Is it time for YBF to upgrade?
Celebrity blogs are big business. Male or female, young or old, we are all intrigued with entertainment gossip. One of my favorite celebrity blogs is YBF. Natasha Eubanks has done a great job of getting her site to an Alexa rank of 41,000 but is YBF at full potential?
As of yesterday, Natasha has an average of 49,000 daily visitors which is up 10,000 over the past three months. By her own admittance, Natasha does everything herself and brags about having zero overhead. My prediction is that her growth will eventually come to a halt if she doesn’t leave blogger.
I have to say that this is not a blogspot basher post. I personally publish quite a few blogspot blogs and it’s a great free service that I use as a primer before I go all the way with a project or just to park a domain name. For the serious blogger who has hopes of going large, 50,000 visits per day is long overdue. Much respect, Paula!
YBF is way over it’s cut off point. The biggest problem is a domain name. She should have snagged up a domain name once she hit 5,000 visitors per day. The YBF brand is so strong that domainers have taken all great potential names… like this, this, this and even this. If you are a blogger who after has built up a nice following then the time is now.
Another opportunity that YBF has is SEO. Yes, I know, blogspot gets crawled and indexed like every 60 seconds but trying to find anything on YBF is pretty much like pulling teeth. Even if Natasha never leaves blogspot, she should examine here navigational structure. She is missing out on major search money.
And then we can’t forget about plugin’s and categories. Even though blogger has introduced labels, it is not as resourceful as going to your favorite category. Maybe separating athletes, musicians and actors, etc, etc, etc would make it easier for her readers who happen to openly and lovingly cry out for her to improve.
My suggestion for a blog of ybf’s size would be to switch to a three column self hosted wordpress site. As far as domain names, it’s not totally too late. Make the switch before blogspot turns into geocities and we lose you forever ybf chick.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Hi. I’m Natasha the host of YBF. Thanks for your suggestions as soeone e-mailed this to me. They weren’t taken as mean at all.
But just FYI—a few of the domains you listed I actually own. LOL And a website has been inthe works for a while now. I could dish out a random easy website in a day…or I could do it up right. trust me it’s be fabulosu once it’s up very soon. And as for the people overly and openly crying out for me to “improve”—I rarely see and hear that. I know what I need to do FOR ME and that’s what will get done. I’m not one of the bloggers who did this for money—so my focus is on content and what I WANT….not what is “best for business”. I purposely do things differently than other blogs and remain true to how I started. My style is unique and I want to keep it that eay. And please believe it’s not “bragging” when I say I don’t have overhead. It’s just the fact of the matter for now. Thanks again.
September 5th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Nice!
September 8th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Sorry
September 8th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Cool!
September 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Sorry