Phew! I like success stories but getting 7 million hits on a blog per day is something special. I went into shock when I managed 40,000+ in one day - but just imagine millions!When I read about this my eyes were like old fashioned cash registers and my mind was doing all sorts of calculations ... If the blog used Voxant videos that would make $28,000 per day just from that (7 million divided by 1000 times $4). That's, that's $196,000 per week ... That's ... astronomical ... Now think about other advertising as well and ... well, all sorts of things.
The blog I'm referring to is Perez Hilton - nothing to do with Paris Hilton! Perez Hilton is a bloke called Mario Lavandeira and he started his blog three years ago.
The blog's name was actually influenced by Paris Hilton as it's all about celebrities (yes, yet another one). Perez and Paris sound sort of similar. The value of a good name.
The thing is though that if you go to his blog you might well think that it isn't anything that special. Sure it's got a pretty pink heading (he's gay and keeps mentioning this fact) but a lot of the posts are short and dominated by a photo, which is often doodled on with almost crude remarks or symbols.Whatever your opinion of the blog the main point is that people (well 7 million people) want to read and look at what he writes. So much so that he has now virtually become a celebrity himself.
Perez/Mario says, "I have always been fascinated by celebrity. As a child I watched a huge amount of television and dreamed about one day being part of that world. Now I am."
See, it's that dream ... if you have a dream it can come true. If you don't have a dream then (as the song goes) 'how you gonna make a dream come true'. It's also writing about something you have a passion about.
Blogs can alter your world and you can, of course, become anything or anyone that you wish.
In Perez's words, "When I'm Perez it gives me the liberty to do things that as Mario I would never do. There's a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on. Perez says crazy things and loves to stay out late at parties. Mario likes to stay at home and be in bed by ten."
The Perez Hilton blog has a definite style of it's own plus it is continuously being updated with the latest news. It's a winning formula.
There are always lessons to be learnt from success stories if we bother to look at them properly and think about why the success has come about.
A lot of it, as I keep on saying, is giving people what they want.
Do this and nothing else really matters. You can forget about SEO, PageRank, Top Lists etc. etc. These are merely add-ons - a bit of icing on the cake.
Good luck,
Mike.
