Sweet Electric

1. Blogging will get you lots of ‘freebies’.
One of the perks of blogging is receiving things to review free of charge. Having said that, theres no guarantee just because you have a blog, you’re going to receive lots of products. The reality is that there are far more bloggers than samples. Blogs that only start for the purpose of getting products wont last long. Yes, if you work hard at your blog, put out great content and have passion then opportunities are likely to appear but they shouldn’t be expected or taken for granted.

2. Looking like a supermodel will get you lots of subscribers.
Now, this is a tough one because for fashion blogging then I guess looks do play a part somewhat. However, you don’t need to look a certain way to gain a readership. I read lots of blogs and for most of them, I have no idea what the writer looks like. If your content is good then people will read it. I’ve never read a blog because of what the writer looks like, maybe they are some people who do but in my honest opinion those people will get bored very easily if they’re not there for the content.

3. You need to make youtube videos to be a blogger.
A lot of bloggers upload videos on youtube. It’s something I considered until I actually got in front of a camera and froze – yep its not for me and I highly doubt I ever will. If its something you want to do then definitely give it a go. However, its not necessary and it doesn’t make you any less of a blogger because you’re not on there. I think some people think they’ll automatically become the next Zoella but it takes a lot of hard work and in all honesty a lot of likability (and luck?) to become successful on youtube.

4. Blogging will make you rich?
Well if only!Ha but seriously blogging isn’t an easy path to make money. Yes there are ways to monetise your blog and some people are lucky enough to earn a living from it. However, for most blogging is a great hobby.

5. You need money to be a blogger.
You dont need a lot of money to blog. You can have a read of my post on blogging when you’re broke here. There are lots of things you can blog about without spending a penny. Its easy to think that you need to go out and buy every new product to review but you really don’t. Try and think outside the box when it comes to writing.

6. Blogging is easy.
Before blogging, I never realised just how much time it takes to create a blog and all the things that come with it. You’re a content creator, editor, admin, social media, all in one blogging machine and that eats up a lot of time. Yes its very enjoyable but like everything, it has its ups and downs, frustrations and all that jazz. If you’re passionate then investing time and energy is 100% worth it!

7. Everyone lives in a dreamland of white walls, candles, flowers and cosy bedding.
Despite how things often look on blogs/social media, no-one has a perfect life or lives in a dream house filled with incredible things. Remember people only show snippets – everyone has their bad days and has their own struggles. In reality, I’m sure most bloggers are just like you and me and no-one is perfect despite perceptions.…

When I started blogging, one of the first things I struggled with was photography. I knew pretty much nothing about taking photos and its still something I’m trying to get to grips with.
My blog photography is very much work in progress. Even though I’m quite a creative person,
My blog photography is very much work in progress. Even though I’m quite a creative person, its not something that comes easily to me. I’ve learnt a few things along the way and I’d like to think my photos have improved over that past two years that I’ve blogged. Today, I have a few tips to share – this wont be anything too technical but I’ll link a few other bloggers posts that explain the tech side way better than I ever could.

GET TO KNOW YOUR CAMERA

Although I do have a dslr camera (canon 1100d – which I would recommend if you’re looking for a beginners dslr) I actually bought it before I started blogging. Knowing what I know now, I would definitely say that you don’t need a fancy camera for blog photos. You can get good quality digital cameras fairly cheap so you really don’t need to spend a lot of money. Its easy to get sucked into with everyone else is buying and what other bloggers are using but if you have a budget, theres no need to go over it. If you are looking for a new camera, I recommend this site where you can have a look at different camera/functions etc. Also don’t be afraid to go instore and ask for assistance with purchasing. The main thing with a camera is getting to know how it works – there should be some guides online/youtube and also if you can, spend some time playing around with the functions, taking photos and seeing how they look when you upload them.

