Canucks Rock: All Canadian Link Up! 06/08

Welcome to our weekly All Canadian Link Up! This weekend and every weekend, Canucks Rock! with our All Canadian Link Up and Candid Canuck feature interview. Brought to you by your hosts: Did you know Canada?, Tales of a Ranting Ginger and Maple Leaf Mommy!

This week's Candid Canuck is Annemarie from Celeb Dirty Laundry. Check out our interview with her..

What advice would you give to newer bloggers?

A new blogger needs to make a plan for success. The plan can be divided into three parts:

The business end of things – how I get paid for what I do and how do I control my budget? Ad agencies, google, sponsored posts, selling things, companies wanting you to promote them, etc. That’s how you make money. Then there are costs – unavoidable costs like server costs - these are recurring costs that need to be paid regularly for you to stay in business. Then there are other costs that I would call start-up costs – things like getting your theme designed and built. If you have the knowledge and skill you could do these on your own with an off –the-shelf package. Then there are costs like hiring writers – forget about it!! DO NOT HIRE anyone to write for you until you are making money.
Develop a theme, style, and primary focus in terms of content – in other words, what do I want my blog to look like and to whom am I marketing? This is easy – do what you love – do what interests you – make your site representative of how you feel and think about issues and topics that matter to you. Make sure you choose fields and topics that you like to write about because you will be writing hundreds of posts before you even make a dent in the blogging world.
The social and relationship aspects of your blog – partners, traffic shares, internships, social buttons – other blogs with whom you can share content, traffic, feeds, workload, etc.

So the above is how I would go about organizing my planning for a new blog - even if you find my partitions uncomfortable you still need to make a clear plan. The blogger without a plan, plans to fail!

Who is your blogging mentor/hero?

Kitty Bradshaw - http://kittybradshaw.com/
Kitty is a hero of mine because she has branded herself and her blog brilliantly! Heck – Bacardi has named a drink after her!! This woman knows how to put together social and branding with top sponsors to market herself and her blog gloriously. She gets invited to everything and everyone wants to know her. What more could a blogger want?

How did you discover blogging and why did it interest you?

I started in 2010 MLRP – My Little Retirement Project http - http://mlrpmediagroup.com/ with the goal of making some extra money and commenting on celebs and celeb gossip – letting people know what I thought about Hollywood and the entertainment industry – my goal was to have 100,000 page views each month – that was the mark of success I desired…. Now I get several million visitors each month to my family of blogs including
Celeb Dirty Laundry http://www.celebdirtylaundry.com/,
Celeb Baby Laundry http://celebbabylaundry.com/,
Hollywood Hiccups http://hollywoodhiccups.com/,
Celeb Teen Laundry http://celebteenlaundry.com/ and
The Travel Moms http://thetravelmoms.com/.

If you could interview anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Mark Twain – the greatest American writer in my opinion. I’m a writer, now that I became a blogger, and so I compare myself to other writers – it’s only natural. When I read Twain I see a wit, warmth and understanding of the human condition unparalleled in American Literature. So while I won’t be able to write like Twain I’d like to get to know him and hear what he’d have to say about our crazy modern messed up world.

Do you find being Canadian helps you in the blogging world? Why or why not?

Being a Canadian citizen is not what matters in blogging – but being IN CANADA and a Canadian blog matters greatly - and not in a good way. America is naturally the biggest English language market on this planet and as a Canadian blog it is simply harder to crack into that market. Entertainment companies often discriminate against Canadian blogs even though we are next door neighbors and our cultures are so similar, especially in the entertainment/pop culture field! These companies, networks, etc., often do not allow access to their features and videos for Canadian sites and invites to big events can be harder to get although we’ve had fair success getting invites to events in the USA. New York and Los Angeles are the centers for the entertainment industry and a presence there really helps. It isn’t an accident that the largest and most successful blogs are located in LA or NYC.

But here is the kicker – the Canadian entertainment industry is more dismissive of Canadian blogs than the Americans are! To add insult to injury the few Canadian events that are of international standard, like the Toronto International Film Festival, prefer to cater to large American outlets than to give their compatriots a helping hand. Last year despite our detailed and repeated applications to attend TIFF we were left out in the cold. TIFF showed a preference for American blogs that are smaller than us! Seriously speaking, it is disgusting. And let’s not forget another Canadian event of international stature – The Montreal International Jazz Festival – here too we received the cold shoulder. The organizers had no interest and no time for homegrown Canadian blogging talent. The irony is that we get better treatment from American events! So I’m sorry to say it but as a Canadian I have had to struggle more for everything I’ve achieved in blogging than I would have had to as an American.

Thanks so much Annemaire!
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