5 Q's with Yee-Fan Sun

First in my new interview series is Yee-Fan Sun, the Harvard-educated hipster behind DigsMagazine.com and author of First Digs:The Quasi-Adult's Guide to Decorating with Style---Without Blowing Your Budget.
Urban Muse: I can tell from the activity on the forums that your site has a pretty loyal following. Could you tell us how you developed an audience when you first launched the website?
Yee-Fan: I came up with the idea for Digs late in 1999 and launched in January of 2000... Within a couple of months, I was contacted by the now-defunct ChickClick.com about joining their network, [which] not only introduced me to new individual readers, but increased my search engine rankings, too.Sometime during that first year the dot-com bubble burst; ad revenues soon plummeted, sites started shutting down left and right (including ChickClick.com eventually), and I found myself with a site that was generating increasingly respectable amounts of traffic, but earning way less money than it had when we'd been starting out with... I think two things allowed me to keep Digs going when a lot of other great sites were closing up shop. First, I was running the entire site by myself, with very very little overhead... Second, Digs had started building up a small but pretty loyal community through the message boards, and getting emails and hearing boards members talk about how much the site meant to them was amazing additional incentive for me to keep Digs going.

UM: Kudos on the book. How did that get started?
Y: I had been approached about doing a book by various people in the past, but for a long time, I just didn't feel ready to tackle such a large-scale project. An amazing woman named Judy Linden contacted me a few years back, and the combination of good timing and the fact that we had an immediately comfortable rapport just started the ball rolling. Judy helped me figure out what the book was going to be about, collaborated with me on the proposal, did all the work of actually shopping out the proposal to publishers, and dealt with all the contract negotiations.

UM: You've been doing the ezine for several years now. How do you continue generating fresh content after all this time?
Y: Moving around as often as I have has certainly helped in coming up with ideas for the Lounge section of the website (which is centered on decorating and maintaining house); I feel like I'm always in the process of setting up house again ... good for inspiring new articles, not sogood for my sanity perhaps!Seriously, though, I'm constantly worried that I've finally run out of ideas for new articles, but somehow, someway, eventually, something always comes up. Digs pretty much reflects the things I'm most obsessed with in my own life -- finding cool furnishings (for cheap), cooking good meals (for cheap), entertaining friends and family (for cheap), chilling with a good book or interesting DVD (inherently cheap). I also steal shamelessly from what I see my friends and my younger brothers dealing with in setting up their own places.

UM: Since you work from home, could you share a few tips on staying motivated?'
Y: People are always asking me this! I do think that developing good work habits helps a lot. For one thing, I keep pretty regular work hours despite the fact that there's no external factor influencing me. I also find that self-imposing deadlines on myself can be helpful; for instance, I decided early on that Digs would feature a new article every Monday and every Thursday, and having those dates set ensures that I have to produce at a pre-determined schedule. Mostly, though, I think the best motivation is just knowing that if I don't do this work, no one else will!

UM: And now, the question that I'm sure is on everyone's minds... what is your favorite reality TV show?
Y: True but totally embarrassing fact about me: a long, long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, I sent in an audition videotape for a certain MTV show often credited with launching the reality-TV craze. Like a gazillion other wannabe reality TV stars, I was roundly rejected. It's possible I'm still a little bitter, but whatever the reason, I can't seem to get into any of the reality shows.

UM: Thanks, Yee-Fan... Be sure to check back on the first and third Thursday of every month for more insight into writing, publishing, and beyond.