Check out my colleague Jill Rosen's story on the success of Jill Smokler, aka Scary Mommy, whose blog has garnered a lot of fans and attention over the years.

Rosen writes:

Jill Smokler is Scary Mommy — and she's becoming scary successful.

Corporations snap to attention when she tweets, Target fills her closet with free merchandise and Simon & Schuster will release her first book next Mother's Day. All because when, say, she admits to swearing at her children under her breath, legions of fans clap with delight and sigh with relief, responding, "Me too! Me too! Me too!"

The article reveals how Smokler started her blog -- as an online baby book for friends and family -- how it has grown and why it's so popular.

Smokler says her blog shows the "imperfect side of parenting."

The great thing about the Internet is that if Smokler's blog is not your cup of tea, there are hundreds -- if not thousands -- of other "mommy blogs" that would fit your fancy.

But give credit to Smokler for making Scary Mommy a successful enterprise.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Parent bloggers
        

If you're a fan of the local blog sensation Scary Mommy?

If so, please help one of my colleagues: Jill Rosen is looking for fans to interview for a story. Please contact her asap at jrosen(at)baltsun(dot)com.

Posted by Hanah Cho at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Parent bloggers
        

One of my favorite bloggers/writers Lisa Belkin of Motherlode recently wrote a piece on successful mommy bloggers -- those that make money, actually lots of money.

Belkin focuses mainly on Heather Armstrong of Dooce, who is one of the first and most well-known mommy bloggers out there.

Typically, there are 100,000 visitors daily to her site, Dooce.com, where she writes about her kids, her husband, her pets, her treatment for depression and her life as a liberal ex-Mormon living in Utah. As she points out, a sizable number also follow her on Twitter (in the year and a half since she threatened Maytag, she has added a half-million more). She is the only blogger on the latest Forbes list of the Most Influential Women in Media, coming in at No. 26, which is 25 slots behind Oprah, but just one slot behind Tina Brown. Her site brings in an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a month or more — and that’s not even counting the revenue from her two books, healthy speaking fees and the contracts she signed to promote Verizon and appear on HGTV. She won’t confirm her income (“We’re a privately held company and don’t reveal our financials”). But the sales rep for Federated Media, the agency that sells ads for Dooce, calls Armstrong “one of our most successful bloggers,” then notes a few beats later in our conversation that “our most successful bloggers can gross $1 million.”

Belkin takes a look at this interesting world -- one that I was not familiar with until I started blogging myself. There are literally hundreds, if not more, mommy blogs out there. But only a few can make a living off it.

To build a successful blog, the story suggests, you need to have some luck, marketing smarts, a strong voice and the ability to be personal without being too revealing. Still, even with all those factors, not everyone can make money blogging.

What draws you to a particular parenting blog?

Posted by Hanah Cho at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Parent bloggers
        

An article from the New York Times about a recent blog conference in Baltimore geared to moms who blog (I'm not using the term "mommy bloggers," which like many of you I hate) has sparked quite a reaction. It makes me sorry I couldn't attend to meet some of the local bloggers I've come to virtually know -- by the time I found out about it, the SITS "bloggybootcamp" was sold out, and I had a fierce head cold anyway.

Anyway, here's a roundup of some of the reactions to the piece that I found most interesting. Many bloggers are angry about the way it depicts them, both as bloggers and as moms. (Even though the story was written by a blogging mom.)

Here's what Mom101 had to say. Kelby Carr, aka TypeAMom, a former newspaper reporter, has a thoughtful critique of the mainstream media response to the phenomenon of women blogging for money.

The SITS Girls, (stands for "The Secret is in the Sauce,") who ran the conference, have a post summarizing some of the reaction here. And at the bottom of this post you'll see a comment from Frederick blogger Jennifer Gerlock that gives her take.

Associated Press photo

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Parent bloggers
        

Well, this mom has joined the tweeting ranks. Follow me at twitter.com/charmcitymoms (look for the cupcake.)

I actually signed up a while ago, but for a while I resisted tweeting very often. I had started to read that moms were finding the micro-blogathon of Twitter just sucked up too much of the little life that remained to them after they took care of their kids, husbands, bosses' needs, volunteer duties, etc., etc. I still remember when Mary Beth at Supafine said Sayonara to Twitter. But then she went back a couple months later.

Guess I can't avoid it, huh?

