Conquering the 'What if' Fear

Blogging is very public and since I started the 'what ifs' have been huge and if I'm honest terrifying.. 

What if my posts are crap? what if Blogger.com decide my blog should be taken down? What if my friends laugh? What if no one takes me seriously? What if  I can't make a career out of blogging? What if no one likes our recipes? What if they don't like my amateur Iphone photography?

I blogged anyway and I now understand the saying...

At home the blog has been a massive success. We are very conscious of what we eat, we have tried tonnes of new (healthy) grub and all 6 of us are loving food and our money seems to be going much further. 

I am proud of how far we have come in so little time and I am extremely proud of my children - Have you seen their posts? Chilli Seafood mix and Half Term Baking.  

There are three things which have helped me conquer the what if fear....

1. Google accepted us for Ad Sense

Not sure I feel about this one - random advertising appearing on our blog seems a little strange and I don't expect to earn much, if anything from it. Despite this I'm thrilled! I see it as Google giving their stamp of approval to Feeding Us 6! 

2. Product Reviews

These seem to be massive in the blogging world, bloggers testing products and posting reviews. Sometimes for a monetary reward and sometimes just to try out and keep a product. I recently signed up to Bloggers Required and noticed a couple of foodie assignments on there, neither paid. Both looked fun and both were a fit with our healthy eating mission. 

I did a little dance....

I applied and didn't tell anyone - I thought there was no way anyone would think our blog was good enough to promote their products (feel the fear and do it anyway) 
Guess what they both said YES! They both saw feeding Us 6 as a good blog - a blog reaching people and being read. I did a little dance (in private) when I received the YES emails.

3. thekitchn Homie Awards

I'm sure most of you will already know -  at the last minute we decided to give the Homie Awards a shot. For a new blog it was very ambitious, we looked amateur and we didn't get past the first round. 

What a wicked experience

I found some awesome foodie blogs to read and these are given us a list of dos and donts.

I have taken tips from them. To start with the look and feel of our blog, I think the last look was a bit uummmm immature, busy, too bright maybe? I can't put my finger on the specifics but it was not working. 
I spent last weekend playing around with it and I am way more comfortable with this new look, although still not 100% happy - What are you thoughts?

My favourite inspirational blogs...
Sally's Baking Addiction and in particular her recent post, How I turned my Food Blog into a career. It was refreshing to read sally's honest post about her journey. Refreshing to hear that yes it does take time and yes it is hard work - luckily for me I am willing to put the work in. 

The biggest thing I took away from our Homie award experience is that we are on the right track! 

We ARE doing well. 

Overall we got 32 nominations and we finished 11th pace in our category out of 113 -lush! 

A big WHOOP and pat on the back to us and an even bigger THANK YOU to our supporters, the comments on facebook, Twitter and Google+ have been awesome. (I am a bit of social media junkie)

These three experiences have given me a massive boost - our blogging mission is now stronger than ever. I want to inspire my family, live healthily and blog. 
I know 100% that if we continue, work hard and we keep my focus on the end goal we will achieve it. 

And our goals - to eat healthily on a nugget, inspire others to do the same through our blog.