Luna Carruthers's Blog, page 16

October 18, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 18: First Page Ideas

Blank page fright is a real condition for any writer, professional or amateur. We’ve all been there with the concern of what to write at one point or another. One solution I’ve come up with are days where I’m really inspired I make a list of potential ideas so that on days I’m stuck I can just pull something out of my list and write on that. Well, I’ve made a shortlist here for you to consider as pages on your blog. Remember a page is not the same thing as a post, you’ll want to link to it in your menu or the sidebar so you can refer to it frequently. The point of most of these page ideas is to help you with personal growth and submissive improvement.

There are several important types of posts that I personally believe should be included in every submissive journal:

A complete list of the rules and expectations your Dominant has set for you
A copy of your contract if you have one
A list of rituals and assignments your Dominant has assigned to you, with completion dates
A list of goals for personal growth with an action plan
A list of goals for improving your BDSM relationship with an action plan
A detailed explanation of your personal wants, needs, fears and fetishes
A completed BDSM checklist outlining your limits and what you will and won’t do
And then these are fun ideas that you could add to give your journal character and express your personality:
A list of favorite websites or books
A list of favorite quotes
A collection of your favorite BDSM toys
100 things about your list
Now to you: what else can you think of to put in your journal?

October 17, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 17: Two Key Items Every Blog Should Have

When setting up your blog, there are a couple key items that you should have so that readers can be introduced to you, find a way to contact you and ways to navigate through your blog to find things they are looking for. You may not know it, but even if you are writing a personal journal of your submissive life, people are looking for things that you do or thoughts you have that might help them get insight into their own relationship. So, make it easy on them to travel throughout your site and pick up what they need, and you just might earn yourself a loyal visitor.

About Page

One of the more frustrating things that I’ve come across when browsing blogs is that they lack much in the way of information about the blogger. Sure, you can read their recent posts about frustration and opinion and what’s going on in their lives, but what’s really nice is when there is a page dedicated to introducing you to the person behind the blog. For some blogs this is more important than others (and its a personal preference thing about how much authors choose to reveal of who they are) but I find pages without an About page can be quite frustrating. Don’t hide your About Page away. Put it high on your sidebar, menu or in your header. People won’t use it if they don’t see it.

So what should an About Page include?

This is really a matter of personal preference and something I’d like to hear your opinions on but here are a few things I include on some of my blog’s about pages:

Photo: I like to see some sort of picture of the person I’m reading. I know a lot of you are writing “in the shadows” so a photo isn’t always an option, but even if it isn’t, some kind of image that speaks to you is nice too.
Blog objectives: Succinctly sum up the point of your blog. What is it about?
Introduce Yourself: You probably want to keep your introduction down to a short one – but particularly talk about your experience and why you are writing in this blog.
Contact Details: Consider giving your readers a way of getting in touch with you. It doesn’t have to be your email address, and if it is, try to use one you made specifically for blog contact, a kink profile or a specific page on your blog for direct comments are ways you can connect with people.
Categories and/or Tags

The best way to organize your journal posts is to index them, and for an online blog you do that through either categories or tags (or a combination of the two). But what are they? How do you use them? Let me break it down for you.

Categories are best imagined as a paper filing system. Each page in the system must be filed away in the appropriate drawer. There are only a set number of drawers, and so each must cover a rather wide blanket. The number of categories should be small and each posts should go in only one or two categories.

Think of tags as the colorful little page markers you might use to flick back to your favorite pages in a book. The tags don’t describe the book as a whole, instead, they describe individual sections of the book. The tagging system is useless when the tags you use vary. For instance, if you have a series of posts on writing articles, you could tag them as “journalism,” “writing,” “copywriting,” or a hundred other variations. The important thing is that you choose one of them, and then reuse it on every post you ever write on the topic. The good thing with tags on a personal blog is you can create tags for each person you talk about, so Sir would have a tag, and puppysub will have another tag and so forth. I also tend to tag for punishment and playtime as well as when rules are discussed or some ritual is shown.

When you add these components to your blog, it makes it much friendlier to anyone who reads it and also helps people explore your life through your words. If you have a blog, what other items do you think are important to have?

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Published on October 17, 2016 08:00

October 16, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling: Day 16 – Should You Try to Make Money with Your Blog?

Blogs come in all sorts of styles and designs these days. Some are personal journals and others like Submissive Guide is a business and resource. So, it might go without saying that having an online presence is an opportunity to make money with ads. But it’s far from easy and take it from someone with experience, it’s not quick money.

A blog may feel like easy money, but making the decision to put ads on your blog may have a negative effect and might not even be allowed by your blog host. Knowing the facts and making a decision before you begin is an important step in creating your blog.

