Networking is Key to Success – UK Money Bloggers Community

Networking is the Key to my Success

Saturday 10th September was the highlight of the 2016 UK money blogging calendar. It was the #SHOMOs. A day of learning, chat, networking, awards and drinking in London with the cream of my fellow personal finance community.

I have been writing Mrs Mummypenny for 3 years and its been my full time job since September 2015. I have had incredible success in the past year and put it down to the proper hard work of building social, writing content and a huge amount of networking. I am now earning as much money as I was earning in my senior commercial manager role at EE, an incredible objective achieved after 1 year. I was also shortlisted for 3 awards at the SHOMOs, best lifestyle, best social and people’s choice (I was voted one of the 6 most popular personal finance blogs by you readers:-))

Go to Events and you will build a network and will get more paid work!

I have spent the past year going to every event possible in London with brands, PR agencies and my UK money blogger community. UK Money Bloggers is a private Facebook community who are regular contributors to the website UK money bloggers. I was welcomed with open arms back in February and was asked to introduce my blog and invited to the first event. It all went boom from there.

Meeting up with a community in the same blogging field as you is such an amazing way to build your business and brand. Here are just a few highlights of the things I have learnt from my wonderful new group of friends and how it has grown my business.

UK Money Bloggers

Set up by Andy Webb of Be Clever with your Cash. So Andy wants to do good in this world, he has brought us together for the greater good. A group of money bloggers with a reach of millions who can rock campaigns and make real changes. We can do things like educate children about personal finance, educate adults out of loan traps, create incredible value for the needy. Andy works really hard on the group, UK money bloggers website and acts as a mini PR agency providing work to the group. He has the organisational skills of a woman (soz Andy;-0 but the SHOMOs were incredible) and peace making skills of a member of the UN (the group has many moments of competitive tension).

Commercial Pricing

I met Ricky and Naomi of Skint Dad fame at the filming of the Aldi school uniform campaign. We were in a school in South London for 5 hours and spent A LOT of time chatting whilst our children were filming. We talked about commercials and pricing, how to make money out of blogging, how much to charge for jobs, how to negotiate with brands. It was a revelation and opened my eyes to what could be achieved. I immediately went home and upped my prices and sent loads more ideas and pitches out and suddenly I was making so much more money. I stopped doing the low £50 job, that I get sent every day. Ricky, thank you, I can now pay my mortgage:-).

Collaborative Posts

I met Money Nuggets on Twitter before real life. She is the most collaborative, supportive and amazing blogger. I could just tell this before even meeting her. She has the blog of my dreams.  We are similar ages, similar professional career background. We both have families and we are both blogging to help people, mainly women understand the scary and taboo word of finance. I have written guest posts for her site and she has written for mine. We chat about how to make our sites and businesses better. We are like minded woman who support each other rather than stab each other in the back!

Inspirational People

I have met some incredibly successful commercially minded people who share their knowledge and provide me with such inspiration that I can achieve what they have. People like Damien from Money to the Masses and Deepak from Latest Free Stuff. These are seriously successful entrepreneurial minds who are willing in impart their knowledge to me, always keen for information. The more people I meet like this the more confidence I have that Mrs Mummypenny will 100% be a super successful business.

How to Do things the Right Way

Us bloggers use the UK Money Bloggers group to help each other. We often post help questions or share helpful posts. I have learnt about the technicalities of SEO, Domain Authority, Follow and No Follow Links, the power of Pinterest. But I have also seen conflict and jealousy. Please everyone if you reading this and are part of the community, use this group as the brilliant resource it is. Treat others how you want to be treated and be respectful. Remember what Andy shared after lunch at the SHOMO awards.

My success

There you have it, networking is the key to my success. And this is my thank you to the people who have made a difference to my blogger journey. Don’t be afraid to drop anyone a tweet or an email asking for advice or with a question. We are all a super friendly bunch and everyone will help out. Don’t be afraid to ask the ‘silly questions’ as probably someone else is thinking it. And use the group to make your blog and business better and give back to the group. If you are receiving great advice, inspiration, jobs and money return the favour and give back to the group. Happy blogging.