What do you do when you meet your hairdresser and husband on the same street? Blog about it, of course! What started (no so long ago) as a blog about hair, has turned into a wealth of info, more than 100,000 visitors per month, and an e-book on hairstyle how-tos. Over to you, Christina!

Meet Christina…

Blog: Hair Romance

Lives: Sydney, Australia

Twitter: @hairromance

Facebook: facebook.com/hairromance

Unique visitors per month: 110,000

Pinterest: pinterest.com/hairromance

Why did you start blogging?

I love hair and love styling my hair. My friend suggested I share how I style my hair and it’s grown from to be all about the hair.

What was life like before blogging?

I used to work in retail deign and was moving into project management but I realised I didn’t love it. I decided to take a chance and follow my dreams of running my own business and being a photographer. Blogging was a side project that’s become my main focus!

Which blogging platform do you use?

I’m currently on Blogger but moving to WordPress. Blogger was super easy and very low tech so was easy to start on. I’m moving my site to the next level and need the flexibility of WordPress now.

Biggest blogging achievements?

I made the first ever top five beauty blogs of the week on Vogue.com.au and passed one million hits in June 2011. I’ve been backstage at fashion week and Hair Expo and been involved in shoots. I love finding out about new products and the support of the blogging community is amazing.

How long do you work on your blog?

Wow, I spend so much time online now! I’m always reading blogs, following trends, looking up runway hair and beauty trends… then I actually have to focus on taking my own photos and writing! I love it, so it’s hard to quantify the time, but I would say a LOT!

How did you first get traffic?

My first traffic came from commenting on other blogs, and I still do that now. It’s a great way to make contact with other bloggers and become part of the community. Pinterest and StumbleUpon are also big traffic sources for my site.

How’s your blog changed over time?

I’m currently redesigning my logo and site. I’m always learning form other bloggers and when I see things I like on other sites I see how it could be incorporated into my site design.

Do you make a living from your blog?

I sell an ebook – 30 Hairstyle in 30 Days – which is going really well. I run Google Adsense ads and I am deciding whether to join Glam Media network or run my own ads. It all depends on time vs returns.

Biggest blogging mistake you’ve made?

Not having an editorial calendar. I am still working on this but being organised makes such a difference. Otherwise I’m always writing late at night for tomorrow’s post. Don’t neglect your real life for online life either.

Run any other blogs?

Not yet but I have few plans…

Blogging achievement you’re most proud of?

My ebook. Designing 30 hairstyles in 30 days and writing all the instructions! I set it up to sell it online and I did it all on my own! I am the photographer, model, designer, graphic designer and salesperson! I get such a buzz when I hear from readers who are trying the styles!

Anything else you’d like to share?

Don’t try and do it all on your own! I’m proud of my achievements but it’s quicker and easier if you ask for help. There are so many resources online, don’t be too proud to ask for help.

What Christina uses to run her blog…

When Emma and her partner Den first moved in together they decided they weren’t going to sit on the couch every night, they were going to go on regular dates with two rules: 1/ each date had to be different, and 2/ they had to cost under $30. And that’s how the idea for their website $30 Date Night began…

www.blog.30dollardatenight.com

Emma’s blogger profile…

Blog: $30 Date Night

Blogger: Emma Merkas

Lives: Australia

Twitter: @30dollardate

Visitors per month: 30,000 across our $30 Date Night Network, 8,000  for the blog.

Date started: July 2008

What’s it about? Marriage, romance, relationships, date ideas and our own date-night reviews.

Why did you start blogging? We started our date ideas website $30 Date Night and wanted to make it more interactive and also provide readers with evidence that we do as we preach as far as date night goes.

What was life like before blogging? I was working as the marketing communications manager at Park Hyatt Melbourne. The full time work schedule and I never really got along. I eventually bit the bullet and left to work on the business. Now I choose my own hours (which is brilliant because I love sleeping in) and work from the comfort of my house or a favourite café.

Which blogging platform do you use? We started on WordPress.org and haven’t looked back since. It’s a fantastic platform for complete customisation and even tech nuffies (like I used to be) can get around the back end without any dramas.

Biggest blogging achievements? My column at mX newspaper came as a direct result of my blogging. The editors there had been reading my posts and when a spot as the dating and relationships columnist opened up, they offered it to me.

I’m a huge believer in self-publishing for that reason. It makes you a proven concept and opens up so many avenues in the real world as well as the online world for you to achieve your goals.

How long do you work on your site? It varies from week to week – how long is a piece of string, really? I post five times a week at least and also do all the marketing, plus guest posts and articles, media spots, emailing, comments, writing e-books and more. It’s not quite a full-time role but it’s pretty close. My husband Den does probably 30 to 40 hours a week across all our sites working on coding, design, building new sites and fixing glitches.

How’d you get traffic in the beginning? To be honest in the beginning we fluked it. We put up the date ideas site and… people just started coming to the site! We were profiled in different media outlets all over the world without even trying. It was nuts. Since then, we’ve been doing everything we can to learn about attracting more traffic.

We rank third for “date ideas” on Google.com and first on Google.com.au. About 65% of our traffic comes from search engines. Writing guest articles and posts has always been good for generating extra traffic too.

How has your blog changed over time? We started with a really narrow focus on date ideas and date-night reviews but now we write about all things dating, marriage, relationships, products for couples and more.

Do you make a living from your blog? We haven’t monetised it properly yet, to be honest. Our first e-book is in pre-launch phase and we’re waiting to grow our traffic a little more so we can get onto a good advertising network.

We trialled Google Adsense for awhile but, being a dating site, we were getting a lot of singles ads and quite a few dodgy ones too. We would prefer to match our advertising better to our readers so we don’t annoy them with crappy ads.

