Cape & Apron – Intern Overview

Last day to apply: September 24th, 2018 by 12:00 PM MST

We’re looking for an intern!

I’m looking for one intern to work with us over at Cape & Apron(C&A)! I’m super excited to bring someone on to help manage the site (around 5 hours a week) and in exchange, I’m going to provide some very powerful blogging mentorship, tools and courses that allowed me and other bloggers to earn a full time income at no extra cost. I know, crazy right?!

I need an intern in general, but I also really need one for at least 5 weeks starting in November for maternity leave!

This is for you if:

– You are a BRAND NEW blogger or a blogger who hasn’t gotten into Mediavine (under 25K page sessions) or someone who hasn’t even started your blog! But you want to grow an awesome blog that earns you some money. It would be great if you want it to bring in a full-time revenue.

– You want or need some help with your blog and would LOVE a mentor to help guide you along to making a full-time income with your blog. You could also want branding, logo, WordPress and tech help (I have over a decade of experience in graphic design and have a WordPress tech background as well as writing!)

– You can work 5 hours a week and prioritize the time on another blogger’s website (mine!) as well as hopefully, dedicate around this amount of time (at least!) on your own blog too.

– You are a dedicated, accountable person. You show up on time and follow through on what you say you are going to do.

– You have a reliable computer and internet connection

In addition, Adobe Suite experience is a super plus but totally not necessary.

You landed here because you probably have some very important questions about this whole internship thing. You’re a smart person, so you want to know if C&A is worth working for, if it’s a website that is big enough for your time and what you’ll get out of this in exchange for your time. Let’s go ahead and dive into questions you may have:

What’s Cape & Apron about, how old is it, what are its blog stats and how much does it earn?

C&A’s mission and passion

C&A primarily is all about helping new mommies or mommies-to-be transition into motherhood. Becoming a mother can be a shocking and extremely difficult transition emotionally and physically. I remember being pregnant, a couple weeks left till baby arrived and I had never changed a diaper or babysat. I had held a baby twice for a total of about 30 seconds and had ZERO experience with babies, toddlers, children etc.

I EVEN missed that day in high school health class where they talked about labor and delivery and having babies. Okay, so I did do the whole fake baby thing assignment WHICH I failed. The baby doll apparently took trauma to the head. Okay, so I had a friend take care of it while I was at track practice!

What I did have: A dog-on-a-bone determination, a hard work ethic, and a very studious mindset. I DOVE into those blog articles, signed up for apps, read those books and took prenatal courses. I was going to be prepared!!!

Except I wasn’t.

Having a baby was one of the biggest life-shocks I’ve ever had. I felt so much was missing from those resources online and blog posts: transparency, reality, and authenticity about what motherhood is truly about and most of all SUPPORT.

So the message here at C&A is “You’ve got this.” Because women are some of the strongest creatures on this planet. And after having a baby, I feel like they have to be THE strongest. We run our households, raise children, manage finances, feed our families, run to sporting practices all over the fricken’ place all while usually juggling a full-time income and trying to look semi-decent (when we get to it) while we do ALL THAT. Sometimes we can’t do it all and need some support.

C&A is here with a shoulder to lean on, helpful advice for those hard-to-answer topics and most of all, encouragement. Because women are strong and we need to know that at the end of the day, we are doing our best, everything will be okay and you’ve got this.

A sub-topic/mission

In addition to C&A’s prime new-mommy focus, I am also very passionate about helping women work from home because blogging and running a small business has enabled me to spend ALL day long with my beautiful little 2-year-old girl and blog 10-20 hours a week….and take time off WHENEVER I want. I’ve taken 3 months off from the blog while it generated passive income. I’ll take weeks off here and there to focus on my family because I can. I run my own life, I choose when I work and how I live. I feel like every woman should have this option!

I help women (or anyone who is interested) in blogging. I have a 7 day How To Start A Blog Course, a Blog Management Tool and some great posts to help new bloggers along like How to Name Your Blog And Choose Your Niche as well as How To Start A Blog and Secrets To Blog Management. This topic is small right now because my primary focus is new mommies but I have A LOT to give to beginner and intermediate bloggers.

