How an Atlanta-based micro-influencer and mother turned a lifestyle blog started as a passion project into a 6-figure business
- When Mattie James first launched her blog in 2010, there seemed to be no outlet for lifestyle influencers in her hometown of Atlanta.
- Now, she earns six figures and has 87,000 followers across Instagram and Twitter.
- She made running her blog her full-time job and found that sharing personal stories and advice garnered more attention than the style and entertainment stories she started with.
- Keys to her success were learning how to negotiate, monetizing her posts, and adjusting with her changing audience.
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Mattie James' Instagram account is full of photos of her beautiful family, stylish outfits, and real-life moments. Her blog website is just as pretty with crisp photos, fun fonts, and splashes of pastel pink.
But though the blogger and lifestyle influencer has got her aesthetics perfected, it's the content behind her visuals that has earned her a loyal audience - over 87,000 followers between Instagram and Twitter - and a six-figure income.
She first launched her blog in 2010. At the time, style and lifestyle blogging wasn't popular in her hometown of Atlanta, and in a sea of entertainment bloggers in surrounding cities, she was in uncharted territory.
How did James make the transition from part-time blogger to full-time influencer in high demand? She gave Business Insider the formula to her success.
It all began with an emailJames discovered blogging after a friend emailed her a link to a celebrity blog in 2005. A pop culture junkie, James was intrigued, and soon discovered the popular world of entertainment blogging. She started two blogs in 2008 prior to her current one as passion projects - one an entertainment blog called Minority Report, and the other called Mattieologie, which detailed her experiences as a radio station intern.
James has kept Mattieologie, hosted on Blogspot, as a reminder of where her success story began. "Everyone knows I started at square one, like they did. Any time I feel sorry for myself, I just go back and look at that," James explained.
In her first five years as a blogger, James balanced her content creation with a full-time job as a manager at a showroom, where she often worked alone. But while she used the downtime to work on her blog, she wasn't sneaking around.
"I told [my boss] I was a blogger when I was hired because I wasn't interested in juggling a secret life. I know some people do that because it's a conflict of interest or [employers] don't respond really well, but I was blessed my boss was not only okay with it, but encouraging," James explained.
While she struggled at first to carve out her lane in the influencer space, James discovered that her standout quality wasn't where she lived, what she blogged about, or the resources she used to create her content.
"The story is really the big-ticket item here," she said. "It's not because you shoot with a $1,000 camera or go on seven vacations a month. The big it factor is your story and using your voice to tell that story in your own specific way."
And that's precisely what James did, filling her blog and social media accounts with musings about her life, experiences, and passions. She soon realized that she couldn't just randomly post whatever she felt like if she wanted to grow her audience. She needed to develop a relationship with readers and learn to share the parts of her story people were most interested in.
"I was so perplexed when people didn't want to know about my outfits per se, but they wanted to know more about my life or get my advice on what to do," James recalled.
A change of direction sparks massive growthJames found that her audience's connection deepened after the birth of her eldest child, when she began to share how she stayed consistent and productive with her blog while balancing marriage and first-time motherhood. She also found that her followers were particularly invested in content that took them behind the scenes of her blog, like how to create blog posts or what camera she used to take her photos.
"I think what I realized [was] that there were a lot of content creators or people who wanted to be content creators that look like me that don't have access to information. And because I was so willing to share my experience and my process, people just jumped on that," James said.
Tailoring her content to her audience's needs meant placing value on saves, shares, and comments."In the comments, when people said something like, 'Man, this really made a difference in my life,' or where people were really transparent because I decided to be transparent about something that happened in my life as well, that is what makes people buy things," she said. "People do not buy logically; they buy emotionally."
James still remembers the turning point of when her audience went from just a few thousand people to massive growth. It was a competition for fashion bloggers called "Full Time Fabulous" and hosted by Sunglass Hut. The eyewear company was searching for an experienced blogger with a passion for style and a good eye for fashion trends to run their blog. James finished in the top 10.
"Within a month, my traffic had quadrupled. Before, I was getting 2,500 monthly views, but then I was getting 10,000 to 15,000, sometimes even 20,000 views a month. That jump was what I needed to get the ball rolling," James noted.
