Bigger Britches Needed

I have a Problem, actually I have many problems, but a big one that has been haunting me for a couple of years, with blogging in particular, is Space. I take up a good share of space both in my physical and mental realms, but this problem has to do with electronic space.

My wordpress site, that you have seen over the years, has been constricted by the amount of virtual space that wordpress.com has allowed me to use. WordPress has graciously allowed me use of the space and it has been free all this time so, really, what is one to expect. I am grateful that I have had a platform to use and learn and share with all my dear readers. The free part of that has let me experiment and sometimes fail, but more importantly, learn from the experience.

Especially over the last year, I have found out the hard way just how much data space is gobbled up by my stories and the photos I insert into the website . I have changed settings to make the pics smaller and with less resolution in order to clear up more space to make it possible to continue with the farm stories. The process to accomplish that task is a mind-numbing, one post at a time, one photo at a time, walk through the archives with obscure sequences of keystrokes. It left me fearful and sometimes sobbing over lost pictures or if I somehow completed the task with each picture completely and correctly, still left images that were not clear or of a size that the reader could enjoy.

Which also brings me to another Problem, Advertising. This wonderful, free, educational for me and hopefully for my readers current blog, is chock-full of advertising. That is precisely how wordpress is able to offer the use of the space, data, etc., for free. It is their ads, I have no say in what is being promoted or how invasive it is to my loyal followers that are inundated with commercial advertising while trying to catch up with my daily farm life. Again, I am truly thankful that I have been allowed the space to begin my foray into blogging but I am concerned that my readers are not being served in a manner deserved with all the advertising that I have absolutely no control over.

Now that I have laid out the problems, I want to share the Solutions. Through the magic of all things cyber, there are ways that I can overcome the space and advertising issues have been plaguing my joy of blogging. (For those of you who are tech savvy, I apologize, you know all this stuff already and my revelations will be nothing more than kindergarten solutions. But bear with me because GOOD stuff is coming.) ((For those of you who are not tech inclined, I will try to explain what I am doing but feel free to ask questions because I learn as you learn. And again, GOOD things are coming.))

I have purchased my own domain name, SchmidlinAngusFarms.com, and will eventually move my entire blog site to that space. By having my own domain, I can re-make my blog site without the limitations on space that I have been struggling with and will not have advertisements for things that I do not use, endorse or want to promote. A big worry has been that being on the wordpress.com site means that wordpress owns it and can remove it and all my blogging at any time they wish.

Since I am now paying to have my own domain for the luxury of telling the farm story to all my loyal, passionate, cheerleaders that I have the good fortune to call my readers, I have signed up to be an affiliate of services/products available to consumers. This program allows me to share information about things that can purchased from the affiliate. These would be items that I use, trust and would feel comfortable promoting. By advertising these products, I will have a link in the posts that you can click on to find that particular product or ANY product that company sells. Clicking on the link will not cost you anything and if you happen to purchase any item from that company from my link, I will receive a small commission without ANY cost to you.

In essence, if I promote a neon green and purple frogman suit with rhinestone flippers (don’t worry, I will NEVER like, try on, or promote such a thing), I would add a link to that product in my story for the day. If you click the link and go to the site to see the sizes of the frogman suit and decide to do a little shopping from their housewares department while you are there, I will get a commission. In fact, anytime you go through my website to shop with my affiliate it would give me a small commission and it would allow me to pay for the cost of giving you the daily scoop on all things SchmidlinAngusFarms.com.

The very first thing that I will promote does not lead you to any affiliate at all but to my own new website SchmidlinAngusFarms.com. I will continue to do daily posts on mrs.susan.schmidlin.wordpress.com as well as SchmidlinAngusFarms.com until I can switch over completely. I have already started (and this is truly a work in progress, you will see the site change as I tweak the new blog space and my stumbling process of by-guess-and-by-gosh). This new site will be the platform for my blogging to continue and I hope and pray that you will follow me on this journey since you are the reason I tell my stories.

Thus, I am encouraging and downright begging you to go to the new site by clicking on this link SchmdilinAngusFarms.com and click the follow button so I do not lose you during this tumultuous switch.  And while you are at it, I could sure use some bolstering from my readers so feel free hit the like button, comment, offer advice and cheer me on my journey!

Humbly and with affection to all that support me and my stories, Susan.