Random Thoughts

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Today I am interviewing Bill, from TheBlogEntrepreneur.com.  He’s a relatively new, yet fairly successful blogger with an beautifully designed blog…Check it out today!

1. Do you have a fulltime job or are you a fulltime blogger?

I have a full time job. I am a Sales Manager for a Fortune 400 company and I am one of the few that are blessed enough to love what I do. I love it mainly because of the people that I work with. I have a great team of guys working under me and I would hate to lose that aspect of the job. I would like to continue to grow my online empire to the point where I would have the option to enjoy the freedom that it gives. I have a ways to go before that becomes an option as my job carries a lot of benefits and perks with it that I am not prepared to give up at this point.

2. How long have you been blogging and did you have any other internet experience prior to starting TBE?

I have only been what I would call a blogger since about December 1st of 2007, just about 4 months. Prior to that I screwed around a little bit with a blogger blog here and there but probably didn’t have even a half a dozen posts on all of them so I don’t really even count them.

I have been dabbling online now for a few years and have been on the internet since childhood.  I have a varied background and can usually talk intelligently about most aspects of the online world.

3. Although you have only been blogging less than six months, it appears that you have been quite successful. What steps have you taken to achieve this success?

I simply made the choice to become successful at it. I know that sounds kind of simple but it really is. Most people fail because they choose to fail, they aren’t willing to invest the time, effort or energy to make themselves successful.

I started out by reading blog after blog after blog. I remember the first one I ever read was Yaro Starak at Entrepreneurs-Journey and I loved it. Yaro is an awesome blogger and I found myself really engaged in what he had to say. After kind of getting the lay of the land I dove in and worked at it. I spend as many as 4 to 5 hours a day working on my blog and that’s after working a 12 hour workday.

I don’t often put that much time in now but I did at first when I was learning how and what to do. There’s far more to being successful than just being a good writer. You need an attractive blog and you need to market your content like a madman. It’s tough starting out and it’s still tough 4 months later. I am still a newb and have a long ways to go compared to some blogs.  I will say this…it’s been FUN! I love it and I look forward to spending time researching and writing articles. If you’re in a niche that you don’t look forward to being engaged in then you won’t last.

4. Have you made an mistakes in getting started that if you could, you would go back and do differently?

Yes a LOT of them. Actually, no I don’t think so because everything I screwed up has taught me something. I would have preferred to have a custom theme designed for me right from the start but all the tweaking and playing I have done with mine has taught me a ton about Wordpress.

I think I was fortunate that I found a niche that I love, even though it’s absolutely saturated. If I could give advice to someone else I would say that you should pick a blog topic that you love and that you can be passionate about.

This will allow you to be a much better blogger than if you are writing to try and make some money. That will wear you out and it will show in your writing. I think the ONLY thing I would do over again, is start earlier. I’ve been considering a blog for years but never prioritized it right. My wife has been blogging for a while and loved it but I found it much later than she did.

5. What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Do you do any affiliate marketing and if so, what are your favorite programs?

My thoughts are affiliate marketing is a great way to earn income. It sounds like it’s easy and most of the affiliate programs make it sound easy, but it’s very hard.

The Internet marketers all make it sound like they are making thousands a week and that if you aren’t then you’re doing something wrong. Reality is very, very few people make a sustainable income from AM. It’s very possible, but most people aren’t willing to invest the time to get good at it because they think it’s going to be easy. When they find it isn’t they end up quitting.

My favorite programs have been Ebay and then smaller affilate programs like phpbay and BANS. I am getting working on developing another site that is going to be centered around blogging and blogging tools, themes, plugins that kind of thing that is going to be primarily an affiliate site.

6. Looking into the future, do you have any quantifiable goals that you would like to accomplish in 2008? (traffic numbers, rss, alexa etc)

Yes of course. If you don’t set goals then you are treading water. I will be very disappointed if I am not looking at 20k visitors per month, 1000 + RSS subscribers and an Alexa that is sub 50k. I would also like to have a PR4 or higher and be generating about 5k a month by the end of 2008.

If I had the luxury of being able to work online full time then I don’t think this would be too terribly hard as I have some neat niche sites and some good ideas, I just lack the time to get it all done.

