Many of you have asked why I no longer have a follow option on my blog.  I had ALOT of followers when I was using WordPress as my hosting agent.  When I switched to a self hosted blog, my followers were all lost!  It was tragic.  We are talking hundreds and hundreds.  I was pretty devastated.  Now that I am a self hosted option, I am trying to steamline how my blog works, or should I say how much work it is, and I have not found an easy plug in option for an email follower or RSS feed.  I know, I know it is not hard, but I am a busy girl.

 I also recently have heard so many very scary stories about peoples blogs being scraped and stolen.

If you are not familiar with what this means, people are subscribing to the rss feed of a blog and then copying and pasting entire blog posts onto thier own blog.  This is STEALING!  My content and pictures and tutorials, are mine and I found a site that had scaped quite a few of my posts before I had switched over and quit having email subscribers.  So, this seemed like a good move, at least for now.  I have taken some other precautions, like adding a watermark to my photos so that if they do scrape my material at least it will still have my blog name on it and maybe it will deter them. No one will be stealing my property and claiming my work as their own.

I digress.  I was going to write about Bloglovin which is an option I have found to organize the blogs that I read and “subscribe” to them.  I thought it may be something my readers would be interested in giving a try as well.  ( I was not paid or promoted in endorsing Bloglovin, I just really like it)

I know I may be a bit behind the times on Bloglovin, but I must say I really love it!

I just began using it to help me organize the blogs I like to read on a regular basis.  It is much easier than trying to remember them and see if there is a new post that you have missed or getting your email inendated with hundreds of emails from each blogger.

I hate having millions of blogs saved on my favorites bar on my computer.  That is so much clutter.  I have a few of my favorites on my Blogs I love Page on my blog, but that is just a handful of blogs that I like.  There are so many out there.  Sometimes you are in the mood for a fashion blog, sometimes a mommy blog, sometimes a party blog.  Bloglovin helps you organize them and see when they have a new post!

Here is a screenshot of how my home screen on Bloglovin looks.  All the blogs you read are down the side and you can see how many new posts they have written since last you read.

They send me one… yes ONE, email per day with my daily feed notifying me of any new posts that my fave blogs have written.  I can chose to read them there through thier reader or click over to thier site.  I can’t believe how easy it was and once I started using it I loved it.  I have since unsubscribed to all of the blogs I was getting daily emails from. This is much cleaner.

I have to admit, part of the reason I want my readers to check it out is selfish.  I want my readers to check it out so that they can easily be updated if I write a new post.  If I do, it will be added to your once daily Bloglovin feed.  How convenient.

1.  Sign up for blog lovin.  Enter in your email and a password.

2.  You can then peruse blogs that are already in their database and add them to your reader.  You can also search for specific blogs that you enjoy reading and add them to your reader as well.  This makes it very easy to save all of the blogs you read in one place whether they are blogspot, typepad, wordpress or self hosted, they will always be organized here in one spot.

3.   You can see who is following your blog too.  To add your own blog to your account. Go to the Tab that says “Claim my blog”  It will ask for your blog address.  Once you enter it the site will search.

4.  Once it finds your blog it will give you a code to enter into a blog post on your page.  This will connect bloglovin to your blog and to your account.

5.  Copy the html code and paste it into your blog.

6.  Return to bloglovin when you need a blog fix and check in on your favorite pages.  You can see how many people are following your blog on bloglovin and follow your favorites as well.

So click here and get started following me on your bloglovin reader.