Introducing: Team Studer Mom

I've been blogging my own business over here for thirteen years - honestly just typing that seems hilarious and ridiculous. 13 years of my life I've been typing away at these keys tossing my voice into the void of the internet. 

Some of it was heard loud and clear and continues TO THIS DAY to bring new people here (hi, new people who found their way here from 25 Rules for Moms with sons or Beer Olympics!) 

And a lot of it made it to the 60 regular readers who either know me and my family IRL or have found their way here and chosen to stick around through all my boring, sporadic posts about whatever we were doing at that season of our life. (thank you for staying, commenting, sharing, and encouraging!) 

And now that I've taken a year off of teaching to stay home with the three littlest of our kids - we have made it to the point that we are getting financially itchy....as in, stressed. Nothing major scary, but enough to make us feel uncomfortable. So I was really looking into my strengths and talents and thinking - what can I do maybe to earn a little extra money for our family. 

and all the people of the internet are like, "um, like start a blog and make money!" and i'm like <<eye roll>>. I have a blog, one that has been viewed 4+million times (thanks again mostly to 25 Rules & Beer Olympics - but still). I probably make about $65 A YEAR. because I don't own this site (thank you blogspot though for never letting me down), I don't have control over the weird internet things (keyword, SEO, meta description, etc), and I never started this blog to make money...I just wanted to catalog our life and spread some joy if possible. 

So it's been kind of frustrating the last few months (years?) when lots of bloggers are literally quitting their full time jobs because their blog is just making SO MUCH money. Like, come on. 

And then finally it felt like a tap on my should from the universe whispering ("hey you, dummy, you have content - start a blog that can make money")

So for the last few weeks, I've been working on a brand new site where I covered all the bases: I own the site! I have control over weird internet things and I'm learning so much (holy learning curve), and I'm trying to go into with clear goals of helping moms/parents and if possible make a little money too because um, six kids.

You can read my whole rationale here on my first official post called With grace, intention, and a deep breath . It will sound a little like this message but I know you guys here - so maybe less Tab-tab. 

I'm hoping to share my tips & tricks on intentional parenting: parenting on purpose (!) because it's something I really believe in and I hope parents can more easily find my words and go out and use them in a real way. 

I've also moved some of my better pieces of reflective motherhood writing to the new site - because honestly, they were just buried under the heap of internet over here...and that's not doing anybody any good. So things like An Open Letter to my First born Child , 10 Awesome but Rarely Mentioned Things about being a Mom, and Mend the Part of the World Within your Reach have all been moved over to the new site. 

My greatest hope is that you will find yourself at the new site and think to yourself: "Hey, I know this girl! I'm glad all the greatest hits and some new goodies are curated in easy to find place!" 

My biggest worry is that you - my favorite people; my loyal readers will find yourself at the new site and think: "ew. sell out." 

ughhhhhh. Honestly, I cannot tell you how I have really wanted all these years to believe that if you have good content, you put good things out into the world, and you stay true - the success will found you. And that's all true - omigosh, I have not given up on the good in the world (LOL). this blog has brought me so much learning, writing, and finding my own voice. 

And most of all - it has brought me t YOU!! But you, my loyal, beautiful, wonderful readers who check back here without encouragement or pushing. Who genuinely care about my kids, and family, and whatever weird things we are up to on a regular basis: I truly love you and cannot believe you choose to spend part of your days with me. I am so so grateful for all the comments, suggestions, encouragement, and love you have shown me over the last thirteen years. I'm not kidding, I actually freaking LOVE YOU. 

And I'm not going to stop this blog. From the start of it all, it was meant to be a repository for all the little stuff we are doing in our life through the years. Our own kids are getting old enough now to know how to navigate here on their own to look through photos and read back through posts I wrote about them and our family. And that's what I want it to be for. For those six kids who might want a deeper look into what it was like to grow up in our house. 

And I plan to keep posting here normally for my weekly round up posts and any other weird tab-specific ramblings that you all have seemed to come to enjoy (LOL, thank you for letting my freak flag fly). And also because our kids like it and will hopefully someday find their way here when I'm a million years old and be glad I chronicled the silly minutia of our life with all of us under one roof. 

In terms of my new site it's still me, I promise I will do everything in my power to not lost myself to all the internet metrics of "how to strengthen your SEO through these five steps" and "All the headings and fluff" and none of the real stuff. I just need my writing to be taken seriously in the potentially-make-money-for-our-family purposes and also (more importantly to me) that my message and writing gets out there to moms who might need to hear it. 

I could never thank you for supporting this little family blog for all these years. And if you choose to follow, re-pin, like, or share any of my new site - thank you!! 

Let's try on these big girl blogger pants (big blogger girl pants? blogger girl big pants? girl blogger big pants?) and take a swing at a new exciting (hopefully successful) adventure! eeeeeeek! 

I think I remember reading somewhere that if you're feeling a mix of scared and excited your doing something right. So, gulp, gulp, gulp. Here we go!