Julia loves houses. Inside houses, outside houses, TV houses, celebrity houses and houses for sale. Yes, she’s hooked on houses…

www.hookedonhouses.net

Julia’s blogger profile…

Blog: Hooked on Houses

Blogger: Julia

Lives: USA

Twitter: @hookedonhouses

Visitors per month: About 200,000

When did Hooked on Houses start? January 2008

What’s it about? Houses. I show TV and movie houses, celebrity houses, before and afters, bad real-estate photos, you name it!

Why did you start blogging? I worked as a writer for years but never got to cover my favorite topic: houses. The blog was a place for me to have some fun and talk about the things that really interested me.

What was life like before blogging? The only blogs I had read were about writing. I thought I had a brand new idea to write a blog that would feature houses. I didn’t discover the world of design blogs until after I was already blogging – which was probably a good thing. I would have been intimidated if I saw all the fabulous house blogs that were already out there!

Which blogging platform do you use? WordPress.org. It’s easy to work with and looks professional – two things that are important to me!

Biggest blogging achievements? I’ve been very lucky to be linked to by a lot of great sites. What has been most exciting for me, though, is hearing from some of my favorite authors, architects, and designers. Getting “fan mail” from people I admire, telling me they love my blog, is a surreal experience.

How long do you work on your site? I turn on my computer around 7:30 in the morning and rarely turn it off before 10 or 11 at night. I work on and off throughout the day. Responding to my e-mail alone could be a full-time job!

How’d you get traffic in the beginning? About three months into blogging, the Guardian newspaper in the UK mentioned Hooked on Houses as a blog to watch and sent some serious traffic my way. Soon after that, I started getting linked to by some of the big blogs I admired like Desire to Inspire, and my readership continued to grow from there.

How’s your blog changed over time? My posts have definitely gotten shorter. I was used to writing for books and magazines, where you can be a lot wordier. Now I edit, edit, and edit some more to boil things down to the main points I want to make. Or I split them up into a series of posts instead of just one.

Do you make a living from your blog? Yes. As of January 2010, it became my full-time job. I sell private ads, but I also belong to an ad network that sells space for me.

Your best advice for bloggers? Figure out what makes you and your blog unique and run with it!

Biggest blogging mistake you’ve made so far? Thinking no one would see things I was writing. I felt anonymous and kind of invisible in the beginning. I’m much more careful about what I say now, and how I say it.