Over the past couple of months, I've been making a couple of changes here at Nourish ME. I've really been attempting to up my blogging game, and create more varied and generally better posts for you guys. Although getting your own domain seems like a fairly menial change, much like creating your own blogger media kit, it can really make a difference if you want to start monetizing your blog.
Why do I need my own domain name?
When PRs and brands consider bloggers for collaborative posts, they will often request a certain DA (or domain authority) score. If you still have a blogspot.com or wordpress.org site, or something along those lines, then you don't actually have a DA. Telling them this can come across as unprofessional, and they are likely to therefore look for a blogger who has organised their own domain name. Having said this, I have successfully completed collaborations with brands from my blogspot address, so it by no means totally rules you out.
It's also a chance for you to rejig your blog name a little if you wish. My old URL was http://nourishmeclean.blogspot.com because initially my blog was all about clean eating. However, in the past year(!) or so of blogging that's become really irrelevant. So, when I switched to my own domain it became www.nourishmeblog.co.uk.
How can I get my own domain name?
I'm not going to lie, when I first started looking into this I was totally stumped. I didn't know how I was going to set one up - would it involve a lot of tricky coding? Or mess up my Google analytics? Would my old address come up as a 404 and lose me tonnes of pageviews? Don't worry, it was a lot easier than I had imagined, and none of these things *touch wood* has happened in the past month or two that I have had my own domain name. Note: what I'm about to tell you only applies to blogger sites (I really have no idea how I would do it on Wordpress, but I imagine it's not too much more difficult).
You will have to buy your own domain name, but there are a whole variety of websites with different prices and packages that you can do this from. I opted to go with Go Daddy because they had an offer on, which gave me a year's worth of my domain name for 99p. On top of the straight up yearly or monthly cost, you can also opt to buy protection. I did this as well and ultimately I think it came to around £8 for the year altogether. You will have to renew it each year, so be warned: buying it does not mean you own your domain forever.
Here's where we get a bit technical. Once you've bought your domain and are happy with the name, it's time to actually get it connected to your blog. I was going to attempt to write you guys a step-by-step instruction for this but honestly I don't want to have written something wrong that could potentially destroy your blog! Instead, here is a link to Blogger's own really detailed explanation of exactly how to set your domain name up correctly and with ease. It probably took me about an hour in total - you do have to leave it for 24 hours and then come back to make sure everything is set up correctly.
Once you've got your new, sparkling domain name all set up and connected to your blog, you then need to let people know about it! I updated my Instagram, Twitter, Facebook page, Pinterest, Youtube and Bloglovin to show the new URL. However, if people click on your old URL, as long as you've set everything up correctly, it will direct to your new domain anyway!
I really hope this was helpful!
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About a month ago a brand that I was considering collaborating with asked me for my media kit. My immediate reaction was 'well fuck, I don't have one'. Obviously I could hardly email them back to tell them that, so all of a sudden I was thrust into an emergency mission to create my own media kit. I had no time to ask anyone to create one for me, or to do masses of research into how to sort one out. Naturally I headed to twitter and Pinterest (my new love) to discover how other bloggers had made them.
In case you're wondering what the heck a media kit is, it's basically a document in which you showcase your blog brand to PRs, potential advertisement clients and potential blog collaborators. You effectively need one if you want to get serious about blogging, or want to start monetizing your blog.
Foolishly when I printed my media kit out for this post I used the web version of the image rather than the printable version *pats self on back sarcastically*, so I promise you that it does actually look a lot better than this when viewed online, or printed with the correct version. You can find the online version in my Contact section.
I didn't want to spend a lot of money making my media kit. In fact I didn't want to spend a penny. So, I headed to Canva to create my media kit. Canva has a whole variety of free to use templates, backgrounds and images to help you create almost anything. Since making my media kit I've actually used the site to create a Youtube thumbnail and a couple of pinterest-worthy images for blog posts. All in all, using this site it probably took me about an hour and a half to two hours to create my finished piece.
Now we come to the really tricky part: what to include. Here's a list of things I think you need if you want to make an effective and memorable media kit that PR brands can use to quickly assess whether your sponsored posts fees are acceptable and whether they want to get on board with collaborating with you.
1.) A design that resonates with your blog brand. Use a similar (if not the same) colour scheme, and try to include your blog header if you can. Immediately the person reading it will then be able to recognise precisely who you are and what you are representing.
2.) A picture either of yourself or that sums up your blog. Potential sponsors want to know that there's a 'real' person behind the brand, someone they can connect with. A picture of yourself is a good way to ensure this.
3.) Information about your blog: when it started, why it started, and the ethos/business idea behind it. It's useful for people to know how long the blog has been about, how you've developed it over the time it has been in existence and what your hopes for the future are. This shows that you've thought seriously about your blog brand and have tracked its course of progress over its lifespan.
4.) Your sponsorship policies. State exactly what someone can expect from sponsoring you. Set disclaimers as to what types of sponsorship you accept, what determines whether a sponsorship application will be accepted and what the sponsor can expect for your flat fee. You can also include your sponsorship fee. I simply chose not to because I would like to discuss the possibility for a sponsorship personally with a brand before them demanding a sponsorship slot on my blog for the fee I have stated in my media kit.
5.) Recent blog statistics. I would definitely make sure to keep these updated on a monthly basis - Canva is a good site to use to create your media kit because it is simple to edit text on it. You don't want a potential sponsor to come along and get disillusioned with the notion of sponsoring you because your five month old blog statistics are too low for them. I've included my monthly average pageviews and users for the past three months, how my statistics have improved during this period and my social media statistics. It's important to use Google Analytics for these, as other trackers, especially the one on blogger can be incredibly inaccurate.
6.) Previous brands you have worked with. This is simply a chance to showcase your previous work, and let PRs know that you have experience in collaborating with brands.
I hope this was useful! I'm currently offering you the chance to have your media kit created by me for £15 if you feel it is too much of a challenge! If you want to do so simply email me at the email address in my contact section
Is there anything you would add?
