A Case Study of BloggingTips.com: Planning, Developing, and Selling the
Blog
alt="A Case Study of BloggingTips.com: Planning, Developing, and Selling the Blog" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-4-500x277_c.png" />
I always say that blogging is an easy thing to do, but a difficult thing to master. It takes time for an aspiring blogger to iron out certain bad habits. Even people who pick up blogging quickly make a lot of mistakes along the way. Someone new to blogging could read a dozen books on how to build, promote and monetize a blog. Yet, there is no doubt that they would then go away and make many mistakes which those books advised against. This is not a bad thing, as identifying your mistakes and learning from them is one of the best ways to improve.
One of the best teaching methods available is the case study. By observing real-life events, you can learn what to do and what not to do. Today I would like to present to you a retrospective case study of title="BloggingTips.com" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com">BloggingTips.com; a blog which I founded in 2007 and later sold in 2010. It remains one of the most popular blogging advice blogs on the internet.
Before I launched the blog, I primarily made money online through discussion forums and small content websites. Launching BloggingTips completely changed the direction of my work online. Since that day, the majority of my income has came from blogging. BloggingTips was my first serious blog and I emerged from the sale of the blog with a lot of experience on blogging.
In a way, BloggingTips was my journey from a novice to an experienced blogger. Therefore, it the perfect blog for me to use a case study for all of you. I hope you enjoy the article :)
My Introduction to Blogging
Blogging has its roots in the late 90s, however it was was not until the mid 2000s that we started to see commercial websites using blogging platforms to publish content. I kind of fell into blogging by accident. When I first went backpacking to Asia and Australia in 2003, I created a gallery website for my friends and families. I used the website to upload pictures of our travels.
I travelled in 2004 and a little in 2005 too, however it was not until 2006 that I went on a long journey again. This 9 month trip took in Asia again, before going back to Australia for a month, and then onto New Zealand for 6 months (heading back to the UK via Japan and Germany).
I had noticed years before that I was saying the same thing over and over to friends and family in emails. When you are travelling, you do not have a lot of time to sit in internet cafes all day writing emails. So I moved the gallery to a sub folder and then uploaded a blogging script to the root of the domain. This allowed me to post updates to everyone. It saved me a huge amount of time.
I tested lots of different blogging platforms before finally settling on title="Serendipity" href="http://www.s9y.org/">Serendipity. The picture below shows you how basic the blog was. At the time I owned professional looking websites, however I did not see the point in spending money or time modifying the design if it was only my friends and family who were looking at it.
id="attachment_737" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/travel-blog.png">
class=" wp-image-737 border" alt="One of my first blogs" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/travel-blog.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/travel-blog.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/travel-blog-300x89.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
class="wp-caption-text">My travel blog was basic to say the least, however it served a purpose.
Due to the amount of blogging platforms I tried out for my personal blog, I started using blogging platforms for some content websites I owned. I added a blog to my poker discussion forums and I also added an add-on that allowed members to add blogs of their own. Some of my older websites used static files (i.e. did not use a database), therefore I upgraded those websites too in order to manage the content more easily.
Why A Blog About Blogging?
Despite using blogging software with my forums, on my travel blog, and as a CMS; I still did not run a stand-along blog. Therefore, I started to thinking about what I could blog about. My initial idea was to launch a daily blog about poker. I had read many poker blogs myself at the time so I knew it could be popular. In the end, I decided to add the poker blog to my existing community to take advantage of the traffic there. Looking back, the poker blog would have had more success if I had launched it on its own, as I was not able to show updates to forum members on the forum anyway (i.e. it was just a link on the menu, there were no active updates on the forum).
There are a million blogs about blogging today. Back in 2006 there was not as many, though it did feel that it was a little oversaturated. ProBlogger had launched in 2005, and was rightfully the most popular blog about blogging at the time (it still is to this day).
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class=" wp-image-736 border" alt="ProBlogger" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/problogger.png" width="750" />
class="wp-caption-text">ProBlogger in 2006
Very few blogs were of the same standard as Darren Rowse’s blog. Most were giving, what I considered to be, bad advice. In the early 2000’s I had run about a dozen websites that I had branded Webmaster Empire. These websites focused on search engines, affiliate networks, webmaster tools, etc. So whilst I was new to the medium of blogging every day, I had spent years writing articles about building traffic to a website, SEO, and affiliation.
