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Topic: I think I am a victim -- of my own success?
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| Author | Message |
| allaboutadvice | Posted – 1/23/2005 7:44:57 PM | show profile | email poster I started writing a quarterly beauty review column about six years ago with ''up-close & personal'' reviews. It was fun to do and before I knew it, I had close to 100 companies participating and the reviews were 30+ pages long! I'm grateful for the incredible support I get but I think I've become a victim of my own success! It now takes weeks, not days, to write. Reviewers din't work out and I don't have advertising because I don't want to bias the reviews. I've got this incredible resource. I'd like to make it into something lucrative, but every time I query Editors on magazines they say they have someone doing reviews. Web sites are competitors or won't pay. I can't really use the columns as a clip due to their size. I can't think how to turn what was just a fun hobby into something more lucrative and I think I'm too close tp the situation. I would be glad to supply the url to the column to anyone who might have ideas or suggestions, and thanks in advance for this! |
| ladeedah | Posted – 1/23/2005 11:12:50 PM | show profile | email poster first, you should limit the amount of products you review if you're worried about the length. or, you could develop a mailing list--which i assume you have--and send a bi-weekly e-mail newsletter highlighting just a few products. advertising is sometimes a necessary evil, but your clients wouldn't necessarily have to be beauty related. you might try to focus on building yourself up as a beauty expert, or offering a personal beauty shopper service on your site. check out shefinds.com...michelle started that, and now writes a shopping column for metro every week or so. good luck...and let me know if you need reviewers! |
| limericks4all | Posted – 1/24/2005 12:02:06 PM | show profile If you want to turn a hobby into a business, you have to be businesslike. Hobbies are meant to be fun; business isn't. It can be fun, but that's not its purpose. So if you want to make this a business, you can't just focus on what you like to do (the fun stuff), but what you need to do (which often is no fun at all.) It doesn't sound like there is much of a market for selling the reviews to other publications. So that's out. If you want to turn your web site into a money making proposition you have two choices for generating revenue: 1. You have to charge readers (in this case, I doubt they'd pay). 2. You have to sell advertising. If you don't want to do the latter, I can't see of any way to make money. I don't see why you can't use the columns as clips. Understandably, no one will want a 30-page clip. But I doubt the people who come to your site read it that way. I'd imagine the reviews are divided into sections, and you could send a short section as a clip. You might also want to start scaling back on the side of your reviews. This is the business part. It may be fun to have those long reviews. But is it businesslike? Do readers really need that much info? How much work can you do in the time you can afford to devote to it? << started writing a quarterly beauty review column about six years ago with ''up-close & personal'' reviews. It was fun to do and before I knew it, I had close to 100 companies participating and the reviews were 30+ pages long! I'm grateful for the incredible support I get but I think I've become a victim of my own success! It now takes weeks, not days, to write. Reviewers din't work out and I don't have advertising because I don't want to bias the reviews. I've got this incredible resource. I'd like to make it into something lucrative, but every time I query Editors on magazines they say they have someone doing reviews. Web sites are competitors or won't pay. I can't really use the columns as a clip due to their size. I can't think how to turn what was just a fun hobby into something more lucrative and I think I'm too close tp the situation. I would be glad to supply the url to the column to anyone who might have ideas or suggestions, and thanks in advance for this!>> |
| wonderdog | Posted – 1/24/2005 1:16:42 PM | show profile Assuming you have a readership and are a known quantity in the beauty world, what I would do is take my best columns and pitch it as a book. You can cash in on work you've already done and give yourself a higher profile that might land you a column spot at some perfume-ad-soaked magazine. |
| allaboutadvice | Posted – 1/24/2005 3:29:57 PM | show profile | email poster ''perfume ad soaked magazine'' -- I really loved that description. Seriously, thanks for the comments. I do appreciate them. The reason this column is so interesting is precisely because it is unbiased and also because it is so huge. Readers really DO want to have a myriad of choices. It would be a lot easier just to cut things down to the top ten --- but it would then be pretty much like everyone else's. The sheer size and scope is the distinguishing factor. Anyway, thanks all for your thoughts, at least those who have posted so far. Many minds are always better than one! |
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