While Kate puts “Drop Dead Gorgeous Daily” into the category of online shopping websites (over blogs), she uses savvy skills all bloggers can adopt…

www.dropdeadgorgeousdaily.com

Kate’s blogger profile…

Blogger: Kate McKibbin

Blog: Drop Dead Gorgeous Daily

Lives: Australia

Twitter: @ddgdaily

Visitors per month: 20,000

Date started: December, 2006

What’s it about? The best online shopping buys and fashion news.

Why did you start blogging? For my old job [online editor at Australia's Shop Til You Drop magazine] I had to subscribe to so many great websites and newsletters, and I would see all these lovely things to buy that were either only available somewhere really hard to find, like at a market stall [two states away], or shopping sites that didn’t deliver to Australia. So I decided to create a fashion site that was dedicated to gorgeous things you could buy immediately, even if you lived in Australia.

What was life like before blogging? I worked as an online editor at Shop Til You Drop and also [Australian] New Woman magazine for nearly three years and freelanced for many other publications at the same time. Although, being a computer nerd runs in my family; my dad has an online business and my brother designs computer games, so I had lots of readily available help.

Which blogging platform do you use? I started out on TypePad because it was really easy to set up and style, but it didn’t offer enough features, so I bit the bullet and moved to WordPress.org.

Biggest blogging achievements? I have been front row at New York fashion week twice, all because of my website.

How long do you work on your site? It currently takes up about 20 to 30 hours of my time a week, and I have freelancers who help as well.

How’d you get traffic in the beginning? My site actually started out as a newsletter, and because there was such a gap in the market just by word of mouth my sign-ups grew really quickly. Now I get about 30 percent of my traffic from Google – WordPress has great search engine optimisation plug-ins. Thirty percent comes from paid ads on Facebook, Google searches and StumbleUpon, and the rest is either direct or from my newsletter, which goes out every day.

How’s your blog changed over time? It started out as one little write-up a day, that would take me about 20 minutes to do. Now there is so much going on (and I am adding in new features all the time) that it’s basically a full-time job.

Do you make a living from your blog? Yes I do, although I do other work in the industry as well when I need some extra funds. I have a lot of different revenue streams, from traditional advertising to affiliate programs, and a few others in between. I also help other people set up websites and blogs, which is lots of fun.

Your best advice for bloggers? Only do it if you are passionate enough to keep it up – even on your bad days. And don’t do it for the fame or fortune, they are just added bonuses for the very, very lucky.

Biggest blogging mistake you’ve made so far? Getting blinded by dollar signs and putting content on my site that I didn’t really think fit the audience, and falling for some instant traffic quick wins, that is, buying traffic and backlinks. I found these to be total scams and not good for overall traffic at all.

Do you run any other blogs? Not at the moment, but stay tuned!