TURN OFF THE FLASH

When I first heard this suggestion from other bloggers, I couldn’t understand it. I used to take all my photos with the flash on – it was like my best friend. It was only when I started to play around with my camera that I realised how harsh it really looks.

With flash, the light bounces off certain areas, whereas with natural lighting it just looks far nicer. Luckily, now the weather is improving, its far easier to make the most of the light available. When indoors, I try to take my photographs as near to a window as I can. I don’t own any lighting buts its something I may consider in winter. Temporary Secretary wrote a great post for fashion bloggers and lighting in this post.PHOTO EDITING
Again, this is something I never really bothered with in the early days, apart from cropping. These days I do edit my photos a little more. Gwen from This Fashion is Mine wrote an amazing post on photo editing here and this is pretty much how I now edit my photos. However, you don’t need photoshop to edit your photos. I like to use ipiccy as well – you can work with curves, levels and saturation on there. Its less complex than photoshop but still a good (and free) programme to use.

BACKGROUNDS

A nice background can make a huge difference to a photograph and give it that something extra. I like to use either my ikea helmer, notebooks, makeup bag, trays, magazines etc. You could really use anything – if you’re stuck for something try taking a few free wallpaper samples from a DIY shop. I would say try not to use anything that looks cluttered so the products you’re focusing stand out. You could try different things. I usually take around 50 pictures for each blog post – sometimes they might look good on the camera screen but once uploaded they might not look right so I like to take a lot of photos.

SIZING

Finally, sizing your photos to a medium/large size can really help them to stand out on your blog. You can resize your photos to all the same size by reading this post I wrote not too long ago. I find smaller pictures can get lost within the text and nice, clear photos will help to draw readers into the blog post.
These are just a few things I’ve learnt, like I said I’m no expert and I try not to get too hung up over the fact that my photos might not look quite as good as others. If you struggle with photography like I do, try to focus on your content and just do the best you can. As I always say, blogging is meant to be fun so try not to fret too much!…

Trying to blog when you have a million other things to do is no easy task. Whether its work, academic studies, loved ones..theres always something that can make it difficult time wise to blog. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break now and then – I think it can actually help to refocus and refresh your ideas, obviously unless blogging is your primary source of income and then it might be a little more difficult. However, how often you blog is really up you. Putting pressure on yourself to blog is never good but blogging regularly can be achieved without compromising the quality of your posts.

LISTS, LISTS, LISTS…
Being organised and prioritising your workload is the key to blogging regularly. I write lists all the time as it helps me to stay focused. Keeping a notebook or several notebooks and writing down blogging ideas, lists for what you want to blog about, products to review, photos that need to be taken etc is a great way to stay organised. Making these into checklists so you can tick off when completed helps to keep everything flowing.

CREATE A BLOGGING SCHEDULE…
By blogging schedule, I mean a monthly chart where by you can state what blog post you are going to publish on a certain day. There are lots of free monthly calendars on the net that you can print off to do this. I use one every month but I don’t stick to it religiously – sometimes I’ll change the day of a post but its a good way to plan out your posts in advance.You can find a free printable monthly calendar which is perfect for making a blogging post schedule.

CREATE AN AREA FOR PRODUCTS TO REVIEW
I always have a few products that I want to write about and need to test out. The best thing I did was buy a small basket from Morrisons (for about £1.50) to keep these products in. Its just a much easier way of keeping everything organised, rather than having all your products jumbled together. You can get things like plastic storage from pound shops and places like wilkinsons so its not something you need to shell out loads of money for but it helps to keep lists and schedules in sync.

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR FREE TIME
If you have a free day or even just a couple of hours, use that time to take pictures, write blog posts and be productive. I always take my blog photos in bulk and try to write several posts in one go – it doesn’t always happen as I’m easily distracted. Scheduling your posts throughout the week allows you to still be an active blogger without eating into your time.

