Now Enrolling: Blogging Today

THE course that demystifies Substack, Blogs + Email Newsletters

I’m so so SO excited to share my new blogging class with the world today! I feel so close to this topic, I’m still so in love with blogging, and I’m as passionate about writing online today as I was when I began.

Blogging brought me everything - the connections, the best-selling books, the tour, my own magazine, podcast, close friends, product collections, lectures, and it even gave me the financial freedom that I needed to leave my day job and work mostly from my laptop so I could relocate from Boston to Europe where I’ve lived for 15 years. I had no idea that putting myself out there with a blog would lead to so many great opportunies in my life.

I know for almost a fact that without my blog I’d still be working in downtown Boston on the 24th floor of 100 Summer Street in a cubicle wishing I could do something more creative, dreaming of life abroad, financial freedom, wishing I could travel more and longing to live life on my own terms.

My blog, my lovely readers, my whole career… This all came because one day I got tired of waiting for life to begin and decided to take a risk and start talking about my passion for design online, through a blog. With an ugly blogger.com template and bad photos, I got started.

Within a year, I had a beautiful template, some readers, and I started to learn how to take better photos. I felt motivated to keep going.

Six years later, I was an author and sent on a book tour for Anthropologie sponsored by Chronicle Books, touring DECORATE all over the United States and then to London and parts of Europe. I had an international best-seller in my hands in over 12 languages. I met several thousand fans on my book tour. By this time, I had relocated to Germany, where my husband is from, and we moved into my dream place bordering a city forest. Later, my online courses were born, more books came, and we welcomed our son into the world. Today, I’m working on my fifth interiors book.

People still start blogs and find success online with a blog as a foundation, but lots of former bloggers are actually returning to blogs they’d abandoned. They’re trying Substack or adding paywalls to their Squarespace blogs. They’re experimenting with subscription and membership models.

Why did some bloggers pause or give up? When Instagram came on the scene, it was the shiny new object that promised that we didn’t have to spend as much time on our blogs anymore, we could become famous with Insta - a micro-blogging platform where we could all connect quickly and share snapshots of our day. Even ugly snapshots with ugly filters and borders (remember!?). And with that, we all ran like wild horses to the newest thing.

Instagram was appealing for awhile, and some people (like me) continue to blog and use Instagram which I still believe is the best recipe for online marketing today in addition to adding an email list and maybe, if you have time, TikTok or something else that you can play around with.

But Instagram evolved from snapshots and snippets about our day to feeling pressure to post professional photos, then came the rise of the influencers because brands gave them the chance to earn through their Insta-fame.

For some, this worked.

I once loved Instagram as a space to connect with new brands and meet people. Today, Instagram still works to a degree. It’s fun if you don’t overdose on it, and you can stay connected to the people that you love. It’s fast and easy to consume. But to create on, it’s not fast or easy. It’s time-consuming and takes a lot of strategy and skill. It can take hours to create a REEL that has the potential to attract your people, though you’ll never know for sure because of the dreaded algorithm.

I was thinking recently that photographers and writers shouldn’t and can’t be pushed to create content that isn’t interesting to them to create. I enjoy consuming video content but creating it - it’s not interesting to me.

Just because you are a set designer doesn’t mean you want to be a producer. Just because you’re a screen writer, doesn’t mean you want to be a film maker. A classical pianist doesn’t necessary desire to sing opera. Yet on social media, we are all required to do whatever the app tells us to do, and to be really good at it, or else we’ll fail.

Thing is, writer’s want to write. Photographer’s want to create beautiful photos and tell stories. That’s why so many of us still love blogs, or are heading over here to Substack, or we really work hard on our newsletters. And sure, we try our best on Instagram, but it’s not our great passion and love in life to create videos. SO WHAT.

They say that timing is everything—and they’re right. There's no better moment than NOW to launch your blog and regular email newsletters and I’ll tell you why. While the world gets swept away producing videos on TikTok and Instagram, you can carve your niche by crafting a blog you adore, and that adoration will shine through in your writing and if you like, your photography too.

But that's not all. In my new blogging course, I'm bringing back the personal touch through lessons that will reach your heart and rekindle your love for writing and blog magic. I mean it, I want to really get you excited about blogging because it’s sustainable, smart, and not going away anytime soon. Even if you have a thriving Instagram (I have 123k followers), you can still use Insta to send people over to your blog/email list or Substack so everything can work beautifully together.

So my friends, ifyou want to learn more about Blogging Today: Substack, Blogs + Email Newsletters, please click here to learn all the nitty gritty, including a complete summary of all 30 lessons, who my special guest is (you will LOVE her) and remember… Enroll by September 1st for a very special early bird offer.

Note: This class will not have live Zoom calls or use Facebook Groups. We’ll only use Payhip and my second Substack account for students only to connect and chat - yay!

I can’t wait to see you in class my dear friends!

Love,

Holly