Guide to Setting Up a Bridal Accessories Business in the UK
Wedding Bloggers: What Do We REALLY Do?
Photography by ANNA WITH LOVE via Tiffany Pratt
If I had a pound for everytime I was asked “What’s your job?” I honestly think I would be a millionaire. If I had a pound for the puzzled look I get everytime I explain to people that I am a wedding blogger, I think I would probably be somewhere near the multi millionaire mark. If every time that puzzled look was then followed by “So how do you make money from it?” – you guessed it I would be a billionaire! Ok so thats a bit of an exaggeration, my maths is way off and who speaks to a billion people anyway? The point I am trying to make is, that the majority of people I speak to about my job, have no clue what it is I do or how I make a living from it.
For some time I was afraid to call myself a professional blogger, instead I would use terms such as online magazine editor, writer or journalist, none of which explained what my job really entailed. I don’t know why I was afraid to use the term blogger, maybe it was because it seemed to garner some sort of negative reaction, like it wasn’t a real job. When I handed in my notice at my part time job to go full time on the blog my old boss actually sighed with disbelief at the fact I was leaving to spend more time on ‘my hobby’ – her words not mine! At the time I was so angry that somebody thought I would be that naive to leave a job for my hobby, did she honestly think all that all the money we spent on building a website, all the hours of research, writing posts and answering emails were all for a hobby? Is that all my work really equated too?
Asking myself this question is what really spurred me to write this post today. I realised that the negative reactions I get when sharing the details of my work are not from a place of malice but from a place of little understanding. If we can highlight what a blog is, what ‘we’ as bloggers do and how this makes money in return, we may one day be able to call ourselves professional bloggers and own it, no questions asked.
Let me start by summarising what a blog is thanks to Pro-Blogger, “a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom”.
You will see from our blog that we update on a daily basis with a variety of topics, this can anything from real weddings or styled shoots to wedding planning advice and DIY’s. We aim to share ideas, make friends and put our brides and grooms in contact with some of the best wedding suppliers in the industry.
So back to the question of what it is we do. As you can imagine running a blog takes up a lot of our time. I believe calling ourselves bloggers is actually a huge discredit to what we really do day to day, as blogging is only a very small part of our job. As bloggers we have to wear lots of hats, we are in charge of all editorial, circulation, sales, pr and marketing – all of which are separate jobs by themselves, yet we juggle these into our everyday working lives and lets not forget to mention the masses of emails we receive every day that need to be replied to.
With that in mind let me share with you what our roles and responsibilities include:
♥ Answering emails
♥ Approving submissions (real weddings, editorials, sponsored posts)
♥ Contacting photographers/ brides or grooms/ Vendors for information and interviews
♥ Updating and maintaining the editorial calendar
♥ Laying out images
♥ Writing post content
♥ Updating existing advertisers with their campaign stats
♥ Updating and maintaining the advertising schedule
♥ Sending out media kit on request
♥ Updating the media kit
♥ Updating Facebook – 4 times daily, as well as being active on both Twitter & Instagram
♥ Submitting blog posts to various carousels to raise publicity
♥ Must be able to utilise Pinterest
♥ Must be competent in basic SEO
♥ Brainstorming new content ideas
♥ Organising and attending styled shoots
♥ Keeping website updated
♥ Moderating comments and leaving replies where necessary
♥ Attending wedding fairs and other public events
♥ Writing content for other blogs and magazines
Some of these jobs have to be done every day others not so often but as you can see it is crucial that we do each and every single thing on that list to make sure our blog runs smoothly not just for us and our readers but our advertisers too.
This leads me to my next point, how do we make money from our blog? Very similar to a magazine, a blog makes money from advertising. There are various other streams of income such as selling ebooks, ecourses some blogs even sell services or products, however at this moment and time we only make money from advertising. For some this is somewhat of a touchy subject, only last weekend I was speaking with a wedding supplier who was appalled that they would have to pay to advertise on our blog. However it is not hard to see why we charge when you take into account all that we do to make sure our advertisers are seen by as many people as possible, which in turn should hopefully turn into leads and more importantly bookings.
In order for a blog to gain regular traffic, the content has to be good and updated frequently. However a blog post is no good if no one can see it cue the role of social media, blog carousels, SEO, pr and events all of which help to raise the profile of the blog along with its brand. As you can imagine this all takes time and as the saying goes time equals money. If we were doing all these things for free, how would we pay our mortgages or rent, put food on the table, pay for clothes and other basic amenities?
This blog is our business, our livelihood and more often than not our life, we don’t write content for us or just for fun, we write our blog for you and that is what we REALLY do.
Much Bespoke Love
Emily x
Love this post Emily! So informative. I don’t think people realise how much work goes into maintaining a great blog. It’s like running your own magazine!
Helena – Upper Street.com
Thanks Helena! You are right it is just like running a magazine, minus the huge departments with lots of worker bees 😀
x x x