Another blog in the family
After my post yesterday about resolving to update my blog every day in November, Alison suggested I should sign up for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). What a wonderful coincidence! Once upon a time I signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and found that writing a 10,000 word rambling family saga based around the trials and tribulations of a group of circus performers in 30 days was beyond me. So I cheered from the sidelines as Paul and my Dad finished their opuses and I felt proud to know them.
So here I am resolving to do this, and not only does it coincide nicely with NaBloPoMo, but also not so nicely with Lily deciding she doesn’t like sleeping so very much anymore and also crazily with the fact that Big-P and I are launching ANOTHER new blog!
Nuts?
Perhaps.
Today we are launching a little sister site for Kiddley called Kiddley Links; a shopping blog full of wonderful products for kids we discover as we browse the internet. For a while we were putting such things up on Kiddley but the more we went on, the less it seemed to fit and the more it seemed to need it’s own site separate from the DIY nature of Kiddley.
Kiddley has been going from strength to strength and no one is more surprised than me that we are starting to make a small income. It’s exciting to be working on a project like this with Big-P and it’s immensely satisfying trying new things and see what works. We are learning so much about blogging and marketing and our audience and after lots of planning and thinking and projecting we have decided that another new (small) blog is the next step for us followed by yet another in the new year. It’s all a bit of an experiement at this stage.
I love blogging, and I find it so much easier to do this kind of work than freelance illustration work which seems to suck up vast amounts of time and demands that you are flexible enough to meet ever-changing deadlines and specifications. I find this so hard to do with little kids. I am really pleased to see that blogging might be some kind of family business for us to make up for it.
If you are interested in reading more about this kind of blogging, the resources we have found the most inspiring and useful are the wise words of Darren Rowse at problogger.net and Steve Pavalina’s essay on How to Make Money from Your Blog.
But after all is said and done, it’s also nice to have Loobylu – which is just my place to write about the random stuff that happens to be on my mind today and that’s what NaBloPoMo is all about for me.
Responses
1st November 2006 at 5:06 pm
Good luck with the new blog 
I’ve been wanting to ask you a question relating to Kiddley for a while. How do you organise your time to DO all these activities with your daughter? Do you schedule time in every day? Do you have a list or chart of things to try? I find by the end of a normal day I’ve done a good job just to take the kids to the park and feed them, let alone try most of these – excellent – ideas. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. (Maybe as a blog entry one day?)
1st November 2006 at 5:48 pm
Your blogs and all yuor blogging is inspiring! I just started up my blog! yay!
1st November 2006 at 9:51 pm
I am so glad to hear you have found that delicate work/life balance everybody is looking for. Your blog is a delight to look at and read, and I am not remotely surprised that Kiddley has been a success – thanks for the advice and links for us novice bloggers!
1st November 2006 at 10:06 pm
and you’ve just had your second child! Amazing. Hope this goes well for you. Your illustration comment hit a nerve with me…it is difficult at times.
good luck with it all.
there are some great things already to see.
1st November 2006 at 11:12 pm
Ahh, the joys of trying to be a productive, contributing to society, working mother while trying to be just a mother. If you find the answers, let me know. But it sounds like you are on the right track. Kiddley links looks great. Who doesn’t love a bit of Kiddley shopping?
1st November 2006 at 11:55 pm
Congratulations! It’s very inspirational reading about all of your endeavors. Sometimes I feel hopeless about having so much to do; that I end up not doing anything at all. Your writings show it’s possible to do lots of things with a little planning and motivation. Thanks!
2nd November 2006 at 8:30 am
Ah, another fan of Darren’s. Good luck with the blogging quota – I’m keeping mine up too for the month!
2nd November 2006 at 9:53 am
I am also doing NaBloPoMo, although in our case it should be NaBloPoMo(Aus).
Good luck.
2nd November 2006 at 11:33 am
I agree completely with all these posters! How do you do it all? I barely have time to write my baby’s blog, which, BTW, was really inspired by Loobylu. I love Kiddley and can’t wait for Evan to grow up enough for me to try some of the ideas!
2nd November 2006 at 11:37 am
Funny that you mention Nanowrimo! The reason I read Looblyu is you designed the Nanowrimo t shirts the first year I did it (ages ago)!
2nd November 2006 at 3:44 pm
Congratulations Claire! It’s so exciting that you’re finding a way to work and care for your girls (gives us all hope!). And more Kiddley can only be a good thing for everyone! xo
2nd November 2006 at 4:04 pm
Anything that brings us more Loobylu to read is a great idea!
3rd November 2006 at 1:29 am
Oh boy — I love your new blog! I’ve already saved a few of the items to our Amazon wishlist. Thanks!
Kirsten
3rd November 2006 at 11:22 am
Hi Claire, I think your blog is very cool and useful for parents of young (and not so young) children. The design also looks great! Could I recommend an educational website that your readers
may find interesting? It includes exercises for kids just starting
learning how to read, as well as hundreds of quizzes on various educational topics. Best of all, it’s free and kids love it!
Here is the address:
http://www.quiz-tree.com/Sight-Words_main.html
4th November 2006 at 10:06 am
Hi Claire!
Hehe, I’m not sure if you realised this, or maybe that’s why you called it what you did – but do you know Kiddley Links rhymes with Tiddlywinks (the game)? I just thought of that and have been sitting here giggling away ever since.
So glad to hear your blogging endeavours are paying off for you, and like everyone else, I’m in awe of your amazing time management skills!!!
xoxox
4th November 2006 at 11:45 am
I’ve been reading your blog for quite some time now, and I really like it. However, I would like to read the complete posts from my rss aggregator, and just the first couple of lines appear in the rss feed. I can understand that you do that in Kiddley, but in your own personal blog, where I understand it’s more about your own space than attracting advertisement clicks, would it not be a better idea to look after the readers that read you from their own aggregators, especially those who do not want to open web browsers to read their blogs?
Anyway, good luck with your month, I’ll go back to lurk in the shadows of my own silence, and read your posts. 
6th November 2006 at 9:31 pm
Congratulations on the launch of the new blog and the success of Kiddley. It’s great to see your creativity and passion in this.
Thanks to for your kind words!
Darren
1st November 2006 at 4:15 pm
I’m so pleased to hear Kiddley’s doing well. You brighten up the internet so you deserve your success. Good luck with the new blog!