How to get traffic to a gossip blog

by mannyman

Posted: 16 years ago 19 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Hi there everyone:

I am posting for help to my 8 month old gossip, celebrity and entertainment site. I average around 400 visitors per day. I have hit 1000 visitors once and hover around 500 sometimes. But after Christmas it's averaging around 400 or so. Every month my stats are increasing.
It's a wordpress site.

I haven't marketed any ads yet.

I want to go the google ads route eventually with some affiliate marketing products and try them out on the website. But I defer to what the experts here have to say.

Yes my site is a type of Perez Hilton type with some controversial posts. It is not a PG rated type site. But it is not exactly as mean spirited as Perez Hilton can be. I am quite fair in my criticism. I do dish out positive news as well.

My family and friends like the site (or pretend to anyways).

I have a day job and can't put in as many quality posts as I would like to so far. I do my best and it is good enough so far.

Any and all suggestions from the brain trust here would be awesome!!!

Thanks.

#blog #celebrity #entertainment #gossip #traffic

Brandon Jones 16 years ago

My brother had a site about Paris Hilton, and most of his traffic came from search engines like Google and Yahoo.

try to write news alerts in your titles, and you'll find that many people will find your site if you're one of the fast posters.
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- mannyman 16 years ago
  
  Yes I did notice that the early news birds catch the worm. This is true.
  
  I am not always able to capitalize on this trend unfortunately. But I have seen my numbers spike when I rode the trendy news wave.
  
  Is your brother making any money from the Paris Hilton site?
  Thanks for responding and for your help!
  
  Thanks
  
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hagay2386 16 years ago

Write spicy news about celebrities. That is always atract people. Make it Spicy. Lol. Good luck
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- mannyman 16 years ago
  
  Hey hagay2386:Your post sounds absolutely delicious and yummy!
  
  I try to make the posts spicy and salty and yummy and all. Lots of picturs and stuff. I use seo based wordpress plugins and all.
  
  But yeah making the posts spicier I can always spice it up more.
  
  Youve made me hungry!!!'
  
  Thanks!
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  Jeremy Morgan 16 years ago
  
  Here is what I would do if I were you.
  
  1. Picture galleries. Create pages with the celebrities name, and make the page SEO friendly, with pictures of said celebrity. This will bring in search engine traffic for people searching for that celebrity. On these pages, put in "latest news about ___" with their latest news. If one of them does something newsworthy your page will likely come up pretty well in a search.
  
  2. Make it shareable Make individual pages for each story, and make those stories very shareable via Twitter, Facebook, etc. The easier it is to share, the more it will spread. There are a lot of people on Twitter who love posting stories about their favorite celebrities, friend them and give them stuff to retweet. Same with facebook.
  
  You will need some time to build a following, but if you do people will post links to your site without being asked, because they feel like THEY are the ones breaking the big news when it comes out. But you must make it as easy as possible.
  
  3. Make your site a blog By making a blog, you can attach your personality to it. There are a million company run celebrity gossip sites, but if you attach your personality to it, and people like your personality, it will take off. This is the key to success for Perez, he poured himself into it and people liked it. By having a blog you can also get listed in directories and have your feed listed on several sites that can get you regular visitors.
  
  4. Don't forget bookmarkers Social Bookmarking sites such as Digg, reddit, and others are hotspots for celebrity gossip. Often times they are the hottest stories on the site. By building a reputation on these sites you can get followers and possibly "blow up" certain stories that will get you tens of thousands of hits in a day. Just be careful and make sure to post links to other celeb gossip, don't be a spammer who just posts their own links or people will ignore you, or worse yet you can be banned.
  
  I think by properly putting together a program including these things and you could have a hit. Don't give up too quickly, it could takes months or more to get good inertia, but once you do you'll have all the traffic you need with very little paid advertising.
  
