This is the first in a three-part series on LifeHacker. I'll take a look at the blook first. Then I want to talk about the two articles ProBlogger Darren Rowse recommended, Turn Your Blog into a Book, Parts I and II. They're by the LifeHacker herself Gina Trapani.
Ms. Trapani (with a staff of three) writes a highly successful technology blog published by Gawker Media. Launched just two years ago, the statistics are phenomenal. In an article from the Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2007, Andrew Lavalle wrote:
The number of people visiting Lifehacker rose sharply last year, according to both internal and external estimates, though the data vary widely. According to research firm comScore Networks, Lifehacker attracted 287,000 unique visitors in November, the latest figures available, up from 98,000 a year earlier. Gawker Media said it doesn't have comparable stats for 2005, but said the site's unique monthly audience nearly doubled in the second half of 2006, reaching two million visitors in November.
Similar to Melinda Roberts's success with Mommy Confidential (Federated Media Parenting and Entertainment Network, ClubMom, Johnson & Johnson, The Disney Internet Group, and MothersClick.com), Trapani has been "invited by Microsoft Corp. and other companies to their headquarters for product briefings and Yahoo Inc. asked her to be a judge at a recent programming competition" (WSJ).
In a interview she gave Darren Rowse, Trapani said:
On average I write about 6 posts a weekday ... and two feature-length original articles per week. ... I get paid much the way a writer at a magazine gets paid. At magazines, you get paid per word; blog publishers usually pay per post. Feature posts - like magazine feature stories - require the most work and bring in the most traffic, so we get paid a higher rate for them.
Her three co-editors do the same - 6 posts a day, 1-2 feature articles a week. Trapani said, "Our goal is to update the site about 20 times per weekday and a reduced rate on the weekends, and offer at least one original feature article per weekday."
It would be interesting to know if other bloggers follow the same pattern. Even just the "several short posts a day." We'll see in Part 2, that Trapani "posted to Lifehacker 12 times a day every weekday for 9 months" before being approached by an agent. [I could probably do that - I wouldn't be worth much after having done it -- but I could maybe do that :-)] Do you think a huge number of posts increases your chances of getting picked up? Compare this to RealLivePreacher who was approached 3 weeks after he'd started blogging.
Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day was published by John Wiley & Sons.
LifeHacker the blook - Part 2 -- LifeHacker the blook - Part 3
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