Monetizing her blogAs her audience and engagement grew, James began exploring how she could connect her followers' interest with current trends in the market to identify her value to potential brands.
But even as James studied sales books to learn how to sell herself, her venture into brand partnerships got off to a rocky start. "In the beginning, it was really rough. I didn't have a rate sheet, so I would just email a number when they gave me a scope of work," she shared.
With time and practice, James said she eventually scored a five-figure campaign sponsored by TJ Maxx that included online content and an in-person workshop on maximizing platform and productivity. She also hired a lawyer on retainer who helped her understand and negotiate her contracts, an investment she encourages all influencers to make. Early on when she received contracts, her primary concern was that the dollar figure on the contract was right. Her lawyer taught her to dig deeper and understand the terms she was agreeing to.
"Even if somebody's paying you $10,000, if they're paying you net 120, how great is it?" she explained.
According to her financial reports, in 2015, James shared that she made $49,000 from brand campaigns. But she hesitated on leaving her day job, wanting to earn her annual income from blogging alone before walking away.
Unexpected circumstances lead to a full-time businessShe was forced to make the leap when she was unexpectedly let go from her job that same year, and she suddenly found herself with a full-time influencer business on her hands.
Instead of waiting for opportunities to come to her, she sent out pitches, studied the trends in social and blog content to stay ahead of the curve, attended conferences to make contacts with key brands, and began developing a business plan for her blog.
"I understood that to actually make six figures, I have to look at this like a business," she said. "I have to have performance reports and sale reports. I have to ask if the things I like doing actually drive my email list up and put money in my bank account."
James' business plan began with her ideal income, which she reverse-engineered to find out what she needed to make each month and what she'd need to do to earn that amount. She studied her competitors and networked to learn more about running a business. The business plan gave James clarity, and that clarity brought growth.
In 2015, when she first began partnering with brands, James said she was pitching about 40% of the time, landing four-figure deals and leaving money on the table. Last year, she said that only 20% of her campaigns came from pitches she sent out.
Followers become students with a new stream of incomeJames also began looking at ways to diversify her income. After noticing how many comments, emails, and messages she got from people with questions about how to become a full-time influencer, James spotted a new way to serve her audience.
She began with free content about blogging and brand partnerships, and as the inquiries continued, James added paid one-on-one coaching to her offerings. But becoming a wife and mom meant the time she could carve out to support multiple influencers was limited, so James scaled up to courses. This was a winning move.
"Online education is continuing to grow just because you can't go to a four-year college and learn how to blog or monetize your content," said James.
James focus now is on one offering and top seller, a self-led course called "Pitch Please." For $1,997 (or $397 a month for six months), James breaks down the strategy that has helped her land four- and five-figure brand partnerships, including modules on how to decide what brands to work with, how to find the right contacts, and how to position content to stand out to brands.
"Pitch Please," which took two and a half years to build, launches twice every year. In 2015 and 2016, James said the course accounted for 60% of her revenue. "Creating a course is extremely hard work. Launching a course is even harder than creating the curriculum. But for me, from a profit standpoint, it has given me the return on my efforts," James said.
The rest of James' six-figure income is from brand campaigns, which are still a huge contributor to her bottom line. She shared that she surpassed her 2019 Q4 goal of $100,000 after landing 28 campaigns earning an average of $5,100. It was a goal she pursued aggressively in preparation for her upcoming maternity leave. (James is expecting her third child.)
With her eye on her first million-dollar year, James will be working with her money manager to see how she can meet her revenue goal in the upcoming year.
Mastering the art of negotiationAs a black influencer in the lifestyle space, James knows she's got a smaller audience than her white peers, but she doesn't underestimate the value of being able to connect with an audience many brands don't know how to reach. Effective negotiation, which James learned from studying material like Zig Ziglar's "Secrets of Closing the Sale: For Anyone Who Must Get Others to Say Yes!," has helped her make sure she's paid her worth.
"Start with your scary number - to me that's 25% higher than what you actually want - because a brand is likely to negotiate down," she shared. "Always have a breakdown of your number, so they know exactly why you are asking for that amount. And don't be afraid to see what the options are. If they don't give you the number you want but they scale down the scope of work and it's a pretty good rate, it can still contribute to your business financially."