Becoming a parent is an incredible life-changing event, and starting a parenting blog is a fantastic way both to document your journey, and make a little side money as well.
Not to mention, you get to share the valuable lessons you’ve learned with other parents, potentially make new friends, and experience numerous other benefits as well.
While starting a mom or dad blog is no small undertaking, this guide will help answer the questions you may have, and provide the framework and planning necessary for you to succeed in starting a parenting a blog.
Note that this guide is massive – over 4,000 words in fact! Therefore, we recommend you use the Table of Contents to jump between sections if necessary, and bookmark this page as we will continue adding to it in the future.
Without any further ado, let’s begin!
Table of Contents
The Benefits Of Starting A Parenting Blog
I personally believe that the rewards of starting a parenting blog far outweigh the work that goes into creating it – both on a fulfillment and a financial level.
Regardless of the motivations you have behind launching your blog, let’s look over some of the benefits in detail.
And yes, it’s totally okay to get excited!
1. Documenting Your Family’s Life
This is one of those things that you may not always appreciate, until you’re looking back at it 5 or 10 years from now.
Blogs are a powerful way to express your thoughts and feelings, while also documenting your life as it happens.
As humans, our memories are limited. We can’t always remember every little thing that happens to us, even if it was significant to us at that point in time.
However, when we write it down, take pictures, and look back on it, all the thoughts and feelings we experienced come flooding back to us.
It’s a beautiful thing.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words… but with a blog, you not only have the pictures, but your exact thoughts, feelings and stories written down as you experienced them.
The blogging platform we’ll recommend later in this guide also allows you to save posts privately, so only you can view them if there are aspects of your family life that you want to document, but not share with the world.
So, you really have nothing to lose in that regard.
2. Teaching Is The Best Way To Learn
They say that the most effective way to learn something, is to try to teach it to others.
Parenting is not easy. In fact, it is one of the hardest things that you will go through in your lifetime.
Because of that, you’ll learn an enormous amount of lessons along the way. And many of them will be completely unexpected.
(Turns out, no parenting book can possibly prepare you for everything you’ll need to know.)
Sharing what you learn is not just valuable for all of the other parents for the world.
It helps you too, as you’ll get to really analyze and break down what you’ve learned.
And, you’ll have everything documented if you have another child in the future, and you experience the same problems!
3. You’ll Make Friends, And Build A Community!
Speaking of problems, some are best solved with the help of others.
Parenting blogs in particular are often very community-focused. Many bloggers network with each other, visit each other’s websites, and even communicate through email or social media.
Therefore, if you ever have an issue, need advice or want to hear other people’s opinions on something, all you need to do is ask.
Of course, socializing with others isn’t a requirement – but it’s an option available to you if you want it!
4. It Can Be Replace A Full-Time Job
Parenting blogs have the capability to make a lot of money.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, in fact.
Seriously. That’s not an exaggeration.
Parenting is such a large market, and something that most of the world will go through at some point. And every single parent faces many of the same problems.
By sharing what your thoughts, ideas and lessons, there is serious potential to make money through your website.
Even if it’s not a full-time venture, and you only write after the kids go to bed.
That being said, you should go into this with realistic expectations.
If your goal is to make money, you need to make decisions as if you were operating a business. It also requires more work, more responsibilities, and more challenges.
Most people that start parenting blogs for the sake of making money never end up making much. Of course, there are a few primary reasons for this:
- They quit too early on, because results don’t come quickly enough. With blogging, income tends to grow exponentially over time. In the beginning, you work the hardest for the least amount of reward.
- They didn’t approach their blog with any sort of business strategy.
- They neglected a key aspect of business blogging success – usually actively trying to market their website and bring visitors to it.
These are all simple, straightforward problems to solve. However, making money with a mom blog or a dad blog requires hard work.
In the beginning, when you’re not being adequately rewarded for your efforts, it can make you feel a little crazy.
Just keep your expectations in check from the beginning, and everything will work itself out in time!
5. Exciting Opportunities
Finally, there are a lot of interesting, exciting opportunities that will be offered to you as your presence and influence begins to grow in the blogosphere.
More so than ever, brands are looking to work with influencers online that have an audience or following.
As an established parenting blogger, expect to be contacted by brands offering you free products, money to promote them, even funded trips around the country just for exposure on your site!
We here at Kinacle love working with bloggers of all sizes, so feel free to contact us once you get your website up and running and we’ll be happy to work with you!
Deciding Whether To Do This As A Hobby Vs. Business
One of the most important decisions you can make early on is whether you want to start you blog as a hobby, or as a business.
Are you looking to make money, or just to have a platform to express yourself with?
