Chapter 12
Taking Your Blog to the Next Level: A Case Study
Much of what we’ve covered so far focuses on the introductory stages of blogging, but what happens when your blog has been around for a while and you want to take it to the next level? How do you expand it from being just another blog that has a few readers and that makes a part-time income to becoming a profitable business in and of itself?
In this chapter, I walk you through the way that I’ve grown my Digital Photography School (DPS) blog into a blog that is read by more than 5 million visitors a month, and which has sent blog buyers my way with seven-figure offers.
The Launch of DPS—Years 1–2
On a rainy afternoon in April 2006, I received another e-mail from a reader of my existing camera review blog asking for advice on how to use his camera in low-light situations.
I’d been developing a small blog that aggregated camera reviews from around the web for a couple of years now, and e-mails asking for advice on how to use cameras was a pretty regular thing to hit my inbox. I’d only ever written camera review posts, and avoided “how to” content on my existing photography blog. I usually replied to these requests for help with a “sorry but I don’t write that type of post” e-mail.
On this day, I was about to send this type of reply when, on a whim, I decided to write a short tutorial on how to use a camera in low-light situations. After completing the post, I was about to publish it on my review blog when an idea struck ...