We’re fortunate that our offline business allows us enough time and money to play around with this new internet venture of ours while we learn the ropes and get the formula right.

Your best advice for bloggers? Learn all you can from the experts as you go. There are so many little things that so many bloggers do wrong that can be easily fixed. I just found a bunch of them that I’m guilty of at the Problogger Event last week! There is always more learning you can do.

That, and network with the industry. Other bloggers can help and point you in the right direction and there are great forums for real-life networking that you should be taking advantage of.

Biggest blogging mistake you’ve made so far? My inconsistency in posting. I’m guilty of not always posting when I’m supposed to, or completely dropping the ball if I’m having a busy week elsewhere. I used to just wake up and write whatever I felt like writing on that day… I now have a blog plan which is updated to the rest of the year so I know what I have upcoming and can write for future posts and more. It’s still in early days but hopefully I can sustain it!

Do you run any other blogs? No, but I have a few niggly ideas sitting in the back of my head that won’t go away. As soon as $30 Date Night is making some money, I think I’ll need to jump on them and get them going!

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.

This week’s blogger came up with her blog’s name by accident. And I’m so glad that happened…

www.rawfoodswitch.com

I stumbled across Nathalie Lussier’s blog on raw foods while browsing Blogs.com.

I’m not sure what made me click on “Ten blogs to get you (or keep you) eating raw food” given I know little about the raw-food movement, apart from the fact that you eat raw food (wonder how I worked that bit out?).

But I’m so glad I did, because I’d never have discovered the cutest little blog on raw foods: Raw Foods Witch, and learned that eating raw foods is about more than carrot sticks.

It is, without a doubt, one of the nicest food blogs I’ve seen, and the witchy theme makes it really interesting. The lesson here: think outside the square.

I contacted Nathalie to tell me a bit more about her blog, witch (sorry, which) has some great ideas including design, videos, e-books and more.

Nathalie’s blogger profile…

Blogger: Nathalie Lussier

Lives: Toronto, Canada

Blog: Raw Foods Witch

Twitter: @nathlussier

How’d you come up with the “witchy” theme? I’ve always had a thing for witches, but when I created my blog I bought the domain with the idea of creating a site called “Raw Food Switch”. When I first ordered the domain, my boyfriend Robin said that it would be funny if it was ‘Raw Foods Witch’ instead. I immediately laughed it off, wanting to make a “serious” website and a ‘serious’ business. But later on I realised that people didn’t want to ‘switch’ to raw foods entirely, and that my site really wasn’t that different from all the other raw sites out there. So I made the witch switch, and here we are today. (And Robin still says he was right from the start!)

How do you think the witch theme has helped increase your number of visitors? It has helped in so many ways! I get people who recognise me or my business logo after they’ve been to my website. They immediately associate me as the Raw Foods Witch, and it sticks. It’s fun, it’s different, and who doesn’t love Bewitched and modern shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch?

What kind of feedback do you get about your site? One of the first things people comment on about my site is the design and the logo of the witch. It’s so much fun to be able to connect on design first, I think it gives people a chance to explore the content further. It’s like saying, “OK, this site is fun – it’s different and I think I’ll take a look around”. I get comments from both blog readers as well as colleagues in my industry on how pretty and fun the site is. It’s also given me the freedom to make my writing more informal and fun and write about magick potions and witch’s brew.

How has your traffic changed with the theme change? It’s hard to tell numbers-wise because when my blog was Raw Food Switch the site was only about three months’ old or so. But I can definitely say that I’ve gotten near-exponential growth since I’ve switched the design around to let my personality and love for witches shine through. Another fun thing that happened after I made the switch is that everything really started to fall into place. Friends pitched in to help design the logo, and I got so many more links and friendships from the change. It was a clear signal that I was going in the right direction!

Why did you decide to blog about raw foods? I used to have a blog called Billionaire Woman, that was all about inner and outer wealth for women. But I was starting to lose steam blogging there, despite loving the idea of it. I knew I wanted to start a business online and one of my passions has always been health and more recently healthy eating through increasing the intake of raw fruits and vegetables.

Las Vegas slot-machine artist, Melissa, decided she had too much nail polish. Her solution? A blog showing one nail-art design every day for a year…

The Daily Nail

Blogger: Melissa

Lives: Las Vegas, USA

Blog: The Daily Nail

Date started: September, 2009

Twitter: @dailynail

What I love about this blog is quite simply, the concept: one nail-art design a day for a year – and I’m not the only one who thinks it’s clever. Not long after being started, Melissa’s blog was featured by many well-known sites. Pretty impressive for a new site!

I think the lesson we can learn from The Daily Nail is that you don’t necessarily need to come up with a blog idea that requires you to write hundreds of words for each post (though I’m sure Melissa is dedicating quite a few hours to nail-painting).

Sometimes the best ideas are right in front of you – you just need to put your own spin on them. I asked Melissa to share her story with me.

How’d you get your blog noticed by so many great sites?
Oddly enough, it started when I painted my nails to look like strips of bacon. Geekologie picked it up, and it went really viral from there. I think those nails are on every bacon-related site on the web! After that, MTV Buzzworthy saw it, and put it on their blog. Then I was contacted by the beauty bloggers at Allure magazine for an interview. It has spread around the world; it’s been crazy! (Good crazy, of course!)

How many visitors is your blog now getting?
I get about 3,000 to 5,000 hits a day. I went from four [Google Friend Connect] followers to 1,183 in a matter of days.

What are you going to do with your blog when the 365 days are up?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think I’ll continue to post new designs, just not every single day. I’ve also considered inviting others to post their work, too. Or, I might just suck it up and see how long I can go without stopping!

What’s your all-time best nail-art/painting tip?
Take your time, don’t expect miracles, and don’t drink any caffeinated beverages if you expect clean lines.