Blogger Interview with Mark from MeAndMyDrum.com
Welcome to another edition of Blogger Interviews. Last week we interviewed Karthik.
It was another easy decision to select this weeks interview due to their dedication to BAYB.
I’d like to introduce Mark Sierra from Me and My Drum.
I asked Mark several questions about blogging in general. Here is his answers
What is your age? Where do you live?
I’m over 40 and live in North Texas.
What do you do when your not blogging?
My day job is to implement web-based software applications for clients. These applications are meant to help in their recruiting and managing talent within their companies.
A hobby of mine is that I enjoy baking desserts and breads on occasion. I used to do it as a side business for a few years, but other interests and demands on my time have caused it to take a back seat, which I’m fine with. Cookies and brownies are something I usually bake for my family most often to satisfy our sweet tooth. Birthday cakes were the usual things I’d bake for people back in the day. One-, two-, or even three-layer cakes in all shapes and designs were quite common. It’s something I still enjoy doing when I have the time.
What are your favorite blogs? What type of blogs do you usually read?
That’s tough because there are so many I enjoy. First, I’ll start with the types. The topics vary greatly: technology, blogging, personal, make money online tips, and so on. The blogs I look for first in GoogleReader are Brown Thoughts, ThingsByMike, and Garry Conn dot com.
What do you enjoy most about blogging?
The interaction I have with my readers and authors of blogs. When my posts go comment-less I feel slightly disappointed, but then there are times that the responses I get are overwhelming and they make up for it.
How many blogs do you have?
I currently have 10. Three of those I would categorize as social blogs. The rest are niche blogs whose primary purpose are to be found by search engines and for people to click on the ads.
What is the best feature on your blog?
I’d have to say the layout is clean and attractive. But equally as important (and evident) is the interaction I have with readers. I try to reply to every comment that readers leave. I never want them to think that their words have gone unnoticed or that they’re unappreciated.
Why do you blog?
A variety of reasons. The topics that my three social blogs focus on are parts of me that want to speak out. For example, MeAndMyDrum, allows me to voice my interests in technology and blogging as well as concerns over current events.
Another blog, Family WebWatch, which was my first blog, is centered around my interest in family and helping parents be more aware of the darker side of the Web. But it’s also about providing educational and entertaining things I find so that they and their children can have a more fulfilling online experience.
When you add it all up, it comes down to helping out others and learning from them.
Do you have any upcoming projects?
I think my primary focus for the short term is to get organized and not spread myself so thin. As I mentioned earlier, I have 10 blogs, but some of those I’ve neglected because I have allowed myself to be spread so thin. So I want to polish them up a bit. I’m also a contributing author on other blogs, so I’d like to get back into those (especially BAYB) once I feel I’ve got a firm handle on things.
Why did you start blogging?
Family WebWatch first started out as a website. I wanted to help educate parents on a topic that their kids were already experts in. Then I saw the benefit of transitioning to a blogging platform, which allowed me greater flexibility and a better way to communicate.
What are your goals?
To market my flagship blog, MeAndMyDrum, to a broader audience and increase my subscriptions. Get my niche blogs to a point where they generate a steady stream of income. And maybe some day, I can make blogging my full-time job.
Where do you get the majority of your traffic?
StumbleUpon, direct, Google, and Entrecard, in that order.
We’d love your opinions of BAYB, anything you’d like to share.
I think BAYB is doing a fine job of providing useful information to its readers. You have developed a strong following here and that’s something to be proud of. It’s also great that you offer it as a platform for bloggers like me to have another voice.
As mentioned in the interview we hope to have Mark more involved here again. Keep on the lookout from great posts from Mark Sierra.
Do you think you should be interviewed? Contact us and tell us why! Next weeks interview will be with Forest Parks.
Comment Friday for March 14th
With the excitement of yesterday I completely forgot about Comment Friday! It was a great day for us. First we got back our google page rank. Then our stumbleupon captcha post went crazy and received about 50 stumbles.
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.
Our post about encouraging readers to subscribe got a little swept under the rug yesterday. Now that we know why you should get rss subscribers, HOW do you get them? What is your method? What has worked best for you?
Stumbleupon Now Using Captcha for Reviews
*Update* Israel reports that the captcha is only on some posts, but it’s been on all of mine so far.
A disturbing discovery while trying to stumble and review a site today. Stumbleupon is now using captcha!
