3 Reasons I Came Back To Blogging After Quitting in 2020

In the fall of 2019 up till March 2020, twice a week I found a comfortable spot in the Panera Bread near my daughter’s dance studio, ordered a cup of warm soup and wrote blog posts for Fun Home Building. My husband and I were building a new house in the suburb of Minneapolis. I documented the whole process of designing a floorplan, picking finishing materials, all the nitty gritty details, and lots of pictures of the construction site. Much to my dismay, it never gained much traction.

Blogging is not as easy as it seems. I struggled to be SEEN. My Google Analytics stats was terrible. I had single digit visits in a week. No likes or comments. When I googled a topic I poured my heart and soul writing about, my site didn’t come up in the search result, ARGH! It felt like I was talking into thin air the whole time.

 Out of desperation, I opened a public account in Instagram, thinking this way I can drive traffic to my blog. Turned out this backup plan was 10 times more fun. I made many like-minded friends and saw my likes/following grow over time. More and more people became interested in what I was working on and asked for more details.

It is time to start a blog again.

The name Fun Home Building came from this idea that building a house should be a fun, happy experience and not stressful. Same goes for DIY projects. I am relaunching this blog with a totally different mindset this time: instead of using my blog as a personal journal, I am going to look at it as a living document of all things home or DIY related. The main goal is to provide useful information in an easily digestible format — detailed steps, links to useful resources, downable tutorials, maybe even videos.

3 reasons I decided to come back to blogging:

1. After 3 years on Instagram, I have done so many project that I want to share and talk about in details. Content on Instagram is entertaining and inspiring, but when it comes to presenting technical, how-to information, blog posts and YouTube videos have a clear advantage. I personally like these better because of how easy they’re to follow and learn about complex concepts. I want to be able to do the same for my readers.
2. Posts for Instagram are easier to make and take much less time than blog (I edited this one blog post over 20 times and spent days on it). Talk about labor of love. But one thing that makes a blog post a clear winner for me is its longer life span compared to social media content. I want to shift my focus to creating quality content that can stay on the internet for many years to come even though it may take me twice as long to complete, than constantly making new things that expire in a few days.
3. I am ready to figure out how does the search engine optimizer (SEO) work. If there is one thing I’ve learned being an Instagram content creator the last few years, it is this: the algorithm seems unpredictable at times, but over time, with more experience, you get better at understanding the patterns of what makes a piece of content popular. You can adapt your strategy to increase the odds. Not expecting it to be easy, but I am willing to put in the hard work to get this site in front a wider audience, hopefully better than single digit visits a week.

@funhomebuilding will still be a major channel of me sharing project updates and reveals. Starting in 2023, I will slowly add new and thoughtfully curated content to this site. Sign up for the newsletter if you want to be the first to know what’s happening in Fun Home Building dot com. And don’t forget to leave a note in the comment section below. Let me know what you want to see on this blog. I look forward to connecting with you and continuing this DIY journey together!!

Posted By: Sherry · In: Life & Reflection, Living