Blogging Tips From Dawn Aldridge At Reveal Natural Health

It’s Friday once again which means it’s time to interview another Friday Featured Blogger.  Today I am delighted to introduce you to Dawn Aldridge who blogs at Reveal Natural Health.  

I met Dawn through a bloggers community and she shows a consistent commitment to her blog and her long term goals.  She is incredibly passionate about her blog niche, and how she intends her business to grow in the future.

Whilst Dawn does not blog ‘about blogging’, she has also become one of our guest contributors here at Blogging Tips 101, and to date she has shared posts about ‘identifying your blog’s niche market‘ and ‘How to use Twitter for social media marketing‘.

Dawn is a stay at home mum who started blogging as a way of earning an income but also managing to stay at home with her children.  Dawn shares with us some great tips on how she makes this possible.

1. Tell us about yourself and your blog at Reveal Natural Health

I am so excited to be a part of this feature!

My name is Dawn. I am a wife and mom of 2 kids (an 8 year old boy and a 2 year old girl). We live in the US. 

I blog at Reveal Natural Health about how you can improve your family’s health by preparing meals at home. I post made-from-scratch recipes and ingredient substitutions to make recipes healthier.

I include my family’s meal plans each week to help others find meal-time inspiration. I also post about skin care and family related topics.

2. What made you get started in blogging?

I had just ben laid off from my job as a material planner for a large manufacturer. Before that I had been laid off TWICE from a local government accounting job.

Traditional jobs were not providing me the financial security I needed. I started seeking opportunities where I could control the work I do and the income I could make. Blogging is a great fit because I can do it anywhere and anytime.

3. How much time do you dedicate each day/week to your blogging?

How do you keep track of what you are doing?

I structure my working time around family activities the best I can.

I typically work about 5-6 hours per day during the week and 1-2 hours per day on weekends. This includes writing, research, marketing and new project development for my blog and also some outside freelance writing and paid administrative assignments.

I also access my blog, email and social media sites from my phone throughout the day so I can respond to inquiries quickly.

I use the calendar function on my smart phone to fill in what major tasks I need to get done each day. If I am having a great day, I may even be able to work on tasks I assigned to the next day. 

4. If you could have told yourself ONE thing when you started blogging, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid of Twitter.

The limited text characters allowed to get a message out can be daunting at first, but Twitter is a great tool for finding people who are talking about your niche.

5. Do you make money from your blog? If so, what has been your most successful way of making money?

I am currently monetizing my blog using Google Adsense and affiliate ads. However, my blog is not currently making much money to speak of.

I do have some of my own products I am creating to sell this summer. I plan to use my blog as a tool to market those products as soon as they are ready.

6. As well as blogging, do you have another full/part time job or parenting responsibilities? How do you juggle these demands?

I work from home doing freelance writing and paid administrative tasks in addition to working on my blog. Now that school is out for the summer, both of my kids are also home with me and we do activities every day.

My kids demand my attention most of the time they are awake, so I have to take advantage of the times they are asleep. I wake up a couple of hours before my kids do in the mornings. My youngest also takes a 2 hour nap in the afternoons while my oldest plays independently. I get quite a bit of my work done during these times.

7. What would you say is your favourite social media platform and why?

For my personal life, I prefer Facebook for keeping in touch with friends.

However, for my blog I prefer Twitter! I don’t like how Facebook algorithms keep most of my followers from seeing my status updates.

With Twitter, all of my followers get the opportunity to see my updates.

8. What has been the biggest hurdle that you have come across in your blogging career to date? How did you overcome this?

My biggest hurdle is finding the time to do everything I want to do. I have so many big ideas for my blog!

In order to accomplish what is most important with my blog at a given time, I set no more than 5 monthly goals for my blog. Then I make sure my blogging time is used for activities that will get me toward those specific goals.

Setting goals really helps me to stay focused.

 9. How do you drive traffic to your blog and grow your readership?

I post my content on several social media outlets. I maintain an active presence on Facebook and Twitter. On those sites I share valuable content I find from other bloggers and also post fun tips in addition to sharing my own content.

My blog is included in the Top Mommy Blogs directory. I encourage my readers to click the badge on my sidebar to keep my blog’s ranking high among blogs in the TMB directory. 

I network with other bloggers, which is how I got to do this interview. Thank you, Catherine!

I also use Bloglovin’ to follow bloggers I enjoy. This is where I find great content to share, comment on and interact with. This helps bring exposure to my blog, as well.

 10. What is the most important piece of advice you could give to a new blogger?

Be realistic!

You can’t expect to be a great blogger overnight and you can’t expect to be successful without putting in a lot of work.

If you are providing great content that is of value to your readers and you are getting that content in front of your target market, you can be successful.

Creating valuable content and gaining traffic to your blog both take a lot of work.

Do you have any other questions you would like to ask Dawn?  Please share at the end of this post. 

If you would like to connect further with Dawn, you can do so at her social media profiles.

Facebook / Google + / Twitter /

Would you like to be considered for an interview at Friday’s Featured Blogger? 

Please complete the form below, and provide some information about yourself and your blog.

You will be contacted once your application has been considered.