A couple of weeks ago I introduced readers to a new forum EarnersForum.com (a forum for people making money online). It’s headed up by a guy named Lee Dodd (who writes a blog called Forum Trends (sort of like ProBlogger for Forum owners). Lee recently posted a screen capture of his latest payment from YPN for a whopping $222,718.36 (that’s for three months). Obviously he knows a thing or two about making money from forums (something that I’ve heard time and time again is difficult).

I’m often asked about using forums alongside blogs and as I’ve never run one I thought Lee would be a good candidate to interview. I hope you find his answers to my questions helpful..

Darren – Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed Lee. For those ProBlogger readers who are unfamiliar with you could you gives us a brief introduction to who you are and what you do?

Lee – My name is Lee Dodd and I am live / work just outside of Dallas, TX. I have been in business online since the summer of 2000. I am 27 years old, married for almost 10 years, and the father of two beautiful girls (ages 4 and 6).

Darren – How did you get into making a living online?

Lee – It all began in 2000 when I got started with my telecom business. I decided to build my first website to use it as a lead gen source. I soon expanded to have a total of 3 sites generating leads for my salesmen to work with on the telephone. After I sold that company in

2004 along with another offline business in later that year, I began to dive more heavily in to content sites and forum building.

Darren – You seem to focus most of your energies on forums – why is that? What are the forums that you work on (have worked on previously). [Read more...]

Big in blog news this week is the sale of BlogHerald (no official word that it’s sold yet but it looks like final negotiations are taking place). The price is said to be in excess of over $72,000 (USD). BlogHerald’s owner is Duncan Riley (a partner of mine at b5media) so I shot him a request for an interview as the subject is so relevant to this blog.

Having never sold a blog of my own I’m fascinated by the process and so started by asking Duncan:

Why are you Selling BlogHerald?
A number of reasons. Firstly Ive identified that there is now a perception that I have a conflict of interesting writing about blog networks when I’m an owner of one. Whether this is fair or not I guess doesn’t come into it because the perception is there, despite me having written the blog for 3 years. Also becoming a full time Problogger back in December means I can always do with the money :-) The capital from the sale will fund my mortgage for atleast the next 12 months and allow me to finish off my house whilst building up income from other blogs and from b5media.

One of the biggest topics of discussion around this sale is regarding the ‘secrecy’ and the strategy of not publically announcing the name of the blog being sold – Why did you do it this way? What were the pros and cons of this move in retrospect?

I don’t think it was so much a secret: certainly those who asked for the information from Jeremy (who were interested in bidding) where provided the details commercial in confidence. Although there has naturally been a fair bit of talk about the sale imagine how much more there would have been if The Blog Herald had been named from day one? Basically I didn’t want a circus around the sale, and from a marketing perspective I believe a full public sale may have been detrimental to the brand.

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One of my favorite blogs to show people when they ask to give examples of innovative ways to use blogs to earn an income is Monolo’s Shoeblog. If you haven’t seen it before you really must go have a look – it’s a blog written by ‘the Manolo’ about shoes and celebrities. Odd topic? Yes and no – in fact the more I reflect on ‘the Manolo’ the smarter I realize that they are as its a blog that crosses two popular niches – shoes and celebrity.

The blog is written in the third person by ‘the (anonymous) Manolo’ who has a real cult following. The style of writing is quirky, fun and at times quite bizarre – but I (and many thousands of others) love it!

I’ve been emailing the Manolo off and on for a while now and have been hassling them for an interview – today my wishes came true. I decided to get into the third person spirit and do the interview in that style. The Manolo answers my questions very candidly and even tells us how much the Manolo earns from the shoe blog – you might be surprised just how lucrative shoes can be!

The ProBlogger – How did the Manolo get into blogging?

The Manolo – Ah, this it is the good question. The Manolo he had been blogging in the tiny small way for many years prior to the launching of the shoe blog, but it was always most unsatisfying because it was not about the Manolo’s true love, the shoes, and so the Manolo he finally decided to follow his bliss by starting the blog about the shoes and the fashion.

