our non-ideal small kitchen. And guess what? That small kitchen has produced 10,000 subscribers almost 2 years after we started making videos. If we hadn’t started, we would not have a single subscriber right now.

So friend, just start where you are. But don’t remain there. Allow yourself to grow. We have changed shooting equipment from cell phone to point and shoot, to DSLR, to a camcorder, to a better DSLR. So start where you are but allow yourself to grow.

Learning is one of those things you must keep doing if you want to grow. We have learnt so much since we started our blog and for this we are grateful. We have learned things we never even knew existed. Things like SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), Food Photography, etc. We have learned to edit photos and videos. We have learned a little of the technical side of managing a website. We have learned about social media marketing. We have learned to edit pictures and videos. We have learned to test recipes. We have learned so much and we are still learning every day.

So grow. Get books and resources to help you grow. Listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos. Never stop growing, never stop improving. One thing we like about content creation is the fact that there is always something new to learn and tweak. It’s an intriguing journey of growth.

Comparing is one of the biggest thieves of joy and we've learned not to compare our blog to others. Everyone’s journey in life is different so it robs us when we compare our journey to others.

As a mom, it is unfair to us to compare our blog to that of other bloggers who have no kids and devote more time to blogging. So do not compare. Work as hard as you can and grow as much as you can but do not rob yourself by comparing. Be yourself, stay in your lane and enjoy your journey.

We have learned so much in these years of blogging but these are the lessons that stand out to us. Hope they make a difference in your life. Here’s to another awesome year of blogging! Thank you, friends, for being here!