![]() I knew that quote was expensive so I called someone else up and got it done for £20. For one project, a company wanted to charge me £60 to do a little gif, making a logo move a bit to catch the eye. Technically, the most important thing is to have someone good who you can call on and who won’t rip you off. Posting is easy and that’s the important bit. You don’t want so many advertisers that all your writing is supporting them, you want to go out and find new stuff, but a directory is a good way to support other businesses.” That was one of the reasons I started the directory. I go and see them, make sure I know what they’re doing, Tweet them. This isn’t about writing advertorials, which I don’t do, but now I’m much more active in other ways. “For the first six months, I didn’t think about supporting my advertisers, and I lost a couple in the early days because I just left them to it. At that point, I was competing with local magazines and newspapers, and then I went professional.” I started Muddy Stilettos for fun, then thought ‘I really want to do this!’ and worked very hard to get to 10,000 uniques. I think that’s the difference between a professional blog and someone who blogs just because they enjoy it. If people find a newsletter in their inbox in the morning, even if only half of them click on it, you’ve got them on your site. Blogging is bums on seats: you need to have the right numbers for people to advertise with you. You have to post regularly: every day at 8.15am, a Muddy Stilettos post is in every subscriber’s inbox. ![]() “I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as I work now. I do blogs and Tweets for other companies for example, a Tweet calendar every month for a big lifestyle company, which is a different income stream that’s popped up.” Muddy has also led to other opportunities. I’ve become far more business-oriented than I ever thought I would be, because I’ve found something I love and I want to make it work. I’m planning to franchise and extend into other counties over the next couple of years. It’s important to diversify rather than just relying on advertising – with the recession, people are thinking very hard about how to use their advertising budgets. “I’ve opened a Muddy Boutique and I also have a directory up and running – they provide different strands of income from the blog. I could earn more money from advertising if I was less fussy, but if I don’t keep that high quality bar, the whole reason for reading Muddy Stilettos disappears.” And if they trust me, they’ll trust my advertisers too, so I won’t have any advertisers I don’t think are good. Those tickets were £50 each – someone had spent £300 on my recommendation so it’s really important that people can trust me. I thought it was amazing and recommended it – and I was accosted in the school playground by someone saying they’d bought six tickets for the show. Last year, Flawless and the English National Ballet did a mash-up that came into the area. I visit everything myself – I never rely on press releases. “The whole point of Muddy Stilettos is that you trust it to help you make the most of your free time. ![]() Make sure your readers know they can rely on you My readers are women, primarily 30-55, most have children, they are quite urbane, they have money, they want to go out and have a good time.” “I target a demographic that nobody else does out here. Like any good idea, Muddy Stilettos meets a need.” Having recognised that need of my own, I then thought of all the other people migrating out of London. “When I moved to Buckinghamshire, I needed to find out about things happening around me.
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