This is not necessarily a permanent decision. Many bloggers start out blogging as a hobby, develop an audience by accident, and realize they now have a monetizable audience that they can generate income from.
However, you may find financial success more quickly if you approach your blog with a business strategy from the beginning.
This means:
- Crafting content that is likely to generate viewers.
- Posting consistently on a schedule.
- Spending time marketing your website in addition to writing.
- Developing your business skills and education.
- Doing more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.
When you’re blogging for a hobby, none of this really matters. There’s no pressure to do any of these things, because it isn’t really important to you whether you develop a huge, profitable audience or not. This can relieve a lot of the pressure and make the process a bit more enjoyable.
You’re free to write whatever you want, whenever you want. There are no penalties from taking extended breaks, and you can focus entirely on what feels best at the moment.
One of the things that makes parenting blogs special, even those running one as a business, is the fact that they are expected to be personal in nature.
With other types of blogs, sharing personal stories or experiences may not be warranted.
With mom blogging or dad blogging, these personal experiences are exactly what makes your blog so special.
People actually care and want to hear your personal take on things. They aren’t only coming for the information, they’re visiting your website for you and your family.
This means you can be equally as expressive and make just as many blogging friends as you do running your website as a hobby, as well as treating it like a business.
In my opinion, that is pretty neat!
The Four Components
There are four building blocks of parenting blog success, and they are as following:
1. Building your website. This involves actually getting your website, choosing the design, building the layout, etc.
2. Creating content. The content you post on your website is the foundation of what makes it valuable to visitors.
3. Building traffic. If you’re blogging to build an audience and make money, you will need to actively market it and build traffic to your website. Thankfully, this gets easier over time.
4. Monetization. There are many ways to make money from your audience, and we’ll talk about some of those in a moment.
Let’s look at each section in more detail.
1. Building Your Website
Before you can do anything, you need to get your website online.
This sounds scary, but it really isn’t all that complicated anymore. In fact, once you get your accounts set up, there are really only a few clicks before your website is online.
In order to get your website, you will need two things. The first is called web hosting, and the second is called a domain name.
When you connect to a website, you’re actually connecting and loading files off of some computer somewhere else in the world.
Web hosts grant you access to store your website’s files on a computer server that is online 24/7/365. For new websites, web hosting typically only costs a few dollars a month.
Pro tip: if you’re reading my guide close to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then don’t miss on capitalizing on one of hosting Black Friday deals which are abundant every year. As an example of what I’m talking about, check out Nikola Roza’s HostGator Black Friday deals page. It’s obviously about HostGator, which are a decent host, especially for beginners, but pretty much all hosts have lucrative offers during the Cyber week.
A domain name is what you type into your internet browser’s address bar, in order to connect to your website. In our instance, our domain name is Kinacle.com.
We recommend choosing a web host that’s reputable and popular, as there will be guides online to do anything you want to do.
Bluehost and Hostgator for example both allow WordPress to be installed in a couple of minutes and come with an included domain name (which you will be able to choose when setting it up.)
WordPress is a content management system that allows you to do things like design your website, add functionality, write and publish posts etc. without needing programming or tech experience. It’s what we use to power this website and best of all, it’s free!
2. Creating Content
All of your website’s success will stem from its content.
People read (and return) to blogs that offer them value in some way.
This could be through the form of important lessons you’ve learned as a mother or father, inspiration to try something new, or just good old fashioned entertainment.
Even while explaining information however, you want to make sure that your content is engaging and holds their attention, rather than bland like a college textbook.
Here are a few examples of the type of content you could publish on your mom blog or dad blog:
- Funny stories and experiences you’ve had.
- Recipes, crafts and activities you’ve tried out with your children.
- How you’re celebrating X event with your family.
- Your thoughts and opinions on controversial parenting / family topics.
- Documenting your travels or events you’ve attended.
- Informational lessons / tutorials (just remember to add your own personal touch!)
As you begin integrating yourself into the mom blogger community, you’ll undoubtedly come across many other bloggers that are already experiencing some success.
We encourage you to visit their websites and see what posts stand out to you – is there a way you can try something similar on your own site?
There is nothing wrong with using other mom bloggers for inspiration!
3. Building Traffic
You could have the best content in the world, but if nobody is there to see it, it’s unfortunately not going to make you any money.
This is where building traffic comes into play.
Typically, most mommy or daddy bloggers will gain traffic through the following methods:
This means your website will show up for certain queries type into Google. As your website grows stronger over time, Google will rank it higher and higher in their search results, leading to more traffic each month.
Social Media
Another large traffic source for parenting bloggers is social media, with Pinterest and Facebook often being two of the largest platforms. That being said, many parenting bloggers also find traffic through Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok! While a social media presence isn’t required for parenting blog success, it can help speed up the process.
