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Kiddley Blogs – Blog Case Study

Posted By Darren Rowse 7th of November 2006 Case Studies 0 Comments

One of my favorite bloggers in my early years of blogging was Loobylu – an award winning blog written by a fellow Melbournian Claire Robertson.

Claire is an illustrator and toy maker and has been featured for her illustration work and blogging in many places over the last five years. I’ve always been very jealous of her sense of style and beautifully designed blog.

Kiddleybanner4Six or so months ago Claire and her husband Phil launched a new blog by the name of Kiddley – a blog with loads of ideas, projects and tips for parents to enjoy with their kids. In a sense it is a DIY blog for parents.

It’s a blog that is brimming with the creativity in Claire’s other works but is also an entrepreneurial blog also with a real commercial edge (advertising and affiliate links).

Claire writes about Kiddley’s growth and emerging income stream that it brings:

“Kiddley has been going from strength to strength and no one is more surprised than me that we are starting to make a small income. It’s exciting to be working on a project like this with Big-P and it’s immensely satisfying trying new things and see what works. We are learning so much about blogging and marketing and our audience and after lots of planning and thinking and projecting we have decided that another new (small) blog is the next step for us followed by yet another in the new year. It’s all a bit of an experiement at this stage.”

Kiddleylinksbutton04In the last week or so Claire and Phil have added another blog to their growing network – Kiddley Links. It’s more overtly commercial in nature as it is a shopping blog and is specifically looking at and reviewing products related to kids.

I love the work that Claire and Phil are doing on these blogs and want to highlight it here for a number of reasons:

Firstly – its a brilliant example of people blogging about something that they obviously have an interest in and finding a way to monetize it. While it’s possible to pick a topic that will be financially rewarding and learn to love it – I think it’s much easier to sustain a blog that is on a topic that you’re passionate about.

Secondly – I love the way that Claire and Phil are expanding their blogging by picking related topics and are leveraging previous success to drive traffic to their new blogs. I wish that I’d done this in my early days of commercial blogging instead of picking a wide array of topics.

Thirdly – The clean design and layout of these blogs and ad placement is pretty smart. While there might be a few tweaks that I’d suggest – all in all I really like their integration of ads and design. Their blogs are warm, inviting and exude character and personality.

Fourthly – I quite like the husband and wife team approach on these blogs. I know of a few family partnership blogs like this and while it’s not possible for everyone it’s really great to see this type of partnership in action.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Thanks a lot Darren for this great blog. Christmas is coming and I know many parents will find this blog to be useful. The success of Kiddley shows that if you give a decent effort for your blogs you will get noticed by some people.

  2. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while; the fact she’s a fellow Melbournite doesn’t hurt either! ;)

  3. I’ve seen a lot of these shopping blogs popping up and I’m not sure how I feel about them. Most are not much more than thin affiliate sites with little value. They aren’t even putting their hands on the products they are reviewing.

    I guess if you can find that niche that really intrigues people it could be a good thing.

  4. I hear what Jeremy’s saying, but I don’t personally see anything wrong with an affiliate site if it brings people stuff they truly want to read about, and I certainly don’t see any evidence that Kiddley Links is passing off their posts as reviews.

    Really lovely design on both blogs. Fantastic stuff : )

  5. Hey Darren, Do you know this study too?
    Blogging success study

  6. […] Darren at Problogger posted a blog case study on the Kiddley blogs, and something he worte in his post caught my eye: I love the way that Claire and Phil are expanding their blogging by picking related topics and are leveraging previous success to drive traffic to their new blogs. I wish that I’d done this in my early days of commercial blogging instead of picking a wide array of topics. […]

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