First of all, Alyssa absolutely loves baseball. This isn't something she's trying to do to get to something else. It's real to her. If you read her baseball blog, you know she really understands and loves the game.
What Alyssa did - which was basic but important - was simply put herself out there and let it be known what it is she loved and wrote about it. She writes with passion and has a lot of inciteful things to say about the game on the blog. She lets out her frustrations and asks intelligent and challenging questions on why something was done a certain way: especially with her beloved Los Angeles Dodgers.
She also saw needs in the game which she is starting to uniquely fill. For example, she has her own baseball clothing line for women now. Her business started when she would come to baseball games and not find anything to wear to support her team that she liked.
In response she launched her own online clothing store: Touch, whose products are offered on the MLB.com and also at stadiums.
Alyssa is building an entire business around what she loves, and the majority of it is based on talking about it on the Internet as a foundation.
Some may think this happened because Alyssa is a celebrity, but I don't think it is. Sure, her name recognition got her a hearing that others have to work to get in a different way, but in the end it's still her consistency, passion and knowledge of the game that has created great online success for her.
It's a great story on how you take what you love, become an expert on it, talk about it passionately, and then create products or services built around that foundation.
Alyssa is becoming a great online marketing success.