I haven’t posted in a few days and this is due to my almost-obsession with affiliate marketing. There’s so much to learn and an endless supply of opportunities out there that it takes a lot of time to sift through all of it. I have been focusing most of my time on learning about PPC and also the Ebay affiliate program.

On Sunday I purchased the Build a Niche Store software and haven’t looked back! I now have 5 sites up and running and am happy to report that I also have a few sales! Since yesterday, I have made over $30. Doesn’t sound like much, but I’m pretty happy with it. To top it off, all my niche sites include adsense and I have managed to make $10 from adsense. $10 in adsense earnings is more than I made all last month with adsense. I’m pretty excited about the whole thing and can see huge potential if you put the time and effort into researching a niche market. I have researched keywords and have optimized my stores accordingly. 2 of the sites are in very hot niches and the other 3 will hopefully grow. I am doing a bit of PPC advertising right now, but once the sites are indexed in Google, I can hopefully stop.

If you haven’t already done so, pickup the BANS software. You won’t be disappointed!

Today I have the amazing privilege of interviewing Caroline Middlebrook. If you’ve been around blogging for any length of time, you already know who she is, however for any newbies, check out her blog at Caroline-Middlebrook.com/blog

1. As you’ve discussed on your blog, you were/are a computer programmer. What background and education do you have?

Well I was entirely self-taught up until a few years ago when I decided to make it a bit more official and go to University and get a degree in Computer Science.

2. How did you decide on blogging as a career?

I didn’t decide on blogging as a career :o) I quit my day job because I didn’t want to spend my life working for somebody else. I had originally planned on developing software but decided to start out with some Internet marketing. The blog was only put up to report on my progress with the Internet Marketing projects. Since I first quit things have evolved a little and I have decided not to continue software development for the foreseeable future and the blog has actually started making some money on its own. However, I would never consider myself a blogger as such - that’s just my voice.

3. Your blog is still fairly new and you have quite a following; What do you think is the most important factor in your success?

My honesty. I have blogged every detail of what I have done for better or for worse so the blog is very ‘real’. Other people can see what I’m doing it and replicate it if they choose to. I’m also quite vocal in my opinions about the Internet Marketing industry and I speak my mind on my blog :o)

4. Have you made an mistakes in getting started that if you could, you would go back and do differently?

Hmm that’s an interesting question. For the first few months I tried various things and nothing really worked but to be honest I wouldn’t really change anything because I have learned so much along the way and I feel as though I am really enjoying my work at the moment and I feel very positive about the rest of 2008. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t made the mistakes that I have made so no, I wouldn’t change anything.

5. What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Do you do any affiliate marketing and if so, what are your favorite programs?

I’m not much of an affiliate marketer to be honest. The only taste of it that I have is where I have promoted the odd program on my blog and I also promoted my webhost in an ebook that I wrote. That has been quite successful and earned me a few thousand dollars so far which was rather nice.

6. Looking into the future, do you have any quantifiable goals that you would like to accomplish in 2008? (traffic numbers, rss, alexa etc)

I do have goals but I prefer not to discuss them openly. On a more general level obviously I’d like to see my RSS readership continue to grow on a monthly basis and I would also like to be able to successfully launch one or two products. Lastly, I’d really like to be able to set up a niche site that has nothing to do with Internet Marketing and make that profitable.

Sorry for posting this so late, but with my vacation and then my laptop giving out, I was a bit sidetracked.  I was somewhat discouraged with my stats for March 2008.  There were so many things in March which took time away from blogging which caused a downturn in traffic.

As for blog earnings, it’s still pretty slim.  I have been spending some time on other projects and am relying on Google Adsense for revenue on this site, which was quite low.  For all of March my Adsense Earnings have been $5.13!  That won’t even buy me a Hamburger and Fries!  I did also earn $25 for signing up with Shopping Ads, which was a bonus.   I have been somewhat preoccupied with setting up some “Build a Niche Site” stores which is time consuming to optimize properly, which has taken away from focusing on blog earnings.  Hopefully I can get back to marketing this blog more effectively in the future.  I’ll also keep you posted on my BANS Stores.

Here are the traffic stats from my servers statistics package.  I was finding that Google Analytics was missing some visitors, so I quit using it for statistical purposes.  It’s still great for analyzing traffic, but wasn’t a great way to keep accurate statistics of each unique visit.  Maybe I installed it incorrectly if that’s possible, but for now these statistics will work.

