In All Uncertain Terms

Hello, neighbor. I’m glad you’re here.

I first thought to start a blog when my second child was on the way, and we decided it would be best for me to quit my job once he came. Moving from two incomes to one, while simultaneously adding an additional person to the family made me a bit nervous. I thought it would be nice if I could find a way to make money while staying home–preferably a job that wouldn’t require much upfront investment, and would allow me to choose when and how much I work. . . Oh, and one that wouldn’t require any particular skill, talent, experience, or education, because I don’t have any. I know, it’s a tall order. So I turned to my favorite tool (or crutch), Google.

Right away, a certain answer to my query kept popping up on most articles I found: affiliate marketing. If you don’t know what that is, it’s where you collaborate with a company to promote a product, and you have a special link people can use to purchase it. For every purchase made with your link, you earn a small amount of money.

Since the idea of trying to be an influencer (or content creator, if you prefer the more generous term) made me want to gag, I thought there was no way affiliate marketing would be an option. But many articles mentioned that you could start a blog in order to do affiliate marketing. Blogging didn’t sound atrocious.

However, then came a new issue: what to write? I thought for a while, and couldn’t come up with any ideas for what my blog would be about. I came to the conclusion that I was simply too lacking in either knowledge or interesting thoughts, and gave up on the idea.

That was months ago. Recently, I wrote a letter to my former church. They would be voting on a particular decision about which I had a strong opinion, and I wanted to persuade the members of the congregation to vote a certain way. It was during the process of writing this letter that I began to laugh at myself a little, realizing that if there were a keyboard equivalent of the phrase “talk your ear off,” I would be doing it. “Type your eye off?” I don’t think it translates. While I don’t think it’s inherently bad, “brief” is not a word one would use to describe my writing style. I realized that I may be the typing equivalent of a “yapper,” if you will.

While I don’t have any new expertise, it did make me think that perhaps my verbosity would be a beneficial quality for blogging. Sure, I don’t know what my niche will be, but is it strictly necessary to have one? I like to write (and do it better than speaking, I think), and have a creative itch that needs scratched. If this is a waste of time, it’s not a bad way to waste my time. After all, if I weren’t doing this, I would probably be scrolling Instagram.

As for the affiliate marketing thing, in a world that seems to mishear the idiom as “If at first you don’t succeed, buy, buy again,” I don’t love the idea of encouraging anyone who happens to read my blog to spend their money on a new something. I don’t want to preach the message that more is better, your life is incomplete, and clicking “add to cart” will fix it. It’s bad for the wallet, bad for the planet, and bad for the heart. So while I haven’t completely vetoed the idea, know that if any affiliate marketing links do pop up, it’s a product I really like, but also one that I do not want you to purchase if it wouldn’t be genuinely beneficial to you.

I don’t know what this blog will be. My favorite creative projects are the ones that surprise me. I hope this will be one of that kind. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m thankful that reading my ramblings is one of the things you choose to do with “your one wild and precious life.” It’s very generous of you.