Co-founder and Editor in Chief, Sugar Publishing

Want customers to become addicted to your Web site?

For ideas and inspiration, visit the fast-growing network of blogs from Sugar Publishing(www.sugarpublishing.com),including celebrity gossip and news site PopSugar(www.popsugar.com), to see why readers are getting hooked on frequent Sugar fixes.

It almost doesn’t matter whether you care about Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt or the latest movie premiere. What Sugar Publishing’s founders, Lisa Sugar and husband Brian, are doing with their Web sites is fascinating… everywhere you look, there’s something else you want to click out of curiosity.

Lisa and Brian started PopSugar in 2005 and launched Sugar Publishing in 2006. They’re now racking up about 40 million page views per month to the company’s network of 10 Web sites, which cover categories like fashion (www.fabsugar.com), beauty (www.bellasugar.com) and food (www.yumsugar.com).

Here Lisa talks about turning one blog into something much bigger…

Starting by Writing

Lisa: “I started (blogging about celebrities) as a hobby and I had a background in entertainment and advertising. My husband and friends were pushing me to write PopSugar. My husband has a background in technology and knows about Web design. He helped me to create something different than what was already out there.

“For me, it was a matter of keeping going on my own, writing every day, getting feedback from people reading (PopSugar). The growth was incredible - it just reinforced writing (PopSugar) more and more”.

Saying ‘No’ to the Ad Networks

“Six months after starting Pop… we didn’t have ads in the beginning, we wanted to keep (the site) really clean, but then we realized with the amount of people coming to read the site, that there was a lot of money to be made based on advertising dollars.

“At this time all the blogs were starting, so there were advertising networks to be a part of, which was our initial phase of seeing what kind of money we could make, but those ads are not pretty.”

Going Beyond One Blog

“We tested the waters with what most people would do with the writing and blogging world online, and then realized we could take things further in every direction.

“We had all these readers coming to Pop… we did a survey to ask what they would want us to write about - fashion, beauty, parenting - the audience just wanted more and more and more.”

Staffing and Synergy

“It probably took another six months after that… we really launched the company (in April 2006). It went from me doing Pop all by myself until my husband started the company, to a core group of six of us, and within a year we’re at 40 people. We have 10 sites and each site has about two to three writers and editors right now. We have about three or four more (sites) we’re going to launch by the end of the year.

“One thing that’s fabulous is that we have synergy among sites. We’ve been doing a wedding theme. Each site writes about it. When FabSugar is telling you what outfit to wear or gift to buy, DearSugar is telling you wedding etiquette and YumSugar would do the menus.”

Coming Soon from Sugar

“We have a handful of sites we still want to launch. We’re planning to launch a parenting site. We’re going to do a home site called CasaSugar. We just launched the BellaSugar beauty site. We have ideas to do PetSugar and KarmaSugar, which will be all about charities and doing good, and SavvySugar, which will be for the businesswoman, the working woman, with financial advice and business tips.”

Secret to Success

“Being able to find fabulous editors to write is an important part of the process. We built a really extensive hiring process. We require a great writing sample from people who apply for the jobs. The training for the jobs includes both technology training and teaching people to write in the voice that we have that carries through on all the sites.

“People are passionate about what they’re writing about. It’s expert advice, but it comes through as your girlfriend talking.”

Challenge #1: Pleasing New Readers and Existing Ones, Too

“I would say the challenge is keeping the community happy. Active users who are part of the community made this a home for themselves. As we’ve been growing, we want to take care of everyone and still make it a place where people feel welcome and safe, a happy place.

“I have readers from back in 2005. They’ve been along for the entire ride. It’s great to get feedback from them. At the same time, the site has to be scaleable because we plan to be big.”

Challenge #2: Posting Up-to-the-Moment Content

“In this wonderful ADD world we live in, we realize people want to come (to our Web sites) and constantly consume. One of our challenges is having 15-25 new stories per site per day, and every time you come back, there’s something new.

“That’s the point - if you’re taking a break to have your coffee in the morning and then you come back for lunch… every time they go to one of the different sites, there should be something new for them to see.”

Lesson Learned

“Because we have 10 different sites, (the lesson is) not to expect that they’re all going to grow rapidly. Some are growing rapidly and some are taking time. Those that are taking time to build are getting a unique audience that might not necessarily go to the other sites.”

Creating Addictive Web Sites

“It takes a certain personality, because a lot of the technology stuff is self-taught. We have a great team - along with my husband, we have a great (chief technology officer). With all the girls in the company, we’ll sit there and think of things we want to see on the Web sites. We want quizzes like you would see in Cosmo. We have the people who can help to create that for us.

“The technology is out there to learn in a self-taught way. All the women in our company are writing code. The editors we hire are more than writers. They’re doing Photoshop, they’re writing code. They’re doing everything, which is pretty cool for them to learn new skills.”

Securing VC Funding

“My husband and I put in some of our own money ($250,000 according to Forbes and Business 2.0) to get things rolling. Once we figured out we were in a place where we wanted to grow this thing quickly, we did go and get an investor, which was great for us.

“We did the little road show and showed people what we were envisioning for our sites. At that time, we only had three sites up, and as soon as we got funding, we launched the next five within the next three months.”

Choosing the Right VC

“We were down to three VCs and (we selected the right VC for us based on) the way they would look at our company. Some of them, by the suggestions they made, you could see the kind of scale of what they were thinking. Some would recommend something obvious that we could have come up with ourselves.

“Another would say, ‘We should have a whole television network dedicated to all things Sugar… and you could see this person was thinking on such a larger scale that it made us think we really can take this to the moon. (Those are) the kind of people we want to be with because they’re such great visionaries.”

Entrepreneurial Influence

“It’s definitely my husband - he’s done this before and he just has an amazing energy that luckily rubs off on me. He’s so great about helping people to find what they’re good at and making them excel. In my case, I found what I was passionate about - I wanted to write about entertainment and celebrity, and it took off and created so much more of that.”

Scared to Jump Ship? Test the Water First

“When I started the site, I was still working in advertising, doing both - and just the reinforcement of people coming to the site and becoming engaged in the comments was reinforcement for me that if I spent all day on this, it could become even larger.”

Words of Advice: Pursue Your Passion on the Side

“If you have something that you’re really passionate about, but you have to have the other job going to pay the bills… it’s finding the time to do (what you love) on the side so that you know if it really does take off, then you can put your all behind it.”

How She Defuses Stress in the Office

“We take ‘Katie breaks.’ My daughter turns one tomorrow. She comes to the office every day and has the only office that’s in the office - otherwise it’s just a big open space. Taking a five-minute break to go play with Katie - that’s the best part of the job for me, being able to have her there.”