What I Want For The Blog

The Dreams Behind the Scenes

Happy Friday, Belles & Beaux!

I had planned to have this written last night but due to my lack of energy I ended up crashing early in the evening while continuing my binge watch of The Last Ship on Hulu. But this post has been something I’ve wanted to address, especially with the four year anniversary coming up in April.

If you haven’t read the About the Blog page, then I’ll give the short rundown of the blog’s history really quick. I started this over on Tumblr about five years ago. Why? Because I wanted a blog that kind of jumbled everything into the mixer together. See, I don’t like being pinned down to just one type of category. And thus, Southern Belle Grace was born on Tumblr and moved to WordPress when Tumblr just didn’t allow me to do what I wanted with blogging – but everything posts there as well!

So here we are coming up on the four year anniversary, and I’ve really started thinking about what I truly want from the blog and keeping it going in the future!

Self-hosting

This is something I’m still going back and forth on. Where I will have more space for images, I think I’d rather splurge on Flickr for the year and just keep dropping them in like I currently do.

Yes, I’d like to drop the WordPress bit on the URL, but right now funds are just not available to do it and I haven’t grown as much as I would like to. Granted, the latter part is 90% my own fault because I keep doing those crazy hiatuses without prompting.

It’s going to happen, but I need to prove to myself that I can blog nearly 365 days a year before that happens. So we’re starting that goal here in 2019.

Monetizing

Yes. I want to monetize the blog in the future. But it’s not a priority right this moment. I’m just really enjoying the writing part right now and don’t want to rush into anything. But I want to be extremely clear: I will not be selling out. And by that I mean that I don’t plan on doing a good review for anything that I don’t like. I don’t care if a brand or something in the future pays me a million dollars to do the review.

I’m gonna tell you the truth no matter what. If I like something, then I’m going to sing its praises. If I hate it, then I’m gonna tell you exactly what I hated about it. I know some brands don’t like that, but in the world we’re in we need honesty on products. I seriously mean this. No lies here on the blog. If I hated it, then you’ll know.

Do I really wanna be an influencer?

Yes. No. Not 100%.

What I want is a space that I can come and share how products worked for me, share my DIYs – I have a great one coming this year-, and the places I go. If you happen to go to those places, great! If you don’t and are living vicariously through me, then that’s great too!

I just want to live my life and share the experiences because I feel like people don’t always have the ability to experience the things they want to. And if I can help someone get out of their comfort zone or find something new doing this, then that’s great!

But I’m totally okay with not being a “influencer”. So that’s why I say “Not 100%.”

So what I really want…

What I really want is to create a community here where we share fun things! And that is what I will always want from the blog. I adore the friends I’ve made and I want to continue making friends with the blog and interact with you, my followers! Which is why I try to encourage y’all to use that comment section down below because I love hearing your feedback.