A Special Sheilacakes Annoucement

I am excited to announce that I am now available for press trips and brand trips. Since I am a single mom, it was hard to be able to be available for these trips. Now that Noah is in school, I am able attend without any hassles or asking my mom to take off time from work. I thankfully have options for after school care too. 

I would love to represent your brand and learn more about your company. I feel that I am a great candidate because I am a very passionate person and I have great ideas. I would love to share my thoughts with you in a face to face setting. I would love to get in there and see how things are done. I feel that once you experience being in the heart of a company you truly can relate and understand all the hard work that they do. It makes it more personal. I would love to have my voice and my readers voices heard. I feel like I not only represent Sheilacakes, but I also represent my readers and moms everywhere. I would love to open up a dialogue with you.

I also love to travel. It is one of my greatest passions. I am the go to person when it comes to sharing the best places to visit or stay. I think of every trip as an adventure and a chance to experience a new place and culture. Even in the US each state and region is different and I believe you don't have to go to an exotic place to have a great time. Some of my favorite vacations are random places my family has decided to visit.  I am a very family oriented person, my son loves to travel too. He went on his first vacation when he was two months old. I would love to check out some great places to take family. I am a single mom so vacations for my family have to be affordable and lots of fun. I know that having both of those elements can be kind of tricky.  I am also a big advocate that every mom needs mommy time or should go on kid free trips with her friends. It replenishes us, makes us once again ready for motherhood.  So, if you are looking for a traveling mom blogger to check out your hotel, location or city  I  would love to help.

I would love to discuss opportunities that we can work together further. I look forward to hearing from you.

How Do You Start a Blog?

When I talk about blogging with my friends that are not bloggers I always get a lot of questions about it.  I have had a few ask me what it is because they are not sure what a mom blogger is.  They are usually older and no so internet savvy. Some of my friends that are familiar with blogs ask me how I did I get started in blogging. I tell them that I have always loved to write; even when I was younger I kept journals and wrote poems in a notebook. I have had a blog since 2001, I was on Live Journal. I wouldn’t really call it a real blog. It was just random thoughts about things.  When I told my aunt and uncle about blogging, they were kind of skeptical at first, but quickly realized it was legit.  I have friends that ask me how do I get in to blogging.   I always tell them, first start a blog. Write as much as you can about what you love. If you want to review products, start writing about things you use at home that you love. It is important to show your writing style and personality. The brands you will possibly be working with, will want to know that you are a great writer. I had never been big on spelling and grammar, I would try and use good grammar and spell things correctly, of course but other people’s spelling and grammar didn’t bother me all that much, until I started blogging. I am not sure why that is, probably because I am more aware.

The most important thing to learn when you decide to start a blog is, it takes a lot of time. You have to start small when asking for products for review. You will be doing most of the grunt work when it comes to finding reviews. You will eventually start receiving emails once you have been noticed by companies and PR reps. It can be hard in the beginning. I remember that I cried when I started blogging. I was afraid I wouldn’t get anything else to review and what I had on the list was it. Once I built up my Brand experience working with many companies, the emails keep coming. The more you blog the better you will get. Blogging is fun, but it is also hard work. You really have to have a passion for it.  There will be times you will get overwhelmed or told no, but if you keep trying and keep blogging you will get past it.  You will meet some of the most amazing people through blogging. It is such a great job.

Dear PR and Companies Please...

Have you ever heard of the website Dear Blank, Please Blank? It is a website where you can submit your letters to people or things and most of them are really funny. My friends Ben and Amber got me addicted to it.  I could spend hours reading it.  I decided after a failed attempt of submitting my own Dear Blank, Please Blank letter.  I would make a post about Dear Blank Please Blank Blogger addition.  This is about some things bloggers have noticed in the blogosphere that I wanted to share with you.

Please note: This is just in fun, not something that is to offend and is a purely humor post.

Dear PR,

Please stop asking us to blog for a chance to win something. Blogging is our job.

Sincerely,

Do they hold a raffle for your paycheck?

Dear PR,

The smiley in word doesn’t translate to a smiley in email.

