750 Copies of Her Book Sold, and a World Championship Win

Who: Katie, a.k.a. The Girl with the Tree Tattoo
What: Ballroom dance blog and books
Format: Content & media · United States, English
Started: March 2015
Audience: 2,852 website subscribers and social media followers (peak)
Payers: 750 buyers of her books and journals
Income: Yes, a side income
Status: Closed
Channels: Your own newsletter, video platforms, collabs & shoutouts, offline & word of mouth

What worked: Blogging consistently about her own journey, amplified by word of mouth among pro-am dancers and at ballroom competitions
The result: 750 buyers of her books and journals; her first print run of 100 copies sold out in about a year, alongside roughly as many digital sales; a self-developed practice framework that helped her win a World Championship division
The catch: Paid ads on Facebook and Instagram never worked; growth stayed modest and eventually faded once she moved across the country and stepped back from competing

I started off just wanting to process and document my journey as an adult amateur ballroom dancer. The journey was full of unique challenges, and gradually I realized there was a gap in knowledge between the adult students learning to dance and their teachers. Most professional dance teachers grew up in the ballroom dance world, so parts of it were second nature to them. Their amateur students were adults coming in from the “regular” world, and almost nothing about the ballroom world was obvious. By sharing my experiences in my blog, and eventually in published books, I hoped to make the journey a little easier for others.

I did all this while working full-time in a corporate office job. Creative writing was something I loved to do, and I had no intentions of turning the blog into a brand or a business. But ballroom dancing as a pro-am dancer – an amateur dancer who trains and performs with a professional teacher – is an expensive endeavor, and a friend who was also a budding entrepreneur encouraged me to explore monetization. That's when I decided to publish my first book, a short e-book about what I wish I had known during my first year in ballroom.

My first followers came through my WordPress blog. I didn't fully grasp the reach I was getting until I started being recognized in the dance studio or at ballroom competitions. My audience grew slowly; it was rare that the blog was viewed more than 1,000 times in a month. But other pro-am dancers would come up to me and tell me how much they loved reading the blog and how much they related to my experiences. I would receive emails and private messages thanking me for saying out loud what they had struggled with silently. That impact mattered more to me than the metrics.

I shared blog posts along with photos and video clips on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. More than three platforms felt like too much to handle. Twitter never produced much engagement; by the time I deactivated that account, it had less than 50 followers. Instagram and Facebook were the most active, with Instagram reaching nearly 1,600 followers and Facebook bringing 870. I posted on those two platforms every day, and blogged at least once a week. After a few years, I had built a solid core audience who loyally read my content every week. It should come as no surprise, based on those follower numbers, that nothing ever went viral – my consistency is what kept the people who did find my content watching out for my next post.

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Several times, I tried paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, aiming either to attract new followers to my social media pages or to direct them to the blog. None ever performed very well or felt worth the money spent. As I ventured down a more entrepreneurial path, I sought opportunities for brand deals and partnerships, and had little success. I even had a book signing for my first physical book at a dance shop where no one showed up. By 2019, I had grown tired of creating content constantly, whether for the blog or social media. I wanted to get paid for being a dancer and a writer; I didn't sign up to also be in sales, marketing, social media management, video editing, photography, and content creation.

The peak for The Girl with the Tree Tattoo came with the development and publication of my first physical book, The Solo Practice Guide for Ballroom Dancing, between 2017 and 2018. My own dance journey required answering the question of how to practice a partner dance on your own, and that became a new, more focused theme for the brand. I was on a very tight budget and couldn't afford the extra lessons or coaching that other students used to advance. I also worked full time and had two dogs at home, so I couldn't spend hours practicing at the studio every day. I first developed a single-page PDF that I offered as a lead magnet, which highlighted the framework that later became the outline for the book. I self-published the book and started with 100 copies to sell out of my apartment. They sold out in about a year, in addition to approximately the same number of sales for digital versions. The turning point came when I proved the effectiveness of the framework I had developed. In August 2018, several months after the book had been published, I competed in a World Championship event and won my division. I credited my solo practice strategy for that win, and suddenly a lot more dancers were interested.

The Girl with the Tree Tattoo started to fade out of public view when I moved across the country in 2021. I had been dancing and competing in Southern California, a popular area for ballroom dancers. I was moving to Midcoast Maine, the geographical and cultural opposite of Southern California. At first, I planned on continuing my ballroom training, but as I settled into my new home and new life, I realized the drive to train and compete was waning. As the adrenaline levels decreased from a life of constant hustle, I realized how much of a toll it had taken on my body. I shared the occasional update from my new life with the audience I had left, but eventually we all drifted in our separate directions. And I was ok with that.

My audience was always people like me – adults pursuing their passion for ballroom dance while trying to balance all the other aspects of life, including work, home, and family. I often focused on people with limited budgets, which didn't help my efforts to sell books but was still important to my mission and values. I had managed to fund my ballroom passion by the skin of my teeth, which often made me feel inferior among people who dropped thousands of dollars on extra lessons or costumes without hesitation. But I loved dance as much as anyone, and I worked hard to own my place on the dance floor. My audience related strongly to that experience, but the reality that impacted my business was that, when it comes down to spending money on a dance lesson versus a book to help them practice on their own, the choice would be the dance lesson.

The Girl with the Tree Tattoo blog highlighted the challenges of learning ballroom dance as an adult while also balancing work, family and home. Through writing about my own journey, I provided honest reflections and insights of the ballroom world from the student's perspective.

Website: thegirlwiththetreetattoo.com