Here’s why:

My Background (and experience)

– Over a decade of graphic design experience with a BFA in Visual Communications & Design (which is a fancy way of saying graphic design and more). I’ve worked with all the major video game companies in the world (BioWare, Microsoft, Nintendo etc.) as well as other major companies like Firefox, Hasbro, Game Stop, Sony etc. as an art director in merchandising and advertising. In addition, my skills in project management were recognized and utilized. I helped implement project management systems for various companies overseeing daily operations and teams – everything about running a company.

Whew, what else? Well, I left that world to raise a family and kick ass doing my own thing. I figured I made millions for other companies, had web, graphic design and writing experience so why couldn’t I run my own company that would just crush it? I had followed big bloggers making over 100K a month. Why couldn’t I do that? So, my blog business planning began February 2018. By March I had a domain and by July I launched a website with affiliate marketing in place, two months worth of content scheduled and a plan. The website made money right away and it’s history from there.

My husband and I also have a side business where we help people with business and life coaching. With this, I am a part of a leadership and business development group. Part of this is reading business and development books each day, listening to podcasts and actively growing as a leader. So, I come at blogging with a business facet as well.

Currently, I am diligently working through Elite Blog Academy. I just got back from Activate #EBALive, met some of the biggest bloggers out there, networked with the most awesome people and have returned with some very powerful information that will change not only the blog but our family’s future forever.

So, let’s talk about C&A. Where is it at and why would you want to help out with it?

Pageviews: Minimum 75,000. Lately, it’s been doing about 90,000. I was just shy of 200,000 before that fateful “Banterest” night when Pinterest banned like a zillion bloggers a couple months ago. Let’s get it back up there! (And I do have plans to focus more on SEO and diversifying traffic in 2019. Pinterest is great but I’m not going to solely depend on it.)

Ad network: Mediavine

Income: About $2,000/month. AND the greatest thing about this?! I have focused on income almost ZERO percent so far. Oh man, and when I do – this blog is going to blow up. I put basic affiliate stuff in place from Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing, got into Mediavine with page views doing basic Pinterest stuff (thank you Carly Campbell and her Pinteresting Strategies!) and sold my Blog Management Tool to about 30 people in a small beta release. I’m super excited to see what’s to come for C&A this next year. I’d like to see the blog doing 10-20K by the end of 2019.

Email List: 10,000+

Other Stuff: C&A is a rebrand from A Silver Lined Life (SLL) which was my first URL. The reason for this recent transition: SLL was a great blank slate for a wide variety of topics in order to find the niche and purpose forward. I branded SLL pretty quickly with more of a focus on JUST STARTING and moving forward rather than taking the time to fully develop a kick-ass brand with a strong message. Hey, and when you start a blog, you don’t know where your audience will take you. It’s a journey and SLL was THE PERFECT beginning.

The future of C&A: I have some BIG product ideas in the works, traffic courses to work through in order to crush our page view goals and streams of revenue that are just waiting for us to begin. The future is bright and exciting.

What You Will Get Out Of This Internship:

– FREE access to courses that have got me to where I am now. I’ll need you to know this stuff eventually for the internship anyways!

– FREE access to your own Blog Management Tool – Beta 3 which has not released yet! Along with my Pinterest pinning plan which gets C&A basically all its traffic.

– A tailored blog path created just for you. We’ll do an hour consultation via Google Hangout and I’ll hear out your blog goals and where you are at. From there, I’ll lay out a path for you including courses I have for you AND

– FREE branding, technical and WordPress website aid. I’ll help you with your brand, logo, colors, WordPress theme, set-up, the right plugins to use, Google console stuff…everything. I have over a decade of logo and website background so I can seriously help you with this!

– Twice a month (every other week) live 30 minute Q&A sessions between you and me, helping you with any and ALL your blogging questions excluding one five-week span starting in November (maternity leave!).

– Understanding how to successfully run a blogging business with an active application, mentorship, tools, and resources.

– An accountability partner/mentor if you so choose!

What I expect out of this internship:

– Around 5 hours a week work on C&A. I also hope you’ll work around that many hours, at least, on your blog and doing the action plans we discuss. I will expect this but I won’t make you do this. I mean, I can’t! Only you can take the action required to progress towards your goals.

