Blogging Into a Career

by Demetria Irwin

The dream is to do what you love and figure out how to make money doing it. For bloggers, that idea seems more distant than most.  Making millions from a blog is something only Perez Hilton and a handful of others have figured out. Most bloggers earn nothing beyond the occasional smartly worded comment or a spot on a coveted blog roll.  In between those two realities, there exists a space for bloggers to build their brand and create careers.

The Atlanta Post caught up with four New York-based bloggers who are doing just that.  Their specialty is technological alchemy—turning online clicks and comments into real life opportunities.  These bloggers are not uninterested in making blog money via the usual channels of banners and pay-per-click ads, but they are more interested in using their blogs as dynamic, evolving, shape-shifting resumes.

Name: Jamilah Lemieux aka Sister Toldja

Blog: A Beautiful Struggler

Plans for the Future: “Full time freelancer would be good. I want to be a media personality. I want to be the person people turn to for comments when something is going on in black relationships. I have a few book ideas for non-fiction and fiction too.”

In a way, Jamilah Lemieux has a typical blogger story. She started blogging in 2005 (The Beautiful Struggler was born in 2006) as a way to release her uncensored thoughts on everything from relationships to pop culture.  She has kept a regular 9 to 5 job the whole time.   “Boughetto” is a word she uses to describe herself in the About Me section of her blog, which gives you a hint of the sarcasm and wit that pervades her writing style.

At least two of her blog posts have appeared in popular national media. An essay of hers  about Reggie Bush and interracial dating graced the pages of Essence magazine and her open letter to Tyler Perry was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.

She has been a panelist for discussions on race, culture and relationships at various universities and is a contributor to an upcoming anthology about African-American women and fatherhood. Lemieux recently joined the Fresh Xpress, which she describes as a young, black Huffington Post. “I joined Twitter to promote my blog and it helped me further brand myself as a social media personality,” she said “I’ve started making some connections.  I’ve been very grateful for social media. I’m really humbled that some people want to read my opinions.”

She admits that she would rather concentrate on the quality of her work than delve into the ins and outs of ad revenue and other business related details. “The same person who redesigned my site set up my ad space,” she said. “I don’t make a whole lot of money off of that yet, but I’m looking to grow. I have done a couple giveaways, but I’m picky about that. I have a lot of black women in my readership, so the giveaways have to be things we can actually use.”

The number of unique views is one thing advertisers look at to determine whether or not to do business with a blogger. Lemieux was not willing to part with her exact viewership statistics, but her Twitter following is almost 4,500 strong and her blog posts typically garner dozens of comments each, not including those made on the various social networking sites.

Beyond trying to entice outside advertisers, Lemieux also uses her blog to advertise her own business.  A long-time baking enthusiast, Lemieux turned her passion into dollars by starting the home-based Sweethoney Desserts. She offers a wide range of treats, some with fun names like Winter Boo Bread Pudding.  Orders are taken via the blog and Lemieux has been pleasantly surprised at the response she has received.  Orders have been placed from as far away as Texas.  “It’s amazing to me that people who don’t know me personally are willing to pay me to do something I love.” That goes for baking and writing.

NEXT: Jozen Cummings

Name: Jozen Cummings

Blog: Until I Get Married

Plans for the Future: “I want to see the blog turn into a book and I’m excited about the first dollar I’ll make from the blog itself.  I think the next thing for me is yet to be determined, but it will probably never be determined by me alone.  I just have to be ready for it. I try to always stay ready for the next opportunity.”

Jozen Cummings just might be the hardest working writer in the blogosphere.  Any given day, you might see his byline on his own blog Until I Get Married, on the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog, on New York Magazine’s Vulture blog or Vibe’s Eldrick Woods Relationship Blog.  Before he became a prolific blogger, Cummings was the web editor at King Magazine and then the online editor and articles editor for Vibe Magazine before it (temporarily) folded in  the summer of 2009.  In the months following Vibe’s closure, Cummings started his blog and that blog helped  him land a spot back at the resurrected Vibe. “I already knew Jermaine Hall, the new editor-in-chief at Vibe, from our time at King. He reached out to me and he brought me on board as a special projects editor. As far as the relationships blog I have there, they noticed the following I get on my own blog and wanted to find a way to replicate that on their site.”

Until I Get Married details Cummings’ dating life as well as his big picture thoughts on women and romance. Though not even a year old, the blog has already attracted dedicated readers who comment frequently. Unlike some other bloggers, Cummings does not interact with his readers in the comments section—unless he posts under a pseudonym as one commenter has suggested. He says he likes for the readers to get the last word, but Cummings does interact with readers in other ways.  Besides being an active Twitter user, he was also a member of a relationships panel for the National Urban League’s New York chapter and he has just begun to get recognized on the street by blog readers.