So I decided to launch a blog about blogging. On many subjects, I considered myself very experienced, therefore I felt I had an edge of many other bloggers who were focusing on simple topics. I was perhaps a little deluded. Whilst I had been working online for several years by that point, my writing was terrible (embarrassingly so). Clearly, I had to work on the act of blogging itself.
Launching the Blog
I registered the domain name BloggingTips.org on 11 February 2007. Shortly after registering the domain I started making moves to secure BloggingTips.com. I had my eyes on the .com version of the name from the start. I knew that the COM extension is much easier to brand. I also knew that the more I developed the blog on the ORG extension, the more the COM extension would be worth. So there was a risk that by launching the blog too early, I would be pushing the price of the domain I needed up and up.
On the other side of the coin, I did not want to hold back launching the blog. I had lots of ideas of what I wanted to do with the blog and I did not want to hold back the launch for months because of the domain issue. Therefore, I title="Welcome to Blogging Tips" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com/2007/03/12/welcome-to-bloggingtips/">launched the blog on BloggingTips.org one month later on 12 March 2007. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long to move the blog to BloggingTips.com as I secured the title="BloggingTips.com Domain Secured" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com/2007/04/16/ive-secured-my-identity/">COM extension one month later for ,250.
id="attachment_743" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
class=" wp-image-743 border" alt="BloggingTips Initial Design" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-initial-design.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-initial-design.png 389w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-initial-design-300x151.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 389px) 100vw, 389px" />
class="wp-caption-text">The initial design had the tagline “Take your blog to the next level!”. It also featured a cartoon mascot of myself in a superman suit.
When I launched the blog, I was living in Auckland, New Zealand. My routine was the same each day. I would wake up about 9, grab something quick to eat, and then head to the gym for two hours. I would then come back and work on BloggingTips for about five or 6 hours. Later I would do Muay Thai training at night for an hour or so. Then after eating at night, I would work a few more hours.
From the start, BloggingTips always had a high posting rate. Some days I would publish three articles in a day. Between May and June, me and my friends were going to travel all over New Zealand by bus, and it was not possible for me to write so frequently when I was travelling. Therefore, I scheduled all of my articles in advance and then tried to write more if, and when, I could.
Most of the content that was published on the blog within the first four or five months was written by myself (save a few articles). My work rate was relentless. A quick look at the title="BloggingTips Archives" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com/archives/">BloggingTips Archives shows I had posted more than once a day during March 2007. In April I published 60 articles and in May I published 71.
Established the Blog
My promotional strategy during the first three months was quite straight forward:
- Publish a lot of articles
- Get reviews on similar blogs to bring my blog to the attention of more people
- Be active on other people’s blogs and leave good comments
- Guest posting
- Convert everyone who visited my blog into a subscriber
I also hosted a few competitions, including title="BloggingTips June 2007 Competition" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com/2007/06/01/june-2007-competition/">one in June 2007 to win a hosting, 0 in cash, and a blog that I had purchased at the start of 2007 that focused on the title="Microsoft Zune" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune">Microsoft Zune. I also hosted another competition that allowed bloggers to title="Win a mascot at BloggingTips.com" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com/2007/05/05/win-a-mascot-at-bloggingtipscom/">win their own mascot.
id="attachment_738" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
class=" wp-image-738 border" alt="Microsoft Zune" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/zunezag.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/zunezag.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/zunezag-300x151.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
class="wp-caption-text">Despite what many people though, the Zune was a fantastic MP3 player. It had a beautiful user-interface that was way ahead of its time.
The paid reviews helped bring in a lot of new subscribers to the blog. Ironically, I got a review on title="Blogging Tips – Blogging Guides, News, Tips, Resources" href="http://zacjohnson.com/blogging-tips-blogging-guides-news-tips-resources/">Zac Johnson’s blog, the blogger who would later purchase the blog from me.