The ProBlogger – If you had to describe Manolo’s Shoe Blog in less than 15 words how would you do it?

The Manolo – Shoes, fashion, celebrity, humor and Manolo!

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There’s a good interview over at PSFK with Engadgets editor, Peter Rojas. It gives a great insight into the inner workings of one of the biggest blogs going around. Here’s a couple of snippets that highlight the type of professionalism that gets a blog to the top of the pile:

‘I personally publish 5200 posts a year but I have my team (Ryan, Barb, Marc) who work shifts. We also have regular contributors for columns and features. To be in the team, you have to get ‘it’. It’s intangible. You need a certain depth and breadth of tech without necessarily being a specialist. We don’t want a Mac person to come in and refuse to look at PCs. We try to be agnostic – we’re enthusiastic about how people can use this stuff and about technology in general, we try not to get focused on specific brands….

We’re trying to grow (Engadget) into three or four areas. We’ve been doing reader events, we’re going to expand into video, and we’d like the podcast to grow and evolve into something better than it is now.’

Great interview Piers – keep up the good work.

Phoenixrealm has a good interview with Jacob Gower the recent purchaser of blogs including CSS Vault, BloggingPro, Forever Geek, and Blog Catalog and the owner of new blog top sites.

It’s an insightful look into the mind of a guy who is quickly making a name for himself in ProBlogging circles.

As I mentioned in my ‘I’m home’ post – I was fortunately to catch up with two talented ProBloggers whilst I was in London – Ashley Norris and Katie Lee from Shiny Media. Ashley and I have been emailing for sometime now as Shiny have been a blogging enterprise that I’ve been following for a while now – and so the chance for a face to face catch up was too good to pass up. I came away from out time together having had both a very pleasant afternoon – but also feeling as though I’d just met a couple of fellow travellers who knew both the ups and downs of the ProBlogging journey (a rare feeling).

So I’m really happy to present this interview with ProBlogger – Ashley Norris.

ProBlogger – Thanks for your time Ashley – can you tell us a little about yourself and Shiny Media? What is it, how did it come into being, who is behind it etc?

Ashley – It was set up by three freelance technology journalists (myself, Chris Price and Katie Lee) around two years ago. Egged on by Neil McIntosh at The Guardian newspaper (who is the Godfather of British commercial blogging), we launched a gadget blog for the UK and Europe called Tech Digest. For the first six months or so we didn’t take it very seriously. Then the adsense money started rolling, we became aware of what Nick Denton was doing at Gawker and people started talking to us about buying the blog, so we thought we’d explore what else we could do. We then started Shiny Shiny, which at that time was the first gadget blog written for women and aimed at women. Since then we have launched the fashion blogs Shoewawa and The Bag lady, techy blogs Games Digest and Mobile Digest, ethical consumer guide HippyShoper and now the online auction freak show that is Bayraider.

ProBlogger – How do you decide what topics to write blogs on? Do you start with a topic and then find a blogger, or with a blogger first? Is it about finding something commercially viable or something that is a passion or an interest of someone and building a commercial blog around it? [Read more...]

If you speak French you might be interested in this interview I did with InternetActu.net. The interview was conducted in English and then translated. I hope it translates well.

If you want to translate it back into English you might want to use Google’s translation tool which presents it like this. It’s not perfect but you get the gist.

Chris Pirillo is one of those names that you hear as you interact with ProBloggers around the web but for some reason he’s someone that I’d never personally bumped into online until a few weeks ago when on a whim I posted this little post asking if anyone wanted to sponsor me to go to Gnomedex which is a conference that Chris runs. Imagine the surprise the next morning when I checked my inbox to find an email from Chris himself offering to help me out by finding someone who might be able to get me there! I was pretty stunned and of course excited and shot an email straight back.

Unfortunately Gnomedex clashes with a prearranged trip I’m going on to a different part of the world at the same time (and I’m thinking they’re not going to change the dates just for me) so I won’t be able to meet him in person (this year) but I thought I’d take the opportunity of him stopping by ProBlogger to see if he’d grace us with some of his time in a ProBlogger interview because this guy is very well connected and has been blogging professionally for a while now – he’s got a lot of wisdom in him – so lets get some of it out!