What you can except in those 5 hours of work on C&A:

I seriously need an extra set of hands and eyeballs scheduling Pinterest for me, and Facebook once a week! If you’ve never done this, don’t worry about it – I’ll walk you through it and then you’ll learn how to do it on your own blog! Once a week, we’ll also have you be part of a comment thread – commenting on 5 other blogs and testing this out.

I’ll show you everything. Don’t worry! We’ll see how much time that takes and if there is time, I’d love help with an extra pair of eyes on blog posts for SUPER basic grammar things like “your” instead of “you’re” or “too” instead of “to” – just basic human stuff that most people know (plus a plug-in called Grammarly that does most of the work for you). Haha. Nothing in-depth. As well as basic blog formatting (don’t worry, I have a super basic [lazy blogger] list) and scheduling the post to match what is spelled out in my Editorial Calendar (which I’ll help you make for your blog too!)

At first, we’ll log time for your tasks in my Blog Management Tool Dashboard. This will help YOU know how long these blog tasks take for your own blog AND it will pave the way to get you where you need to be. This will also help me get an understanding of where you are at and how we can improve. You WILL be slower at first! I was! But, I do expect to find an intern that has internal self-drive and wants to better him or herself. This will help with efficiency with C&A but most of all, it will help with your own blog efficiency. The more you learn how to quickly and BEST do these tasks, the better off you will be for your own blog.

Drive – Have a mindset for learning, mentorship and a good work ethic. I can’t help others who are lazy, make excuses (because no matter how good excuses are – ANY excuse will work) and I can’t help or be-helped by that kind of attitude!

Accountability – So, I’m going to be real here. I’m by default a people pleaser. I like to give MORE to people than whatever my own wants, needs or desires are. That said, I can’t help it but deeply dislike…okay, so I will be super transparent with you…I HATE it when people are late and don’t follow through on what they say they will do. This is a weakness and I’m working on it! I think I’m this way because I expect high standards of this myself – so, therefore I inadvertently expect the same from others. On the other hand, is it too much to ask to show up on time, respect other people’s time and follow through? It’s really super basic nice-person stuff :).

Timeframe of Internship

Starting date: October 1st, 2018. This is my goal starting date for an intern but I am very particular about starting with the RIGHT person. So, I may take longer to find someone or maybe not! We’ll see!

Trial period: Two weeks. You will want to know if this is going to work out and I will too! So, we’ll schedule a two-week review. Further, we’ll do an additional 10-minute review at the end of our Q&A bi-monthly Q&A session to see where you are at, if you need any help and if I can help. We will touch base via email every week too – just a quick “here’s what I did”. We’ll do a 1) what worked 2)what needs improvement and 3)what we can do next week outline.

End date: 3-6 months. I’m hoping to have help at least through the end of March. This doesn’t mean you’re locked into anything! And I also withhold the right to let someone go if things aren’t working out on both ends. 3 months is a great time too but we’ll see what your schedule is. Hey, if you stick with me for a year – I can REALLY get your blog going and you will be earning a good income by the end of that. IF you will accept mentorship.

Things to note additionally

I will have a simple barebones contract to make sure this is spelled out, basically stating that you KNOW this is an unpaid internship in exchange for an education. I’m not looking to complicate something that’s simple – just shared expectations, good communication, and accountability on both sides. Some good ol’ fashioned help! I’m not going to hold you to anything like that legally! I will trust you will do what you say you will do and be a nice person. Though if you steal or copy any of my property for your own benefit…that’s not cool.

Also, this outline is not set-in-stone. If we need more time on C&A and you need more video-call mentorship time, we’ll change it. If we both agree less time on these things works better, then we’ll do that. The bottom line is, we’ll start with this and communicate, both agreeing if there needs to be more or less in different areas! Most importantly, I want this to be an internship where you get AH-mazing help and I get AH-mazing help!

Please click the button below to apply and allow me at least 3-5 business days to look over your application. I will be looking over these carefully, so it will take me some time! I may also want to do a quick 20-30 minute live interview with the top 1-3 candidates.

I’m SO excited to meet you!!!