Guest Posting
If you make friends with another blogger, why not ask if you can publish a post on their site? You can then use this post to link back to your own website, which will also help it rank higher in Google (links from other websites are one of the biggest factors Google uses when determining who to rank.)
Blog Commenting
Many parent blogs get their initial visitors simply by commenting on other parenting blogs already out there. Most will have a section to place your website, which can get you a few clicks. This also gets you on the radar of other bloggers, opening up networking opportunities.
This is more of a way to bring your current audience back, then it is to build new audience members. Email marketing services are available for free that allow audience members to opt-in to your mailing list. Then, you can mail all of these people at once when you have a new article or announcement to make!
These are only a few of the traffic building methods out there, but they are some of the most common. It often helps to focus on getting really good at a couple of them before moving onto others.
4. Monetization
This is where a lot of the fun begins! If your goal is to make money as a mom blogger or dad blogger, there are plenty of opportunities available to you. Let’s look over a few of them now!
Ad Revenue
This means that you place banner ads on your website, and earn money whenever they are viewed or clicked. The wonderful thing about this strategy is that it is completely passive – you could walk away from your blog for months at a time and as long as it is still getting traffic, you will still be making money.
As your website grows in size, you will be able to apply for better ad networks and make more per visitor than when you are just starting out.
Still, this option is available to you even with a very small website via Google Adsense.
Affiliate Marketing
This is the act of promoting other companies’ products, and earning a commission whenever one sells.
This can be as low as 2% from a company like Amazon, to as high as 75% of the product’s price for certain digital products, like eBooks or courses.
Many bloggers prefer mixing in affiliate marketing regardless of what other monetization strategies they choose, because it can be so powerful. And, you don’t have to deal with anything but sending people over to the site!
Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are essentially articles that are sponsored by another company, and they are extremely popular in the parenting blog space.
This may be a company sending you products + money to review, or running a giveaway on your website for your visitors.
Typically, the larger your website, the more brands will be willing to offer. While newer sites may not receive any additional money (besides the free products), large sites may charge thousands of dollars for a single sponsored posts.
Just don’t go crazy with these – if your site is only sponsored posts, visitors and Google will take notice – and lower your ranking accordingly.
Selling Your Own Products
This one requires the most work, but it is often the most profitable of all.
Because your audience already knows, likes and trusts you, it is much easier to sell your own products to them than other people’s products as an affiliate.
Some popular examples include eBooks, courses, and printables.
The wonderful thing about having an engaged audience is that there are limitless opportunities available, so get creative!
Parenting Blog Best Practices
Just like with any business, you need to approach starting a parenting blog with a strategy in mind.
Mom blogs and dad blogs are a little bit unique, and are ran a little differently than most blogs out there.
Therefore, let’s look over some of the best practices and tips we’ve discovered after analyzing over 400 top parenting blogs across the web.
1. Get Personal
We’ve touched on this one a few times already, but it bears repeating.
People follow parenting blogs because they are interested in you. Your lessons. Your stories. Your unique angle.
They want to feel a connection, and that requires that you share things about you and your life rather than just relaying information.
Do not be afraid to tell stories or even get very vulnerable.
It is easy to tell yourself, “why would they care?” However, people do.
If anything, stories make you relatable. Parenting is scary, and it is comforting to hear that someone else went through the same struggles you did, and came out successfully on the other side.
2. Share Photos When Possible
The parenting space is very visually oriented. This may stem way back to when parenting blogging first became popular in the early 2000’s, and websites like Blogspot and Blogger allowed us to upload and store our photos for free.
Still, if you can use photos to invoke emotion, support important points or demonstrate something you’re trying to teach, then you definitely should!
Photos also aid with memorability and building connections. People may not recognize you from the way that you write, but they will definitely recognize your photos!
3. Keep Safety In Mind
While this one won’t help you grow your blog, it’s important to keep in mind – especially if you have young children.
There are some truly sick people in this world, and as you begin to develop a public presence, you’ll need to be mindful of who can read your blog.
Even if you become very popular, the chances of anything bad happening are very low, and we haven’t heard any stories about it actually happening to anyone. Still, it’s worth taking some time to think about how you can mitigate your risks.
A few examples include:
- Writing under a pen name, or changing the name of your children when posting (though this may not work if you also plan on doing video and your kids are young, as they not be able to play along.)
- Talk with your children about strangers, and explain that it’s not safe to approach someone even if they know their name.
- Avoid publishing articles indicating that you and your family will be away from home for an extended period of time.
- Lock down your private social media accounts, to ensure that nobody can see your posts unless you add them as a friend. A shockingly large amount of people leave posts public for anyone to view.