Should You Place Ads?

When deciding if you should place ads on your site, there are a few things to consider. First, how much audience do you have? For any sort of ad to work you really need to have a goal to attract a large audience. If you plan on producing content that Google may drive traffic to you or you are going to actively share it on social media, then making a little side money might at least pay for the domain name and hosting.

What is the purpose of your blog?

If you just want a personal place to talk about your D/s relationship and your life as a submissive, it might not be a smart choice to consider advertising. Personal blogs don’t do so well with affiliate advertising because they don’t often attract a large audience. But, if you want to review sex toys you might have an avenue to make a little bit of affiliate money from the companies that you do reviews for.

Note: Many of the sex toy sites that I’ve worked with require a site that’s been around awhile and has an audience before they will send you free items in exchange for a review, so you may have to start by buying your own toys and reviewing them. Show you are professional in your reviews and you could attract other retailers.

If you are building a blog as a site for your business or as an information exchange you have a wider range of options, but not until you’ve been able to build your pillar content a loyal audience. Also, if this site will be for your business, you have to consider if you want to dilute your brand by having other companies ads on your site.

What do you want to convey to readers?

Some people consider personal sites with ads as money grubby. Others don’t care. It does depend on the type of advertising you are doing. If it’s a simple banner ad in the sidebar it will attract less attention than a pop up over your site, forcing your readers to click through it to read your content. Build the site you feel will work for you, but don’t be afraid of making changes if things aren’t turning out the way you want. Again, as I’ve said above, a personal blog isn’t usually the best place for advertising since the audience you attract is there to read about your, not learn about a new wonder drug or slip on loafers.

Is it Allowed?

The last point I’d like to make about deciding if you want to have ads on your site, is to look into the TOS of the blog site you are using. Some blog hosts do not allow advertising other than what they place on your site and you usually have no control over what those ads are. Other hosts allow specific advertising, but not others. If you want full control over your site’s advertising, you’ll have to pay for your own hosting and domain; a cost that you will have to pay out of your own pocket if you can’t make any income from the advertising.

What Advertising Is Available?

For the most part, you have affiliate marketing available to you. Your favorite sites that you shop at can have affiliate programs where you get a percentage of any purchases that people make through links on your site. For what is likely to be an adult site, if you are planning to write about D/s, BDSM or submission, you will need to read the terms of the agreement to know if you can advertise their products on your site.

If you are lucky to get direct ad sales (it took Submissive Guide 4 years to get its first ad sale) then you can open up to a larger market, but you will have to decide on terms of the agreement yourself and how much to charge for advertising. It’s a longer business plan than affiliate marking requires.

Your last option is selling a product of your own. This could be from an Etsy shop or an ebook of some sort. It takes work and dedication, but you’d be selling your own things, getting all of the income instead of only a percentage and you wouldn’t be diluting your site with advertising of other people’s ideas and products.

So, Is it wise to advertise?

It is your decision if you want to try to make money on your site, but if you do, add them tastefully. I’m sure we’ve all been to a site with annoying advertising ploys and we don’t want to host a site like that. For my personal blog, I’ve pretty much removed all advertising except a couple ebooks from here that I’m proud of. It’s for expressing myself and sharing my story – it’s not for anything else. Evaluate what you want from your blog and what kind of audience you want to attract. That should help you decide if advertising is the way you wish to go.

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Published on October 16, 2016 08:00

October 15, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 15: Online Security and Anonymity, or Should You Share?

When you decide to open up your life to the world and write a public blog, there are some inherent dangers with being discovered or worse. What worse could there be? Reports to child services which could lead to losing your children, someone from your job discovering your “immoral” life and firing you, or complete disowning from your family. But you can protect yourself and still have a public blog. You just need to keep some things secure and really consider what’s necessary to put out into the World Wide Web.

What’s Safe?

Nothing you place online is safe. Anyone can find you and use what you put online to harm you in some way. Take for instance a rather vanilla picture of yourself on an adult site. It could be used against you in your job or other social engagements. Just the knowledge alone that you are present on a site like FetLife could get you fired. Your ex could use it against you to gain custody of your children. Anything is possible.

The idea that because you have to log into the service means that every word you write or photo you share behind that security feature means you are safe. This is far from true. Too many people rely heavily on the false sense of security that a login screen provides. Think about it this way; how easy was it for you to create a profile? A predator or someone you don’t want to find you will find it a breeze.

Top 8 Online Safety Tips

Protecting Names

When you start out with a blog, one of the first things you should do is decide on a fake name for everyone you will be talking about on the blog. Just as lunaKM is not my real name and KnyghtMare is not my husband’s.

