A bit more about Hello! Hooray!
It has been a little over a month since my blog switched over from So Many Crafts, So Little Time! to Hello! Hooray! and I’m so pleased that I decided to change things. It was a bit daunting at first, and I didn’t realise all the technical things that I’d have to learn, but I’m glad that I just went for it! When the switchover happened we were on holiday, and I had to rush to the aquarium in Maryport to be able to use the WIFI there to write my original post about the changes. I arrived there quite late in the day and didn’t have a huge amount of time to say what I wanted to at the time! So hopefully I can cover everything that I wanted to, now that I have more than 20 minutes to think about it…
So firstly, my new blog name…I must point out that despite my musical connections, it isn’t named after an Alice Cooper song of the same name! I actually didn’t even realise that there was a song called Hello Hooray until I was Googling potential blog names and it came up. I have since listened to the song, and it’s not the worst song I’ve ever heard but it isn’t really my cup of tea to be honest! So I just wanted to clear that up 🙂 As I said in my original post, the main reason for changing my name was that when I started blogging a couple of years ago it was just for fun, and I came up with the name because that’s how I felt about crafting at that point – I had so many things that I wanted to make, but had no time at all to do any of them! But that’s all changed now since I’ve gone part time in my day job, so the name didn’t really make sense anymore. I also realised that a blogger in America had a blog of the same name, so it was important to me to have something unique. Thinking of a blog name is really tough though! You think you’ve come up with the perfect thing and then you find out it has been taken. Argh! I wanted something shorter, something that sounded friendly and welcoming, and something less specific so that I can take my blog in any direction I want to. So Hello! Hooray! was born!
The direction of my blog has changed a bit since I started blogging a couple of years ago, and it has become such a big part of my life. I could never have predicted that! I love being a part of the blogging community, and it’s great to connect with people all over the world. I enjoy blogging so much more than I thought I would, and would love to make the jump from being an English teacher to full time blogger. Whether that’s actually a realistic possibility I have no idea, but I’m determined to make a go of it! So that’s one of my main goals – a long-term one, obviously. In the meantime, I’d love to get involved with other blogs and have guest posts on my blog too, so get in touch if you’re interested! I’m also keen to try out new crafts and have lots of projects planned, so stay tuned…Another thing that I have considered is selling a few of my makes, but I don’t know if that will be possible/practical/worth it. It’s something that I would love to do at some point, so maybe I’ll add it to my list of long-term goals for Hello! Hooray! and focus on building up my site for now. Who knows where I’ll end up…
In order to start working towards my goals, there will be a few changes on my blog. I guess the main one is that I’m going to be signing up to Affiliate Links to be able to place some adverts on my site. I know, I know, adverts are everywhere – but I need to start somewhere if I’m going to build things up! I don’t want them to take over, so they will be in the sidebars only and I’ll be picking and choosing the content that I feel is relevant to what my blog is all about. I may have some affiliate links in my blog posts, but I’ll be pointing them out to you so you know where they are. I’m also going to be trying to post more frequently – I do this as often as I can at the moment, but I’d love to have some brand new content for you every day. This is one of my mid-term goals, because I don’t think I can do it straight away but I’ll get there one day!
Although I’ve been working super hard to update everything after the transfer, some of my old posts from my So Many Crafts, So Little Time! days still need updating. I have over 300 posts now, so it’s taking a little time to get through them all! Some of the formatting was lost in the transfer and the majority of my photos on older posts are watermarked with my old blog name (I would NEVER do that again, but you live and learn!). I’m trying to update things as I go along, but please bear with me as it’s going to take some time…There have been a few other teething problems, but I have been trying to fix those too and learning a lot along the way. My Twitter feed should now appear at the bottom of the page rather than just a blank box, and the follow by email widget is now up and running again too – yay! This still doesn’t look like the prettiest box, but that will be fixed at some point.
The community feel of my blog is also really important to me, so if there’s something you’d like me to make/feature then do let me know. I love hearing your comments so you can always leave me a message on a post (good or bad!) or get in touch via my social media (links on the left and in the footer). It took me a while to find it (despite it being in an obvious place!) but if you’ve enjoyed reading any post on my blog, you can also let me know by hitting the ‘like’ button. It’s underneath the title of each post, as shown here:
I think that I have finally covered everything that I wanted to say – hopefully I won’t think of another 10 things later on… It’s actually very strange for me to have written a post without loads of photos, so I hope I haven’t rambled on too much. The final thing that I’d like to say is a big ‘Thank you’ to everyone who reads my blog – I wouldn’t have got this far without you reading it and it’s wonderful to have your support! Have a super dooper Saturday, whatever you’re doing 🙂
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Hi Clare, I’m so pleased I stumbled across your blog, it’s great! This post really spoke to me as I’m currently considering changing my blog name and expanding my content so it’s really interesting to hear how you found it. Did you find you lost/confused followers doing it? I’m also an EFL teacher trying to spend my spare time blogging (though I’ve fully lost all motivation the past month) and love all things handmade. The big difference is that I’m useless at crafting myself though, ha! I’ll definitely be following along from now on. Verity x
Hi Verity! Aww, thanks so much for getting in touch! And thank you for your very kind comments