We recently connected with Candy Keane and have shared our conversation below.

Candy, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

Though my creative focus has shifted over the years, I have always earned a living from my creative work. I started in custom costume design and moved into writing and digital content creation about 9 years ago.
When I closed my costume shop and started blogging in 2015, I didn’t intend to make it my new job, and it wasn’t “work” for the first couple years.
Then when I started to give it more time and put more effort into it, it started to pay off and I realized I could turn it into a full-time job. Once social media entered the picture in a big way, I had to branch out from blogging and learn all the aspects of content creation including creating images and video.
I also started to learn about blog design and SEO and started creating more blogs in different niches. I now run 5 blogs, with my main one being GeekMamas.com.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started GeekMamas.com in 2015, as a personal project. It wasn’t until several years later that I started to put regular effort into it and it became an actual job. Now, I blog daily for several different blogs in different niches and create and build blogs for other companies.
My blogs usually have more of a personal angle, and a real voice as opposed to AI generated articles most sites seem to rely on these days.
I have a background in costume design and cosplay and have integrated that into my personal blog GeekMamas and a newer costume/fashion focused blog MidnightPumpkinBlog.com.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I had two goals growing up- I wanted to be a writer and a costume designer. I went to the University of FL and earned a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism, only to graduate into a world where the Internet was taking over. There were no Internet writing classes when I was in school, so I had to learn all that on my own.

After the dot com boom busted around 2001 and websites started offering “exposure” rather than money, I sought out work in my other passion- costumes. I started a custom costume design business called Three Muses Clothing, and eventually opened a boutique in Jacksonville, FL.

I did that for 11 years and closed in 2016, shortly after having my son. I was ready for a change, so I went back to my writing roots and started blogging. GeekMamas.com eventually took off and became a source of income, and blogging is now my full-time job.

Blogging also led me to follow another dream of mine- to publish a book. I wrote a children’s book about going to Comic Con called “I’m Going to My First Comic Convention,” and you can find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

GeekMamas.com didn’t even start as a side hustle. It was an outlet for me as a frustrated first-time mom. I didn’t know how to make money blogging and I wasn’t even trying to do that. I just wanted to write.
Then as the blog grew, companies started sending me free things to review. I was so excited to get free stuff that I’d write about almost anything. My first review was of a fake bonsai tree, which I actually still have.
Slowly I caught on that I should start charging a fee rather than working for free, and the blog grew from there as a business.
Once it became a business, I had to learn about SEO and writing Internet content to rank on search engines, which was a bit different than most of my articles. I’m still going back and improving old posts, which is taking a long time because I have over 1000 blog posts on GeekMamas.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.geekmamas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sewgeekmama
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sewgeekmama
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candykeane
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sewgeekmama
• Other: https://www.momtasticmommyblog.com
  https://www.midnightpumpkinblog.com

Image Credits

All photos and editing by Candy Keane