The American Mama, a blog that reaches tens of thousands of readers monthly, featured sponsored posts from big brands. Established by Josi Denise, a former marketing director, the blog was formed in 2013. When she started her blog, the then 24-year-old wife and mother earned $125-150 per post, which eventually increased to $700-1,500 for each new blog entry, paid sponsorship post and paid social media post.
Josi Denise lost her true identity in it all. She found herself staging scenes and celebrating holidays in photos for her blog before the day actually arrived so her post would be on time. Talk about commercializing and capitalizing on motherhood, taking the fun out of living an authentic life. There is something so counterintuitive about it. I suppose it’s right in line with reality TV and all the scripted and staged scenes the cast members try to pass off as real.
In a recent confessional post, she writes,
“So there we all are, family time, grilling on Father’s Day with peach iced tea, but you can’t enjoy the moment you’re having with your kids, because you’re taking endless photos and it’s all stage-directed,” she said.
“You’re worried about getting the company logo in the frame, and your kids smiling, and you’re taking shot after shot. ‘OK, now you stand behind the grill!’
“I posted the pictures with a caption that said, ‘We had SUCH a great time grilling Sunday!’ and it’s like, ‘No, actually we didn’t even do that on Father’s Day. We did it a month ago so the content would be ready.'”
Josi Denise had made such a career of this, she joined a host of blog networks, an agency that “connects brands with bloggers,” and attended their conferences, including the Social Influencers Travel Summit in Atlanta, where her food, drink and hotel were covered for four days. She even founded her own company, American Mama Media, which served as the middle man mom between the hundreds of pitches she received each week and information and stats from her tribe of bloggers.
She recalls writing “fake nonsense I used to share on the Internet . . . writing about my fake life and oh-so-happy marriage,” that ended in divorce. At the time she wrote the posts, she admits she felt validated.
The perfect plan has turned into a hot mess.
Mid-May, she divulged:
Let me preface with a few important things. I
amwas a mommy blogger. I have three kids, and I’m popping out another one this fall. I have a background in marketing and had “real jobs” in the “real world” working with PR teams on the daily. I started this blog in 2013, thinking I could combine my writing talents with professional experience and rock this new industry of influencer marketing (before it was called that). And I did, I guess.What could you be doing instead of writing your s**tty mommy blog? Would you spend an extra hour in the morning cuddling with your toddler? Would you read some intellectual books or find a hobby? Go back to school and launch a career? Would you leave your marriage? Would you travel? Would you lose weight and be more active? Would you make some new friends you actually enjoy talking to? What hole are you trying to fill by calling yourself a blogger?
Just quit. Quit now before you get burnt out and feel guilty. Quit before you realize you wasted years of your life writing bulls**t about your kids’ childhood and your relationships instead of being actually involved. Quit before you get caught up in some legal mess with a brand contract and your house is cluttered with shit to review that you do not need and nobody else needs either. Quit before you feel like a failure instead of finding the intersection of happy and fulfilled.
Quit because your mommy blog f***ing sucks. And it’s not going to get better. There are probably a dozen things you are actually good at.
Actually a good read that allows you to put things in perspective, it can be read in its entirety here.
