TMST is a weekly meme with optional participation hosted by Jen Twimom @ That’s What I’m Talking About. There isn’t a check in and she doesn’t have a linky (although you’ll find one at the bottom of this post for #LetsDiscuss2022, that also has a giveaway raffle). She does encourage you to leave a link to your post on her blog if you participate, just so she and others can find you!
Jen sends out an email with the upcoming prompts roughly every two months. To get them, just go to her blog and sign up to get her newsletters. Then, just write a post for the corresponding date’s topic!
Today – August 16, 2022 – the topic is: What do your family and friends think of your blogging?
So, without any further ado…
Remember, this is my first TMST so be gentle!
So, what do my family and friends think about my blogging?
As background, when I started blogging, I didn’t tell many people about it. Mostly because I wasn’t sure what having a blog would mean (as you can see from this post). I only started blogging after having gotten burned by all the pay-per-click sites where I’d put up articles that I’d worked hard to write, and then when it came time to get paid, the sites closed or cheated me out of my “earnings” (I put that in quotation marks because, well… we really didn’t earn anything).
After I looked over all the posts I’d put up on all these various defunct sites, I noticed that the category where I put up the most articles was in book reviews. Book reviews were already notorious for not earning money on these sites. Still, I loved reading (always have, despite my dyslexia), and if I wasn’t going to make any money from all those sites, I might as well put my reviews up somewhere else where, even if I wouldn’t earn any money, at least I had control of everything else about my writing! I didn’t realize that I could actually get enough of a reputation to get free ARCs to read, which in a way is a type of payment. Yes, I have gotten a couple Amazon vouchers for sales there, and I did get a pay-out or two from my affiliate links, but if I had to live on those funds, I’d be starving and homeless!
But what do my friends and family think? Well, at first, while I was still working, they all looked on it as a nice hobby, and a nice way to share what I thought of the books I was reading. To be honest, I can be a long-winded talker, so I think some of them were very happy that I could say “just read my review on my blog” rather than to tell them what I thought! When I retired, they seemed to think that having this blog would be a good way to occupy my time. Little did I know that having all this free time would mean I’d be posting more, and now I don’t have much free time left!
In short, I don’t think that anyone has had anything bad to say about the fact that I blog, and people seem to agree that it is a good thing. That makes me happy, because blogging makes me happy (and it keeps me from getting too upset about politics, as well)!
The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog 
Enjoyed reading about the origin of your venture into book blogging. Ive seen numerous sites where there are affiliate links but have never been tempted – I don’t think the returns would make it worthwhile.
I’ve encountered any negative comments about my own blogging activities. I suspect most of my family have forgotten I do it – if they do, they don’t really know what its all about 🙂
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I just started blogging for the fun of it! I have no affiliates or anything and not too many ARC’s. As long as I treat it like a hobby, my hubby is fine with it!! My friends and colleagues are always very supportive and gladly read my posts. Our Book Club loves the fact that I review most of the books in our selection, so that can get a better idea of what it’s about.
So mostly, it’s a positive vibe on this side as well!
Love your header graphic Davida!! Very nice!
Elza Reads
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Thanks. The header is from the blog that is doing this meme.
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People who know me in real life don’t think about my blog one way or the other except for my immediate family, and they barely think about it. LOL!
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wow, I feel privileged here, by the support my husband and my friends give me about my book blog. My husband often considers it as part of my work, even though I keep reminding him I don’t make money from it. But he insists it’s an essential part of my life, and he is right
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Yes, my husband was also like that. Very supportive. He also was very supportive of the novel I’m working on. Having someone who “gets” you is very important. Cherish every moment of your time together.
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I don’t think my family care blog and just leave me to it. I run two blogs. One for books and movies and the other for true crime. I just started the second one and it takes longer for me to write a post because of all the research I has to do.
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Oh… true crime… Only Murders in the Building like stuff?
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They don’t pay much attention to my blogs and that’s just fine with me. I do it for myself and because I love books.
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Most of my family and friends don’t get why I blog, apart from a couple who read a lot and find books they fancy on the blog. I get more comments about the photography than the book reviews. I did start a separate photography blog but find I haven’t the time to keep up with both. But, as already has been mentioned, I do it for myself more than anything else.
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Most of my family roll their eyes at my blogging and make a joke of it, letting me indulge in my ‘hobby’. When new books arrive in the post I get the comment ‘what, more books?’ Friends always ask if I get paid to do it and if not why would I continue. If they ask about a book or I say ‘I read a book about that…’ they usually want a short answer, but invariably I talk too long about it. I feel them getting bored. Online book friends understand and I have met some of them and happily talked about books for hours, which is wonderful. In the end, books make me happy and that’s what counts.
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Totally! We do it for ourselves!
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Well, I have three blogs. Most of my family ignores my book blog except for one of my brothers and sister-in-law, who get book recommendations from it and like to discuss the books we’ve read. I have a once-a-week personal blog that I started to keep my old friends informed of my activities after I moved more than 1000 miles away. That one my family isn’t fond of. They don’t like to be mentioned in it, so I have to mention them discreetly and just using relationships instead of names. My third blog is a hiking blog for people who are out of shape. The only reaction I’ve had about that one is for my family to occasionally request that I not mention one of their favorite hikes on my blog, for fear it will fill up with people. They obviously have an exaggerated opinion about the audience size for both my personal and hiking blogs. The only one with a decent audience size is my book blog.
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Wow… three! I have a hard enough time keeping this one going. Brava to you for doing three! Strange about your family’s ideas about your blogs, though. But I guess they have their reasons.
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They don’t want information about themselves out on the internet. But if they knew what a small audience I have and what innocuous things I write!
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No one cares about my blog except other bloggers!
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