Although my editorial career started in print, editing a music magazine in the late ’90s, I’d been obsessed with web publishing since I wrote a college essay about it in college way back in 1996. I started blogging in 2000, and recognized immediately that my mid-’90s digital publishing dreams had come true. I continued writing for magazines and newspapers and wrote a book, but my work has always been mostly focused on web publications. I launched offbeatbride.com in 2007 as a way to promote my book, but the website’s popularity was insane — and since 2009, I’ve been focused full-time on what offbeatbride.com has become: an online publishing network start-up called the Offbeat Empire, which serves close to 4 million pageviews a month.
Offbeatbride.com
Launched January 2007 | 2.6 million monthly pageviews
“Offbeat Bride is one of the highest-trafficked wedding blogs in the world.” -ThinkSplendid Communications
I publish the web’s most popular website for nontraditional brides, featuring daily posts about wedding trends, advice, and bride profiles for 550,000 unique visitors a month. I built traffic from scratch using SEO and SMO techniques, and now receive over 2.6 million monthly pageviews. As publisher, I act as director of business development, ad sales, and marketing, and manage an editorial staff of three.
Offbeatmama.com
Launched September 2009 | 520,000 monthly pageviews
In a web filled with mommyblogger drama and cheap corporate shilling, Offbeat Mama’s positive, supportive voice stands alone.
After requests from hundreds of Offbeat Bride readers, I launched Offbeat Mama in September 2009. The site has developed a committed following among nontraditional mothers in the US and abroad, getting 115,000 unique visitors a month, with the most popular markets being hip cities like Seattle, New York, London, Portland, San Francisco, and Sydney, Australia.
Offbeat Mama topics range from serious stuff like step-parenting and birth stories to light things like offbeat family portraits and celebrating of cute mom jeans. While we do feature hip parenting products, we focus on indie businesses and are completely transparent about our sponsors.
Offbeathome.com
Launched February 2011 | 480,000 monthly pageviews
Dedicated to helping readers create a comfortable space for themselves, Offbeat Home celebrates occupants as much as we ogle over decor porn and DIY projects. We’re not especially into fetishizing furniture or unattainable decor, but we love to explore how people authentically integrate and express their personalities through their homes.
Unlike our sister sites, Offbeat Bride and Offbeat Mama, Offbeat Home is both un-gendered AND non-relationship-based. Offbeat Home is just about YOU and YOUR SPACE. Not other people … although we do have a category dedicated to Offbeat Entertaining, full of fabulous dinner parties and brunch potlucks and nights in. 105,000 monthly unique visitors.
OffbeatEmpire.com
Launched February June 2011| 20,000 monthly pageviews
Offbeat Empire is just the meta blog for the business, featuring posts about web developing, editing, community management and more of the nitty-gritty behind-the-monitor workings of a small bootstrapped media start-up.