If you have been following this blog you will probably know that although I had closed my other business down due to my health, my entrepreneurial spirit would soon get the better of me and I would have to organise something else. There are some characteristics in work and life that you just can't teach. They are part of you, it's in your blood, they become who we are.
I was far from the brightest in the bunch at school and only left with two GCSE's then went straight to Secretarial College but the I had a passion from being quite young on thinking of ways I could make some extra money.
They say that 'to be entrepreneurial by nature is to be optimistic,' and that people with an entrepreneurial spirit never spend time thinking about what they can't do, but ask themselves instead 'why can't I?'
I had to take stock after I closed the last business and initially just wrote for my local Newspaper.
I'd always enjoyed typing more than anything else so my other half bought me my first laptop.
I then started to research and learn lots from the internet. I made mistakes as I went along but then didn't make them the second time around and it was during this time that I first came across 'blogs'.I loved reading other peoples musings and became fascinated by them all.
Then I decided I would start to write a blog and thought I would write about my back pain as I was sure there were many more sufferers like me who might read it. So back in 2008 'backpainblog' was born.
When I first started the Back Pain Blog I didn't really think about what income I could make out of it as it was just something to take my mind off my chronic pain. I decided I needed to know more about pain management and how to deal with it, so I took an online Certification Study Course on 'Pain Management'. I was also went to a 'Pain Management' course at my local hospital. Then armed with all this information I could write blog posts regularly on the latest treatments, product reviews, therapies, drugs, tips and websites on back pain, Fibromyalgia and arthritic conditions.
My views were going up daily and so were my followers so I decided to start up with Adsense to bring in a bit of extra revenue. Right from the start I did well with Adsense and decided to have a go at writing another blog.
The second blog I started was 'Tea4Two' which I started simply because I loved the quintessential British tradition of an Afternoon Tea. What I didn't realise at the time was that there was about to become a national and now international resurrection of the Afternoon Tea business.
I was totally in my element and was quite happy with the income from my small writing job at the Newspaper and my blogs. It fitted in with my quieter lifestyle and took me into another world away from my pain.
Back then the competition was no where near as big as it is now, so it wasn't really necessary to work with affiliate companies as Adsense could bring in enough money. I also think I had lost a bit of the fire in my belly to 'make it big', but it gave me a feeling of being back in the entrepreneurial seat.
No matter how much pain I had to endure I have always been someone who would push myself to the limits to achieve a goal. At this stage in my life I had to be in 'control' of my pain, and be able to pace myself in order to succeed. I realised that as long as I had a rest when my body cried out for it that this could then give me another boost to work a bit more. I now go for complete bed rest every afternoon for a couple of hours in order for me to get a lot more out of 24 hours.
Since then I have never really looked back although I was really upset when the platform my blog was on ('blog.co.uk') decided to close down last year. By then I was rated on the first page of Google, I had a massive list of friends and followers and was gutted that it was finishing. Where to go and how to move the blog(s) was something I had to really look into.
They only offered you the choice of Wordpress to send it over to otherwise you had to sort it all out yourself. Well, I maybe a little computer savvy but certainly not knowledgeable enough to know how to change things into html and move to another site. After all I am self taught, I've never ever been on any type of computer course.
I decided on Wordpress and moved my Back Pain Blog over in September 2015. Now I have to work on getting my followers back and also getting my blog back on page one of Google.
In my next post I will go through the ropes of setting up an Adsense account and how to make some money using it.
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