Introduction
One of the best parts of my journey as a travel blogger is meeting cool people. Recently, I had the pleasure to do just that by interviewing Kathleen from lifebykathleen.com. She is from Melbourne, Australia and she has been part of the blogging scene since 2014. Her blog is a great place to learn how to save time, money or different ways of tackling various life situations. Found out more specifically about her in my interview below!
So even though I had the chance to learn about you and about your work, why don’t you start by introducing yourself?
I started blogging on a platform called Blogger back in February of 2014. Interestingly, I hid it from everyone I knew personally. Even now, I still feel like a lot of people just don’t understand what blogging is really about. My topics gravitate around self-improvement and my first ever post was about my 2014 New Year resolutions. I look back now and even though I did not accomplish some of these resolutions, I still find it intriguing that I went through that exercise. A good trait about me is that I often offer different perspectives to people when it comes to solving problems or answering common questions. I really do believe it’s what sets me apart. I am also very results-driven and I get worried whenever I don’t meet my expectations.
Why did you hide it from everyone back then 🤨? How long until they discovered it?
So within my group of friends back then, I remember that once we found out one of us had a secret Facebook page and YouTube channel, we kind of laughed together about them. In the back of my mind, I did not want that to happen to me 😅. I also had this fear of publicly failing. With my blog, I was afraid that if it ever failed, it would stay permanently public and people would bring it up often. I managed to work on it for three years without telling anyone. Like I said, I blogged for six months on Blogger before switching to WordPress. Only one of my friends discovered it by accident after those three years. She recognized people and herself in a wedding picture and that’s when she asked me if I was the one behind it. That’s when I told everyone the truth about my work. That whole experience was quite funny, because even now, I feel like nobody would know unless they come across my stuff by Googling certain keywords 🤔😆. I don’t know, but they would have to dig quite deep before landing on anything unless they Google my name.
What is your background? Did it help you in your blogging journey?
I studied in accounting! I worked in it full-time until my daughter was born back in 2016. Afterwards, I took on a role in my husband’s IT company. Since he always loved working with tech and computers, we told him why not just do what always loved doing as a child and start a company about it. So he setup a company and I helped him with accounting obviously while running a blog section on the company’s website. I am not working on that blog section anymore, but I used to write the articles. Luckily, since my husband’s company is all about Web design and hosting, I don’t (and never will) need to pay for any domain names or hosting services 😄. He also helps me a lot with the technical side of running a blog so that is also a huge plus 😃. I took pretty much any role I felt like doing within the company. I once took on a support role and even for all the questions I was helping customers with, I literally just googled the answers. It was quite interesting, because even I was able to find answers despite not being technical or not knowing anything by just typing the right keywords. I guess it taught me the importance of keywords when it comes to finding the right answers. That is also another trait about me, I am naturally into problem-solving.
What inspired you to become a blogger and how long have you been doing it?
I got familiar with Ruth Soukup back in 2013 who is a very popular blogger. She hosted a lot of mastermind meetings and courses where she coaches people who want to succeed in blogging. These days, whenever I would think back at that moment, I constantly internally kick myself for not having purchased her course which costed only 214 USD$. Now she charges way more like 4000 USD$ or something. I also found out that a lot of people from these mastermind meetings were based in America. My intention when I started blogging was to make money plain and simple. I read about people who succeeded at it online and I just went for it, because I felt like I had all it takes to make it.
That must have been hard, because I am guessing you were you doing it as a side-hustle along with a job?
Before my daughter was born, my husband and I were sort of working on our projects and so that kind of kept me going at it. Like I said, I worked full-time in accounting until my daughter was born in 2016. I was also studying back in 2015 at a trade school. I probably worked on my studies for about 10 to 20 hours per week so I did not have much time for anything else. What was hard was because I am naturally very results-driven, I get really worried whenever I am not hitting the kinds of results I would aim for. Also, particularly after the birth of my daughter, I felt like my friendships were kind of fading a little bit. I had old friends, but I longed for a close female friend which is something I talked to my husband very often about. That’s one of the reasons why I made a lot of these blog posts on adulthood friendship. It is interesting to witness my evolution throughout the years. When I started in 2014, I wrote a lot about fitness, because it was a big part of my life, but then I started writing more about adulthood friendships after my daughter was born. My blog evolved along with my life events and that was fascinating to witness. I really enjoy having real conversations with people instead of just surface-level ones. For instance, within my group of friends, one of them once voiced their concerns about pregnancy and then the others sort of jumped in with the same issue. It always just takes one person to be vulnerable for others to know that they share common issues. I feel like within a group of friends, once someone experiences issues with anything, it encourages others to open up too.