REMEMBER TO GET YOUR BLOG POSTS OUT THERE
Once you’ve posted your blog posts, remember to get links to your posts out there on the web. I would highly recommend having a twitter account if you don’t already have one as its a good way to help increase your views. You can schedule tweets via various apps, such as hootsuite and if you use bloglovin, you can sync it to your twitter/facebook account so the links to your recent posts are published on your social media accounts.

I hope this was helpful in some way. Don’t worry if you really don’t have time to blog and don’t put pressure on yourself either – its your online space and blogging is meant to be fun!…

Editing your photos can be a big blogging chore. Luckily, there’s a few free online sites that can help make your blog photos so much nicer. Whether its brightening a photo, making a blog banner or mocking up a collage, I’ve got a round up of the best free photo editing sites on the net.

Pixlr
This is very similar to photoshop in its layout. Its more complicated to use than other free sites but there are a few tutorials on the web. Pixlr editor is the main section you need for doing everything from photo editing to making collages for wishlists etc. There aren’t as many features as photoshop but it has what you need for brightening photographs, cropping, resizing. For fonts, you can use the ones stored on your computer or new ones you download.

Picmonkey
Probably the easiest editing site to use. There are limited basic features but you can pay for extra ones – for photo editing I personally feel that the free functions are fine. There are a few different fonts to use and the you can crop, resize, and brighten though there are no curves/levels feature. A lot of the time I find that picmonkey doesn’t load or certain features wont load so it isn’t the most reliable.

ipiccy
Similar to picmonkey but with some extra features, such as levels/curves for brightening photographs. Its also really easy to make collages with the collage tool and some nice fonts. Its definitely my favourite editor as its simple to use and always loads quickly.

Fotoflexer
Similar to ipiccy but some less features. There are some really nice handwritten style fonts on here so its nice for adding text. I think ipiccy and pixlr are better for actual photo editing though.

A few others to mention are photoscape which although free, needs to be downloaded – I’ve only just downloaded it so I haven’t used it much but first impressions aren’t great. I think you’re better sticking to the online editors to be honest. Another is befunky, which I’ve only used once but it looks similar to picmonkey.
Overall, free online photo editing sites are definitely good enough to use for editing blog photos or making a blog banner/collages. Photoshop is much more advanced but I don’t feel you should splash out on it for the benefit of blogging. If there’s any other site you can recommend let me know in the comments!…

Its been a good few months since I wrote one of these posts but I thought I’d continue with the series as I still have a few things to share. If you want to see previous html posts click here.

I thought I’d continue where I left off which is styling the sidebar – you can find out how to change side fonts and backgrounds here and here. As I’ve said before, I’m not a professional web designer – I’ve simply found a few ways to customise a blogger template by endless searching and trial and error.

The sidebar is good for showcasing aspects such as subscribers, the blog archive, sponsors etc. There is a very easy way to make to the sidebar look attractive without having to mess around with your html template. Firstly, its a good idea to save your current template in case anything goes wrong. That way you don’t have to worry if you make a mistake. (To save – just go to the template section on your blogger dashboard and backup/restore. You will then be given the option to download your template to your computer!)

Adding a border (like I currently have) is a great way to make your sidebar standout and separate it from all your other content. To add a simple standard border around your sidebar, firstly you need to go to the template section on blogger – customise template – advanced – add css. In the blank box add the following code;

.sidebar {
border:  1px solid #000000;
}

This coding will give you a standard black border around your sidebar.

If you wish to change the thickness of the border, all you need to do is increase the value of the px in yellow.
To change the colour – just change the colour code in blue to the one you desire – you can find various html colour codes here.

If you dont want a solid line border, you could add a dashed border instead. To do this just use the following coding (again the thicnkess and color can be changed as above).

.sidebar {
border:  1px dashed #000000;
}

Or to have a dotted border use the coding below

.sidebar {
border:  1px dotted #000000;
}

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions leave them below and I will do my best to answer. If theres any other html tips you’d like to see just let me know and I will see if I can help!…