Sincerely,

I spent  10 months trying to figure out who J is

Dear Companies,

Please don’t try and trade us Twitter Followers and Facebook fans to hold your giveaways.

Sincerely,

My grocery store doesn’t accept followers as a form of payment

Dear Companies,

Please don’t use more traffic as an incentive to get us to blog about you.

Sincerely,

They don’t take traffic either

Dear Companies,

Please stop filling packages with those little crinkled pieces of paper.

Sincerely,

They are pretty but they make a huge mess

Dear PR,

Please send full sized products, especially when it is a beauty product.

Sincerely,

One or half an application won’t help me review

Dear PR,

Please be thoughtful when you are sending toys to review.

Sincerely,

Moms with more than one child

Dear Event planners,

Please make a note when you are inviting a blogger to a show in New York.

Sincerely,

I live 1000 miles away

Dear Companies,

Please read our blogs and get to know our families.

Sincerely,

Why are you pitching me for that?

Dear PR,

Please when you plan for brand trips invite different bloggers, I am sure they are great but share the wealth.

Sincerely,

Never been on a brand trip

Dear Companies,

Please send me ice cream, but sending it overnight in dry ice is not necessary.

Sincerely,

Coupons are cheaper to send

Dear PR,

Please call me Sheila that is why my blog is Sheilacakes.

Sincerely,

If my name was blogger my blog would be Bloggercakes

Dear PR,

Please stop sending me irrelevant press releases about celebrities’ clothes or what products they use.

Sincerely,

I am not Vogue or Parents Magazine

Dear PR and Companies,

Please don’t offer samples when you have none.

Sincerely,

Still waiting for my really expensive watch

Dear PR and Companies,

Please stop pitching me saying you have samples and then run out of them.

Sincerely,

Don’t pitch more than you have.

Dear Companies and PR,

I would love a vacation just so you know.

Sincerely,

The Mom blogger with a whinny five year old

Hey Baby What's Youre Niche?

Everyone is always talking about niches.  What is your niche? I am not exactly sure if it pronounced nitch or niche which would rhyme with quiche.  Honestly, I don’t really think I have a specific niche. When I fill out certain things one of the question commonly on the questionnaire is what is your niche or what your main focus is.   True I do a lot of reviews and giveaways but, I also talk about food, family life, being a mom, doing crafts and other bits of random things.  I think that I am my own niche. I am just me, I blog about whatever I feel like. It could be what products I like one day and something random like about baby diets.  I don’t consider my blog as a review blog because I have quite a few personal posts. I think a review blog is a blog that has only reviews, giveaways and other PR related posts. I love doing PR related things but I am a lot more than just PR.   I consider my blog a mish mash of everything.

There are a bunch of great niche blogs out there. I just don’t think I am able to write about just one thing and one thing only.  My friend Laura writes a chocolate blog.  I like chocolate but I don’t have her discipline to do that. I think it is awesome if someone has a niche, or is like me that write about whatever comes to mind.  I have never really been  a certain type of person. When I was in school I was friends with whoever I wanted. I wasn’t a preppy person although I have a funny story about Goodwill, I wasn’t an athlete, I hated gym.  I wasn’t a gangsta, I wasn’t a skater. I was just me. I have always had my own style, did my own thing and was friends with different types of people.  I wasn’t anyone but me.  I would dress whatever way I wanted to, be it a band shirt and cords or clothes from Abercrombie.  It just depended on how I felt that day. 

I guess that is something I carried along with me as I got older. I don’t want to be in a specific group and only do one thing. I want the opportunity to do what I feel like and not be stuck being type casted in the blogging world.

Do you have a niche or are you just like me and do a little of this and a little of that?

I Got Something to Say

The title of this post is a quote by the character Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy. I feel like I should share with my readers some things. I wrote a post a while back called When Blogging Relationships Go Bad about my horrible experience with a company I worked with on my blog. You can read the post here if you are not familiar with what I am talking about. The long of the short of it is, I was working with a company that promised me a full sponsorship to BlogHer in exchange for advertising, posts and even a Twitter party that ended up being a nightmare. I turned and looked the other way while she bashed other bloggers and even a NASCAR star. I did think it was wrong but I didn’t stick up for my fellow bloggers. I feel bad because I should have been the voice for the masses;I thought that she was being mean and rude. I regret that.