A pseudonym starts with its own email address and most of that information should be incorrect or as vague as possible. Hotmail and Yahoo are email providers to avoid. People can see your IP address on a Yahoo email and may be able to use it to track you. Hushmail is an encrypted email service that comes highly recommended.

If you host your own blog then your server will provide you with a free email address though these are not always convenient to access. You can connect your server’s email address to your anonymous, free, easier to use and access email. The mail can be received and sent from your Gmail account but is routed through your server and arrives at recipients under your own @domain name – which gives the added bonus of appearing more professional. This makes it harder for people to know which email carrier you actually use.

Personal Photos

If you share photos of yourself, even if your head and identifying features are cut out; be prepared to find them elsewhere online. So many people online just don’t care if they don’t own the rights to the photo, they just like it and want to share it, others like to increase their personal stash of porn, and others still want to earn money on your shared ‘free’ content. It takes all kinds. So, before you share a photo, consider if you want it on the internet. Don’t limit your mental scope to the site you are placing it, but all over the internet.

Pictures Share You With The World
Dangers of Online Photos

Personal Information

Other than the basic profile information, I’d keep your life pretty vague if you don’t want to be found by others you may know in another sphere of your life. Leave relationships, family and work details out of your blog. Never share information about your children.

Think about it this way, put on your blog only what personal details you wouldn’t have a problem telling someone face to face that you don’t know. Because you know, that’s just it. Strangers are reading your blog and looking at those pictures before they know you… really know you.

Sure it sounds counter productive for a public blog, but protecting yourself should come first.

Some of you may be saying, “Well sure lunaKM, but I’ve seen your profile here or there and you share a lot about yourself including unaltered photos. Practice what you preach!

Let me tell you; I have no children, no job outside the home, no friends or tech-savvy family that do not know and have nothing to loose if someone sees me or learns about me. I’m a unique case. I’m not saying that some of you aren’t either. I’ve given all of the information I share a look over and am happy with what is shared. That’s all that matters.

How Much Information is Too Much?

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Published on October 15, 2016 08:00

October 14, 2016

31 Days to Submissive Journaling – Day 14: Finding Your Voice

When I assign a writing task to my students, the two predominant questions that I receive are “What do I write?” and “How do I write it?” If you’re not familiar with the writing process, the task of writing in a journal or using a blog has probably provoked the same two questions for you; so today, we’re going to address those two questions and the umbrella that they come under – writer’s voice.

What is “The Writer’s Voice”?

The question is a surprisingly complex one. What elements make the voice? How do they do it? Who has a voice already? Who says who has a voice? The purpose of this article isn’t to hand you your own writer’s voice. It’s not even really going to give you the tools to find your voice. Why? Because if you’ve made it as far in the series as this article, you already have the tools that you need to do all of that yourself. The job of this article, instead, is going to be to show you how to recognize which tool is which, and how to use each tool in the long run. So what I want you to do now is grab a loose leaf sheet of paper and something to write with, or open a word document, and split your screen between this article and your word processor.

Ready?

Here we go, then.

Activity 1: define your voice

You know you want to write.

That’s the good news. You know you’re ready to write about your journey as a submissive, about the challenges you face, the worries you have, the limits that you want to shift, the burgeoning relationship between you and your Dom. That’s half of the battle out of the way. So on the very top of the page, in your best handwriting or your favourite font, I want you to ask yourself why you’re writing. Just type/write the question at the top of the page.

At this point, I normally ask my kids to share. What did you write? More importantly, how did you write it? Did you say, “Why am I writing?” or “What the hell am I writing this for?” or “Why am I keeping a journal?” You may have had other variations, like “Why’m” instead of “Why am” or “i” instead of “I”.

This is called your diction, or your word choice. Its creation is as simple as comparing what you wrote for the question to something that someone else would have written.

What if you wrote the same thing as someone else? Well, that’s where your handwriting/font selection comes in. It doesn’t matter if you decide to keep a private journal, or a public blog, you can make your journaling experience your own by the way that you decorate or realize your ideas on a visual level. The colours that you choose for your blog, the background pictures, the doodles you draw in a journal, and the way you change your handwriting as you go, are all things that feed into the creation of your voice as a final product. These paratext elements plant as many defining ideas in your reader’s mind as your words do.

Let’s go back to the question.

“Why am I writing?” What the hell am I doing staring at this blank page, fingers/pen at the ready? You should already have an idea of how you want to answer that because you’ve already decided that you want to write. Something inspired you, even if it was just liking the idea of having a journal. So go ahead, under the question that you wrote, take about 5 minutes to answer your question. Why are you writing?