Cummings estimates that he spends one and half to two hours crafting each blog post and about 15 minutes marketing the blog on various social networking sites. “Since writing is my day job too, it’s kinda hard to break down the amount of time spent on each project,” he said. “I spend about 10 to 12 hours a day in front of my computer, which makes it seem like I have no life, but it’s really no different than the amount of time people spend at their office jobs.”

With the help of his friend and business partner Jermaine Roseman, Cummings switched over to WordPress.org in mid-March so he could begin hosting ad space. They expect to start seeing revenue from those Google AdSense ads by the fall. The team says that February brought in views in the upper five figures.  “Writing is not a hobby for me. It is the only way that I pay my bills.  Until I Get Married is my baby. It’s my passion project. It shows what I’m able to do beyond just writing,” he said. “It shows my work ethic, the kind of person I am and that I’m capable of engaging an audience.”

NEXT: Kitty Bradshaw

Name: Kitty Bradshaw (not inclined to give her real name)

Blog: Kitty Bradshaw

Plans for the Future: “My blog will be pulling in six figures in about a year and at that time I’ll quit my day job, shut down the blog and focus on the next level of my career.”

Kitty Bradshaw’s blog chronicles her experiences as a California girl navigating her new life in New York City.  Her hodgepodge of movie reviews, fashion show rundowns and pop culture commentary don’t always garner comments, but they do attract hits.

According to Bradshaw, her site has 15,000-20,000 hits every month. That was enough to grab the attention of clothing giant, The Gap.  Bradshaw is a “brand ambassador” for the retailer, one of 50 around the country. The company is the main sponsor for her site and they sponsored the swanky one-year anniversary party for her site in 2009.

The party included gift bags stuffed with shoes, blue jeans (Gap of course), beauty products and other items provided by a bevy of sponsors.  “Sponsors approach me because I get my brand out there.  I stay pro-active by going to blogging and technology conventions, reading up on the newest trends in marketing and just generally knowing my business. I was just reading about people who get paid for tweets. I’m definitely going to look into that,” said Bradshaw who invested $4,000 into her logo.  “I know I spent more than most people would for something like that, but I wanted to own my logo. My blog is a platform for me to expand into other things, so I take it very seriously. I spend about 12 hours a day doing things related to nurturing and expanding my brand.” Bradshaw won’t specify her exact post-blogging career goals, but she says it will be media related.
NEXT: Demetria Lucas

Name: Demetria Lucas aka Belle Woods

Blog: A Belle In Brooklyn

Plans for the Future: “The goal is a talk show, but my approach is to just do my best and put myself in a position to take advantage of opportunities as they come my way.  I don’t really know what’s going to happen in the future, but I know it will be good. “

For Demetria Lucas, it all started with Myspace. Back in 2007, she used her Myspace blog as a way to share her dating adventures and thoughts on romance.  Friends of friends and strangers started sending her friend requests just to read her blog.  As the blog’s popularity grew, Lucas successfully pitched the idea of a relationship column to Honey Magazine.  She was editing romance novels  at the time (though she knew her heart was in magazine editing) and freelancing for various urban magazines.

Just four months into publishing her online column with Honey, an Essence Magazine staffer and avid reader of her blog contacted her to let her know that the magazine was looking for a new relationships editor.  Lucas got the job and she continued blogging on her personal time.  She usually writes the blog posts on her Blackberry (or Belleberry as she calls it) on the train on her way to work. The blog grew, raking in thousands of hits per day and attracting an international readership.

Lucas’ face appears in Essence every month alongside her relationships column and also in the About Me section of her blog. “People will stop me on the street or at parties and say ‘you’re that Essence girl’ or ‘you’re Belle,'” she said. “I spoke at a panel at Princeton recently and one of the student reporters said she thought my real name was Belle Woods.”

She receives about three invitations a week to speak at various universities and organizations. Lucas won’t divulge her average number of hits per month, but she did say that the number of comments on any given post is a mere single digit percentage of the number of views for that post. With posts frequently garnering well over 100 comments and an average of three to four new posts per week, A Belle In Brooklyn potentially pulls in at least hundreds of thousands of visits per month.  Lucas says she has considered putting advertisements on the site but has to figure out a classy way to do it.

As an editor at a popular magazine and the writer of a popular blog (she’s very happy with both positions), determining which perks come from the magazine and which ones come from the blog is almost impossible. “I get access to people because of my job at Essence and in those conversations, something might pop in my head that inspires me to blog about it and, in turn, a conversation is sparked.” The reverse happens as well.  Some of Lucas’ blog posts now appear on the Essence.com and sometimes a reader’s comment will move Lucas to suggest a particular idea for the magazine column. One thing that is definitely a result of the blog is an offer from a major publishing house to publish a collection of A Belle In Brooklyn stories. Lucas is still mulling the offer, but hopes to have the book on shelves in 2011.