Do you tweet?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Parent bloggers
        

Since it's Mother's Day Week, we're going to be talking a fair amount about so-called "mom bloggers" (perhaps at my peril). For the two of you who are not already reading the excellent Finslippy, I'm going to commend you to her blog today. Her motto is "wading in the shallow end since 2004," but she clearly understands that the shallow end is also the deep end.

Her last few posts in particular capture the absurdity and the heartbreak that comes with being a parent. Ever tried to ask a kid about his day? Read this post. Tried to protect him from marauding germs? Check out this one. And, sadly, her latest -- about her miscarriage last week -- is a sparely written account of a tragedy too many parents will recognize. I'd add to the 783 comments-and-counting under that post, but I have no words for this one except those that have been said: I'm so sorry.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: On the Web, Parent bloggers
        

It seems fitting to kick off Green Week with a web site about green parenting. The Green Parent, written by an environmentalist mom, is dedicated full-time to the subject, with posts about recycling, eco-friendly crafts, saving water, and more.

Speaking of Green Week, please don't forget to answer my call for images of your kids' fantastic art to showcase on the blog. E-mail them to me here. Or you can snail-mail to:

Kate Shatzkin, The Baltimore Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21278.

But please send only copies if you want to keep the art; I wouldn't want to lose anything precious.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

While I've been writing about Dinner Together, faithful commenter Annelies has started a new blog about the lunches she sends to preschool with her son, whom she calls Nugget (on the blog, anyway). She packs his fare in very cute bento boxes. Annelies has an added challenge in preparing tasty, healthful lunches: Nugget has food allergies, which will make her blog particularly useful to many of you.

There are other dishes besides lunch. I'm going to try the Xetzels she made as a school snack sometime.

How do you deal with lunch and food allergies?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Food and Recipes, Parent bloggers
        

I was catching up with our new friend suburbancorrespondent's blog over the weekend and spotted a post some of you might like, especially if you've got three kids or more. (Suburbancorrespondent has six.) It's a list called "How To Know You May Have Too Many Kids."

Even though I only have two kids, I will cop to #7 ("Going to the grocery store alone counts as 'me-time' ") and #2 ("When you call the doctor to tell him that the toddler has croup, and he asks if she's ever had it before, you say, "I don't know, but somebody has.")

I will say, however, that my pediatrician has actually recommended the book "Siblings Without Rivalry" on a number of occasions when I've asked her how to help my kids do better at sharing. Here's where I have to admit I never got time to read it -- sorry, Dr. B -- but one of the recommendations from the doctor that I believe came from it did work. More on that in my siblings post later (I promised you a follow-up to last Monday's consult.)

Meanwhile, would love to hear what you'd add to suburbancorrespondent's list. Tell us below.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Parent bloggers
        

On the subject of successful mom bloggers, it occurs to me that the writer of Baltimore's own Sweetney --Tracey Gaughran-Perez -- bears no small resemblance to Dooce. Like Heather Armstrong, she's been invited to appear on parent-blogger panels, gotten her blog linked on ParentCenter, and started recommending products, on a separate blog in Gaughran-Perez's case.

She's got the same cool blond bob, salty language, a little girl she takes lots of pictures of, and -- key -- a dog.

This is a newspaper blog, so cursing's out for me. But if only Rex were still here, I could compete. If I got a blond wig.

(Photo of Tracey Gaughran-Perez by Sun photographer Kim Hairston, 2006)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
        

According to the Wall Street Journal, a Salt Lake City mom named Heather Armstrong is the nation's top parenting blogger. I was in a raving jealous rage over impressed with her numbers: her site, Dooce.com, gets about 4 million page views a month. (I get nowhere near almost that many. OK, only in my dreams. But I'm new. We'll get there, right?)

Back to the point. ...With all those page views, some of you must be reading Dooce. A lot. I'd like to know why. And I'd like to know what other mom and dad blogs/sites you read, and why. We're phenomenally busy people, we parents, and yet we make time to read even more about parenting. (And please don't stop doing that. See above.) What makes one parenting site stand out over the other 200,000 out there?

One feature I like on Dooce is Armstrong's monthly newsletters to her daughter, Leta. For one thing, even though they're quite personal, they're a bit of a window on how kids of a certain age can change from month to month. For another, they'll be a great record for her family some day. Haven't we all vowed to write down all the wonderful things our kids say and the bizarre things they do, only to forget?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)