The Dithering of a District Diva

The award-nominated series “The Prototype” was inspired by Brooklyn Bloggess Jamilah Lemieux’s “Happy Black Girl Day!” This once-a-month holiday allows us to take a break from the constant media assault on Black women and to celebrate the sisterhood with showers of positivity. The way I choose to celebrate HBGD is by highlighting an extraordinary and prototypical Black woman.

The November 2011 Prototype:  Angel Laws, Creator of ConcreteLoop.com, Lifetime Achievement Award Winner at 26 and author of the top-selling book on Amazon.com: “Angels Laws of Blogging.”

Angel Laws is your favorite blogger’s inspiration. When her entertainment blog, ConcreteLoop.com, was featured in 2008 as one of Time magazine’s fifty best websites on the internet, the media attention made mainstream advertisers finally pay attention and invest in the previously ignored minority blogging industry. Now many Black bloggers — including Ms. Laws — are making a very good living doing what they love.

Currently based in New York City, Angel blogs from her chic Manhattan office, just blocks away from the Empire State Building.  Her first book “Angel’s Laws of Blogging” (which she published at the age of 26 this summer) is a top-seller on Amazon.com (check it out below!), her keynote speaking gig at the 2011 Blogging While Brown Conference was a smash hit, and at the age of 26, she’s already received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her blogging success at the 2011 Black Weblog Awards. When it comes to blogging, Angel is clearly the expert to know.  She’s in such demand that both Russel Simmons and Jermaine Dupree offered to buy Concreteloop from her. She passed on both, explaining to DCDistrictDiva.com:

Jermaine Dupree is cool but  at the time he wasn’t really familiar with the internet world, so it wouldn’t have been a good fit for CL as a brand..”

[As far as Russell Simmons is concerned], there’s always something going on [with him]. The Rush [credit] Card scammed people to get money and [his website] Global Grind, when it first started, they’d take a full post [from someone else’s site] and put it on their website with a tiny link back to make it look like it was actually their content. That didn’t look right to me, [so I passed].

Instead of cashing out, Angel joined into an advertising partnership agreement with Buzz Media, a company whose advertising expertise has enabled her to take her blog to the next level financially.

But her journey to success was no cake walk: Angel has been blogging for over a decade.  Ever the entrepreneur, Angel started her first of many businesses in middle school doing graphic design and designing websites for her friends. She started Concreteloop at just 20 years old, while living with her parents, still in college and working a minimum wage job.  Her entrepreneurial spirit and confidence  — as well as her parents’ support of her strong individuality and precociousness, she says — kept her motivated enough to see her dreams through to fruition.  Through her book, Angel breaks down every single thing that a blogger needs to know “if you want to have a successful and profitable blog.”  But Angel explained her own three-part strategy for success to DCDistrictDiva.com.  The first key element is:

Hard work! People don’t want to put in the effort and hard work. They don’t see [that my success is the result of] growth over the years. Everything I’m doing now I’ve been doing for 13 years. It’s like a step. People just want to go from A-Z [but that’s not how it works]. Hard work does pay off. You’ve got to be consistent and persistent with it.

Second, Angel brought on a team of trusted friends ( Brian, J. Dakar, Norell and Christine) to help with content for the site:

[Keeping up with the demand for the blog] was hectic, that’s why I had to bring contributors on. I had school work and  [Concreteloop] was my hobby. Now that it’s a business I have more to juggle and more stress. Now that it has become the job, you’ve got to really get on your game and you’re paying [company] taxes, and you’re responsible for other people’s paychecks, so [I needed help]. 

Angel dedicates a whole section of her new book to the keys to building a great team.

Third of all — and the winning element that must be responsible for catapulting Angel into blogging success — is her striking humility and overwhelming kindness and commitment to help others succeed.  Her heart for giving back is evidenced most recently in her awesome book that literally tells all of the secrets of the trade and breaks down how to make your blog profitable –information many bloggers would rather keep to themselves to stave off competition.  But she wrote the book, she says because she wants  more minority bloggers to enter the industry and to thrive like she has.  To remain so humble is easy, Angel says:

 I still get teased by my brothers just like I did as a kid and that just made me never really take myself too seriously; they still keep me grounded.  I just don’t take [my success too] seriously because it could be taken away like that. People don’t realize that just because you make it at one point, you’re still just as vulnerable to fall. I feel it’s pointless to act like you’re on an untouchable level.

I’ve learned that you’ve got to be humble and you’ve got to remember where you came from. You can’t stab people in the back because its going to come back to you. Everything will come back.

And it is with that sense of duty to spread positivity that Angel runs her celeb-friendly blog that spotlights up-and-coming entertainers and avoids hurtful gossip — a far cry from competitors who live to tear down the famous.  Unsurprisingly, Angel has faced some hate from other bloggers in the industry as well as some disappointment from artists she helped gain notoriety.  Though in her book Angel describes  Janelle Monae as an example of someone who remembered and appreciated Concreteloop’s early support of her career, Angel tells DCDistrictDiva.com:

Drake is one of them I feel that we kind of helped him out in the beginning [but then they gain fame] and they don’t have time for you anymore.  [But] you can’t take things personally. It just shows their character and you’ve got to get over it.

[As far as other bloggers attacking me] it kind of came out of left field to me, but you learn that it’s coming from their own insecurities and you can’t let it get you down.

And Angel has every reason to stay positive. Her blog boasts thousands of unique hits a day, and she’s even been approached by VH1 to do her own reality show.  Though she turned that opportunity down, as well, due to “bad timing,” that has not stopped her

steady climb. After her exclusive invite to a White House symposium for minority bloggers with the President in 2010, she can add White House press credentials to her stash of back-stage passes.

She says:

I’m just going with the flow. I’m doing book tours to promote the book at high schools and colleges. I’m styling shoots. I did the female Roc-A-Wear style look book  and things are going well. Concreteloop is such a great blog and it’s always going to be relevant. There will always be a place for the energy and positivity the blog brings, so I’m just going to keep going up. If it fails it fails. I’m living in New York!

In addition to the invaluable advice she lays out for new bloggers in her book, she says:

You’ve got to know how to promote yourself. Don’t try to follow the trends; If you follow a trend you die when the trend dies. Just be organized, consistent and motivated. It took about a year for me to make money [from Concreteloop], so keep at it.

And when it’s all said and done, Angel says:

I want people to remember I was a creative person, a trendsetter — I brought new things to the table. [I hope to show that] anything you put in the world will come back to you. I always try to be a positive person, so I hope they remember me as someone who was a positive influence on the blogging community.

Angel Laws is: The Prototype

Buy “Angel’s Laws of Blogging: What You Need to Know If You Want to Have a Successful and Profitable Blog“

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