Your answer doesn’t matter. It can be anything from “I like writing” to “My Dom told me I have to. The motivation for writing, in and of itself, is the important thing. You’re writing for a purpose. The Author’s Purpose, in fact! The author (that’s you), contributes to his or her voice by letting the purpose of their writing help them choose the words they want to use.

Are you keeping a brat’s journal? A tidy recollection of the day’s events and the tasks you’re expected to do each day? Are you reflecting on scenes as part of your after care? Let the reason you’re writing take on a power of its own. If you’re a Baby Girl, reflecting on how Daddy punished you for sneaking ice cream, let yourself be petulant, let yourself draw doodles in the margins or use emoticons, choose a font that suits a baby girl, in a colour that suits a baby girl, and roll with it.

Likewise, if you’re planning to keep a journal for scene reflections, and you want your experiences to sound as sensual on the page as they were when they were happening, you’re going to want to choose words that are linked to the senses, to describe sensation, to make the journal as external as it is internal, to act for your reader almost in the capacity as your Dom acted for you, bringing the reader all the way to the brink, and then letting them go.

The last thing that you need to keep in mind as you determine how you’re going to write in your journal is who you are writing for. Is your journal a private, safe place for you to express yourself? Is it on a public forum that you are using to help people learn about kink? Is it for your Dom’s eyes only? Or specifically for already kinky practitioners? These things are important. Like your purpose, your audience should help you choose the words that you’re going to use, and the topics that you’re going to address. If you’re writing for people who you expect to be new to kink, you’ll want to keep that in mind and try to clarify any vernacular (e.g. clarifying SSC to be Safe-Sane-Consensual rather than just saying SSC). If you’re writing just for your Dom, you can use inside jokes , be less formal, or even extra formal.

Keeping in mind why you’re writing, what you’re writing, and for whom you’re writing it is a good way to define the raw aspects of your voice. It gets you on the page, takes away the pressure of where to begin. You’ve already begun, after all, on the page in front of you.

If you’re still feeling stuck, mechanical, or like you’re not really accessing the “true you” in your writing, that’s okay—especially if you have no experience with writing non-fiction pieces. These things come in time, and with practice. Here are some additional elements that you can keep in mind as you write, which should help you refine your voice as you go:

1) Sentence length matters.

The longer, more languid, the sentence, the longer the journey your reader embarks upon, and the slower they’ll read the sentence. Short sentences create urgency. They’re quick bites of information. They keep the reader’s attention. Snap them back into the moment. Use a variety of sentence lengths to create urgency, convey stress, to push the reader to his limit and then let him tumble over the edge with you: to unwind, free fall, create a point of impact, and then…breathe.

2) Punctuation also matters.

Exclamation points create a sense of juvenile excitement. Full stops (periods) are more refined but less expressive. Commas, colons, semicolons, parenthesis, hyphens all perform roughly the same function, but they look different on the page and feel different for the reader. Look them up, determine how best to use them for what you’re writing, and make each symbol your own.

3) Synonyms are your friend.

If you’re having trouble finding the words to express yourself, grab a thesaurus (or go to Thesaurus.com) and look up words that mean the same thing. You can use a collection of different words to say the same thing, and to create a different sense of meaning. Did your Dom push or press you against the wall? Spank, strike, or smack you? Bind you or tie you? Various words have different shades of meaning, and those shades help you create your diction (which, as you know, is a key part of your voice!).

If you still need help finding your voice, you can check out some of the resources below.

Finding the Writer’s Voice – Ten Writers Comment
10 Steps to Finding Your Writing Voice
25 Things Writers Should Know About Finding Their Voice
Related Posts:
The Slave Journal
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 7: Selecting a Physical Journal
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 6: Why New Submissives Should Write a Submissive Journal
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 4: What Can a Journal Do for My Submissive Development?
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 1: Introduction

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Published on October 14, 2016 07:00

October 13, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 13: How to Decide on Public or Private Blogging

In the previous article, we covered the different hosting services that allow adult blogging. Today let’s decide if the blog will be public or private. It’s an important first decision before you even start writing so let’s cover the differences and hopefully you’ll know if you want a public or private blog by the end of today.

What is Public Blogging?

Public blogging is when you use a site that anyone can discover, read, and comment. You are sharing your private lives and anything else you write with the public. Even if you don’t have a lot of viewers, your blog can be discovered, searched, archived and copied via search engines and malicious bots. Although the latter is rarer, you still have to be aware that bots can scrape your blog and post it elsewhere.

If you choose to share pictures or not disguise your real name or details, it’s always possible to be discovered by friends and family that may not like what you are sharing publically. Even if you do use pseudonyms, some stories could alert others that they know you from “somewhere”. Blogging in the public sphere is always taking a risk, so be aware of those risks and mitigate the concern by blogging responsibly.

