Welcome to the sixth instalment in TLCB’s Pro Series;
How to Become a Lego Professional
In this series we’re interviewing builders who have taken their hobby to the next level, and who are now earning an income from their Lego building, either via a full time career, or via side projects such a commissioned creations or book publication. If you’re interested in a career working with Lego, these builders can help you, because they’ve made it happen. Let’s get started…
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Pro No.6 | The Lego Car Blog
Wait, you just said ‘professional’?… Admittedly, longstanding readers of The Lego Car Blog will know this site is far from that, but nevertheless our inbox has burst over the last decade with at least one correspondence asking how we do it. Probably. Thus if you’ve ever wondered how to run a world-famous Lego site… you’d best ask The Brothers Brick. But we can tell you how we run this dilapidated shack clinging to the internet’s fringes.
Alright then, tell us about yourselves…
Ah. We can’t really do that. Well, we can, but then we’d lose our mystique. We have been asked a few times who we are, and honestly it’s not important. We’re not important. The work of those we post is however, at least to Lego fans, and thus the focus is on the talented builders that appear here, rather than the monkeys behind the typewriters.
Our anonymity also allows us not to be swayed, biased, or burdened; we can publicise the creations we feel are deserving of it, without self-promotion or favour, which is somewhat unique amongst Lego-sites. And we can’t personally get into trouble if we write something stupid.
We can say that we’re just… normal. No special talents, particularly not coding or writing, we like cars (and may be fortunate enough to work with them for a living), and have family, kids, pets, mortgages, and other hobbies away from little plastic bricks.
How did you start this ‘dilapidated shack clinging to the internet’s fringes?
We began posting our own creations on the now defunct MOCpages, where a vibrant community of vehicle builders had blossomed. Sadly at the time, said community was roundly ignored by the established Lego sites, most likely due to the whole ‘self-promotion and favour’ thing mentioned above. And so we thought, if they weren’t going to do it, perhaps we should.
A bit of research later – which mostly centred around what was a) the least work, and b) free – we settled on WordPress, and in November 2011 The Lego Car Blog was born.
What happened from there?
We posted a couple of creations, and a few people decided to take a look. They must have told a few more people, and they then told a few more, and then much to our surprise we were in the tens-of-thousands. Fortunately we knew that it was the creations our readers were interested in, not The Lego Car Blog as such, which helped to keep us grounded as the numbers reached a million.
How did you decide what to blog?
It was just what we liked! We set some rules around the minimum standard, which subsequently evolved into our submission guidelines, and we encouraged our readers to suggest models too. We also decided to post set reviews fairly early on, which have proved immensely popular, and now number over a hundred.
Oooh!… Does that mean you get sent sets from LEGO?
Sadly not. LEGO have contacted us to become an affiliate to drive traffic to Lego.com, but perhaps because we’re anonymous, and therefore not visible in any LEGO User Groups (plus we sometimes write ‘your mom’ jokes), we’re not endorsed by The LEGO Company in any way. We still like them though.
What sets you apart from other Lego sites?
Incompetence probably. But we’ve also tried to reach the places that perhaps the more established Lego sites haven’t. These are the uncool places, the niche places, the places unaffiliated with a LUG, without a famous builder in their midst, and that maybe don’t get the air-time because they don’t know the right people.
Secondly, we try to be quick; we love seeing a proper Lego site blog a creation after it’s appeared here (and particularly if we have a wittier title).
And that’s probably the final thing; we don’t take ourselves as seriously. Firstly because our creations are found by mythical Elves, and secondly because there are so many holes in our Lego-community knowledge (especially sci-fi). Thus our posts tend to be slightly more, um… lavatorial than the proper Lego sites, with such topics as loose stools, your Mom’s topiary, and a cat’s anus featured over the years, but we’re also maybe better informed when it comes to things vehicular. That does mean we can occasionally go into a bit too much detail about the history of car licensing in 1970s Eastern-Europe mind…
What’s the worst thing about running the site?
The spam. It numbers dozens a day, and is always for shady businesses. Still, it does help us to know which products, industries and markets to avoid. The current front-runners are crypto, escorts, and – weirdly – puppy farms.
We also receive a lot of inbound communications from marketing agencies wishing to leverage our reach with their clients (who are probably the aforementioned shady businesses), and from other marketing agencies promising to expand our reach. All are ignored.
Hmm… so how do you earn an income?
Fortunately there are lots of legitimate ways to turn eyeballs in to dollar signs, and we use two; WordAds, which is WordPress’s in-house revenue generator, and more recently Google AdSense. We dabbled with another after they reached out to us promising much, and it looked great on paper, but all that happened in reality is our views halved overnight. Perhaps their amazing reviews may not have all been genuine…
The two sources we do use are good enough revenue generators for us, as – frankly – we don’t know what we did to earn it. It’s therefore passed on, where we hope it’s doing a little bit of good in society. Or at least cancelling out the ‘Your Mom’ jokes.
How could other Lego fans start their own Lego website?
If we can, anyone can. Seriously. Sure we’ve learned a bit of coding, hosting, e-marketing and other internet-y skills along the way, but we possessed none of these when we founded The Lego Car Blog some twelve years ago.
Our only advice would be do it with your heart in the right place. We’ve tried to make a difference to the Lego Community’s vehicle builders first, ensure a bit of charity, social justice, and even faith appears every now and then, and that we don’t keep what could be better used elsewhere for ourselves.
Some aspects can be hard; trying to being to nice to the fifteenth person that day to ask “Where Can I Buy It?”, finding the time to find creations, er… we mean to ‘look after The Lego Car Blog Elves’, and balancing running the site with family, work, faith, friends and other hobbies isn’t always easy. Fortunately our writing standard is very low, so it doesn’t take long to bosh a post out.
Most importantly of course, do something you like. We like LEGO and we like cars, so for us, The Lego Car Blog was (and is) easy.
Is there anything you wish you’d done differently?
Oh a hundred things. But none serious enough to dwell upon. We sometimes wonder if we should re-enlist on social media, until we remember it’s poison, and occasionally we publish things that annoy people, but really, it’s just Lego at the end of the day. And ‘Your Mom’ jokes.
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And so that’s an interview of… ourselves. The Lego Car Blog was started, and continues to be run, by normal, mediocre, talentless people. Which means if normal, mediocre, talentless people can create a world-famous Lego site moderately known Lego site, then you certainly can. Or more likely something much better. We’d love to see what you do : )
If you have any questions for us here at The Lego Car Blog (as long as it’s not ‘Where Can I Buy It?’) then drop us a message. You can find what we look for in the creations we blog by clicking here, our sources by clicking here, FAQs here, and if you’d like to read some interviews with actual Lego Professionals, you can find the full interview list by clicking here.