Has blogging helped you have “deeper” conversations? Would you suggest that writing down emotions helps someone open up more verbally?
I think so. For example, I wrote articles about friendships in adulthood, because I was going through it and it sort of changed my life for the better. It made me want to host a girl’s night and write about how others can do it. It also made me commit to a schedule of catching up with several friends more regularly and write share those experiences too.
What were some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome as an early blogger?
My biggest challenge before and even up until now remains motivation. Like I said, because I am very results-driven, I lose a lot of motivation whenever my articles do not get enough pageviews. I would check my analytics daily and they really just go up and down constantly. Also, because I work a lot from home, I tend to easily get distracted with social media. Even though I have to use them for my work, it does not really feel to me like true progress. Even when I am working seriously on my blog, some of my work would end up being time wasters. For instance, I have never found any significant ROI from Facebook or Instagram after spending a solid month on them. Bloggers often say to go where your people are so if they aren’t there, then I don’t see any point in staying there either. I ended up just automating my posts and not using them as primary sources of traffic to my blog. I even use my Instagram page as my personal account even though I initially created it for my blog. On some days, I would get really anxious whenever I would feel like I did not make enough progress. I installed this Chrome Extension called Forest which allows you to block certain websites while rewarding you with coins. As you progress, you unlock more coins and your virtual trees grow. It really helped me stay focused on my tasks and not get side-tracked.
What false assumptions did you have about blogging when you first got into it? Would you say you had expectations that were too ambitious? not ambitious enough? unrealistic?
I was definitely misled by how easy successful bloggers made it look. There used to be a time when bloggers would write about their monthly earnings and they mentioned stuff like “I earned this much just by doing these small things.” They are really good at making you believe that it is easy like just publish two articles weekly with a few keywords, post daily on social media and that’s it, but in reality it is not as straightforward😅! Not only do they make it look easy, but they also made me believe that I could make 7 figures within just a few months which is very significant even though it was totally not the case. The bloggers I read about basically retired their husbands through blogging even though they were engineers 😮🤯. I was so shocked when they said that, because matching an engineer’s salary is significant! Even after my ten years of blogging, I have never been able to reach those kinds of numbers.
How do you decide on what topics to write about and how do you go about writing them?
Yeah, so I basically get my ideas from talking to my friends. I ask them about their problems and I get my inspired by their questions. Like I said, I really like being a problem-solver so I would write articles based on what I hear from them. These days, I update a lot of my old posts that I published during the pandemic. For example, I made a mental health toolkit which I have modified a little bit. I use RankIQ to determine the right keywords to include in my articles. It tells me the level of competition for these keywords and how quickly you can rank for example. I had some success on Pinterest and I noticed that quotes do well on it. Some would visit your website and some won’t, but at least they save your content.
I was wondering, because you write many guides and tips, has anyone ever given you positive reviews for any of them and has anyone given you any feedback after trying them?
Not at all 😅😆. I once asked my email list what they would like me to write about and only one replied. That was the only feedback I ever got even after all my years of blogging. I really do wish for more though. I usually get most of my feedback during a quarterly mastermind meetings that I am part of. Most of the members are from America, but every week, we would get together and share updates on our work. That really keeps me grounded, because within a group, you sorta feel bad for not having done anything every week and you sort of owe it to them in a sense. I really recommend it.
I wanted to end this interview by asking you, why do you love the quote: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there?”
Absolutely! I really love it, because it resonates with me the most 😊! As a child, I would hear other people say stuff like I want to be a doctor, a police officer or any other popular career paths, but I never really had those precise life aspirations. When I first heard it while reading Alice in Wonderland, it sort of struck me well of course, just keep walking on any road and you will stumble on the road that was meant for you 😮. I never really knew what to do so I just thought to myself why not just study in hospitality and management, because I honestly really just felt like it and then I ended up in accounting and then into blogging. All along the way, it never occurred to me to arrive at an exact destination. It was always one foot in front of the other and even now after almost ten years of blogging, you would think that I know where I am going, but I still don’t 🤣!! I have some goals for myself like travelling to beautiful places and learning more skills, but I will always just try to enjoy whatever comes into my life one day at a time.
Conclusion
I would like to thank Kathleen so much for the interview! I was very inspired and impressed at how she persisted with this career path even after all these years. What surprised me the most is that even up until now, she struggles with motivation just like I am. I am very grateful that she was willing to be honest about her experience and it made me feel more normal to have these same feelings and thoughts. I am so happy she took the time to answer everything and I genuinely enjoyed reading some of her articles especially around the topics of adulthood friendship. I wish her best of luck in her other goals and hopefully, we could stay in touch for any blog related advice and tips!
Make sure to follow Kathleen by clicking all the buttons below!
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