Exactly one year ago, in August 2008, I wrote my first entry for Doe Deere Blogazine. My heart skipped a beat as I pressed that blue “Publish” button. After that, my life was never the same again.

I can’t believe it’s been a year already. It seems like only yesterday we’ve shared our beauty secrets, debated whether women should take their husbands’ names & confided our deepest secrets into each other. 12 months and 307 posts later, 3,500 people jump on this carousel of GLEE daily to read, comment, seek or give advice. They say it’s all about the audience and it’s true – but it goes far beyond that. What this is, is a community of intelligent, open-minded, engaging people – a community I’m proud to be a part of!

All my fans who stuck with me from the beginning – thank you! You have changed my life in ways that I cannot even express. A huge thanks to fellow bloggers who tirelessly supported me through my most difficult first year. And last but not least, my family and friends – thank you for reading my blog even though you don’t have to!! It means the world to me.

In order to celebrate this joyful occasion, I have prepared a couple surprises.

Doe Deere’s Box of Delights: Anniversary Edition

I always put lots of thought into my boxes, but this time it’s going to be extra special! To win the Anniversary Edition Doe Deere’s Box of Delights, tell me in comments: What do you love about this blogazine? What would you like to see more of? Is there a particular subject you’d like to see me cover in the future?

Winner will be picked at random and announced on August 21st.

20% off on select Lime Crime products!
What better way to celebrate the anniversary than by rocking some colorful makeup? Sale begins today, August 14th and ends on August 21st.

Here’s to another year of sparkly, infectious GLEE!

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I have just started a new blog and am having trouble gaining an audience. Could you please give me some tips?

One of the best things about blogging – and what attracts people the most – is the immediate reaction you get to your work. You slave away at an article for a couple of hours, submit it with a click of a mouse and marvel at all the supportive comments pouring in. That’s the theory behind it, anyway. Of course, finding an audience can be a challenge for a newcomer. No one wants to pump out posts without any evidence that they are even being read – unless it’s a secret diary, and I have a few of those scattered all over the internet.

Last week I got to meet the alt porn star Joanna Angel (a female entrepreneur of BurningAngel.com fame, who pretty much runs the entire alt porn industry), and we ended up talking about her job. “When people ask for advice to get into porn, I tell them porn is not hiring,” she stated bluntly. “Porn doesn’t need any more actors and actresses – what we need is more promoters, people who will push it”. Funny thing is, I’m sure Johanna was told the exact same thing when she was starting out – except it didn’t deter her.

When someone tells you you can’t do it, it usually means one of the following: a. They have failed; b. It’s a test to ‘separate the boys from the men’, to see how determined you really are. It all comes down to this: if you are fabulous at what you do, you will be accepted and embraced.

Blogosphere Circa 2009

If I were to paint an honest picture of the blogosphere today, it would resemble a Hieronymus Bosch painting: effin’ crowded. Everyone and their grandma has a blog – and, sadly, the good ones are far in between. Oversaturation causes people to become extra-picky – the real reason you’re having trouble gaining readership. The good news is that in such an abundance of talent out there, you’ll have lots to be inspired by. Yes, you may have to compete for attention, but I promise you that if you can upstage what’s already out there, you will come out on top!

Most successful bloggers have several things in common: quality content, some originality, and consistency. In other words: good writers who write about interesting subjects & put own twist on it. They build up expectations and consistently come through on them. The important thing to remember is that success doesn’t come overnight; most heavyweights of blogging have been at it for a long time. Christine of Temptalia – 2.5 years. Gala Darling – 2 years. Jane of Sea of Shoes – 2 years. I’ve been blogging since 2004 and was able to successfully transfer my readership to my own platform 9 months ago. I post 5 times a week and am not planning to stop any time soon.

Growing a successful blog

• Blog about what you know and are extremely passionate about.
• Make it as unique and as “you” as possible!
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with new subjects – you might just find your niche!
• Listen to your audience: your best guide.
• Think of your blog as a portfolio of works, a database of articles you’re seriously proud of.
• Spread the word: comment on other blogs, tell your friends, post on forums. For instance, I use MySpace & Twitter.
• Pick a posting schedule – be it 3 times a week or 3 times a day – and stick to it.
• Bad reasons to start a blog: “I’m bored”, “I need a tool of self-affirmation”, “I want to make money quick”.
• Good reasons to start a blog: “I love writing”, “I have something better to offer than what’s already out there”, “I cannot NOT blog!”.

Bottom line: do it because you love it & if you don’t love it, don’t do it!

