I first met Mike Crimmins at Daily Shot of Coffee when he purchased Ramped Reviews. Back then, Mike was just getting started with process of review blogging and was looking for a way to connect with his readers and blog about his massive love of all things coffee (as you can imagine…I can relate).
On DailyShotofCoffee.com, Mike shares his coffee experiences, opinions and reviews with his readers and he has a great growing community around that premise. As he says on his about page, “I’m not a coffee expert (yet), I just love coffee.” and that rings true throughout his blog.
What You Can Learn From Mike
Mike Crimmins has done a fantastic job at taking action steps with his blog. Having been blogging for sometime before he purchased Ramped Reviews, he was able to capitalize on what he had already learned through first hand knowledge and apply the steps laid out in Ramped Reviews to take his blog to the next level by getting in all of that coffee and equipment for review content on his blog.
From Mike:
I’ve read Ramped Reviews from cover to cover several times now, it has really been the hands on guide for helping me get products to review for Daily Shot Of Coffee. The chapter on how to write the product request letter was especially helpful and one of the key reasons that I’ve received thousands of dollars worth of equipment product to review including high end coffee makers, espresso makers and various other pieces of coffee equipment. Thanks at least in part to Ramped Reviews, I’m running out of room in my kitchen.
Ramped Blogging helped me fine tune my blog. I’ll admit that I thought I was a little too experienced for it at first, but inside of it I was able to find many things that helped me fine tune my website on a lot of different levels. The chapter on pages, I used as a guideline to add missing pages to my blog to make it more useful to my readers. The section on generating income helped me tweak some things to improve my income, while also giving me ideas on other ways to monetize. Another good read that I need to go back and look at for a second time.
Mike is doing an incredible job at capturing leads for his newsletter by providing a free eBook that gives you the recipes you need to create your own Starbucks drinks at home. With a great tagline, “Learn How To Make The $5 Coffee Shop Drinks For Less Than $2 A Cup”, Mike is growing his blog by providing a valuable resource to his readers. This newsletter will be a vital part of the blog’s future growth.
Over time, Mike is going to want to clean up the design a little bit and get more of a defined logo to centralize his brand, but the community his is building and the success he has seen so far overshadows that at this time. As the budget allows, those will be investments he is going to want to make in the future.
How Is Daily Shot Of Coffee Doing?
Well…I could throw up his stats and show you guys how great he is doing with unique visitors, pageviews, etc…but there is something else that happened recently to Mike’s blog that is much more important. It also shows the true power of blogging and reviewing products on your blog.
Mike hit one of the holy grails of blogging exposure…main stream media. Thanks to Mike’s hard work on providing quality content and reviews for his coffee loving readers, Mike’s Daily Shot of Coffee blog was linked up in a magazine…Woman’s World.
It doubled my traffic on Monday and brought me a lot more fans on Facebook and email subscribers.
You can find out more about that magazine article by clicking here.
Mike has done what a lot of bloggers don’t, he has applied the knowledge he has learned from experience and eBooks by taking action. You can get all of the advice in the world, but until you take that first action step…you are not going to get anywhere.
Now…thanks to his action…he has more product than he can physically review (didn’t pay for it either by the way) and he has a growing community built around his honesty and love of all things coffee.
You can pick up your own copy of Ramped Reviews by clicking here and…if you love coffee…click through DailyShotofCoffee.com and soak up the content.
18 comments
A call to action is crucial. Without actually putting the rubber to the road nothing will happen for you.
Mike, I love your site and read it religiously…it helps that I also am a coffee fanatic (typing over top of the coffee cup).
I think Mike laid down some tracks when he went after product reviews…he is killing it.
Glad to hear that you’re reading it! Really honored to have people that actually check it out and always glad to run into another coffee fanatic. I’m about to make another cup now.
Thanks for sharing another success story! Good to hear about yet another way to be successful on the subject.
Great work Mike.
I to am using Ramped Reviews when writing letters and requests. It helps just to have an outline of key points that I want to cover when writing.
That is great that you were able to hit mainstream media. I suppose that is all of our goals at some point, even if it is just once.
Good work and keep it up! Once the lil successes start happening its hard to want to stop isn’t it?
Thanks Robb!
Mike
Mike’s Brew Review
It is addicting for sure!!!
The success is definitely addicting and Mike, I think you’ll be seeing a lot of it. Love your blog.
Way to go Mike! I’m not much of a coffee person, but your site definitely perked my interest. And congrats on the Woman’s World nod!
I don’t understand the not much of a coffee person part, but in all seriousness thank you for the kind words!
hmmm…. Mike better not have said he came up with his tagline “Learn How To Make The $5 Coffee Shop Drinks For Less Than $2 A Cup” because as I recall, I was the one who thought that up for him!!!! 🙂
But in all seriousness, Mike has done amazing things with Daily Shot. I’ve seen it grow from day one and it’s been wonderful to see how far it has come. Robb, I know you have been an amazing inspiration for Mike’s site & business mindset. And he has passed on a lot of your wisdom to me as well!
Thank you!
Thanks Jen!
Jen, of course I didn’t take claim for that or the name of the blog.
@Mike: Congrats on your blog and the mention in Woman’s Day. Very impressive.
@Robb: As promised, I picked up my copy of Ramped Reviews today. Thanks.
Awesome Bryan. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Thanks Bryan, never thought I would be mentioned in Woman’s Day, but I’m not complaining.
Really honored to be mentioned. I have to say that the small success I’m seeing can definitely be attributed to your, your blog and your ebooks.
Thanks Mike!
The fun part about making eBooks and this blog is the feedback/success I get to see on other blogs. Makes it all worth it.
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