Heidi and I are sharing our stories in hopes that you find them inspiring. Though our struggles may not be obvious, we’ve been told our story is inspirational, so we’d like to share it with you to get you motivated.
BloggerBabes.com is an organization of “Sophisticated Bloggers Seeking Simple Solutions and Support”. Our mission: to help female bloggers realize their dreams of becoming professional social influencers in their areas of expertise, such as fashion, beauty, food, travel, DIY, decor or lifestyle.
Heidi Nazarudin was a NASDAQ CEO who left her high profile profession, a neat and perfect career, and a lavish lifestyle to follow her dreams of writing professionally. Only a small percentage of bloggers actually earn a living with their work, and many colleagues tried to talk her out of it. Heidi charged forward against the odds and now she’s a high profile, sought after fashion blogger at TheAmbitionista who works with renowned brands such as Armani cosmetics, Saks Fifth Avenue, Vanity Fair and Microsoft.
The poor odds and naysayers didn’t keep Heidi from realizing her dreams, and she wasn’t about to let them keep other female bloggers from theirs. Heidi created Blogger Babes unlike other associations run by marketers or other non-bloggers. Bloggers Babes was and is an organization run by professional bloggers, for aspiring professional bloggers.
I started blogging in 2005 to market my debut book on women’s empowerment and professional networking. It was written in three days while in bed after a life changing car accident; that same year, I was also diagnosed with a rare brain disorder. Despite these challenges, 2005-2006 were to become my most lucrative years of blogging. I was the women’s networking columnist for Entrepreneur magazine online, and that three day, bedridden debut? It became a best-seller.
While I spent the last six years mommy blogging and homeschooling my three tweens (who are all best selling authors and pro-bloggers, too!), Heidi’s fashion blog grew dramatically. She was desperately in search of a partner to help Blogger Babes reach its full potential…
Heidi envisioned two big things for Blogger Babes:
- Offering Simple Solutions to bloggers in the form of educational materials for female bloggers, by female bloggers. Her dream Learning Library would include Kindle ebook series, ebooks, webinar series, training kits, group training bootcamps, and paperback books. Heidi also wanted to offer coaching and mentoring services to novice bloggers, as well as Brand-to-Blogger opportunities such as sponsored social media campaigns, product reviews, etc., to its members.
- Offering a Support System of like-minded female bloggers where they could network, barter, share resources, hire help, and even meetup in live events.
Given Heidi’s huge vision, it was simply fate that she found me when The Ambitionista was taking all her time and she couldn’t carry through with her big plans for Blogger Babes alone.
We actually met and spent the day together with my three tween daughters on a personal tour of Santa Monica. Little did we know that this personal meeting would be a turning point in both of Heidi’s business start ups, The Ambitionista and Blogger Babes.
After my years of mommy blogging and Heidi’s desperate search, it was the beginning of our biggest entrepreneurial break. We found that many of our skills, talents, and experience were complementary to one another, and we had much in common. Within the week, Heidi asked me to be her managing partner for Blogger Babes and return to inspiring women entrepreneurs and bloggers. Within a month, we totally rebranded and relaunched the site.
According to my papers and doctors, I’m still living with a disability. Nearly a year with partial paralysis left me unable to type or write—but even then I never gave up on my life as a writer. I’ve undergone nearly a dozen surgeries in the past few years, and nothing has stopped me yet! 
With only nine days left of the month when we relaunched, the site garnered an increase in email subscribers more than any month prior. And within our first month together, we closed a deal that recouped our initial investment—it’s already turning a profit.
We currently work with nearly a dozen outsourcers and are in the process of negotiating four big deals, each amounting to 5-6 figures annually. These brand partnerships are all on top of the business model we’ve developed to create more passive income through our Learning Library.
It’s often hard to talk about ourselves for fear of boasting or being told we’re arrogant, which is different from sharing to prevent others from making our mistakes. For you, we want to shorten the path to success on which we’ve already experimented and experienced our fair share of failures.
We hope our story will inspire you so that no matter what hardships you may have experienced, you can turn them around to positively impact the lives of others going through challenges in the same, rickety boat. We dare you!
The post Dare to Inspire Others When You Blog This Year! appeared first on Blogger Babes.