With stumbleupon obviously being gamed by different website services, I suppose this was inevitable. I’ve heard of automated programs as well as “stumble hacks” going around. Adding Captcha helps stumbleupon stay more legit, but more annoying to use.
One of the biggest benefits of stumbleupon was the ease. Adding a toolbar, easy. “Thumbs up” on articles you like, simple. Reviewing the website or article that you like, not bad. Throwing captcha in the mix makes it a little more annoying to use.
If you aren’t sure what captcha is, it is the little box of words. You have to correctly type in the words in order for you to complete the action. In this case your captcha has to be correct in order to leave a review.
I never subject my readers to entering captcha to leave a comment or do anything. I’d rather manually delete spam etc. However that’s not possible with sites that are huge.
Enter Captcha
With captcha, reviews will decrease, it’s inevitable. I can only imagine the importance of reviews going up.
What do you think about the Captcha on Stumbleupon? Will it last? Are you done writing reviews?
Why Should You Encourage Your Readers to Subscribe?
Bloggers often tell you HOW you can increase your subscribers, but not why you should. Why do RSS subscribers matter? Why does John Chow mention that he has so many subscribers every week?
Chris from Wat da Wat asked this question about encouraging your rss readers to subscribe on the Bloggeries Forum. I thought I would answer.
Encourage your Readers to Subscribe
Loyalty
The first reason definitely has to be for loyalty. Once you get someone to subscribe to your blog, the chances are they will stay subscribed for a while. Getting someone to read your blog, gets them to visit, to comment, and participate.
Relationship
By getting them loyal to your blog, you can build a relationship with the reader, whether they never visit your blog or not. Getting them involved in your content gets them involved in your website or blog. Many times I’ve gone back on my RSS reader and searched for old posts I’ve read from bloggers. Usually I would then link to the website or post.
Ease
If you’ve made the switch from visiting every website to a RSS feed reader you know what I’m talking about. At times I’m sure I have had over 100 blogs I’ve followed in my google reader. It’s a lot easier to keep updated with blogs you like. That offers your reader that ease.
Numbers
This isn’t as important. Yet blogging, especially blogging for money, is about numbers. RSS readers are valuable. If you decided to sell your website with 1,000 readers compared to 10, it would be worth a lot more.
Likely to Join
A reader that finds your blog from a search engine are likely to click one thing and leave, it may not even be an ad. Unless they subscribe to your blog, you may never have that reader ever come back. A RSS subscriber will click and come back. By building a base from RSS feeds, it is a lot easier to get referrals for different websites you want to promote.
RSS Subscribers
The argument to oppose it can be that you will get less website visits. This is partially true, but you should include those reading your feed. If I had to chose more traffic or more subscribers, I would definitely have to go with the subscribers.
Also mentioned in the forum post, is that a better indicator of your rss feed is the “reach”. Make sure to get a Feedburner Stats Pro (free) account to get the “reach” to be displayed. You can go to your Analyze page of your feedburner feed.
Reach is the total number of people who have taken action, viewed or clicked, on the content in your feed.
Why do you encourage your readers to subscribe?
RSS feed buttons taken from AKoogle
Be Careful Advertising – Literally
Recently Dennis from Direct Sales Web Marketing contacted me about our Scratchback widget. I was aware of the problem, but I was glad he let us know about it.
Be Careful Advertising
The problem was that Pepperjam Network bought a link from us. What the problem with that is, they put the link as:
http://www.www.pepperjamnetwork.com/
Simple mistake, especially if you are buying a lot of advertising. The thing is, I can’t change it for them. That is the link that they paid for and with scratchback I don’t have the ability to edit links.
One of two things can happen. I can either let the link go as is (like I have) or delete it. I’m actually not sure what would happen if I deleted it. One of us would be out the $2 that they pay. Why should it be me?
Not only do you have to be careful where you advertise to get the most out of your money, you need to make sure that the link you are buying is correct.
Imagine if Pepperjam decided to spend $100 or more on scratchback widgets and put the wrong URL. Don’t make that mistake, double check!
While you’re at it make sure to buy one of our top spots for only $2.
Thanks to Dennis for the idea of the post!
Send Stumble Requests to Your Stumbleupon Friends
After a few quick emails with Kelly Curtis from Pass the Torch we began discussing Stumbleupon. I mentioned the Send To feature, but she had never used it before. Getting your stumble friends to stumble your posts is another way to utilize stumbleupon for more stumbles and more traffic.
How to Use the Send to Feature
On your stumbleupon toolbar there is a “send to” feature. By clicking that it lists all of your stumble friends. Instead of emailing each one separately when you want to promote an article you can simply use this feature.
