Hello again Armchair BEA bloggers! Welcome!
Here are the posts for the event that I've created this week:
Today's prompt is how has owning your blog helped you get other opportunities besides free books. Do you write/freelance elsewhere? etc...
Nope, I don't monetize, I don't offer advertising for a fee, I do not provide any fee-based promotional services, and I try not to participate in blog tours that are not big bonafide publicity companies (I stick with those who pay taxes and file for tax id #s etc). There are tax implications to receiving any sort of compensation in affiliation with a blog, and I would really like to not get on the IRS radar; this is another reason I have decided to not become a Mommy Blogger/Product Reviewer. (You are supposed to report income received on your tax return and I am not even going to attempt to distinguish tax laws between products, their value and money). I do have an Amazon store, but no one uses it. It's there for show to list cool books, and I don't link to Amazon within reviews with the 'special' link etc.
So, how about freelancing? I do indeed want to become a writer someday, and blogging has helped me see how my writing has developed over the past three-four years. I do have the opportunity to write as a Dallas Literature Examiner, but I haven't really done anything much with that. Their publishing tool is hogwash and there are so many nitty-gritty rules for posting articles on Examiner that I would rather not waste my time.
As a result of reviewing books, I have become a member of the Historical Novel Society and I have been reviewing for them since last fall. I also have the opportunity to review for the brand new Romantic Historical Fiction Lovers group, but that would require learning Wordpress and I am not too keen on that endeavor yet. Oh yeah, I forgot I did do a sweet little article as well for the HNS, in which I try to get history lovers to try Christian historical fiction.
So as you can see, I see the blog as a hobby. I already work full-time, have two kiddos, and a cat. There's only so much time in the day, and going beyond the blog anymore than what I've mentioned above would only be if I was writing a book. Which I would like to do.
I have loved meeting so many new bloggers, and wanted to share my other social links so we can stay connected:
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