KartelInc. Fashion, culture and trend blog.

7th January 2010 Blogging, Business, KartelInc

About two years ago (February 2008) I launched a blog called KartelInc with the idea to publish content about ’street fashion and culture’ aimed at the UK market. The base of the blog was covering fashion and trends relating directly to fashion but the overall categories ranged from music and art to events, tech and features.

At the time I was reading a lot blogs and online magazines from across the pond such as HypeBeast, SlamxHype and FormatMag and I originally wanted to create something similar but that focused primarily on British culture that catered more to UK users by only featuring products that could be purchased in the UK. When I started I knew very little about blogging and how to develop a website based around content and most of what I planned to do and did was based around what I’d seen other people do.

Initially the the site went well. I managed to keep the content rolling and keep the users coming, and although I never achieved huge numbers I was fairly pleased with the result based on the amount of time I was spending working on it. In order to entice advertisers and make the site seem busier than it was, I gave several spots away on the website to companies and brands that I knew fit the demographic of the blog readers. Again this showed good results and again although the click rate numbers weren’t huge it did give me what I thought at the time was a good set of sample figures to work with.

The site ticked along nicely and I spent roughly 2-3 hours every other day updating articles and promoting the site, in this time I had a few offers from people wanting to advertise as well as some companies wanting to sponsor posts. I was pleased with the way things were going.

As the weeks went on due to other work commitments I began to find it harder and harder to produce the content I needed in order to main the visitor numbers, I also found it increasingly difficult to provide the UK only content that I originally thought I could. The updates on the site dwindled to the point of one or two a week and in early 2009 the updates stopped all together. At the time I was annoyed that I’d start and that I was unable to keep it going, but made the decision that client work was more important.

I left the site live and kept the analytics switched on and throughout 2009 everytime I checked the stats for my other sites, I’d check Kartel to see how the user number progressed. A few posts, in particular those related to products that we’re still relevant, still dragged visitors to the site and it was this that lead me to keep the site live. On a few occasions I tried to revive the site with a ’sorry’ post but most of the time it got no further than that.

Then before Xmas I was speaking with David Haywood Smith from Wishli.st and Jonny Philip from OW! Health about plans for 2010 and we got talking about content driven websites, they both mentioned that they were going to start new projects based on building a ‘brand’ around published content in a specific area, which got me thinking about Kartel. Flash forward to now…

Today I (soft) launched the all new KartelInc. After some thought over the holidays I decided that a stripped down design, more focus on the content, no ads and a simpler layout would make the site easier to maintain and promote what was important. I also reassessed what the blog should be and the type content it should contain (which I’m not going to go into yet) and also what the long term plan would could potentially be, which means I can treat it like a actual working project rather than just side-project.

My plan to to develop the site, the content and the concept as I go and keep a blog on the process, in the next couple of weeks I’ll go into more details on the redesign and promoting the site.

I’d appreciate if you could checkout the site at www.kartelinc.co.uk and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading!