Heather Armstrong is the blog founder, writer, also known as "Dooce". In this episode, we speak with Heather about her journey of being one of the most prolific mommy bloggers, influencer marketing, and how she's growing her business these days.

 

Podcast Transcription

State of Digital Publishing is creating a new publication and community for digital publishing and media professionals in new media and technology. In this episode, we speak with Heather Armstrong, founder, also known as Dooce, on her journey of being one of the most prolific mommy bloggers and how she's growing her business these days. Let's begin.

Vahe Arabian: Hi, Heather, how are you?

Heather Armstrong: I'm good, how are you?

Vahe Arabian: I'm good, thanks for joining us.

Heather Armstrong: Of course.

Vahe Arabian: The reason why I wanted to bring you on is that I've read quite a bit about you and how you're called the queen of mommy blogging. We'll go into a bit of that, but also I want to go into what you're up to these days as well. Just for those that don't know much about you and the website, if you can just provide a background, an introduction would be great.

Heather Armstrong: Briefly, I started blogging in 2000, 2001. I was working as a web designer and decided that I wanted a space of my own to write and design and edit. I hand-coded a few pages of HTML and sent it to a few friends of mine never thinking that more than 12 people would read it, but then within five years, it was supporting my entire family. It was the sole source of income. I started writing it when I was single and living in Los Angeles. It morphed into me getting married and then I got pregnant and I thought that I was going to give up the website when I got pregnant or when I had a baby because I wasn't going to have time, but when I had my daughter the audience exploded. That's when my trajectory really took off. People wanted to read stories from me about parenthood. I was one of the first women to document all of this on a blog and to get paid to do it through banner advertisements.

Vahe Arabian: Just for those who don't know, is it pronounced as Dooce or?

Heather Armstrong: It's pronounced Dooce, D-O-O-C-E, Dooce.

Vahe Arabian: Dooce, cool. With Dooce, specifically, I guess I think we all know to some extent that it was a bit more easier back in the day because there wasn't as much competition and everything else, but with how you've evolved your strategy and your monetization from that, I know you're not working on it as much these days, but how did it evolve over time so that you continue to do what you want to do?

Heather Armstrong: It was always really organic and there was no model to follow back then at all. It was all building itself and back then I got paid exclusively just from running banner advertisements and that was it. I didn't have to run sponsorships, I didn't have to run campaigns, I just had to write. That's all I had to do. I learned my audience, my audience wanted to hear about my dogs and they wanted to hear about my children, so that's where I focused most of my content. I built a community section of my website where readers could connect and talk to each other about parenting and depression and whatnot, but really it evolved very, very, very organically where I was responding to my audience and they were responding to me. I wouldn't say it was easy, but because the model was just banner advertisements, the strategy was just to keep my audience happy and keep me happy as well, but was like, "What does my audience want to read," and to give them the best content that I could.

Vahe Arabian: How did you define, back then, what your audience was looking to read because you mentioned that ...