I still remember the day when a friend told me to head over to the 9rules network of blogs to check out the design and style of blogging that was going on there. I surfed in and immediately found myself drooling over a clean and nicely laid out design and reading the content of someone who seemed to really know his stuff.

I’ve often gone back to 9rules and in more recent times have found myself drawn to its owners latest blog – Work Boxers – a blog not dissimilar to ProBlogger in some ways that is dedicated to one blogger’s lessons learnt whilst blogging for money. The Blogger I’m talking about is Paul Scrivens. Paul is also one of the guys behind Business Logs and the author and owner of the recently sold CSS Vault. I respect his work and have learnt a lot off him already since finding his blogs and hope that you find this interview with him helpful in your own blogging enterprises.

ProBlogger – Paul thanks for your time – can you briefly tell us a little about yourself (ie how would you introduce who you are and what you do when you meet a new group of people).

Paul – I am a 24 year old kid who likes to play with new methods of making money on the web. Since there are so many ways to do so I am still wondering around the landscape trying to find the best mix possible. I am not a workaholic or someone that is overly obsessed with his work. I just love doing what I do and hope to continue doing so while also

helping others do the same.

ProBlogger – How long have you been involved in online ventures? How and when did you first discover and enter into blogging? What sites/projects/blogs are you currently involved in?

Paul – I started blogging around June 2003, but didn’t start to make money online till January 2004 when I implemented Google Adsense on Whitespace. Being a web designer I had been reading web design blogs for the longest time, but felt none of them said the things that I wanted to say and so I decided to start my own.

Currently I am involved with all the sites in the 9rules Network.

ProBlogger – Can you give us an idea about how much you earn directly from your blogging activities?

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A few weeks ago I stumbled across a thread on a discussion board discussing the success of a website owner who was claiming that he was earning $15,000 per month ($500 per day) using the Google Adsense program – not only that but he had released an E-book about it. The guy being discussed was Joel Comm, the owner of the successful Worldvillage.com, blogger at joelcomm.com, co founder of ClassicGames.com which was bought by Yahoo and is now Games.yahoo.com and author of What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense and Chitika eMiniMalls Secrets“>Chitika eMiniMalls Secrets (aff. links). Joel is a net entrepreneur who has been making a living online for 10 years and who has a story that inspires me every time I read it.

The more I read about Joel the more I wanted to interview him for this blog. Whilst he’s not making a living from his blog – Joel has a decade of experience from making a living online and has a lot of great advice for bloggers trying to make money from their blogs.

ProBlogger – Joel thanks for giving us your time this way – can you briefly tell us a little about yourself? Who is Joel Comm?

Joel – I am a 40-year old computer enthusiast from Illinois, happily married since 1989 and father to two beautiful children. I got bitten with the computer bug at the age of 16. I remember my mother asking me, “What in the world are you going to DO with a computer?” Many years later, she finally understands! I remember dialing out on my 300-baud modem (the kind where you have to place the phone receiver on the the modem in order to use it) and thinking that I had “arrived”. Little did I know what the coming years would bring, as computers became more a part of my every-day life….

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Last week Susannah Gardner from Buzz Marketing with Blogs posted a two part interview with me so this week she’s agreed to answer a few of my questions in my ProBlogger Interview of the week. Susannah is a web/blog designer through her own business (with her husband Travis Smith) Hop Studios, she’s an author of the soon to be released Buzz Marking with Blogs for Dummies (affiliate link) book and she’s an avid blogger. You can actually download the table of contents and first chapter of her book here. In the following interview I ask Susannah about her upcoming book, about blog design and about the pros and cons of having a blog (plus lots more). Enjoy.

ProBlogger – Thanks for your time Susannah – can you start us off by telling us how you would introduce yourself to a stranger – give a quick sketch of your life.

Susannah – I’m a Web designer, technical book author, blogger, and with all my spare time, I’m working on a master’s degree in public art studies. I love to read and travel. When I say I love to read, I mean it. Even at my busiest I just have to fit a few minutes in every day to make everything right in the world. I’m married to a great guy, Travis Smith, and we live with our annoying but cute cat in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Together we run Hop Studios, a Web design company. Whenever possible, we like to work on sites that bring together our combined expertise in online publishing, journalism, design and writing.

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I’ve had a lot of good feedback on the interviews with Professional Bloggers that I’ve been running lately so I’ll keep the ball going with this week’s one – this time I’m featuring a blogger I’ve admired a lot recently Jon Gales. Jon is one of the youngest Pro Bloggers that I’ve come across (only 20) but runs one of the best examples of a professional blog that I’ve seen – Mobile Tracker (a blog on all things Mobile Phone). Jon was featured last year in an article at Fortune which revealed that back then he was already earning more than $5,000 per month from Adsense. Looking at his traffic levels since that time you can expect that this is a figure that has continued to rise.

Here is what Jon had to say.



ProBlogger – Jon, thanks for chatting with us, can you briefly tell us a little about yourself? Give us a quick sketch of your life.

Jon – I’m young (I’ll be 20 in a few days), on a break from college, and having a blast publishing online. There’s something about writing for an audience that excites me.

ProBlogger – How and when did you first discover and enter into blogging? Do you have or have you had involvement in other blogs or websites other than Mobile Tracker?

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A few weeks ago I stumbled upon one of the most helpful discussions (audio/visual link) I’d heard or read about Entrepreneurial Blogging for quite some time. It was by a guy named Glenn Fleishman who I’d actually read the blogs of numerous times but whom I’d never really heard speak about blogging before. I wrote up my impressions from his session at BBS and have found myself coming back to it numerous times since. I immediately knew that Glenn was someone that I’d like to feature on my weekly interviews and so approached him.

Glenn has gone above and beyond the call to do this interview and has put a lot of time and energy into his answers for which I’m grateful. This is an interview I’m very proud to post here and hope that you find it as helpful as I have to hear the experiences and advice of a Pro Blogger who has been making a living (at least part of one) online for some time now.

ProBlogger – Glenn can you briefly tell us a little about yourself – how do you introduce yourself to new people?

Glenn – Sure. These days, I say I’m a journalist. I divide my about 30 to 40 percent writing for print, 30 to 40 percent writing for online (my own and others sites), and the remainder on projects like isbn.nu, a book-price comparison service I’ve run since 1999.

I’ve been lucky enough to follow my bliss. I started as a graphic designer, getting a degree in art as an undergrad at Yale in 1990, working for Kodak’s miraculous (and brief) Center for Creative Imaging in Maine from 1991 to 1993, and then getting into publishing as a managing editor of a small computer book firm.
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I’m pleased to post the following interview with one of the bloggers that I’ve admired for some time – Joel Johnson the editor of the incredibly popular Gawker Media blog, Gizmodo. At the time of posting this interview Gizmodo averages 153,334 unique visitors per day and ranks third on Truth Laid Bare’s traffic monitoring tracker. It is a leader in field of consumer electronics and gadgets and a blog that is widely regarded as one of the most successful money making blogs going around.

Joel recently got a big scoop and interviewed Bill Gates – so now I can say I interviewed a guy who interviewed Bill – which isn’t as impressive as written as it sounded in my head. Anyway – here is my chat with Joel.

ProBlogger – Thanks for your time Joel – Can you tell us a little about how and when you first discovered and got into blogging?

Joel – I first discovered blogging in the middle ’90s, when it was called ‘the web.’ I ran a website in the chronological weblog format in… 99? Maybe 2000. It was strikingly similar in format and tone to what I do on Gizmodo today, except that I paid money to write it, instead of being paid to keep it going.

ProBlogger – Do you have or have you had involvement in other blogs than Gizmodo?
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