Rachel Bustin

What I Learned from getting Hacked and How to Prevent it

On Christmas Eve I decided to turn my laptop off  and have a wonderful few days off enjoying baby girl’s first Christmas. On boxing day I did a quick check of my emails and discovered that my blog had been hacked. They hadn’t got in through my username and password, but through a plugin I wasn’t using and had not updated. They had somehow injected malware into my blogs core files. My stress levels were about to reach breaking point.

I’m writing this today to share with you what I have learned from getting hacked, and hopefully help with some tips so the same doesn’t happen to you. It’s a very unpleasant experience, I felt violated. My blog is only about family topics and what not, it’s a baby fish in a the huge sea, so why would a heartless hacker want in?

 

Prevent Your Blog from getting hacked

View Post

Taxes, Blogging and being Self-Employed

This time last year my blog was still a hobby, I hadn’t earnt a penny, but I started to get offers for sponsored posts…

What was I going to do?

I was on maternity leave and that pay is practically zilch. A few extra pounds from my blog would help to make up some shortfall. So I decided after the new tax year started to take up these offers, because I was so close to the end of the current tax year I thought waiting a couple of weeks would give me time ( a year!) to get my head around the whole tax self-employed thing!

Taxes, Blogging and being self-employed

View Post

How to Revive a Stale Blog With the Help of Original Content

Blogging can be tough. Unless you have a topic that is giving you an infinite amount of content to write about, you’re probably going to run out of ideas sooner or later and you might start running into a creative wall. I know this has happened to me!

It can spell the death of an otherwise informative and interesting blog, and it’s one of the things that writers fear the most when they turn their blogs from a hobby into a full-time job. Sadly, many writers try to get around the problem of a creative block by using questionable tactics. For instance, they might decide to repurpose an old post and disguise it as a new one, or they might hire third-party ghostwriters to make content for their blog.

While these are perfectly acceptable, it doesn’t add interesting and creative content (most of the time). Thankfully, there are ways to rekindle that creative mind of yours if you’re being faced with a stale blog.

With a little tinkering, creative thinking and a lot of hard work, you could revive a stale blog in just under a week with the following tips.

Revive a Stale Blog With the Help of Original Content

Source: Pexels

View Post

Happy 2nd Blogiversary To Meeee!

This month marks 2 years since I started blogging. Happy 2nd blogiversary to me!

I started off on blogger, writing about my competition wins, books I loved to read and gardening tips. I didn’t know what self-hosted meant, I didn’t have a clue about DA, follow links, linky’s, coding and so many other terms it would take me an age to list!

I wasn’t a part of any Facebook blogger groups, and honestly didn’t know you could make money from blogging. I was in my own little bubble, drifting along doing what I wanted to do – sharing bits and bobs of my life and the things I loved.

Happy 2nd Blogiversary!

View Post

January Review and February Bucket List

Wow didn’t January disappear fast? February is an exciting month for us. First up is Baby girl’s first birthday and then our house is being put on the market. January for me was all about setting up my blogging goals for the year. You can pop over to here to have a little peek to see what goals I have set myself.

View Post

My Blogging Goals for 2017

We are really here! It’s 2017 and in a couple of month’s I will be celebrating my 2 year blogiversary. 2016 was crazy!

A few days ago I wrote my Year in Review, looking back over what I’ve achieved in my personal life and the blogging world. Now I’m looking at what I can do in 2017.

I have never been great at keeping to goals. Maybe for a New Year’s Resolution I can make one by sticking to my goal plan! Don’t get me wrong I’ve been very good at keeping to my bucket lists which I have made each month but they are not ‘proper’ long term goals.

To turn my blog to where I want it to go I need to come up with acheiveable goals. I have been taking part in Aby’s course’s from You Baby Me Mummy to help me get on the right track.

blogging goals 2017

So here we go!

View Post