For curious minds: Is Blogging For You?, How To Start a Blog by Gala Darling.

Deerlings: do you have a blog? How do you promote it?

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Before MySpace and Facebook, LiveJournal was the first convenient, fun network to keep in touch with your friends. We would document our lives in a journal and comment on each other’s entries daily. For many years LJ was the place to meet new people, express yourself creatively, even market a small businesses. And then something happened. LiveJournal became dead journal; posting in it was like screaming in a desert – no one will hear or care.

My sister wrote a piece about her personal experience on LiveJournal – why she started it, how it came to an end, and what the future holds. I just had to share.

Written by Kat V.

In an effort to show courtesy to my fellow LJ-ers, I went through my friends list and read their journals. I discovered that most had stopped posting regularly around 2006, which incidentally is about the same time I stopped caring for LJ too. The reason for this massive abandonment of a previously popular internet destination is Facebook. Like MySpace, LJ is suffering a slow and painful death. It is essentially a stabbed, bleeding half-corpse. “It’s like a superhero that’s been shot in the back and lunges forward, without realizing it,” one of the commenters evokes.

Some users, like me, still cling on for lack of motivation to start a new blog or maybe due to some nostalgic attachment to LJ. But in general, nobody cares for other people’s whining, especially when it’s laid out poorly and lacks pretty pictures. Nowadays, the preferred blogging platforms are Blogspot and WordPress, which have a cleaner, prettier layout. LJ is actually celebrating its 10th anniversary in April of this year. This means they’ve been around since 1999 – that’s before the millennium! They’re actually putting together a book with some highlights from LJ’s existence. I suppose what makes LJ different from Blogspot and the rest is that there are many communities, which I never took part of (and the one I did join, City Life, filled my friends page with gigantic photos of cities throughout the world).

Content wise, good blogs nowadays are rarely about the self. They usually entail some personal experience but try to reach out to a bigger audience with topics other than the blogger’s personal life. So I am now questioning the quality of my blog – or, rather, a journal. It was never meant to be entertaining. It was started when I was 18, and thus documented a good portion of my life and a good chunk of teenage idiocy. Now I’m wondering whether I should write a real blog that would be interesting to other people, not just me.

I went ahead and enabled anonymous commenting on my LJ. Maybe that’s what was preventing thousands of readers of brilliant and entertaining kat in the hat from leaving their mark? I changed the status of many entries from “friends only” to “public” because I realize that virtually none of my friends have LJ accounts, making “friends only” as good as “private”. I tried to remove most identifying content though, especially the kind that could embarrass The Company.

P.S. A friend of mine recently mentioned the word “Web log” a couple of times. I was very surprised to hear it. Most people have already forgotten that obsolete term.

Deerlings: what is your favorite social networking site today? Why?

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Setting the trend: (clockwise left to right):
Gala Darling, Queen Gilda, Nubby Twiglet, Agent Lover, Star

I was recently (and to my great surprise) mentioned as part of the new ‘Personality Blogger Girl’ trend. According to this article, myself and the girls above have these things in common:

• Young female, using a glamorous pen name
• A mix between personal life, recommendations of products/people, and how-tos based on everyday life (such as How To Be Fabulous)
• Plenty on design, fashion, style, culture, trends
• Blogger likely to be an artist or other creative person
• Promotes the blogger itself as a brand
• “Things I Love Tuesday” (possibly started by one of those bloggers)
• Similar layouts

This got me thinking: Could I be a part of a movement and not even know it?

While I think that placing me next to these senior bloggers was a bit premature – most of these ladies have been blogging for months, even years, where as I just started – I can definitely see the similarities between us. We all love fashion, but use it to express our individuality rather than to fit in; we are artistically inclined and place high value in aesthetics, while maintaining that inner happiness is essential; and lastly, we all write about everyday events through the prism of our own experiences.

If that’s the case, then maybe it’s not such a bad trend! In fact, I think it’s revolutionary enough to inspire more similar blogs to come out in the nearest future. It fills me with GLEE to think that we may have unwittingly created a new community with a terrific purpose – to perk up and inspire women around the globe!

This movement is not some sort of a clique; it’s all-inclusive. A whole bunch of new, extraordinary blogger girls to look at and get to know is a good thing in my book! :D

Do we really market ourselves as a brand?

I think some bloggers do, some don’t, and some don’t give it much thought. I don’t like to think of myself as a ‘brand’, but I probably am. After all, this blog is centered around my life and experiences. I see nothing wrong with that though – as long as I get to connect with people through my writing, experiment, take pictures and have fun! :)

Have a lovely weekend, Deerlings!

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