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Lessons from a Celebrity Blogger

Posted By Darren Rowse 27th of April 2006 Case Studies 0 Comments

Celebrity-Blog-2The following blog case study was submitted by Derek – a celebrity blogger. In it he reflects upon 7 lessons he’s learned in building his blog from 50 to 1500 uniques per day since March.

Derek Hail – stealing celebrity dignity and fame was launched on March 13th of 2006. The first two weeks the Derek Hail.com staff focused on producing content. The only promotion for our blog was through our friends. We would ask our friends for feedback on our writing. After the two weeks were over we decided to start aggressively promoting our blog.

The first two weeks, Derek Hail.com received on average 50-60 unique hits per day. Now, as of April 23, 2006, the past two weeks we have received 20,000 unique visits which averages to around 1500 hits per day.

Here are lessons I have learned along the way while trying to promote blogs:

1. Blog Traffic Exchanges are worthless.

The amount of time spent surfing to earn credits is not worth it. Instead of wasting 3 hours a day surfing for credits, write content. Most people surf these blogs for credits and they do not read anything. They are only at your blog for a credit.

2. Collect a list of all the links possibly available in your niche:

This was originally mentioned on Darren Rowseâ•˙s Blog Promotion tips post which can be found here.

The list of links was the blogs I would regularly attend during the week to leave insightful and funny comments. This was successful because the less popular blogs would make the author of the blog interested in viewing my website. On the more popular blogs that received a significant amount of traffic, some of the readers from the popular blogs would then stop by my blog

3. The reader of a related blog can be your reader as well

I discovered that most people who comment on blogs in a particular niche, usually have their own personal web log which is not necessarily related to the niche they are reading about. I decided to start going to each of these peopleâ•˙s blogs and leave insightful comments on their blogs as well. This would then help me to attract someone who was already interested in a particular niche to my blog because I was taking the time of my day to comment on their blog.

4. Submit articles to popular web-sites in hopes of getting picked up

I have been linked by several popular websites in the short period of time I have been blogging. This did not come easy because I actively sought people to submit to. I started perusing places like Fark and other humor sites that dealt with writing. After several submissions to these web-sites, naturally some of my articles were picked up. This helped build my traffic to what it is today.

5. Sell yourself and your blog

Make the blog worth while to read. My blog has focused on entertaining our readers with humor. We write about celebrity gossip and add twists and jokes at the end of each of our articles. This was our selling point of our blog. There are other ways to sell yourself, but we chose to do it in a humor fashion.

6. Ask for Link exchanges the right way:

I mainly collected a list of links of approximately two hundred blogs that were in the same niche as my own. I originally started emailing these bloggers with informal emails. My successfulness with informal emails was limited. I decided to create formal email messages that included proper greetings and format. My success with emails went up drastically. The moral of the story is, present yourself professionally and people will take you seriously.

7. Create a community

This is self explanatory and has been hammered to death by several different bloggers. I created a community a little bit differently. It is not uncommon for other bloggers to plug each other when they find something they find interesting. Instead of relying on luck, I set up a community of a few bloggers who would exchange plugs with each other a few times a week.

This is significant because we would be sending each other targeted traffic.

These are the lessons I have learned over the past month and a half and helped me grow my blog from the minimal 50/60 visits a day to a much more significant 1500 visits per day. I hope this helps everyone in promoting their blog as well.

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. nice tips, although i know the most of them, it may help a lot of people

  2. Congratulations on your success!

    I went to your site and found a video. That breaks the Adsense TOS. Look at the program policies: “In order to avoid associations with copyright claims, website publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results”
    I don’t know if linking to a video does break the rules, what do you think?

  3. Great article – I am thoroughly enjoying these case studies. Practical examples are awesome.

  4. It’s always nice to hear from another blogger. Thanks for this, Darren. Another blogger’s idea is my idea starter. :)

  5. Hello everyone, I am the person who wrote that blogger case study.

    With regards to the video, I don’t think I was violating anything, but I will have to check into that. I sure hope its not a violation.

    I don’t think it is because i have seen several other sites who host videos and that use adsense at the same time.

    Anyway, I am glad some of these tips helped some people out.

  6. Some great tips Derek… enjoyed reading that. Thanks for that Darren.

  7. Good to see you have achieved, 1500 visits per day. Thanks for sharing your insights with us…
    It was really helpful..

  8. I am glad that I could help everyone. I have learned so much from Darren and his website and the community I felt that I needed to give back to it. This was how I could do that.

    To Darren, Thanks for considering me for pro-blogger case studies series.

  9. Hello, If I may ask the blog author: where do you get your celeb’s photos from? Do you pay for them, or just take them from other websites?

    Thank you.

  10. .Tip # 2 .to leave insightful and funny comments…
    So here it is..
    Nice tips..

  11. Quirky – they are found all over. People send photos in, message boards, I’ve done some scans myself, some other websites. Just generally all over. All sources are sited if obtained from other websites.

  12. I’m no lawyer, but generally the photographer of celebrity images owns the copyright. You should at least add a disclaimer and a quick way for removal if someone protests.

    Darren

  13. Sorry, I should sign my whole name so you’re not confused which Darren said that :)

    Darren McLaughlin

  14. Hello – Darren –

    With regards to the disclaimer… I currently have a disclaimer on the About Us section of our webpage. The only thing I may be considering is giving the disclaimer its own personal page and maybe including it at the bottom of my website.

    So, as of right now, I do have a disclaimer, although it isnt as readily accessible as it should be. So I should take into consideration and fix that.

    Thanks for the tips. I am still learning as well.

  15. […] The advice I can offer bloggers so far right now can be found on Darren’s Problogger…which is where he featured me as a lesson from a celebrity blogger. […]

  16. […] Since there is such a large audience available, gaining traffic is relatively easy. In April of 2006, I wrote an article for Darren Rowse’s Problogger on how I went from 50 uniques per day to 1500 uniques per day in approximately 3 weeks. However, unlike most product blogs or tech-related blogs, the amount of revenue earned per visitor, tends to be much lower, but don’t let this be a deterrent. Some gossip blogs are earning six figures a year. […]

  17. great tips…hvnt had much content going into my blogs….will have to give that another thought

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