Blogger Interview with Ian from TheRandomForest.com
Welcome to another edition of Blogger Interviews. Our last interview was with Karthik.
Ian Parks is a loyal reader of BAYB and I thought would be great for an interview, especially since he has quit his job to become a full-time blogger. We asked Ian some blogging questions. Here is what he said:
What is your age? Where do you live?
I’m 26 and currently living in Montreal, QC but Original from London, England.
What do you do when your not blogging?
I have been pretty inactive socially, as it’s been winter but have been going to the gym, watching the odd movie and I’m becoming addicted to catching up on the show Lost.
I work full time as a blogger now and enjoy taking photos. Before I came to Canada last year I was a Freelance Graphic Designer / Artworker and I was most recently working in a kitchen as a line chef.
What are your favorite blogs? What type of blogs do you usually read?
Garry Conn provides me with a wealth of blogging tips, tricks and ideas and he is a bloody nice guy.
Bush Mackel as he is kind of at the same level as me when it comes to blogging but gives out great ideas and fun posts.
Vegan Momma is close to being a freelance writing and business guru and I like to see what she is up to. She always inspires me with her energy and enthusiasm.
What do you enjoy most about blogging?
I like the freedom to express myself, the challenge to make it my full time career and the chance to constantly try and keep up with better writers than myself.
How many blogs do you have?
At present I run 3 main blogs and have a few that I have just started working on.
The Random Forest is my flagship blog and
TheRandomForest.info is my shameless blog. I make almost all my money from here.
The Condom Monologues is a new project in conjunction with my partner.
What is the best feature on your blog?
I don’t really have any feature heavy blogs but I think I like writing posts about animals mostly and people seem to like reading them.
Why do you blog?
Right now, to make a non geographically constrained living and work on my own terms. I also love reading other blogs and enjoy the communal aspects.
Any upcoming projects?
New and Reviewed is an experiment in progress, I want to try and make money using affiliates and search engine traffic only and then report the results back on The Random Forest.
Amazing Arcades will be finding new games and arcade websites. It’s a simple website that will be somewhere between an arcade site and a blog.
I have a ton of other ideas, just no time right now and need to concentrate on the things I have.
Why did you start blogging?
Initially I wanted to see if I could make a few pennies and see if I had what it took to make money from writing reviews and articles.
Why did you choose your topic?
I had no clue what to write about, so I made it random.
What are your blogging goals?
To be earning enough to allow me to embark on some charitable projects.
Where do you get the majority of your traffic?
It seems that recently the majority comes from Google and recently I have been using Micro Niche Finder to choose post titles. This has really been helping getting people to come visit.
Opinions of BAYB, anything you’d like to share?
I like BAYB very much and visit whenever I get a chance and enjoy the tips you offer me. I don’t think there is anything I would really change! Maybe I would make the green into a nice blue, but that’s solely because I like blue!
Comment Friday for April 4th
Definitely an exhausting day for us. We spent all day at a wedding. I’m ready to doze off, but first, Comment Friday!
If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.
After putting together the Bloggers Guide to SEO, I noticed a lot of bloggers hadn’t really started optimizing their blog for search engines. What steps have you taken to improve your blogs SEO?
Fight Back Against the CyberCreeps
Every now and then I get negative comments on this blog or the social media articles that were submitted. Some users go a little too far. That’s why I put together Dealing with Negative Criticism of Your Blog. Now there is another way to deal with the criticism, to add to the list.
Cyber Creeps
This is an interesting idea where you can sort of “fight back” against Cyber Creeps. CyberCreeps is basically a social media voting site for those who have abused you on social media websites. When you find a “cyber creep” is include write about the incident and include their profile.
I can understand getting negative reviews or thumbs down, but some users go way too far.
CyberCreeps isn’t as active as I would like, but I decided to put up my “creeps” anyways.
My Submissions
I got two thumbs down for yesterdays article, Bloggers Guide to SEO. I wrote this for bloggers for all kinds and many have already found it useful.
Arleas wrote a comment stating, “Quit disguising blogs as marketing BS and then posting it under the heading of blogs. FU and your SEO BS.” Of course I cleaned up the language a bit.
The other thumb down was by someone named Joe. His response to my SEO article was that it was a steaming pile of dog —-.
Finally, the most disturbed of them all, ThungurKnifer. He left a crazy review of me and just about every other blogger on his profile. I can’t write here what was said about me, but you can see it at CyberCreeps.
Who are your Cyber Creeps?
April Fool’s Spotlight
It has been WAY too long since I’ve posted here. So I thought I’d get back into the swing of things by posting a collection of April Fool’s jokes that have made their way to the Web today.
I must admit that ever since I saw last year’s April Fool’s jokes by Google, April 1st couldn’t get here fast enough for me so that I could try my hand at a little fun.
Here are just a few that I’ve come across. If you’ve found some, don’t be shy and post them in the comments.
MeAndMyDrum – Google Announces The G-String iPhone Accessory
Darn Good Reviews – Frog Soap That Washes Away Fat?
Google – Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes
Garry Conn dot com – I Got Banned From Google Adsense!
Chris Pirillo – Chris Pirillo Gets In Fight With Wife and Quits His Job
Google – Gmail Custom Time
John Chow – John Chow Cola – The Official Blogger Drink
Freelance Writing Gigs – Men with Pens Expands with Freelance Writing Gigs
Bloggers Guide to SEO
First I have to say that I am by no means a SEO expert, but I do know blogging. Improving your blog for search engines has never been easier for bloggers. It just takes a little bit of work. In the last month we’ve received 1,400 visitors from Google alone.
