When mum blogs

While Ellen Girod (pictured above) is breastfeeding her daughter, she types drafts on her mobile phone. At night, she sits at her laptop, transfers texts to her blog, tinkers with photos and web design and works on strategies to make her blog «Chez Mama Poule» more popular and earn money. The 33-year-old has a dream: «In two years' time, I want to be able to make a living from blogging,» says the freelance journalist and mum. A dream that many mum bloggers and certainly some of the few dad bloggers share. Because blogging promises freedom: «Blogging allows me to work from anywhere and at any time - and always be there for my children when they need me,» explains Ellen Girod.

Travel fan and mum-of-three Andrea Jansen is pursuing a similar goal. The journalist and former TV presenter launched her blog «anyworkingmom» in 2016 and had 1,000 visitors on the very first day. «When you're publicly known, you can't just try things out - every text has to be right from the start,» she says. With her blog anyworkingmom, she is a shooting star in the Swiss parenting blogger scene. After just one year, she already has around 30,000 readers per month and a partner on board in Anja Knabenhans.

Anyworkingmom was never created next to the nappy-changing table. Andrea Jansen goes to the office to write - in her case to a hip co-working space in Zurich. Blogging happens during her official working hours of around 60 per cent. The blog has become a professional project alongside her consultancy work, lectures and journalistic articles - and that was the plan from the outset. After a few advertising co-operations, the two women want to focus on long-term partners next year and try to finance the blog with innovative ideas. For example, with their own product: funny cards for mums that pay homage to the motherhood profession with a wink.

Our list of Swiss mum, dad and parent blogs. Is anyone else missing? Then please send us an e-mail with the link to: online(at)fritzundfraenzi.ch

Parenting blogs are in vogue - in the USA and Germany for a long time now, but the number is also increasing in Switzerland. There are no official figures and they are difficult to collect: Many Swiss blogs are also fishing for readers in Germany and vice versa. Over 2000 German-language family blogs are listed in a database of the women's magazine Brigitte. In Switzerland, the growing interest is also reflected in the number of participants at the Swiss Blog Family conference, which was created especially for family bloggers : while just under 50 mothers (and one father) came together at the first event in 2016 to discuss image rights, privacy and marketing, this time the organisers easily filled 100 places.

Although family is at the centre of the bloggers' work, there was only one toddler crawling around the large seminar room of a congress hotel in Basel - everyone else had left their children at home. The sponsors with crayons and colouring books wait in vain for bored children. The women (and a few men) are in the cheerful mood of a large class reunion. They know and read a lot of personal things about each other.

If you want to earn money, you have to become a media company

One thing quickly becomes clear at the conference: if you want to earn money with your blog or even earn an income, you have to become a small media company. Mum bloggers need to be just as familiar with web design, search engine optimisation and social media marketing as they do with the question of how to create media kits with relevant information for advertising partners and negotiate with potential sponsors.
The pens whizz across the paper as Svenja Walter from meinesvenja.de, one of Germany's most successful family blogs, talks about her strategies. «I stopped writing what I felt like writing a long time ago,» she explains. «And if you want to achieve a wide reach, you can't do that any more either.» The businesswoman reveals her impressive earnings and at the same time emphasises: «Yes, I can cook for my children at lunchtime - but I've been working seven days a week for years.»

After Svenja's energetic performance, there are lively discussions in the foyer. «I don't know if I want to be so strategic,» says one mum. «Maybe I should finally rework my layout when I see how professional the other pages look,» says another mum.

«I just think it's a shame that many mum bloggers don't return to «real» working life.»

Karin aka Mrs Brüllen

Karin, alias «Frau Brüllen» from bruellen.blogspot.de, is standing in the middle of it all and wondering. She is one of those bloggers who simply wants to record and share her experiences every day without receiving any money for it.

Karin takes a critical view of the fact that more and more bloggers want to make writing their profession: «On the one hand, blogs are becoming more and more similar if everyone thinks strategically. On the other hand , the blog landscape will become dull and smooth if more and more female bloggers censor themselves and no longer dare to express an opinion that may not be in favour of the majority so as not to frighten off advertisers or readers. What's more, many of these women don't return to «real» professional life - and I think that's a shame.»

If you become too commercial, you disappoint your readers

What she is talking about has long been discussed in English-speaking countries. In 2016, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, investigated the blog «Get off my internets (GOMI)», where internet users publicly complain about the internet, and found that it is teeming with former mum blog readers who are bitterly disappointed and turning away from their beloved blogs. Because they have degenerated into advertising platforms, there is a lot of sponsored advertising content and the rest has degenerated into a much too clean world with pink icing.
As recently as 2005, mum bloggers around the world followed the credo of New York blogger Alice Breadley, who wrote that blogging about one's private life was a «radical act». Because women can portray being a mum exactly as they experience it every day. Mum blogs are an important addition to the male-dominated media, where mothers are only presented as perfect advertising templates or as bitchy problematic beings. It is precisely this "feminist side" of blogging that is lost when mums are primarily out to make money, the study from Montreal also concluded.

"Could this contribution harm my daughters one day, in the unlikely event that one of them becomes a Federal Councillor? "

Ellen Girod asks herself this question every time before she clicks on «Publish».

The majority of Swiss bloggers still don't seem to be sure which direction they want to take. When asked who wants to earn money with their blog or sees themselves as an influencer, i.e. someone who influences purchasing decisions, only a few raised their hands at the Swiss Blog Family. But the afternoon workshops on monetisation are particularly well attended.

The blog landscape in Switzerland is still diverse: some blogs are diary-like narratives of experiences, others deal with specific parenting approaches such as attachment parenting and how to implement them in everyday life or focus on topics such as nutrition or handicrafts. And some also want to make a social impact. Andrea Jansen emphasises that her primary goal is not to earn money, but to address topics that are not talked about enough.

One of the main topics on anyworkingmom is work-life balance. «Above all, but not only of work and family, but also the compatibility of the new situation with the self,» says Andrea Jansen. She not only wants to reach other mums who are struggling with similar issues, but above all young women who are considering whether to have a child. «I still hear the sentence far too often: «I didn't know what to expect when I had a child.» That has to change.»

How private is too private?

What all parenting blogs have in common is the search for the right way to deal with privacy - especially that of children. Mrs Brüllen's children are old enough to proofread articles that are about them - what they don't like is not published. Andrea Jansen and Ellen Girod's children, however, are still too young to express their own opinions or to assess the possible consequences of the texts. So their mums have to take over.

Andrea Jansen deliberately selects individual pictures of her children for publication and adds a watermark to them. «Since I'm a celebrity, people can find out what my children look like anyway if they really want to. I also think that children should be in the public eye. But I think about every picture very carefully,» she explains.

Ellen Girod never takes frontal shots of her children. She also thinks about every text before publishing it: «Could it harm my daughters in the unlikely event that one of them becomes a Federal Councillor?» Andrea Jansen avoids this question as much as possible by writing about herself and her feelings as a mother - embarrassing experiences of her children are left out. «You have to let your trousers down to make it a good text,» she says, «but please let it be your own and not your children's.»

Blogging makes you happy

According to a study conducted by Pennsylvania State University in 2011, blogging has a positive effect on the well-being of mothers. The online contacts and exchanges about the uncertainties of motherhood help the 157 new mothers surveyed to feel involved and socially stable. Just being on social media does not have this positive effect - the women obviously do not receive the same support here as they do with mum blogging.

About the author

Read more:

• «If you blog, you don't need any more guides,» says mum blogger Séverine Bonini in an interview.
• Not alone, but online: Basel mums find mutual support in a Facebook group and say: «We're better than Google!»