a website & community for women who write & blog
Last week I had the privilege of attending the 8th annual Blogalicious conference in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the keynote speakers for the weekend was media mogul Nely Galen. Galen was the first Latina President of Entertainment for a U.S. television network (Telemundo). She is an Emmy Award-winning producer of over 600 episodes of television in Spanish and English, and is the founder of the nonprofit The Adelante Movement, which seeks to train and empower Latinas to become entrepreneurs.
Don’t hate me, but I have an idea for yet another challenge for the women of See Jane Write.
This month I’m challenging you to #bloglikecrazy, to publish a new blog post every day for 30 days. But one month soon I’m going to challenge you to #pitchlikecrazy.
You can blame Roni Faida Clark of RoniTheTravelGuru.com. This weekend at the 8th annual Blogalicious conference Roni led a value-packed workshop called “How to Pitch Like a Pro” at which she gave 10 tips for pitching to brands.
As with most good things, it all started with tacos.
On March 24, 2011 I invited a group of women to meet me for dinner at a Mexican cantina in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Most of these women I’d never met before; they didn’t know me or one another. But we all had one thing in common: We all loved to write.
I have been blogging in some capacity for nearly a decade.
I’d like to say that when I started blogging I did so just for fun or for the love of writing. But that would be a lie.
I first started blogging for the newspaper at which I was working at the time because I thought it would help me make a name for myself at the paper and in the city. I wanted to be Louisville’s top features reporter!
Then I soon started a blog of my own because I had always dreamt of starting a magazine and this was my way of doing so — kinda, sorta — without the overhead.
My point is from the day I published my very first blog post I did so with a business mindset. But it wasn’t until last year that I started making real money with my blog. LAST YEAR!
So what was my mistake? Failure to launch.
And I bet this is the same mistake you’re making, too.
Allow me to explain.
On Monday I published a blog post stating my case for “Why Writers Must Be Entrepreneurs.” The next day a See Jane Write member very honestly shared this: “I saw the post about writers being entrepreneurs, but I just don’t know how to get started.”
And for this particular woman it is crucial that she get started because she recently quit a soul-draining job to pursue her dreams.
I realized that I needed to design a clear path to help give some guidance for this crazy, but beautiful journey called entrepreneurship, a path that you could follow whether you’d left your day job or not.
As a writer and blogger you need three things to become an entrepreneur: your platform, your people, and your product.