By far the biggest return came from title="Blogging Tips – Take Your Blog To The Next Level!" href="http://www.johnchow.com/blogging-tips-take-your-blog-to-the-next-level/">my review on John Chow’s blog. A few months later I wrote about title="My experience with paid reviews" href="http://www.bloggingtips.com/2007/07/07/my-experience-with-paid-reviews/">this experience with paid reviews, detailing the traffic I received from the John Chow review.
style="text-align: center;">
class="aligncenter wp-image-739 border" alt="John Chow Traffic Spike" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/johnchow-traffic-spike.png" width="750" />
Unfortunately, as the Feedburner feed was transferred to the new owner when I sold the blog, I cannot show you any statistics on the growth of subscribers during this time. I do, however, still have access to some stats via Google Analytics. As you can see, I received about 1,000 visits from the John Chow review. I got a lot of new subscribers too, however my daily traffic dropped down to a similar level after a few days.
style="text-align: center;">
class="aligncenter wp-image-744 border" alt="John Chow Traffic Spike" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/johnchow-traffic-spike-2.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/johnchow-traffic-spike-2.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/johnchow-traffic-spike-2-300x78.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
Taking It To The Next Level
In the Summer of 2007 I brought in many other bloggers to help me write content for the blog. As I was still writing frequently myself, the posting frequency greatly increased. By September the monthly post rate was around 90 articles per month (3 per day). Most other blogs at the time published articles 3-4 articles per week.
Was it a good decision to publish so much content? In retrospect, probably not. Blogs such as Mashable have href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-business-ideas/how-popular-websites-use-high-posting-frequencies-to-succeed/">established themselves through high volume posting. This technique works well for news type websites, however it was not right for a blogging advice blog.
Firstly, the sheer volume of articles being published overwhelmed some readers. I recall a few people saying that they found they found it difficult to stay up to date. Secondly, most articles were only 500-1,000 words long. My own articles were normally longer, sometimes a few thousand words long.
At different stages of the site’s life, I had around a dozen or so bloggers writing on a regular basis. Each blogger was scheduled to publish once or twice a week. I set it up so that authors had the freedom to schedule content on their designed days themselves. Occasionally, this backfired, as authors would publish on the wrong day or at the wrong time. Generally, the system worked well though, and it ensured that there was at least two articles published every day, even if one author was sick.
One of the problems of this high posting schedule was that the feature articles that I spent a lot of time writing myself would sometimes get lost in the crowd. I suppose this was down to my own inexperience with blogging at the time. In the following years I would do more to emphasise the best articles on the blog.
If I had to go back and launch the blog again, the quality of posts is something I would have placed more emphasis on. It is difficult to get your point across in only 500 words, so many posts only touched upon a subject rather than explaining the subject in-depth.
So if I had to start a blog like that again, my primary focus would be on publishing long in-depth articles (in much the same way Web Hosting Secret Revealed does now).
The Design of BloggingTips
Despite using a few different blogging platforms in the past, BloggingTips was launched using title="WordPress" href="http://www.wordpress.org">WordPress. It was the platform I used throughout the life of the blog and the platform I continue to use for all of my content websites to this day.
What is interesting is that the blog was launched when I was new to WordPress. I was constantly learning new things about the platform and testing out new plugins, therefore BloggingTips was always in a state of evolution. As a result of this, the blog had many redesigns. This ensured that the blog always kept up to date with the latest advancements in WordPress.
BloggingTips.com Design #1
I created all of the designs myself during the first year. After the design which was used at launch, I created a simple design using the Revolution Theme, a framework type theme that was designed by title="Brian Gardner" href="http://www.briangardner.com/">Brian Gardner. In many ways, Revolution can be considered the predecessor of his flagship title="Genesis Framework" href="http://my.studiopress.com/themes/genesis/">Genesis Framework, which is the framework I currently use on title="Kevin Muldoon Blog" href="http://www.kevinmuldoon.com">my personal blog and on many small content websites I own.
The logo that I used at launch was designed by the guy who designed my mascot. I was never a fan of that logo (he himself said that logos were not his speciality), therefore I approached graphic designer title="David Airey" href="http://www.davidairey.com/">David Airey for a professional replacement. I loved the simple bold style that he came up with. I would continue to use the logo on the blog until I sold it (which illustrates how much I liked it as I changed everything else!).
id="attachment_745" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
class=" wp-image-745 border" alt="BloggingTips Design" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-2.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-2.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-2-300x166.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
class="wp-caption-text">Sporting a brand new professional logo from David Airey.
class=" wp-image-746 border" alt="BloggingTips Design" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-3.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-3.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bloggingtips-design-3-300x166.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
class="wp-caption-text">The white background remains, however the theme is a little darker
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