As most of you already know, I started blogging in July of 2011 when I got attacked in a mothers forum for complaining about my not so perfect pregnancy. I got so mad that I decided to start my own forum where I could say what ever I wanted. That day I gave birth to www.TiredofBeingPregnant.com. It became my place to say "Who ever said Pregnancy was rainbows and unicorns is an idiot! oh and P.s. I hate being pregnant today, suck it!"
I wasn't sure if anyone would read my blog, but just in case someone else was tired of being pregnant, I wanted to let them know they were not alone. Truthfully, not at all to my surprise, there were hundreds of thousands of women who where tired of being pregnant. So I just kept on writing. I didn't know at the time I would turn into this "Mommy Blogger" a year later.
Now I sit here typing to you, with collectively between the two sites, 300,000 page views, a facebook page and a twitter account for my websites. I just shake my head at it. I don't know why I decided to buy into the blogging world and it's dirty politics, but I did. I bought in late July 2012 after a year of blogging. I figured out pretty quickly that I needed to get a Twitter account, a Facebook account and to start rubbing elbows with other bloggers. So I did it. All three in the same day.
Quickly I learned I was in way over my head, there were hundreds of mom bloggers, and they were all fighting for readers, retweets, awards, mentions, facebook fans and followers. I joined Blog Hops, Blog Swaps, tried out for Blogger Idol, joined clubs, cults and clicks, I dug myself the biggest damn bloghole I could.
Then I realized, not only was I deep in the blog-o-sphere hole, I had become, what my friend and fellow blogger Ashley at Sorry Kid, Your Mom Doesn’t Play Well With Others calls a Bloghole, a.k.a blogging asshole: Someone who is just out for followers and recognition for their own blog who leave pointless comments, begs for followers and likes, and is purely focused on the numbers, not the content and readers. I had lost complete touch with reality, with my readers. I put and end to that immediately.
Unfortunately, there are so many Blogholes, Faceholes and Tweetholes out there, that I still have a daily battle of fighting them and their comments off. On my blog I get crap comments with the persons name, tag line and website in the body on a daily basis. I don't even publish them anymore. On my Facebook I am constantly having to delete post about someones cause, book or product that they are trying to pawn off. And on Twitter, the spam messages are out of control with crazy mom bloggers playing dumb and dirty. It's all apart of the back stage bullshit a blogger has to deal with.
Recently I started getting tweets from random people listing 5 or 6 different names, mine included of course, saying "Thank you!," great right... too bad I have no idea who these. I am not following them, they are not following me... just crap tweets, probably looking for superficial followers to pad their numbers. I also get tweet saying if you follow me, or my friend I will give you 2000 followers. I don't want fake followers. I wasn't the popular girl in High scholl and don;t care if I am on twitter either.
Still, I learned pretty quickly twitter is a numbers game between bloggers. The majority of my readers who are just moms coming to read my daily rant, don't have twitter accounts. Of my nearly 500 followers, about 20 are my readers, the rest are bloggers and company's, all buying into the numbers game.
I have finally come to the conclusion that I don't want to play the game anymore. It's was fun while it lasted, but I don't want get all caught up in the backstage bullshit of being a blogger. I write because I love it. I love writing about my daily adventures in mommyland. But I barely have enough time in a day to be an awesome Mommy, me, wife and blogge, let alone spend so much time and energy playing into the Blog/face/tweetholes.
Listen up Blog/Face/Tweetholes who are reading this on your way to spamming me with crap to try to add to your numbers, if you really want to be the best blogger and have the most numbers in the game, ask yourself these two questions...
1. With 3.9 million mom bloggers out there, what makes you so special?
2. How are you going to set yourself apart?
When you find the answer to those questions, then you will win the game.
Want to read more about the politics of blogging? Check out my friend and fellow blogger Heather @ The B(itch) Log's post "My thoughts on Blogger Awards and Facebook Shout outs."
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