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!
Google webmaster console, is it good?
Finally, after a long wait, Google has announced the release of a tool that we bloggers always needed – a tool that shows us our links for our sites. Now with Google webmaster console one can see the links of our sites – not only from blogs like technorati, but forums, websites and directories.
To use it, you need to login to Google Webmaster Console and verify your sites, which include adding some code, but you will only need to do it once, and you´re set. However a mate of mine has mentioned something important – even though the links are displayed in your link count, not all of them add to your google rank or site popularity. Not all links carry weight.
Checking my art blog out, seems all my forum backlinks are there, but links on mylot, orkut and mylot are missing. Sites such as blogs, technorati, art directories are in, yet LIVE and typepad blogs that have linked to me are missing.It has its flaws, but its a useful tool for any webmaster, and I suggest every blogger to check it out.
On a side note, this is my first post with wordpress. If anything happens, Mike did it. 😉
Win Digging For The Truth Goodies at Crypt Hunter!!
Over at Crypt Hunter we are running a competition in conjunction with Digging for the Truth. Come on over and have a look! Smack on your creative fedora and get in the running to win!!!
Is it possible to earn a part-time income online?
That is the question I hope to answer with Nuttin’ But Pimp.
In May 2006, I took stress leave from my full-time job. Taking the time off probably saved my sanity, but did increase some of our family’s everyday stress.
Bills have been mounting, rent needs to be paid, and quite frankly my medical leave benefits really could use a serious infusion of cash.
So I’ve started Nuttin’ But Pimp in order to see if there is anything to all those messages we receive promising easy cash earnings online. I’ll let you know what hopefully works, what doesn’t, who delivers, who doesn’t, and/if or when the cheques are in the mail.
If you’ve tried any money-making schemes and have an opinion let me know. I want to hear from you!
Check out Nuttin’ But Pimp at the following link:
http://doubledeckerbuses.org/nuttinbut/
And watch for futher articles from this author right here at Blog About Your Blog!
Cheers!
Sue
Get your blog reviewed
Want to have your blog reviewed? Post a comment on any of our posts, or just email me at ff_n_stuff@yahoo.com. The review will consist of basically whatever I want to write. Appereance, look, feel, content, structure and anything else that catches my eye. Your review will appear on this blog, and on another blog partially. You will receive two links just to be reviewed! If this sounds something like you are interested in, we will be doing this once a week, first come first serve.
Stay tuned for our series of articles on how to get traffic. Looks like there will be about 20 different small articles, eventually combined into one great guide on how to get traffic for your blog! You may see one as soon as tomorrow.
Check out a few BAYB stats.
A big jump in blogs linking to us. We are moving up on technorati quite nicely:
Rank: 50,893 (381 links from 69 blogs)
Looks like we are about 1 blog link to the top 50,000! Thanks everyone linking to us.
Top Keywords of January:
difficult emotions to deal with
mylot
bayb
poweroptions
reditt
images of venom
mylot earnings
Hope google and the rest will be a little more kind to us on the search engine hits this month.
Our hits have been definitely increasing, I’ve been spending money advertising. The more hits we get the more traffic we can send to your blogs! We offer our own advertising, give you some great rates so contact us today!
Deeksha
Every so often, you hear about something which could make a real difference to the way we live our lives. One such phenomenon is Deeksha, a transfer of energy which nurtures a feeling of “Oneness” in those who receive it. It dampens down the individual ego and encourages us to think of ourselves as part of the wider family of humanity. Which is a useful mindset to have if you like the idea of global peace and harmony, a distant dream though this might seem at the moment.
So how is this energy transferred? You might be thinking of old science fiction movies, with helmets connected by wires and a high voltage transformer. But I’m please to report that it’s a lot less scary than that. Deeksha is simply transferred by a laying on of hands, the same as in Reiki or spiritual healing, with which you may be familiar. Deeksha itself has a similar healing effect, as well as promoting this helpful change in consciousness.
To find out more about Deeksha – and how you can try this amazing energy for yourself – see the latest post on my blog, The Secret Of Life.
Secret Simon – The Secret Of Life
Commission Junction Problem
My post today, Money Making Problems With Commission Junction, on my own blog is about my account with Commission Junction being deactivated – with no reason or explanation given.
I have no idea as to why my affiliate account was deactivated by CJ. I have had quite a few orders and have used only approved adverts.
I was wondering if anyone else has had any such problems, with CJ, or knows of anyone who has?
I must say that, up until now, I have been very pleased with them and have received payments on time.
Good blogging,
Mike
Mike’s Money Making Mission
Baseball in Fort Wayne is Here! – Sort of
If you know me at all, you know I have been anxiously awaiting publication of my first book; Baseball in Fort Wayne. Yesterday, an envelope from Arcadia Publishing was waiting for me. It contained my advance copy. Words cannot say how cool that is to me.
By the way, the book (Baseball in Fort Wayne) goes on sale the week of February 26th. You can order it from pretty much any on-line retailer. Search for ISBN 073854129X. Keep up to date on the book and events involving it and more at BaseballinFortWayne.com.