The last corporate company I worked for was NVIDIA, and I had the fortune of being there before the IPO to help the company grow $1.3 billion in three years. I decided I wanted to have a life, so I left and took a two-year mid-life retirement to enjoy the fruits of my labor, and most importantly get healthy. The need to regain my health got me using the Internet more to find resources and meet others like myself.

During my “off time”, the term “Web 2.0” started to buzz, and I, being one who loves things new and unusual, dove right in and discovered blogging. I thought blogging was the coolest thing in the world because it is about self-expression that is completely uncensored. I read about this guy who bought a house with Google AdSense money by writing all day about things he loves, and thought, “How cool is that?” So I decided that I wanted to become a professional blogger.

Q: Tell us why you started Back in Skinny Jeans. How has the blog developed since you first envisioned it - close to what you originally conceived, or different?

A: When I made the decision to become a “Pro Blogger,” I started with four blogs; three were designed specifically for revenue generation, and the fourth was Back in Skinny Jeans, which was just meant to be a platform for me to rant about our society’s obsession with beauty and thinness. The name was inspired from the fact that every woman has a pair of skinny jeans in her closet because it represents the dream of bliss and perfection your life will have once you can be thin enough to wear those jeans again. Sound silly?

Well, after three months, not only was Back in Skinny Jeans getting more traffic than all the other three blogs put together, it was making more money just from Google AdSense, and some affiliate marketing I did which was more about recommending books and movies I liked. I was quite stunned. All my traditional marketing training was asking, “How is this possible? It’s got to be some kind of fluke.” Quickly, I learned that my success was attributed to the fact that I hit a very strong emotional chord with many women who felt just like me.

People are so inundated with advertising nowadays that they tend to just block it all out or distrust it because it’s coming from the mouth of some large corporation, so now people are looking to their social circles and others like them for referrals and references. With Back in Skinny Jeans, I am merely one woman who speaks her truth about what it’s like trying to feel good as I am and finding balance while living in a world that bombards us women with messages of, “You can’t be thin or beautiful enough.” The topic is also one that I am passionate about so I ditched the other three blogs, and looked to see what I could do with Back in Skinny Jeans.

Q: You recently redesigned the look of the site and made a statement tightening its mission. You also are making it more personal — the site is about women's issued regarding fitness but also your issues, specifically. What lead to that decision?

A: My current challenge is creating a balance of strategies to make money and keep the quality of my message. For example, at one point, I focused more on celebrity news because celebrity names get higher hits thus helping in search engine optimization. Like many bloggers, I got caught up in the SEO game because I wanted to start getting paid advertisers. Most of the banners on my blog are from affiliate programs. The field of celebrity gossip is so over saturated that there was no way I could compete without completely changing what I do at Back in Skinny Jeans. Plus, I didn’t want to be just another news aggregator type blog where you just collect info from around the web and re-report it with your two cents thrown in. I wanted to create more original content that would add value to the lives of my readers.

One of my marketing friends recommended that I read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, and from that it inspired me to think about mattering to “someone” rather than trying to be everything to everybody. I had bits of fashion, feminism, weight loss, beauty, celebrity gossip, recipes, and even web product reviews. Covering women’s topics as a whole is too broad for one blog, so I decided to focus on one thing that could make Back in Skinny Jeans “sticky” and that is the topic of weight loss as an expression of self-love. As well, I gained about 25 pounds in the last two years, so it’s an opportunity to talk about my own journey to shed those excess pounds. I’m walking the talk! And lastly, most sites about weight loss are, in my opinion, kind of sterile, too serious, and too medical feeling. I want to add a sense of style and humor to a journey that is commonly seen as “hard, frustrating work.” It’s a chance to stand out.

I made the focus change on June 13, and my traffic has gone up 30 percent in that time. It has been much easier to talk to ad networks and companies about advertising. I added a bookstore, and very soon I will add extension blogs for healthy eating ideas and a store to buy workout, fitness, and healthy living gear.

Q: You recently left a job as an evangelist for Microsoft to concentrate on blogging instead. You blogged about that extensively. Anything you can add to that?

A: It still makes me giggle to say that blogging about getting back into skinny jeans helped me land a job at Microsoft. You never know where blogging can take you. Sometimes I still have days where I kick myself for leaving Microsoft so soon because I had a nice steady paycheck, and some awesome benefits. But, at the end of the day, I can’t work just for a paycheck, and there is something far more fulfilling working for myself on something I REALLY love. I have no doubt that the newly created Enthusiast Evangelist role will have great impact on Microsoft’s success online.

One thing I do admire Microsoft for more than any other corporate company I have seen is Microsoft’s encouragement of their employees to blog. I mean they want you to blog to your heart’s content. Of course there are the “don’t spill un-announced stuff” guidelines and rules, but other than that, the company highly encourages their folks to blog in open and honest ways even if that means being honest about some of the not-so-perfect things about your own company. I don’t know of many huge corporations that have that much trust in their employees to blog in that fashion. Other companies can learn from Microsoft’s example.

Q: What's the future hold for you and blogging at large?

A: The most fulfilling part of my day is getting e-mails from people telling me that something I wrote helped them have a more productive, happy, and inspiring day. I get e-mails from people who thank me for helping them feel less alone, and to feel braver about facing their own issues because they saw me do it. I want to continue to create more content that will help people in their lives.

What I am doing with Back in Skinny jeans makes me feel fulfilled in a way that I never did in my corporate career. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great deal of happy and good learning experiences in my corporate life, but I was never of service to other human beings as I am today. Discovering blogging was the best thing that ever happened to me.