Some friends and readers have noticed I recently dropped the “magazine” in the Geek Mamas name, and have slowly started changing the social media handles to @GeekMamasBlog. I figure if I do eventually turn it into a magazine, I can always add it back. That sets much better with me then having it there, taunting me every time I see it. It was starting to give me anxiety. I wasn’t making any progress getting it started and as I watched my own magazines pile up, I started to wonder… Does anybody even read magazines anymore?

Sometimes Dreams Change

I launched into this new project because I kept reading about my childhood dream of creating a magazine, but unfortunately that just doesn’t fit with my adult life I’ve already built. And since there weren’t blogs (or the Internet) back then, creating something like the website I have now wasn’t an option. Magazines were the only thing I knew.

But now I know blogs, and I have put five years into creating and growing this one. I know sometimes blogs (and bloggers) are not held in the highest regard, or get the same respect as other media types. But I feel like that stereotype is slowly shifting. And I’m starting realize I should just embrace the blog and make it the best it can be instead of spreading myself too thin trying to launch a whole new publication right now.

That’s Not Really a Magazine

It’s always bugged me when people just slap the name “magazine” on website and they aren’t really a print publication. Of course that’s exactly what I did, but I had intentions! All the best and most sincere intentions of creating a quarterly print publication. This is something I have a specialized degree in. A degree the University of Florida doesn’t even offer anymore- a Bachelor of Science in Magazine Journalism. I was trained to create magazines, wrote for them all through school and spent my summer interning at one. It was at Curve, the nation’s best-selling lesbian magazine, but that’s a story for another time, lol.

The Internet has changed things and now we have e-zines or digital magazines, with the option to print on demand. That usually makes the magazines terribly expensive to purchase in print. It also means that anyone with computer access can publish a magazine. Once I started looking through all the magazines online and also the books on Amazon, and saw all the types of things things being published, and I got a little bug to go make something myself.

But Did I Really Have Time for That?

In my excitement to create a new project, I seem to have forgotten it took me over a year to make a 32-page children’s book. And that was working with just one other person. How the heck was I supposed to bring a bunch of people together to create a magazine? My original vision for this blog was to have many other “geek mamas” writing articles and so far only a couple have actually come through. In five years. So in that time, I just got used to just doing everything myself. I have no idea what I was thinking planning a huge project involving a lot of people. It must have been one of those things that sounded like a good idea after a couple glasses of wine.

Between taking care of the house, the kid, the fish, the cat and myself…it barely leaves me time for the blog. And the only reason I’ve kept the blog going so long is because I really love having this little place to write whatever I want, and make money at the same time. But the number one reason for this blog is still personal satisfaction, not money-making.

That approach works for the blog because it doesn’t really cost me anything to maintain. There’s a small annual charge for my WordPress hosting, but I easily make that up with one sponsored post. There’s no additional costs. But a magazine…well that is going to cost to produce. And I started to realize that if I wanted to make money with it and not have it cost me a ton of money, I’d have to sell ads. And if there’s one thing I hate doing, it’s trying to sell ads. I’ll avoid it at any cost. In one of my college courses, it was a requirement to sell an ad for the school magazine. Instead of actually doing that, I built a website about saving money and then sold an ad to myself! That’s how much I hate trying to sell things.

I’m a Blogger and That’s OK

I guess this is mostly just me, talking to myself, and giving myself the permission to set that little magazine dream back on the shelf, where I can go back to it if I choose. Things are going well right now. I love having a blog and it deserves my full attention. So that’s where I’m at, and that’s where I intend to stay for a bit. 🙂