I met with Peter Sive, MD of Catalysis Communications last week and he shared with me an interesting story about his 14 year old daughter Alex that I thought was worth repeating.
Apparently his daughter is into blogging about fashion and like me, she watches the statistics on the site closely to see what content resonates with her audience.
She has noticed that when she blogs about herself, the stats drop. If she blogs more broadly, the hits increase.
The site she has set up with a friend of hers is closely focused on fashion, and the latest posts have a 12 days of Christmas theme.
Her ultimate aim is something that shows a very entrepreneurial streak in her. Apparently she wants to “get more followers” so that she can monetise the blog with Google Adsense and therefore “not have to take up a paper round” (paper route if you are American).
This got me thinking – will the ability to monetise blogging replace the traditional way of making money for a teenager – the paper round?
The times they are a changing! By the time Miss Madeleine is 14, perhaps there will be other ways to make money beyond those we know of now.
Hats off to Peter’s daughter for spotting an opportunity, and also being aware as an author of what drives her audience, and adapting accordingly.
At the time of posting, she had 2,948 hits, so let’s see what happens when we unleash the London Calling readers on her blog!
UPDATE (2019): The blog has since been removed.