With public blogging, you could be open to receiving comments from others. Most, if not all, public blogs have their comment section open for chat, input, advice and more. If you don’t do well with criticism then you might want to consider closing your comments or going with private blogging.

Now there are a lot of positive things about public blogging too. I love the camaraderie and friendships that I’ve developed from my blogging life. I’ve also been able to express some really stressing situations and have comments that not only help me see other sides but realizations that I wouldn’t have thought of myself. It’s been a huge help to my understanding of submission and myself.

If you are considering reviewing sex toys or want to try to make a bit of pocket money with your blog, you need to have a public blog.

Pros
Cons

A pretty space that you can decorate and express yourself
Using a site that anyone can discover and read (and comment)
Making friends and gaining insights
Sharing often private details with the public.

Sharing often private details with the public.
Nothing is secret and can be searched, archived and copied/stolen
Open to judgemental comments, trolls, and potential stalkers
Chance of being discovered by friends and family

What is Private Blogging

In private blogging, you do much the same that you can do with public blogging. It’s a pretty site you can express yourself and write about whatever you’d like, but there are a few key differences.

Any readers have to be granted access, usually with a username and password. All other access to the site is blocked. Nothing can be searched or archived. You still have a slight chance of a bad reader copying your content but that is extremely rare since you often don’t hand out access to people you don’t know or trust.

If you want to be completely private, but share it with your Dominant, this is a good alternative to emails or using a cloud storage system. It’s also good if you plan to share images of yourself but don’t want them ending up all over the internet.

Pros
Cons

A pretty space that you can decorate and express yourself
Using a site that readers have to be granted access, usually with a password
All other access is blocked
Nothing can be searched, archived or copied

All other access is blocked
Closed from judgemental comments, trolls, and potential stalkers
Can’t share anything with anyone outside your sphere of approved readers

How to Decide Which is Right For You

Hopefully, you’ve considered all the pros and cons from above and are leaning one way or the other by now. If not, think about what you might like more and how you’d handle your blog getting negative attention or being discovered by your friends. Consider your purpose and go from there. In most cases, you can always start out private and move to public, but it’s harder to go the other direction because search engines will have likely already found you and archived your posts. It’s not impossible though so do what you need to do. My personal blog has comments turned off because I was getting a lot of negativity that was proving unhealthy for my thought process. But I’ve been blogging for over 10 years so I have a ton of content that is visible to the whole of the internet. And I’m fine with that.

Do what works best for you and be confident in your choice.

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Published on October 13, 2016 07:00

October 12, 2016

Ask Submissive Guide: How Do I Help My Dom Give Me What I Need

Hi SG,

I’m relatively experienced when it comes to submission. I’ve submitted in play to a number of delightful Dommes and pushed my boundaries nicely over the years. I’ve never had a long term D’s relationship, though.

I’m just entering into a relationship with a lady who is highly sexed and thoroughly enjoying the power. I find myself wanting her to get deeper and deeper into my mind and increase my ‘need’ for her and the control she has over me. She’s new to BDSM. Can you advise how she might achieve this?

Ready to Go Deeper

Dear Ready to Go Deeper,

Congratulations on the new relationship! It sounds like you have a good idea of what you want and need, which is always important when it comes to having a fulfilling relationship.

Because she’s new to BDSM, one of the main things she needs to do is learn more about the lifestyle. There are as many ways to have a power exchange relationship as there are people in the lifestyle because of this, it’s good to have an idea about what her options are – and there are plenty.

If she hasn’t already found them, point her to online resources like Dominant Guide (the “brother” site to Submissive Guide) and the different groups on Fetlife. This will give her online resources to read other Dominants’ experiences and ask questions.

It’s always a good idea to get involved in the local kink community. Go to a munch together and get to know other kinksters. Many local groups offer classes, sessions, and meet-ups specifically for Dominants or submissives so that you can learn from each other.

Reading, asking questions, and talking to people is a great way to learn about BDSM and kink, in general. However, your specific question was about how she can increase your “need” for her. Have you told her this is what you want? That’s the first step.

Because you have the most experience between the two of you, it’s okay to share what you know with her. You won’t be topping from the bottom as long as you’re respectful. Think of it as another way to serve her by sharing your knowledge.

You can tell her what you’ve done, what you’ve read, what you’ve heard about others doing, and let her know these things excite you and (may) fulfill your needs. As your Dominant, she will do what she wants with the information – many of them tend to file it away and pull it out when you’re least expecting it which is often a nice surprise.

Once you tell her what you want and need and even give her examples of what you mean by that, it will be up to her to learn more, do some thinking, ask other Dominants, and find out more information about how she can achieve this for you.

