Blogging Fears

We all have blogging fears at some point in this journey. Mostly in the beginning. 

We may fear "not fitting in" in the blog sphere. 

We may fear that after we make the choice to put our life out there, in writing, for others to read and criticize we won't be able to take the rude comments and harsh critics. 

We may fear voicing our own opinions and beliefs for fear that others might not agree with us and judge us. 

Another fear is that of having the pictures of our kids we so proudly put up to capture the moment or turn into a memory getting stolen and used for God knows what. 

At the beginning of my blogging journey I didn't pay much attention to the last fear noted. It was mostly at everything above that. Then when I became pregnant I started to think more about my blogging. How much is too much sharing? How do I take precaution? How do I protect my children? Myself?

I'm guilty of probably over-sharing sometimes. Not so much with my kids though. I hope. 

Even so, it worries me what some people can do with the stuff I share online. Especially my pictures. 

It wasn't till recently after reading a story about how a blogger's pictures and blog posts, were stolen and being used as someone else's. Even scarier was the fact that it was somewhere outside the United States. Then I read two other stories similar to this one. That was it for me. No more procrastinating on watermarking my pictures. I needed to find the best way to do this and lucky enough that same blogger posted a tutorial on how to watermark your pictures. I tried it and have been using it in my last few posts. Now only if there was a way to watermark previous pictures just as easy. 

I blog for me. To write my story. Our story. To print it and have it some place safe to look back on over the years. This is my journal. One that I decided, for whatever reason, to make readable by the public. Whoever they may be. Do I regret it? No. Not yet at least. Because I have learned things that have made me a better wife and better mother. A better person in general. And whether I have 1 or 50 followers I will always blog for me and my family. Yes, I will be more cautious on how much I share. Wouldn't want the wrong person to find my blog and use it against me, like the crazy-jealous-stalker I had before. And I will definitely do my very best to protect my children, husband, family, and friends from having their picture stolen. I hardly ever post pictures other than of my family but I do post pictures of others and I need to take responsibility for those images. 

Here's the tutorial I've been using. If you're not already watermarking your photos I advice you to take precaution. Is not as hard as you might think. 

The only thing I do different then Becky is that I use Blogstomp to group them nicely so instead of uploading my pictures to Facebook I open them from "Stomped" directly to paintbrush add the watermark and just re save it. It automatically saves in Stomped again and I send them all to Flickr to be uploaded to my blog post. All my ungrouped photos remain in iPhoto without being touched. However if I wanted to keep the grouped photos as well without the watermark all I have to do is use "Save As" instead of just "Save" in paintbrush. 

I also have the option to watermark via Blogstomp but it shows in the corners and I much rather have it in the middle since that's harder to "crop out". 

What will it take for you to protect yourself and your family?