I hope you enjoy our interview with Chris Pirillo!

ProBlogger – Chris – thanks for your time. Who is Chris Pirillo? Pretend we’re at a party, we’ve got beer in hand, peanuts (you get the picture) and we’re meeting for the first time – I ask the aged old ‘So what do you do’ question – How do you answer?

Chris – WHAT? OH, I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU HAD YOUR HAND IN MY NUTS. I DON’T NORMALLY BRING MY NUTS TO PARTIES, BUT ONLY BECAUSE SALT MAKES ME THIRSTY AND I DON’T DRINK SUGARY SODA.

THERE’S NO EASY WAY TO DEBIBE… DESCRIBE MYSELF. SORRY, I GOTTA STOP DRINKING SO MUCH AT THESE PARTY INTERVIEWS. ANYWAY, I’M A CONDUIT MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE THESE DAYS, SHARING INFORMATION WITH OTHER PEOPLE. THROUGH LOCKERGNOME, WE SHARE INFO IN TEXT-FORMAT. THROUGH THE CHRIS PIRILLO SHOW, WE SHARE INFO IN AUDIO-FORMAT. THROUGH GNOMEDEX, WE SHARE INFO IN PEOPLE-FORMAT. THEN, THERE’S MY PERSONAL BLOG, WHICH IS KIND OF A HODGE-PODGE OF EVERYTHING.

ProBlogger – Can you tell us a little about how you first got into developing websites? What was your first one – and how did you to the place you find yourself today with Lockergnome? Do you have other online projects that you’re working on?

Chris – ARE WE STILL AT THE PARTY? LET’S GO INTO THE SIDE ROOM WHERE IT’S JUST A LITTLE LESS NOISY, OKAY? I’M GOING HOARSE.

I started with HTML back when the BLINK tag was en vogue. It was long before commercialism had crept into the Internet, so my first page was a personal one. I had fun scanning photos of myself in the computer lab on campus (the University of Northern Iowa), and stealing animated GIFs from elsewhere on the Web. I understand HTML, but I’d just as soon not develop it anymore. There are far better designers with far better skills than I, and that’s obvious.

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Michael Moncur is one of those web entrepreneurs that you talk to and realize that you’re just a baby when it comes to making money online.

A few months ago Michael left a comment on one of my posts and I knew instantly that this was a guy with some real wisdom when it comes to this career that many of us are in. I asked him a few questions about his experience and an email came back that got me really excited. In it Michael outlined his history of creating profitable websites over the past 10 years. Since then I’ve been an avid reader of his blog Figby.com and quite often go to him for advice and to bounce ideas around. He’s not only wise but he’s also willing to help out a newbie like myself and I’m really grateful for the time he’s put aside to be interviewed here. I hope you enjoy what he has to say.

ProBlogger – Michael thanks so much for your time – can you briefly tell us a little about yourself – give us a quick sketch of your life.

Michael – I started out working in IT and technical support for a couple of local firms in the early 90s. At some point I was recruited to write a book about Novell NetWare 3.x. I had always enjoyed writing and since then I’ve written books on the MCSE program, JavaScript, DHTML, and MySQL. In 1998 I quit my last “real” job to work on freelance writing full time.

Meanwhile, I started a web site in 1994, and ten years later my web sites have started to take more of my time, and make more money, than books. Recently I’ve been happily converging these two careers by doing most of my writing online.

I’m an old-timer by Internet standards, which means over 30. I’ve watched the Web grow from a wacky, obscure geek thing (I told everyone it would never work) to the world-crushing phenomenon it is today, and it blows my mind to think about that.

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah with my wife, a dog, and two cats.

ProBlogger – You’ve been writing your website ‘The Quotations Page‘ since 1994 – can you tell us a little about how you started it? How has it evolved? When did you start monetizing the site? What are the main methods of generating an income from it that you use?

[Read more...]