As with all things BDSM and D/s, it starts with communication. And if you don’t already have one, create a set time each day or week or while you’re together to talk about these things. This is something all D/s partnerships should do, but it’s especially important when you first get together. It’s a check-in to make sure there are no problems or concerns and to discuss your wants and needs. Doing this will help you both have a more fulfilling power exchange and give you space to communicate more freely about your desires.

Do you have a question or would like to get some advice? All questions are anonymous. Ask lunaKM!

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Published on October 12, 2016 10:00

31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 12: So You Want an Adult Online Journal (Blog)

If you’ve decided you’d like to explore having a journal online, also called a blog, then you’ll want to know which ones are available, what they offer and most importantly in our lifestyle, what their adult content policies are. I’ve done a bit of the leg work and found out this information for you! Well, not all of it. I picked only the most popular blogging platforms to research but I know can find your best match in the ones I’ve listed.

Generally, blogs are available in two forms, one is free and the other is self-hosted blogs where you have to pay money. Both of them have their own pros and cons. Free blogging sites are free to use though you won’t have full control over your sites whereas in self-hosted sites you have to pay money for a domain and hosting to run your sites (and you’ll have full control of your sites) .

If you are just starting out your blogging journey, you can start with free blogs. There can be lots of reasons why you want to try your hands on free blogging sites first. The most obvious reason could be the cost. With free blogging sites, you won’t be paying a single penny for your domain name and hosting space.

Some Important Facts About Free Blogging Websites
First of all, you will have no control of your blog address. You will be at the mercy of your free blog host. They can delete your free blog without any prior notice if they find you are doing anything against their TOS. So make sure to know about this fact before creating a blog.
Most free blog hosts will allow you to add content to your blog in the form of blog posts and pages. You can easily add images, videos and any other kind of media elements on your blog.
You cannot upload a theme or template of your own with most of the free blogging sites. But on Blogger.com, you can upload templates of your own and also can upload templates that are available on other blogger template websites.
These free blog hosts will give you enough space to write your blog posts normally. But if you start spamming these blogs with hundreds of automated blog posts on a daily basis, you will come to know about your monthly blog post limit on these websites very soon.
You will have no access to the plugins on most free blogging platforms like Blogger. If you are on the other hand using WordPress as your blogging platform, you will have access to over 20,000 plugins ranging from SEO to increasing your AdSense earnings.
Free Blogging Platforms for Adult Blogging

1. Blogger.com (Blogspot)

One of the most preferred and widely used free blogging platforms is Blogger. You can customize your blog design. There are thousands of free templates available on Blogger platform and you can design your blog any way you like. You can create pages, multi-user blogs and private blogs and Blogger.com is currently available in 41 languages. Click this link to learn more about Blogger.com features.

I myself started my blogging journey with Blogger.com. The best thing about Blogger.com is that it’s quite easy to use compared with other blogging platforms available on the Internet. You can use blogging platform from Blogger.com on your custom domain even by mapping it. The majority of the bloggers still use Blogger platform to start their own websites or blogs not only because it’s free but it gives you great functionality.

Adult Content Policy (link)

We do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity. If your blog contains adult content, please mark it as ‘adult’ in your Blogger settings. We may also mark blogs with adult content where the owners have not. All blogs marked as ‘adult’ will be placed behind an ‘adult content’ warning interstitial. If your blog has a warning interstitial, please do not attempt to circumvent or disable the interstitial – it is for everyone’s protection.

There are some exceptions to our adult content policy:

Do not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content. For example, don’t create blogs that contain ads for or links to commercial porn sites.
We do not allow illegal sexual content, including image, video or textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia.
Do not post or distribute private nude or sexually explicit images or videos without the subject’s consent.

2. WordPress.com

WordPress is also one of the most reliable and widely used free blogging platforms. After Blogger.com, it’s WordPress which is the most used and most powerful content management system for bloggers. You can use WordPress for creating a personal or professional blog of any type.

There are some limitations that should be in your mind if you are thinking of using WordPress for creating your first free blog:

You will just get a sub-domain with them
You cannot install themes or plugins that are not in WordPress official directory. You can access WordPress free themes and plugins directory from here and here.
Adult Content Policy (link)

WordPress.com’s Mature Content Policy is quite extensive, so I suggest you check out the entire policy before deciding if WordPress.com is right for you.

We do permit mature content on WordPress.com, including text, images and videos that contain nudity, offensive language, and mature subject material. However, blogs that contain such content must be marked as Mature in our system.

3. LiveJournal.com

Live Journal is available in free and paid version. You have to pay money if you want to keep your LiveJournal blog from their free advertising. You will be getting the features like multiple author blogs, polls, and calendars, commenting and it has lots of social media features which differentiate it from other free blogging websites.