What Exactly is SEO?
When I first started blogging, I didn’t even know what SEO was.
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.
The better your website is prepared and “optimized” for search engines, the more traffic you should get. Here is how you can improve your blog and start using basic SEO methods to improve your rankings.
Change the URL Permalink Structure
It’s important for your blogs URL to include at least the post title. Basic WordPress default settings give your blog, example, “yourblog.com/p=1”. This not only hurts your SEO, but makes your blog look unprofessional. You can customize your post URLs to have whatever you like.
To change the settings, go to your Options tab in the WordPress dashboard. Then select permalinks. To have your post link just have the post title, go to custom and enter /%postname%/.
I recommend to do this very early with your blog. By changing the URL structure, your blog will need to be re-indexed for the right URLs. If I changed my permalink structure now, people searching my blog would get errors because the URL for each post would be different.
Install the All In One SEO WordPress Plugin
This is an essential (and easy) WordPress plugin for any blog. This plugin allows you to perform basic important SEO techniques with your blog. You can change the title and description to whatever you want. This is what the search engines will see. You can also tag your post with keywords which is also very important for search engines.
If you haven’t downloaded the All in One SEO plugin, you can do so here.
Blog Your Key Term
Pick relevant key terms for your blog and use them. The obvious best way to start ranking for the key terms you select (at least longtail) is to blog about them. Make sure to include the key terms in your title, post and tags.
My post, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, helped me start ranking for “blogging tips” and other key phrases similar to that.
Build Links With Your Key Terms
To get better rankings for your key terms you need to promote it. I’ve had bloggers link to this blog with keywords like blogging tips and blogging tools. I’ve used this technique for link exchanges and leaving comments.
Of course the alternative is to buy links. However this can be costly. You also don’t want to go and get 1,000 links within the same key term in one day. This could ultimately ban you from search engines, or for that particular term. SEO can be a slow process, but rewarding.
Comment on Blogs – Do Follow / Top Comments
Commenting on blogs can not only drive traffic and subscribers to your blog, it can also help with basic SEO.
By commenting on blogs with “do follow” or a top commenter list, you can build easy links with whatever key term you chose. This is how I gained better rankings for key terms like increase website traffic and blogging tips.
An important rule here is to NOT SPAM. All the comments I left were on-topic and provided value to the article and comment section.
Courtney Tuttle has the infamous Do-Follow List where you can find tons of blogs that give you SEO juice. There are over 200 websites/blogs that are now on the “D List”.
How have you incorporated basic SEO into your blog?
Spending Money in the Blogosphere: Articles or Advertising?
My marketing budget generally isn’t that big, yet. The money I make goes into living, bills, etc. However I have purchased reviews, banners and links in the past.
Where Should You Invest Your Money?
This is a classic chicken and the egg theory that many bloggers have debated about. Some argue that with the right content, readers will come. Some argue that without marketing you can’t get readers. Some argue both are equally important.
Many bloggers have started selling articles for easy revenue. The more people selling, the cheaper you can buy articles for. You don’t even need to be a writer, to be a blogger, you can get someone to do that for you.
With that dilemma, which should you purchase?
Articles
In the Bloggeries Forum, Bobby is selling his articles for $3-$5 dollars. By choosing the right topic and SEO, you can not only hope and expect your post will get social media traffic, it will also get traffic from search engines.
I get paid to write articles for different blogs and it’s a nice gig. The best thing you can do is get it to be steady. For a particular blog I make over $100 a month, so I can see why this is appealing to bloggers.
Advertising
Buying advertising and links can be cheap fill, unless you renew. The traffic you get sometimes only lasts so long. However, you can also convert that traffic into readers if you advertise on the right blog. We just (finally) added an advertising page with many great options.
Given that argument, I am interested to test out purchasing articles. This not only will save me time for other things, its another fresh perspective.
What would you rather buy, an article or advertising?
Contest Roundup: March 30th
Today we have only the big blog contests. Below a collection of the hugest on line competitions you have ever seen, there’s no reasons to hesitate.
Etienne Teo
Prizes for $5641 from Etienne! Cash, blog reviews, advertising space, WordPress themes, entrecard credits, take a look at the site for full list. To enter you have to write about it, linking to the contest post and to all the sponsors.
Ends on April 13th.
Winning the Web
Gyutae is offering a total of $14,575 in cash and prizes, not only cash but also internet marketing-related products and services. That’s incredible! There will be at least 100 winners and to participate you have to perform some simple actions: sign up for the free Winning the Web mailing list, subscribe to the Winning the Web RSS feed and collect entries by doing other tasks (explained in random post during the contest period). Remember: you have to sign-up to certain sponsors to be eligible to win some prizes. Even BAYB is a sponsor!
Ends on April 2nd.
The University Kid
Jason has more than $2000 worth of stuff for you. From hard cash to blog consulting and much more. Gain your points to enter: leave comments, subscribe through RSS, blog about the contest. Simple and easy.
Ends on April 5th.
If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!
Comment Friday for March 28th
I just got back from a game of mini-golf. On the ride I realized I had to write up Comment Friday! I’ve got a big to-do list around here so let’s get started.
If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.
With our recent social media articles, I thought it would be an excellent Comment Friday topic. I want to know, what is your best experience with social media? Whether it is a meaningful comment, a bunch of participation, votes, or loads of traffic. I want to know! Happy Friday.