- Remembering that everything on the internet really is forever. Even if you one day decide to delete your blog from existence, archived copies may still be available to those willing to look for them. Therefore, use discretion when determining what moments to post – and avoid posting anything that could negatively affect your child’s future.
4. Keep A Consistent Schedule
These days, people don’t read blogs like they used to.
They come in, get the information they need, and get out.
Parenting blogs are an exception to the rule. Unlike 99% of markets out there, people do still come in to view your newest posts.
This means that you benefit from having some sort of consistent schedule on your website. If people know that you post every Monday and Thursday at 9 AM, they know exactly when to come back and visit your website to see what’s new.
If you’re blogging for money, repeat visitors are really what help you grow. These people will also become your most engaged and loyal audience members, so it really helps to cater to them.
That being said, you should write and structure your posts both for your regular audience as well as for newcomers.
You never know when someone will be making their first visit to your website, and it’s wrong to assume they already know everything about you.
Thankfully, it is easy to find a balance as you become more established in your blogging routine.
5. Consider A Unique Niche Or Angle
Niches are in some way, less necessary in the parenting blog space, because you are such a core aspect of the blog’s success – and there is only one of you!
That being said, taking a unique angle with your blog can help it stand out, and call out to a core audience.
A few example of parenting blog niches include:
- Homeschooling
- Parenting as a working mother / father
- Parenting twins or triplets
- Adoption / fostering
- Parenting frugally
- A parenting blog with a focus on traveling
- Restricting yourself to a specific topic, such as crafts or DIY activities
As you can see, each one of these are a bit unique and cater to a specific type of parent. This makes it easier for your blog to stand out among so many others, and call out to groups of people as the blog to pay attention to. This may make it easier to build and retain your initial audience.
That being said, there is no reason you can’t branch out later as your audience grows, or you run out of topics to write about. And if you really don’t want to, then you don’t need a niche at all. This after all, your website, and you should make sure that working on it as enjoyable as well, even if it means that it takes a little longer to build an audience too.
Like we mentioned early on, the largest reason parenting blogs fail is because the bloggers give up before they find success – and that is often because it feels like work, rather than something enjoyable! 🙂
VIP Club Promotion
With a domain and web hosting, you have everything you need to get your website online.
Unfortunately, that’s the easy part.
Because the barrier to entry is so low – anybody can start a website for just a few bucks, this has led to a flood of people publishing blogs online. For the average person, this makes it a little difficult to stand out.
While not completely necessary, we recommend investing in quality blogging training in order to help speed up the process.
Seeing as we run our own blog here, we’ve spent thousands of dollars on various blogging courses and training programs.
The best value we’ve found is a a collection of courses by an internet marketer named James McAllister.
These run for $29 / month and can be accessed on a month-to-month basis. So, feel free to sign up for a few months (or grab the annual option to further save) and simply reference it as needed.
It also includes a support community and a Q&A forum that you can ask any question in and receive a response from James or other community members within 24 hours, which definitely comes in handy!
You can view it by clicking here.
Just a word of warning – don’t try to go through all of it at once. There are over 20 courses throughout the different areas of the website and not all of them will be applicable to you right now.
We recommend starting with the blogging course, then branching out to other training as it makes sense for you (for example, there is an entire course on maximizing ad revenue from your website, but this isn’t necessary to know until you’re actually running ads.)
Words Of Encouragement
As we near the end of this guide, I just wanted to offer you some words of encouragement.
Starting a parenting blog is a huge task, and sticking it through to success is even bigger.
However, the rewards of doing so are invaluable, and I’m not just talking about the money either.
Having something to look back on is just so precious. It is like the best possible combination of a photo album, and a journal, and a keepsake.
The fact that you can make money talking about something you already love so much – your own family, is just incredible.
For many parents, their blogs have granted them the freedom to spend more time with their lives ones, and build a more fulfilling life full of more experiences, more time together, and more memories.
Stick with it. Keep expectations realistic, and enjoy the process.
Every article you post is one step closer towards building something huge.
Conclusion and Questions
Starting a mom blog or dad blog is incredibly exciting. It can be a great way not only to document your parenting journey, but to supplement or even replace your current income as well.
The friends and connections you make along the way are invaluable, and it’s truly something that can add a little more excitement to your life.
I hope that this guide has cleared up some of the questions you had, and given you a better picture on the steps that lie ahead as you start your website.
Of course, this isn’t everything.
Parenting blogging is challenging, which is why so few are determined enough to succeed with it.
If there are any questions that all that I can answer for you, please do us all a favor and share them using the comment form below.
Chances are, if you have a question, other people have that same question as well. Your questions will also help me continue to improve and update this guide as time goes on.
We are wishing you the very best, and we can’t wait to see your new website succeed!
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