Last week, an eagle-eyed reader slid into my messages asking whether I used to run a blog under a different name. And honestly? I had to take a moment. Because yes, yes I did. For those who weren’t around for it, I used to run a little corner of the internet called Danielle Alexa, a blog that became my absolute labour of love for the better part of a decade. I poured everything into it. My time, my energy, my sanity, my best lighting. And towards the end, it reached heights that, even now, I find genuinely difficult to believe.
But life, as it so often does, had other plans. I reached a point where family commitments meant I simply could not give the blog the attention it deserved. And rather than let the standards slip on something I had worked so incredibly hard to build, I made the painful decision to step away. It was not easy. It was not fun. It felt a little bit like leaving a job you adored for reasons entirely outside of your control. But here I am now, Danielle Sloane, back with an absolute vengeance, and before I crack on with this new chapter, I wanted to sit down and talk honestly about what blogging actually gave me. The benefits of blogging go so far beyond anything I could have predicted when I nervously published my very first post.
Blogging Built Me a Community I Never Expected
If someone had told me when I started out that blogging would hand me some of my closest friendships, I would have laughed them out of the room. And yet, here we are. One of the most profound and unexpected benefits of blogging was the genuine human connection it created. Finding like-minded people on the internet is rarer and more wonderful than people give it credit for. We would discover each other through similar content, reach out, start talking, and suddenly realise we had found our people.
Back in the earlier days, we would do blog swaps to try and grow our audiences. But by 2019, it had evolved into something more meaningful than a straightforward content exchange. It became about wanting to connect with someone who truly understood the grind, who was leaping over the same hurdles and occasionally face-planting over the same ones too. Those friendships? Still standing. Blogging gave me a friendship group I did not even know I needed.
It Threw Me Completely Out of My Comfort Zone (And I Am So Glad It Did)
I am, at my core, a creature of habit. I like my routines, my familiar places, my carefully selected circle of people. Pre-blogging Danielle would not have stepped in front of a camera voluntarily. Pre-blogging Danielle would not have boarded a flight solo for a brand trip. Pre-blogging Danielle would absolutely not have cold-messaged a stranger on the internet to suggest a friendship. And yet, blogging made me do all of it.
The camera, the solo travel, the audacious reaching out to people on a complete whim. All of it. Blogging essentially grabbed me by the shoulders and said, right, we are doing this now, whether you like it or not. And the independence it built in me has been one of the most transferable skills I have ever developed. Not just for content creation, but for life. For my career. For every single moment where I have needed to back myself and just go for it. Blogging was the thing that taught me I could.
The CV Wins Are Very Real
My full-time career is in marketing, and SEO is a significant part of what I do day to day. So when I tell you that running my own blog from scratch, building it up to hundreds of thousands of daily visitors with zero budget and zero team behind me, sits proudly on my CV, I mean it with everything I have. I keep a dedicated file of my blog statistics attached to my CV. Real numbers. Real results. Built entirely by my own two hands.
That is one of the most underrated benefits of blogging that nobody talks about nearly enough. It is a living, breathing portfolio. It shows potential employers not just that you understand digital marketing in theory, but that you can actually execute it. Running Danielle Alexa deepened my understanding of SEO enormously and pushed me to keep learning as the search engine landscape shifted and changed around me. I basically ran a masterclass in digital marketing for myself, for free, for years. Honestly, the audacity of it all.
The PR Opportunities Were Pinch-Yourself Moments
A couple of years into blogging, I received my very first PR outreach. The brand? Charlotte Tilbury. I wish I was exaggerating when I say I ran around my workplace in a state of complete disbelief. One of my all-time favourite brands wanted to work with me. Me! It felt genuinely surreal. From there, once those products were featured across my blog and Instagram, other brands began to follow. And then more. And then more after that.
By the end, I was receiving PR from brands I had spent years buying from as a regular customer. It was a privilege I never took for granted, which is exactly why, when I stopped blogging, I asked to be removed from every PR list. Whatever was being sent deserved to go somewhere it would be properly showcased. These days, on Danielle Sloane, I am being much more selective. I think it is important to be transparent about the fact that receiving gifts from brands creates a complicated dynamic when it comes to honest reviewing. Not to mention the consumption piece, which is its own conversation entirely.
Working With World-Class Brands Is as Wonderful as It Sounds
This ties neatly into the PR point, but it deserves its own moment. Because there is something quite extraordinary about going from being a loyal customer of a brand to actually collaborating with them. Whether it was showcasing new arrivals at Net-A-Porter, creating a makeup tutorial with products stocked at Selfridges, or working with the likes of Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, NARS and La Mer, every single collaboration felt like a privilege.
It never stopped feeling special. I had spent years buying from these brands as a regular person, and then suddenly I was on the other side of the table. That context matters. I think it kept me grounded, kept the content genuine, and ensured I never sleepwalked through a collaboration just because it landed in my inbox. Every brand partnership meant something because I understood, as a consumer, exactly what these brands represented.
Yes, Let’s Talk About the Money (Because Nobody Else Will Be Honest About It)
Here is where I will be completely straight with you, because the blogging industry is not always known for its radical transparency on this particular subject. It took me around four years of consistent, hard work before I started earning genuinely good money from my blog. Four years. Through affiliate marketing, Google AdSense and paid brand sponsorships, the income slowly built. And then, a couple of months before I made the decision to step away, my blog income overtook my full-time salary.
But here is the honest part that the glossy highlight reels leave out. The money was never guaranteed. It varied wildly from month to month, and for someone with OCD, that unpredictability was genuinely difficult to manage. It was not the relaxing passive income stream that blogging is sometimes romanticised as being. It was work, constant work, with a side of financial anxiety. That said, I would be lying if I told you I was not sitting here wondering whether, this time around with Danielle Sloane, I could eventually make this my full-time thing. Watch this space.
So, Should You Start a Blog?
If you are sitting on the fence about starting a blog, here is my entirely biased and wholehearted answer: jump in with both feet. The benefits of blogging are so much broader and deeper than most people realise when they are standing at the beginning of the journey. Community, confidence, career credentials, extraordinary brand relationships, and yes, eventually, the potential to earn real money. It gives back in ways that are genuinely difficult to put a price on.
The one caveat I will offer is this: go in with the right intentions. If your only motivation is money, you will burn out long before the income arrives. The people who build something truly special online are the ones who are genuinely passionate about what they are creating and who they are creating it for. For me, it has always come back to the connection. The idea that writing honestly about the things on my mind can create friendships for life is, quite frankly, extraordinary. And it is exactly why Danielle Sloane exists as it does today.