After a while I tried to let it go and not let it bother me. I have received numerous requests and comments asking me to tell who it is. I have remained silent as a professional courtesy but in light of the increase of new bloggers, I have decided to break my vow of silence and share with you all so you don’t get taken as well. It was Bea’s Gift Baskets. There I said it. Like I said there are quite a few new bloggers out there and I want to warn them, I don’t want anyone to be treated like I was. It still hurts; even more so with everyone starting to talk about BlogHer and BlogHer related events like the parties. It also still hurts that I spent all that time working on the posts and twitter party that wasn’t review related. They got free advertising. I got nothing but disappointment. I am sure you are thinking well you got those gift baskets at least that is something right?

I went to the dollar store, it is kind of new and yes, it still had eau du Dollar store smell. I was browsing around by the food and I saw an item that was supposed to be “gourmet” in one of those gift baskets. I was like wow; those are the exact same chocolate covered pretzels that were in one of my gift baskets. I just thought well they could have sprung for the Flips if they wanted to be cheap. The Flips are like 3 dollars a bag versus the dollar store ones. It makes me wonder how many more dollar store items are in those overpriced gift baskets.

There is nothing wrong with the dollar store, I shop there. I love the dollar store, but if you are paying 90 dollars for something you should at least get 50 dollars worth of food, a 20 dollar basket then the company nets 20 bucks or something along those lines. Maybe 40 dollars worth of food but there shouldn’t be items that you can get at the dollar store. I just think that is unethical and deceitful. That of course is my opinion.

I just wanted to share this with my fellow bloggers and readers. Maybe even the weary traveler passing through my blog. I don’t want to see anyone taken by Bea’s Gift Baskets like I was. So, how can we prevent this from happening?

1. Make sure you get everything in writing. Granted I had everything in email and that would have been fine, but when you are dealing with something like this extra forms like contracts are a good way to go. I know she didn’t mention contracts once until after she pulled out and didn’t want to do what I consider the right thing.

2. Don’t turn the other way or put up with others that talk bad about other people. Chances are they are bad mouthing you to someone else. You should work with companies that conduct their selves in a professional manner.

3. If your gut tells you it is too good to be true, it just might be or if the person gives off a weird clingy vibe you should probably walk away. Always trust your gut and your heart.

4. If a person you are working with is lying to others, 99% of the time they are lying to you.

5. Talk to others about their experiences, I know that everyone can make up their own minds about things they want to do, but listen to what others have to say and keep it in mind for when you make your decision.

I hope you find these tips helpful and keep them in mind in the future. Thanks for reading!

Check Out This Amazing Blogger and Friend

Everybody is always asking me and other bloggers who their blogging idol is or who they look up to the most? Normally I don’t like to single people out because feelings get hurt and egos get bruised. Most people say it is some really well known blogger but for me it is Mommy Niri. I had the pleasure of getting to know Niri from a PBS Sprout Band of Bloggers telephone conference. She is an amazing person and she is so intelligent. She has a really cool accent too. She was full of great ideas and I knew during that phone call that I wanted to get to know her. I immediately started following her on Twitter and I started tweeting back and forth with her. I really enjoy talking to her.



She is such a kind person. She is doing all these things to help others and she is such an inspiration to me. She is such a great blogger and an even better person. She is one of those bloggers that truly want to make a difference like I do. I hope I have the opportunity to meet her someday soon. I can’t say enough good things about Niri. She is the blogger I strive to be like; she has such a big heart like I do. I bet we could do a lot of good in this world together. Everyone should check out Mommy Niri’s blog because she is such an awesome blogger and friend.

When blogging relationships go bad..