Here are few notable features of free blogging site LiveJournal.

Video Uploading
Photo Uploading
Private Message Sending
Public Message Posting

You can know more details about LiveJournal feature for free and paid account type from here.

Adult Content Policy (link)

You are encouraged under the TOS to flag ALL Content and/or Accounts that contain adult themes and images, including, but not limited to, nudity, sexual acts, crime, violence, and/or illicit subject matter, regardless of artistic merit or newsworthy purpose. If the content is graphic and explicit in nature (for example, an image which contains nudity, sexuality, or violence), the content will be flagged as containing explicit adult content. Having content flagged as containing explicit adult content does not mean it is in violation of LiveJournal’s Terms of Service, and no other action will be taken for posting this type of content.

4. Tumblr.com

Tumblr is a microblogging website like Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr is one of the fastest growing websites on the internet and it looks like a mixture of blogger, Facebook, and Twitter. Use Tumblr to create free blogs if your site is more about the visuals. Tumblr gives you everything to make your images look visually appealing and you can show images, videos, and music in any way you want. They have lots of unique features that make them the unique choice of many bloggers:

Hundreds of ready to use themes
You can post on your blog directly from your Email box
Publish updates to your Facebook account
No limit on how many people can contribute to your blog
You can create a theme of your own
You can post almost anything on Tumblr
You can keep your posts public and private
You can convert your posts into audio posts
You can use your own custom domain
Automatic update on Twitter about your latest posts

Use this link to know more in detail about why you should choose Tumblr over other blogging platforms. You can repost, reshare, reblog anything that you find useful on Tumblr community this leads to getting you more Tumblr followers without actually spending time in content creation.

Other people can also reblog your blog posts, images and videos leaving you with more followers and giving you much exposure to reach a wider audience.

Adult Content Policy (link)

You’re welcome to post NSFW (Not Safe For Work) stuff, and other people are welcome to filter out NSFW stuff. It’s a live-and-let-live kind of thing. If your blog contains nudity or adult-oriented content, please respect the choices of the people in our community and flag your blog as “NSFW” on your Settings page.

One caveat: We’re not in the business of actually hosting sexually explicit videos, so don’t upload them using our post form. You can, however, embed anything in a Tumblr post as long as it’s lawful and follows our other guidelines.

Let me know any other platforms you would recommend to a newbie? I’m sure you must have already tried your hands at some of these free blogging sites. It would be great if you could share your experience and your favorite from this list in the comments section.

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Published on October 12, 2016 07:00

October 11, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling: Day 11 – Top 3 Mistakes When Starting A Journal

Today I want to talk about mistakes people make when starting a journal. It all starts with good intentions, but if you don’t use a journal to its potential then you are wasting a valuable resource – YOU!

Journaling Is For the Long Term

You could say that having a journal is an investment. Writing in it consistently and then reviewing it at a later date will do you more good than having a journal that collects dust on a shelf. So, you could say that the first mistake of journaling is not keeping up with it. Some of the best journals are the ones you go back to and coach yourself through your experiences and help your future-self succeed, learn about yourself and reach your goals. Even diary entries can be positive and motivational if you point them that way.

Not Having Your Journal With You

That’s right, if you don’t have your journal, you can’t use it. And think about all those times you had some wonderful thoughts, moments of inspiration or a spark of understanding but no way to record it. So carry your journal with you everywhere. If it’s a digital journal, have access to it as much as possible. The best thoughts happen spontaneously, not when you’ve scheduled journaling time. So keep regular notes somewhere, be it a notebook or an app on your phone and then relog it in your journal when you can. But, really, keeping your journal with you is the easiest way to record everything that comes to mind when it does.

Making Journaling Feel Like Work

Good intentions are nice, but if you schedule the time to sit down and journal but just aren’t feeling it, then it’s work. You want to relax and enjoy journaling. It should be fun and beneficial. You should feel better after journaling and look forward to when you’ve opened your journal to the blank page. Journal through inspiration, not the obligation. Okay, so your Dominant requires that you journal on a regular basis. A lot of submissives have to do that. And it does force you to consider it a task, but it doesn’t always have to be.

Extra: The Worst Way to Journal

Sometimes you feel angry, or frustrated and you just gotta get it off your chest, so journaling is a go to for that, and that part is honestly great. You should express yourself and get your emotions out, but the worst thing you can do with that is not solving the issue. That’s right. You don’t sit down and work it out to try to find a positive or a solution to your intense emotions or situation.

Your brain dump is key, it’s the heart of your journal after all, but it needs solutions. If you are going to learn from your thoughts and experiences you need to ask yourself questions and try to solve the problems and issues that come up. It’s not always about expressing yourself. There are benefits to getting it off your chest but you need to make sense of it.

