256: How One Blogger Landed a Book Deal That Launched Her Career - a podcast by Darren Rowse: Blogger, Speaker, Author and Online Entrepreneur

How a Book Deal Launched the Career of a Blogger
We’re kicking off our Blogging Breakthroughs series, where a variety of bloggers share their stories of breakthroughs they’ve experienced over the years with their blogs.We received submissions from numerous bloggers. And today I want to introduce you to Andrea Vahl.



When Andrea started getting into social media, she realized nobody was teaching it in an entertaining way. So she invented a character:'Grandma Mary: Social Media Edutainer'.

She'd even show up at events as Grandma Mary – a great way to stand out!

Here's Grandma Mary and myself at an event several years ago.

Andrea is also the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and a public speaker. She was a presenter at last year’s Success Incubator event.In her blogging breakthrough story, she describes how she started her blog in 2009 and how she got her book deal.
She also shares some good blogging tips:Start experimenting with monetization early on
Be open to where your blog may take you, and stay open to possibilities/opportunitiesShow up consistently and participate
Network: Be well connected and relational, even if you have to wear a costumeHer first eBooks may not have sold many copies, but they got the attention of a publisher. So she created more eBooks that were profitable, and created opportunities for her to speak, consult and teach.

Much of what Andrea does today started as a simple blog. She pushed herself out of her comfort zone to do some great things.Links and Resources for PB 256: How One Blogger Landed a Book Deal That Launched Her Career:

Andrea VahlAndrea Vahl’s Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies book
Andrea Vahl as Grandma MarySuccess Incubator

Further ListeningWhy You Should Create a Product to Sell on Your Blog (and Tips on How to Do It)
How to Create a Library of Products to Sell on Your BlogBlogging Breakthroughs - Your Invitation to be on the ProBlogger Podcast

CoursesStarting a Blog
ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better BlogJoin our Facebook groupFull TranscriptExpand to view full transcript
Compress to smaller transcript viewDarren: Welcome to episode 256 of the ProBlogger Podcast the podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind the problogger.com. A blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of eBooks, and courses all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog that's going to help people, that's going to give you an opportunity to make the world a better place in some way, and also that will hopefully build some profit for you as well, and give you an extra income stream. You can learn more about ProBlogger and check out our courses and eBooks over at problogger.com.

Now, today we're kicking off our blogging breakthroughs series where you'll be hearing over the coming weeks from a variety of bloggers who are going to tell you their stories of breakthroughs that they've had over the years. I put the call out a couple episodes ago for this series, and we were inundated with amazing stories. We can't use them all, but we are going to use quite a few of them over the coming weeks. We're still working through those applications to be honest, there's so many of them, but today I want to introduce you to the first of them, a friend of mine called Andrea Vahl. I actually asked Andrea to submit her story while we went through all the other submissions.

Now, Andrea is someone I met many years ago now at a blogging conference, I think it was in Las Vegas of all places, but at the time of meeting her, she wasn't actually Andrea Vahl, she was Grandma Mary, which is a strange one, and I was a little bit freaked out when I first met her because she was obviously someone dressed up in costume.

Andrea is someone who had been doing improvisational comedy be...

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