After recent events, that have to do with my blog, I am starting to wonder if all of my efforts are worth it. I really enjoy blogging and reviewing products and doing giveaways but, I am starting to question these things. I have many wonderful relationships with many pr agents and businesses which I am grateful to have. There is one “business” relationship that I had for three months; I really worked hard on everything I did for them. I put business in parentheses because it seemed like it was much more personal as this person emailed me almost daily. I went above and beyond what a normal product reviewer would do, I spent hours upon hours doing things that weren’t really in the scope of my job. It was almost like I had become an employee of this company. I was promised multiple times that they would fully sponsor me to go to BlogHer 10.

I spent my time writing posts for them that were not product reviews. I posted and posted for them. One I had to go back and edit because they stopped their relationship with a foundation. That meant I had to rewrite part of it, so it would make sense. I tweeted about the business multiple times. I also researched for them. I gave them free advertising for three months. I wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth. BlogHer is not cheap by any means.

I prepared a Twitter party and then held the Twitter party on a very devastating day, the last thing I wanted to do was have fun at a Twitter party. I wanted to be there for the community that I belong to. I wanted to mourn a loss of a fellow blogger. Yet, I sucked it up, I superglued a fake smile on my face, and did my job. Little did the guests of the party know that I was crying between my tweets. I was so upset, it turned to frustration because I had not had the help that I thought that I was going to have. I had to deal with other things between the others that were helping me. I had to deal with the sponsor making rude comments at the guests. I thought that overall it was a success. Anyone who has ever hosted a Twitter party knows how difficult they are to run and how stressful they are.

After all the hard work I put in to the company, and after all the nice things I did, I am left with nothing in return. They informed me out of the blue after emailing me as if nothing was wrong and after they sent me a Christmas present and then bailed on me. There were many questionable actions shown by the owner of the company. Many that made my stomach turn. I should have known but I trusted them. Some of the wrong doings were but not limited to insulting other bloggers, forwarding their pitches to me and making fun of them, lying to others, and just plain rudeness.

I was so excited to be able to go to Blogher 10. I talked about it all the time. I was like a kid at Christmas. I know it’s probably not all I think it is, but I want the experience of going. I want to go and learn and meet up with my friends that I have made in the last six months. I want to be able to have some time where I am around adults for an extended period of time without other people’s kids. Everyone deserves a break.

I want to represent a company or companies and use my voice to promote them. For me it is more than just a trip to New York. It is a way to break out of my shell and bloom in to the blogger I want to be through the training and the possible networking I will gain from this experience. It is not a trip it is an adventure and an experience. Now, I am not sure I can even have that experience because of the hurtful things this company did to me.

I am sure one or two of you are thinking, it’s just business. Well, it is not. It is extremely personal and extremely hurtful. It would have been completely different if it was just someone I did a few product reviews for and they just changed their mind. It was something I invested my time and heart completely and fully in this company and I thought that I was doing a great job. I was completely floored that someone would have the nerve to just do this to me after she knew I worked so hard and did so much. It is just so wrong to this to me or anyone. I have spent a lot of time crying. I have gone back and forth between crying and being angry. I feel like I failed and there was nothing else I could do. I felt helpless, I immediately reached out to my friends and I want to thank them all for their continued support. They mean so much to me.

Please don’t walk over bloggers. They deserve the respect and kindness just as much as anyone else. We work very hard for our blogs and for the PR and companies. Only a blogger would truly understand the time and effort we put in to our work. I am sure that most of the companies appreciate all the work bloggers do. It is like when you work really hard on a bunch of projects and once they are completed they call you in their office and fire you.

I am pretty sure I want to keep blogging. I am trying not to let one bad apple ruin it for me. My only regret from blogging is working with that company. I am still extremely upset about this whole ordeal. I feel like I wasted three months for nothing more than empty promises and many lies. I hope that this post brings caution and awareness to others especially bloggers. I hate having the mentality of not being able to trust the people I work with, and now questioning everything and wondering if the same thing will happen again.

So, here I am again back to square one, for looking for sponsorship to BlogHer 10. If you are interested in possibly sponsoring me, please use my contact form or email me. I will work very hard to promote your company. I will post an informational post in the future. I just wanted to get this all off my chest and perhaps help me work through the complete disappointment and hurt that I am feeling right now. I hope that this post helps someone too.