For this feature to work the person has to be your “mutual” friend. I currently have 20 ‘mutual’ friends that I can send my stumble requests to.
Once you send them a request, there will be a number next to their stumble button. This will indicate that there is a request. The next time your friend presses the stumble button, they will be sent to the page you that you ‘sent to’ them.
Get Your Stumbles
I am always looking for new articles to submit and stumble. An easy way to do this is requesting me as a friend and “sending” them to me.
Another option on stumbleupon is the ‘contact’ page. This way you can send private messages to users on stumbleupon. This is a great way to use stumble to build your base and increase your votes. I get plenty of requests a day, so don’t worry about bugging me! Send them on over.
How do you promote your articles on stumbleupon? Have you used the Send To feature?
Monetize Your Blog With OIOPublisher
Are you looking to monetize your website like the pros? Get the great looking 125×125 and 468×60 banners, text link ads and sponsored postings delivered, paid and rotated automatically with the brand new OIOpublisher WordPress plugin.
To all of you Blog About Your Blog readers, this is Jim, author of TheNetFool.com (feed), a business blog focused on making money online through the stock market, affiliate marketing, get paid to (GPT) websites and more! But enough about me, lets explore this great opportunity.
Lots of bloggers face the problem of adding advertisements to their websites in a quick and efficient manner. The brand new OIOPublisher direct WordPress plugin allows you to do all of this automatically. Truth be told, this is the
first (and only) WordPress plugin I have ever purchased. At $37, its not cheap… but it completely beats out WP Text Ads ($127) and WP Bankroll ($50).
Not only is OIOPublisher a cheaper alternative, but it is much more functional! Unlike any other WordPress monetization plugins before it, OIOPublisher offers an all-in-one solution for bloggers. You can place banner ads, image ads, text ads, sponsored postings and even sell digital downloads! I use it on The Net Fool to rotate all of the 125×125 banners in the sidebar. You can have multiple banners rotated per ad slot, and even randomize the appearance of the banners. OIOPublisher is your swiss army knife of monetization!
With all of the functions and a terrific price tag, you may be asking yourself how hard this thing is to actually install and 
use. I had this plugin up and running within 30 minutes of first downloading. It is extremely easy, and after you activate it.. there is an entire new tab (labeled “business”) that opens up in your admin panel. You can have emails sent every time an ad is purchased, clicked, etc. A full flux of options makes OIOPublisher the only option I will ever use for putting ads up, and best of all the one-time $37 buys you a license to use the software on multiple servers.
I know that the initial shock of shelling out almost $40 for a WordPress plugin, most of which are free, is a bit much. If you are a somewhat popular blog, all you need is a couple of purchases to get that all back. No longer do you have to sacrifice 50% of your revenue to a service that handles the work for you, now you can do it yourself. I’m always looking for ways to make money online, there is no better way in my book than by monetizing your own blog site. OIOPublisher makes it easier than ever!
-The Net Fool
Contest Roundup: March 9th
Dear readers, today easy cash and thousands of Entrecard credits. It’s time for another Contest Roundup. Follow me…And don’t forget your blog…
$100 from PureBlogging
PureBlogging.com is running two separate easy blog contest. Prizes for both are $100 CASH and 500 Entrecard credits.
Contest One: the winner will be the one who post the comment #3500 on the blog.
Contest Two: the winner will be selected among those who write a post about this contest.
$350 from WMR Zone
More cash for you from WMR Zone. 3 prizes for 3 winners: $100 (by Paypal), a 125×125 banner space on his blog sidebar (for 1 month) and 1 blogroll link (for 1 month). To enter, you have two options. Subscribe to WMR Zone RSS feed by E-mail or write a post about this contest in your blog linking back to his homepage. Send a mail at admin [at] wmrzone.com telling what you have done.
Ends on March 10th. Hurry up!
1500 Entrecard Credits
Zero Hour Sleep is running an interesting Entrecard Contest. One person will get 1500 Entrecard Credits. To enter and gain points you can: post a meaningful comment on any of his posts (+1 each), subscribe to his RSS feed by email or fave him on Technorati (+2). You can also stumble any of his posts or blog about Zero Hour Sleep or any of his posts with a linkback to the site homepage (+3). Then contact the site (info [at] zerohoursleep.com) with the tasks you have completed.
Ends on March 15th.
And don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests, your daily source for the latest, simplest and greatest blog contests around the net!