This past week I had some technical problems which were very frustrating. My laptop is out of commission so I had to find an affordable alternative. Since I do have a desktop, I decided that I didn’t need to spend too much for a laptop. I mainly work on a desktop throughout the day and then in the evening when my wife is home, we watch some TV. To avoid sitting in the office all evening as well, I prefer to have a laptop to hang out in other rooms of the house.

Anyway, back to the gadget. I did quite a bit of research and settled on an ASUS EEE PC. What a neat little machine! At only 7 inches, it’s tiny. It has a pretty light Linux operating system on it so it’s not bogged down having only 512mb of RAM. It’s small, convenient to travel with and has a solid state hard drive, which means that you could drop it and not cause damage to the hard drive. The part of it was the price at just over $300. THAT’S RIGHT…$300. It does everything that I need a laptop to do for me. It won’t replace my main computer, but it’s a handy little computer that I can take anywhere and surf the net.  Sure beats a PDA. Check this out.

Here is my first in a series of interviews with some of my favorite bloggers. Meet Jay, from Datmoney.com. I love reading this blog because Jay gets straight to the point and isn’t afraid to offend. He says what I’m thinking, but didn’t want to say! Hope you enjoy, and check out his blog today.

1. How did you get started bloggging and why do you it?

Well, technically I started blogging around September ’07 but I did work on a few entrepreneurial internet things prior to then. Unfortunately, I did not exactly succeed with my prior endeavors so I decided to give blogging a shot.Well, I started with another blog of mine because I wanted to educate people and be able to speak my mind at the same time. Then I started DatMoney because I figured I could help people through my personal internet experiences. Hey, I try to help out as much as I can, in whatever way I can!

2. Do you blog fulltime or do you have a “real” job?

I do have a “real” job but at the same time, I feel as though I blog full-time anyways. I spend more hours with my blog(s) than I do at my “real” job. And hopefully in the long run my hard work pays off so I can quit and be able to do this as my “real” job!

3. Did you have previous website experience before DatMoney.com?

Yes. I was the co-founder of OurBS.com which was a college oriented website, but that failed miserably.Well, maybe not “miserably” because I learned a lot from it. Though, if you go to that URL, you’ll see that it currently does not exist. The reason why it went straight to the ground was simply the fact that my business partner and I simple did not have the manpower to do what we had envisioned. But it was a learning experience and I’m just going to take that information and move on. Additionally, I am the owner of DatCurious.com which is a sex education website with a twist, of course. That was actually my first blog Though, I haven’t been able to update it everyday like I once did! that I started and it’s still up and running as we speak.

4. What tips would you give a brand new blogger?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and be yourself, don’t be a copycat. I swear, everyday I see a brand new blogger that starts a MMO (Make money online) site but they have absolutely no idea on how to make money online. I wouldn’t go into that niche; most people will be better off talking about being a bum. And I bet they’re have more success with that. Opps, I got sidetracked for a second. So, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket and be yourself”, in the sense that you should not rely on one source of traffic, one source of income, one blog, etc, because you always want to have an open mind about the internet, your site, your life. And be yourself, don’t try to be a copycat, just blog about something you have some expertise in. Trust me, if you try to talk about something you have no clue about, your readers will know! Additionally, read, read, read, learn and go do! Most people tend to read blogs but get so caught up in someone elses’ work that they forget to focus on their own. Stop procrastinating and go out and do it already!

5. What is the most important activity in generating traffic to your blog?

Well, there’s a difference between generating traffic and building a readership. Anyone can go to social media sites and submit an article to get tons and tons of traffic, but will they ever come back? My goal is to build a readership of people who enjoy my articles and continue to come back. I would rather have 100 people who read a few articles, comment, etc than 1,000 people who come by for 30 seconds and never come back again. That being said, I spend lots of time talking with other bloggers, networking, reading, commenting, especially, using a hands on approach to build a readership. And I’m not saying all those people will be a loyal reader of DatMoney.com, but meeting new people in general is what’s best.

6. Have you made any mistakes in your blogging journey that you would change if you could?

Wow. Yes, I’ve made tons of mistakes and I continue to. I’m not perfect and I don’t think anyone is. But without mistakes, you can’t learn from it. So, all the mistakes that I have made, I probably wouldn’t change, only because if I didn’t make them, I would probably never have learned from them either.