In May of 2003, my fiancée and I put up crown moulding in our bedroom. I blogged the process on my personal weblog at leelefever.com with pictures and descriptions, just for fun. Soon after I posted it, I noticed I was getting a lot of hits to that page and did a little research.
I titled the post “Crown Moulding Installation�? and I soon realized that Google searches for “Crown Moulding Installation�?(google search) produced my site at the #1 position. This has been true for the last half of 2003 and the first part of this year.
Because of this Google ranking, I get between 50 and 100 people coming to this entry each day. What is really interesting to me is the technical support discussion that is occurring in the comments of the entry. On a weekly basis, people come through and ask a question about crown moulding and myself or someone else will try to answer it. So far there have been over 30 comments. Here’s a recent comment:
Lee, thanks so much for the encouragement. You were right on. The project was not at all difficult and it came out just beautifully. For me, the caulking at the end was the most painstaking but I am very particular so it had to be perfect. Thanks again.
Of course, I’m no home improvement expert and I’ve been reminded many times that my pictures show that we actually hung the moulding upside down. I’ve warned readers that just because I have a web site doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing.
I think this is a testament to weblogs and their ability to appeal to small and finite niche. I’m not an expert and it obvious on the site. There are plenty of non-experts out there trying to hang moulding themselves. By finding a weblog entry by obvious amateurs, the other amateurs felt at home discussing the basics of their project with peers.