Learn how to blog successfully about your passion and turn your love for a topic into a thriving online community.Even when you really want to start your own blog, it can be difficult to find the motivation and finally do it. But the paradox is that over time, it can itself become an incentive for professional growth. Sharing your hobbies with an audience can make it easier to achieve your goals, find support, and develop your strengths. We talked to four girls who run channels on Yandex.Zen and found out how their hobbies turned into work. Carpentry, beauty, modeling, and yoga — we tell you how the girls were able to succeed in these areas.
It all started when I was choosing an apartment to buy. I am an architect by education, so I assessed everything from a professional point of view. I looked at the options and understood that this is absolutely not what I want to get for many millions of rubles and overpayments on the mortgage. So my husband and I decided to move out of town and build our own house.
I filmed the process: I wanted to create a video with different stages of construction and share it with others. But then I had my first blogging failure: the hard drive with the videos about the foundation burned out. It was terribly unpleasant, and my husband also said that I was doing some kind of nonsense, so for a while I abandoned the idea of blogging. But I continued to work on the house and began making furniture with my own hands.
I made a bench, then a table for a samovar. And I liked this new activity so much! My first serious project was a cabinet. It turned out to be simple and budget-friendly: it cost me only 10,000 rubles. Then I wanted to tell the world about my find again and make a video. Besides, I didn’t find any similar videos on the Internet at that time. And then it all started: a sofa, a workshop, carpentry. People were waiting for new publications, and I was happy to talk about my work.
I spent a lot of time in the carpentry coworking space: on average, one product took a week. Preparing for the shoot also took a lot. I didn’t like that some bloggers from the same field didn’t talk about their mistakes, which my eye had already begun to discern. I followed the advice from their videos and discovered in practice that there were inaccuracies there.
The main goal of my blog is to be heard and seen. I love doing makeup, cosplay and unusual images. I always wanted them to inspire people, and not just be stored on my computer. I myself was once motivated in the same way by other bloggers.
I am a philologist by education. I mastered beauty skills myself through trial and error. Now I have managed to reach such a level that my photos have started appearing in the profiles of major cosmetic brands, and in 2020 I won the cup at the All-Russian Makeup Championship among bloggers.
Two years ago, at my main job, I was asked to run a channel on Zen about our company: I wrote a few articles and thought about it. What’s stopping me from starting my own? It turned out, nothing. At that time, there were very few channels on Zen with creative images and cosplay, so mine took off right away. I reached monetization in just seven days. At first, the income was low, about 10,000 a month. But in a year and a half, I reached a good income.
I recently quit my job to devote myself entirely to blogging. It wasn’t an easy decision, but when Zen started bringing in over 100k a month, I knew it was time. I wasn’t physically or mentally strong enough to combine work and blogging.
99% of my income now is the usual monetization of Zen. Sometimes I insert advertising widgets, no more than once a month I do advertising. There are many offers, but I do not want my brainchild to turn into a continuous stream of commercial posts. Therefore, I take only brands that I myself enjoy using and can recommend without a twinge of conscience.
I always read the comments, and subscribers often ask me to create a certain image. For example, when I made my first cosplay of Ciri from The Witcher, I was inundated with requests for two others – Triss and Yennefer. I ordered costumes and had photo shoots in all of these images. They also constantly asked me to make someone from Game of Thrones and write my opinion on the series finale. The problem was that I hadn’t even watched it! And I have a principle: not to cosplay characters I don’t know. In general, I resisted for a long time, but during these New Year holidays I finally sat down to watch and couldn’t tear myself away. And then the first thing I did was run to cosplay Daenerys.
I take the regularity of my publications seriously: I decided that since I quit my job, I need to publish daily. So that the schedule does not affect the quality of the articles, I dilute them with short videos of makeup. I allow myself (and readers from me!) to rest only on Sundays.
Such a fervor does not always happen — no one is immune from creative crises. I had one this summer. I didn’t want to create any images at all, I was sick and tired of cosplay. This state of mind was stressing me out. The blog in Zen helped me a lot: for a while I was distracted and started writing more useful things about photography. People liked the advice, which made me very happy. Now I’m returning to the topic of makeup, make-up, and cospla