Happy ONE YEAR blogoversary to me!

 

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I can hardly believe that today marks one full year of Simply Sweet Melissa! I mean...time truly flies when you're doing what you enjoy :) I've stepped outside of my comfort zone, shared parts of my heart that were uncomfortable, celebrated the little things and made new friends. I've taken part in some fun sponsorship, and even shared some tips, tricks and other things I've found interesting. But before I move forward, I want to stop for a second and put the spotlight on YOU.

If I wanted to be short and sweet I would just say thank you, but i'd rather explain the reasons why I'm thankful. First, thank you for taking time out of your day to read my blog. I know how precious time is and to know that you spend some of your time with ME means so much. Secondly, thank you for following along with my life and for being such wonderful followers.

From the comments you've left, emails you've sent, and words of encouragement offered, all the way down to the blogging advice you've given me and the friendships that we have made, I am forever grateful. All of this is beyond what I ever thought would happen and i'm left speechless. I feel so loved and being part of this blogging world has been one of the best spur-of-the-moment decisions I have ever made! So thank you.

Simply Sweet Melissa's success is all because of you don't you see? You've helped me grow this blog into something I never saw possible. Without being inspired or even challenged, I don't think I would have ever continued blogging if you asked me. But blogging has opened up so many doors and I am no where near ready to see them close. I can't wait to see how much this little ole' blog grows over the next year and I'm even more excited to see how I bloom as an individual more then anything else.

So in honor of SSM's ONE year blogoversary, I wanted to bring you a giveaway to celebrate and as a way to say thank you one last time.

Blog, Inc. was the first blogging book I ever read. I remember I was a few months into blogging and having a hard time trying to figure out how to drive traffic to my blog (aka grow my community), wondered how often I should blog and how the heck do I balance blogging with the rest of life's demands. This book answered all of those questions and more. I've highlighted and flagged more pages in this book then half the other books I own and I recently re-read it for a refresher on a few particular topics. I'm so excited for one lucky winner to win this book as part of my giveaway and know that it won't be a disappointment one bit. To read more about Blog, Inc. you can go here and even take a peek inside to see if it's up your alley.    

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If you haven't heard of The B Bar, I'm sorry. Good thing I am giving you the formal introduction! Back story: around this time last year, I started to follow The B Bar's blog which just so happened to be the same time that Simply Sweet Melissa was being created. I loved the gals (Meg and Victoria) behind The B Bar, and started to read their personal blogs (VMAC+Cheese and Meg Biram) first thing pretty much every morning. Talk about blogging inspiration and knowledge on all things Social Media! 

So fast forward to one morning when I was reading Victoria's blog in which she mentioned there was a free PDF book on their "menu" called The Importance of Permalinks. When I saw that it was free, I knew I had to download it immediately and see what there was to know about Permalinks. Short and sweet, easy to understand and packed full of other stuff, I realized I had a new obsession. That's when I knew I needed more and got my hands on 3 other items off the menu! Because you purchase these as PDFs, you can easily save them to your computer or even print them out which I have done. But my favorite part about these books being PDFs is mainly for the fact that you can click on the different websites/blogs that they mention and go to exactly what they are talking about. This is an added bonus to your purchase as a whole because your being introduced to more RESOURCES! And that's one thing I can't have enough of!

Whew wee! Y'all I just got myself worked up with excitement talking about all of this stuff and I can't wait to share my favorite bar purchases with you and heck, I may just even give the winner a third just because :) The giveaway is open until next Friday so enter, enter, enter and help me spread the word! a Rafflecopter giveaway