(photo from this Nashville airbnb)
At the start of every year we like to update you on this blog, and what we are focusing on for the year ahead! It has changed so much since I opened up a blogspot address when I was a new mother and freelance graphic designer. I never thought it would become our main line of work! Gabe and I both feel like the doors that opened and closed over the last several years have lead us here, and that is what gives us the motivation to continue on (with much gratitude). So here is a summary on the changes we made this past year, what we hope to continue to share this year, and even why we said no to doing a tv show…
To expand or not to expand.
In the past I have debated before whether to keep this a personal blog or expand into a bigger space that has several contributors. I even dabbled in guest posts for a while, but ultimately decided to keep it more of a personal blog. I realized pretty quickly I don’t really have a desire for the blog to require a team of people to keep it going. For what purpose? Popularity and money have never been motivations for me. To make a living doing something Gabe and I both love? Yes. That is enough for us though! This past year, we were actually approached by a few different tv producers for two different networks asking if we would be interested in pursuing a show. We were taken off guard by this, and had a moment of, “should we consider this?” It just didn’t feel right though! We really value the privacy of our kids and our family. I also love feeling connected with our audience and find more motivation in the way we share content currently. So for now, it will remain just Gabe and I that write and manage IHOD. We have a few part time freelancers that helps us with emails, newsletters, and graphics. That has been a significant help! More on how we are managing family life in this post.
Content direction.
As for content, that is something I struggled to narrow down to a niche in the past since I loved blogging about a range of topics. However, when Gabe was able to come on full time, it really allowed us both to focus more on the topics I was drawn to most: home and family. The underlying tone here has always been to make the most of the life you have been given. It’s about taking the good, the bad, and the in-between and looking for the right perspective in it all. Needless to say, I more than eagerly said goodbye to the outfit posts that I started to dread (apologies if that’s what you were here for!), and we set our eyes on what really fueled us. I hope you enjoyed that shift last year! It has given me a little more creative breathing room, and getting to work with Gabe on our home has been such a cool experience. Granted, there are definitely many moments when we have toddlers at our ankles and there is so much noise that we are shouting at each other to communicate measurements and ideas. Just to give you a more accurate depiction of how un-glamorous it is!
A break from sponsored posts and where they will go from here.
As you know, sponsored posts allow us to continue blogging here. All of the content we create and share requires full time hours, so the only way we can continue sharing is if it is sustainable financially. However, I’ve started to feel a greater divide from the current sea of sponsored content I usually scroll through on social media. So much of it feels forced. When it first became an option in the blog world, it was novel and fun to dive into styling and curating a scene. However, I no longer connect with the type of imagery I used to create. I have to reallllllyy be on board, and feel super confident it would connect with our audience before I commit to anything. Believe me, we have had some really hard to pass up offers, that just didn’t feel right. So along with narrowing down our topics, we narrowed the type of partnerships we chose to share here. If it is a company we genuinely love and use, than we consider it. If it allows us to create imagery that feels more like us, and less like an ad, even better. It was a little scary to take the financial risk of saying no more and yes less, but it has definitely been freeing! Could we be making more by committing to more? Yes, but again that is not our goal. Our goal is to share real life topics that we love, and hope you connect with them too. We even took a break from sponsored content during the busiest ad month of the year (December) as well as January. We needed the time to focus on our family, and start the year refreshed. We are working on a few partnerships now that we know you all will really appreciate, and I look forward to sharing those soon. However, we are still limiting the amount we take on, and hope to be able to grow other areas of revenue eventually (like the shop!) because to be honest, I am not sure how long we want to be doing sponsored content. This blog has been wonderful for our family, but we don’t think it will be something we do forever;)
Looking ahead.
If you have any specific requests for topics in the home and family categories, now is the time! We really value your feedback! Leave your thoughts in the comments below or shoot as an email, where it is easier for us to keep track of and respond to. (Instagram DMs can be hit or miss.) We are going to continue sharing more how-to’s, renovations, family topics, and a few adventures we might tackle this summer. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and visit IHOD. We really appreciate the support you have shown us this year, and we are really looking forward to the year ahead!
P.S. We will be sharing some really good bonus content this year to our IHOD insider email list!
