The Diverse Offerings from My Creative Life

When I first decided to start my own blog back in early 2011, I wanted to come up with a name that would accurately reflect what exactly I do as a creative person. I was imagining a blog that would primarily be about my scrapbooking, with the occasional kids' craft or themed party thrown in. And cards, of course, and maybe some homemade gifts. Oh, and the recipes I make up. Halloween costumes. Decorated cakes. Piñatas! It became apparent that I needed a name that would encompass ALL of my creative life. And thus, the title was born.

From the beginning, My Creative Life has been about all the various things I do that I consider to be creative. But a lot has changed since early 2011, and I feel like my blog has become even more diverse than I originally intended. For example, I didn't anticipate sharing the creative things I've done as a Cub Scout leader, as I didn't have any idea back then that I'd ever even be a Cub Scout leader! I didn't plan to share Trevor's creativity in the form of his school projects, but he reflects the creative atmosphere in which we've raised him, so it's a natural fit for the blog. I think so, anyway. I certainly didn't expect to be blogging about rabbits, as I didn't know then that we'd be adopting Trouble.

A Twinkee narwhal? No way to predict that!

A "knitting kit" for my then-13 year old nephew? Couldn't have guessed.

Pinewood Derby cars? I'd barely even heard of that back in early 2011.

A six-course meal with each course featuring potatoes? Definitely out of place on a scrapbooking blog.

In fact, what I'd originally conceived as a scrapbooking blog only features scrapbooking about 10% of the time. And the other 90% is all over the place. In other words, it spans my entire creative life, not just the papercrafting portion.

Most of the blogs I read are far more focused than mine. I read scrapbooking blogs, kids' craft blogs, food blogs, cake decorating blogs, rabbit blogs, and Cub Scout blogs. Mine is all of those. It's reflected in my audience. I don't have all that many people who read every single one of my posts because, frankly, who but my closest friends and family could possibly care about such a diverse set of interests? (And most of them are just being polite.) But there are a lot of people (about 20,000 a month) who find some of my topics interesting enough to check out.

I wonder if I'd have better readership if my blog were more focused. The house rabbit people who stumble across my blog probably don't care about Cub Scout meetings. The person who needs an Angry Birds piñata most likely doesn't care about scrapbook pages featuring gardening. I guess it doesn't really matter, because I like sharing a wide variety of topics and I'm not going to stop.

You may be wondering what prompted this topic. It's a combination of things. I'm bringing on someone to help with monetizing the blog (more on this later) and am starting the process of designing a new logo, header, and business cards. In the process, I've been going over the analytics with a fine-tooth comb and identifying what is working (and what isn't) about my blog as it stands.

That, and Trevor and I made up our own recipe for bunny cookies today, featuring ingredients such as ground up pellets, hay dust, and mushy banana. (What did I say about my blog being all over the place?) I'll share the recipe tomorrow.