  [ 1 ] Thanks
  
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  Jeremy Morgan, Software Developer / SEO
  Learn AI Powered Content Creation
  at Prompt and Prosper
  
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MCD 16 years ago

Maybe you could leverage off of social media sites like Myspace, FaceBook, and Twitter.
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- mannyman 16 years ago
  
  Hey MCD: I am on twitter but am not getting too much traffic from twitter. Just started on facebook. Just signed up with posterous and squidoo too.
  
  Celebrity websites are very competitive.
  
  Thanks
  
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matt5409 16 years ago

can't you guest post on related blogs? it sounds like an industry where you might be able to get some mutual back scratching
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Alex Barboza 16 years ago

Try offline marketing.

Most of the readers of gossip blogs are young women so go and advertise in places where young women are.
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julesw 16 years ago

if you embed video make sure you have a video sitemap sorted. You can actually rank for the embed and have video result traffic come back to you not youtube.

re money and products

maybe link the celebrity mindset with how to succeed in life in general or go direct
for how to get famous, or how to pitch your biz to celebrities

just ideas!

jules
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Johnny12345 16 years ago

Manny,

Make sure you're using legal photos (that is, that you have a license to post them). Perez got sued when he started because he didn't pay for the images he used. Now he pays.

John
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mannyman 16 years ago

Thanks Alexbarbosa and Julesw for thinking out of the box. This burst of ideas is just what I needed for inspiration.

Young women and gay men read gossip sites so I ought to do some offline advertising at my local colleges and universities!! YES!!!!

Maybe link affiliate books and tapes on succeeding in life like their favourite celebrities are succeeding also. That sounds good too!

I haven't explored video marketing yet but I'd love to. Right now I haven't posted any pics of me on the site but I want to change that. If I personalize my blog with pics of me and videos of me ranting online this would increase viewership for sure!!

People like to see real people behind a website.
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Brandon Jones 16 years ago

He monetized the site with Adsense. That's what I'm recommending to you too.

With loads of traffic Adsense is the thing, and celebrity sites and gossip usually get a lot of free traffic.
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James Foster

16 years ago

I say use Twitter... gossip is the type of stuff Twitter was made for.

Say you've got a post about something crazy Lindsey Lohan did...

Go to search.twitter.com and type in Lindsey Lohan.... you're going to see all kinds of tweets talking about her.

Now just start @ replying those people saying something like "did you hear about what Lohan did now? (link to blog post)"

It'll take some work, but a few of the people who you talked to will retweet your link and it'll start spread virally.

Thanks
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Clyde Dennis

16 years ago

James beat me to it. I was reading and reading and reading and thinking this sounded like something that would be perfect for Twitter. EXACTLY what Twitter was made for no?

Originally Posted by James Foster

Thanks

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Jason Moffatt 16 years ago

I wouldn't personally want to have to deal with this type of site, but if I were determined to attract more visitors, I'd MASSIVELY step up the mud slinging and start publishing stories that people like Paris are way too afraid to publish.

Stuff that would freak people out.

Then I'd probably film myself egging Paris or something stupid and slap that on YouTube. People love beef and drama! You could manufacture some pretty easily if you had the balls.

Other than that, Jeremy's idea of making it very share-able to others is a good route. Maybe even give away some kind of prizes for people that share via social media.

I'd also do everything in my power to get myself filmed messing with celebrities and playing jokes on them.
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sirkaliber 16 years ago

Unfortunately you do have to get your paws dirty for a gossip site or else not many will come. Best of luck.
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EMPIRE2 10 years ago

Hi there this is a very interesting post and is exactly where I am about 400 daily searched after one year although my pa and da is quite high at 30 and 41. Please can you advise if you tried any of the suggested advice and which ones worked?
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EPoltrack77 10 years ago

Yeah the difference in my opinion is search, keyword traffic or self delivered traffic. Your celebrity idea brings easy, huge numbers to your landing pages...
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How to get traffic to a gossip blog

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