Author Interview with Tom

Sorry for the delay on this, it won’t happen again, this was supposed to be up last week!

Tom from Tom Jackson Online has been chosen to be our third Blog about your Blog author interview. I have asked him a series of questions about some personal things, blogging and blog about your blog. I hope you enjoy the interview.

First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Tom Jackson, I’m 26-years old and I’m a chemist from the rural northern county of Northumberland in England, UK. Anyone who wants to know more can read my welcome post at Tom Jackson Online. I’ve been blogging for about 6 months now and I thoroughly enjoy it, although I’ve had to scale back recently because of work commitments.

Are you married? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?

I’m single – probably just as well because when you’re in science, particularly research, your life kind of gets taken over by your work. It’s not a job you can forget about when you get home – you’re always thinking about which piece of work needs done next and how to tackle it.

What do you do when you are not blogging?

When I’m not doing my day job I’m a part time Army Officer, so that’s really work too! I steer well clear of that aspect of my life when blogging because it’s rather a delicate issue in the current political climate. I’m also a part time First Aid trainer and assessor and do some work for training agencies around the North of England, as well as for St John Ambulance.

Jeez how do you find the time to blog?!

What is your favorite blog to read besides your own?

This is going to sound a cop out, but most people on BAYB read the same sort of blogs. I’m following Mike’s Money Making Mission, My Quest To Make Money On The Internet and The Million Dollar Experiment Heads Down Under. Don’t ask me to choose a favourite! I read them because I like to follow their progress without risking failure myself! I also believe they provide a very valuable testing ground for blogger’s wishing to monetise their work.

Well we do have the best blogs here, impossible to chose a fav.

Ok, now the personal is out of the way, let me ask you a few questions about your blog.

When was your blog created?

YouTube Karaoke, my newest venture, was created in October 2006. My other blogs can be found on the sidebar in there. Why did you choose your blog topic?In Soapbox Jury I did a review on a blog called Name That Tube (by Mike, the friendly chap who gives you money at Money for Blogs). The things I admired most about Name That Tube were the originality and quirkiness of the concept, audience participation and the ease of maintenance. I wanted a blog with similar traits – particularly the ease of maintenance and audience participation, which only a very small proportion of blogs currently offer. A karaoke oriented blog puts a tick in all the boxes. It has worked well so far – PR4 after only 3 months and 150+ uniques every day, 95% of which is from the search engines.

We get a few hits a week from that exact term ‘youtube karoake’ from one of your posts lol

Did you think you were going to be instantly successful?

With YouTube Karaoke I had done some homework beforehand and received a lot of positive feedback from my work colleagues. I had an inkling it was a good concept and it has been from my point of view because I enjoy adding to the collection of music videos – it’s like my own online record collection for the world to enjoy (or not as the case may be). About 20% of the visitors are returners, so it obviously works for them too.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?
To be able to network and share tips and ideas with my fellow bloggers. I often leave small nuggets of information for Mike, Martin, and Rob and they do the same for me which is nice.

That’s one of the most important things to becoming a successful blogger I think, networking.

Do you have any new upcoming projects or ideas you want to announce?

No new blogs in the pipeline because I have my hands full already! I am hoping to refine the layout of YouTube Karaoke. It has one distracting flaw at the moment – when you scroll to see the song lyrics you lose sight of the music video. Ideally I’d like to have videos that floated as you scrolled, but that’s for the future.

What is the best feature of your blog?

A good feature of my blog is that you can crank up the volume, scroll, sing and be merry. I think everyone, even the most miserable of people, likes to sing along to music sometimes.

What do you rely most on to get traffic to your blog or website?

Search engines – in particular the big G. When you give posts a straightforward, focused title like ‘Song Name – Artist’ you tend to fair well in the search results.

And the final series of questions, a little bit about Blog About Your Blog

How did you find us?

I could be wrong, but I believe you asked me to do a review about BAYB on Soapbox Jury. You could say I helped launch this community.

Haha yep, that seems like such a long time ago though, we were still at blogger. We need a re-review!

What do you like most about BAYB?

I like the concept and ease of maintenance. I know PoEt didn’t like it when I mentioned this in my review, but BAYB is elegant in its simplicity – the idea of getting other people to write your blog posts is borderline genius if you ask me.

I don’t really like it put that way. I am trying to help out other bloggers and send them traffic as well as getting their articles read by more people. With the review and linking that I want to start doing with pr4 blogs we’ve built I think we can help bloggers even more

And for the hardest question of all…

What do you like the least?

Tricky one this. I have to answer diplomatically here! I think that some posters are shifting the focus away from blogging about their blog and tending towards blogging about their product or advertisement. Hope that was tactful enough!

Who have you chosen to be the next one interviewed?

Stefanie from Random Encounters of We. Bless her, she got a tiny slating from Soapbox Jury too but she took on board our recommendations, so obviously thought they were worthwhile.

Ok Stefanie, we are coming for you next! I’ll send out your questions right away so the next interview can be posted on tuesday!

Thanks to Tom for the interview! We hope to see you blogging with us more!

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