How do you do that? Problem-solving. And this next question is key:

“What advice would I give someone else in my exact same situation?”

Why does this help you? Because it’s easier to see solutions if you are putting the situation on someone else and advising them. It distances you from the emotions of it and you can get a lot more viable solutions and coaching tips by giving advice to someone else, hypothetically, about the same issue.

I hope you don’t make these mistakes with your journal, but if you do, you’ll know how to pick up and carry on. Use your journal and make it useful to you now and in the future. It’s the best book you’ve ever read – as long as you keep writing in it.

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Published on October 11, 2016 07:00

October 10, 2016

31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 10: Ways to Personalize Your Physical Journal

Continuing on with our physical journals today we are going to talk about how to be creative with them and personalize them so that they make us want to use them more! I am creative but I can’t say I’m super artistic. I’ve never doodled, even when taking notes in school, but I love crafts so I’ve found small ways to make my physical journal more about me and give me an outlet. So, let’s cover some of the suggestions I come up with and then I’d love to hear what you would do to your own journal!

Decorate the Cover

If you get a journal with a plain cover you can definitely share your personality by decorating it. There are a wide variety of ways to do this and I’ll be covering most of them below, but one that you can’t really do inside your journal that would be lovely on the outside is embossing. Many companies that sell personal journals offer embossing services so you can out your name or a phrase that means something to you on the front. There are also DIY embossing kits that I’ve seen online and at craft stores.

Vinyl stickers, coloring, and painting are also great options for a cover. You could also just get a leather or fabric book cover and call it done.

Artistic and Creative Inside
Once you open your book the skies the limit. Some people prefer minimalist journals but others love to decorate, add color and other elements to make the journal not only a place for words and thoughts but creativity and artistic outlets. It’s your journal so use it as you want to!

Doodle – I do not doodle, as I’ve said before. I’ve never doodled even when taking notes in class. It just never interested me. I love to see other people’s doodles though and am always impressed with the creativity in a small hand drawn image. There are monthly challenges for people who enjoy doodling and want more inspiration for what to doodle. I especially like the ones offered by Passion Themed Life. Check out Pinterest for a huge range of journal doodles.

Stickers – Stickers rock. They are cheap, come in a wide variety of colors, styles, designs, characters and themes. With just a little sticker you can brighten up a page or make an entire theme. You can even make your own stickers!

Stamps – Stamping is a world of its own. There are all sorts of stamps and stamp pads, inks and designs. Just walk down the craft aisle for stamps and you’ll see the mountain of art that you can add to your journal.

Stencils – I once read somewhere that stencils are a poor man’s stamping tool. I like that they are compact and use the same pens/markers that I’m already using for my journal.

Watercolors, markers, crayons and coloring pencils – When I was brainstorming creative ways to personalize your journal, I thought first about doing it old school – with crayons, markers, colored pencils and watercolors. There’s something about adding a bit of color to the page and coloring especially that is peaceful and meditative. And adult coloring is all the rage now! If you find a coloring book that you like a page, glue or tape it into your journal and start coloring! There’s so much you can do with the basic art supplies so don’t overlook them.

Washi tape – I didn’t know what washi tape was before I started my Bullet Journal this year, but I can definitely see the appeal! Washi tape is paper tape that is repositionable and comes in, dare I say, millions of colors and designs. The rolls are cheap and can be used in so many different ways that you’ll never run out of ideas. I like washi tape because it adds a bit of color and whimsy on a page where I just don’t know what to add but think it needs something. Slap a stripe down the left or right margin and voila! a whole new page.

Scrapbook style – You don’t have to stick to lines and paragraph format when journaling. Scrapbook style journaling is where you make little boxes, decorative or not, and jot down ideas, thoughts, and memories as you have them. It creates an artsy style all its own. Amp it up with watercolored pages, vintage stickers or stamps and you have an inspiration that will keep you coming back to journal each and every day.

Embrace Mistakes
You will make mistakes, it’s just a part of journaling. How you respond to that mistake will make or break your enjoyment of journaling. So embrace them! Turn a misspelling into a silly character, or a whole page of ink spill into an art expression page. And if you must cover up the mistake, at least do it with something pretty, like some Washi tape or a quote or perhaps a coloring page tacked in.

What other ways can you personalize a journal? Let me know in the comments!
Related Posts:
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 1: Introduction
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 7: Selecting a Physical Journal
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 5: What Your Dominant Learns from Your Journal
31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 3: What is a Submissive Journal?
Submissive Journals: Bullet/Analogue Journal Review

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Published on October 10, 2016 07:00

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