1. Tell us a little bit about yourself - have you always been an entrepreneur, did you work in the corporate world, etc.
I'd say the entrepreneur has always been within me, but I spent the first 18 years of working life with big corporations, I worked for Toyota, Ford Motor Company and then Volkswagen group in Northern Europe. When we decided to move to the island we live on now, about nine years ago, we set up a Real Estate business, which started small and then become quite big! So I guess that started in an entrepreneurial way, but became something more. I started blogging less than a year ago, but now it's my full time job.
2. Why/how did you get started in blogging?
I'd already started the process of easing myself away from my old business, and I wanted one which could provide me with a solid income, and which I could run until retirement without having staff or meetings or hassle! I also chose blogging because I have been writing all my life, and it was a logical decision. I studied the blogging market for some time before moving into it, and clearly understood what I wanted to do and which niches to enter, and I was fortunate in that my wife joined me in the venture and she runs one of our three blogs.
3. What are some key factors to your success in blogging?
The most important factor is lots of quality content. As long as you keep that going, everything else just seems to happen - traffic growth, more subscribers, great connections with other bloggers. You just have to keep the content coming, and stay focused on your readers and what they need.
4. Any tips on driving traffic to your site - SEO, PPC, affiliates, referrals - on & offline, partnerships?
I'm not a "technical" blogger. That's to say I didn't come at it from a web based background. I'm a writer, and the blog is simply a medium for that. Because of that I have to be honest and say I don't really "do" SEO at all. I simply write what I think is good stuff, and it seems to get indexed well and quickly by the search engines. Twitter has brought me an awful lot of traffic, but again I don't really push it for that reason, I enjoy the communication side of it. I've been lucky enough to develop some quite close relationships with other bloggers, which has enabled us to introduce our readers to each others. I've also worked hard at commenting on other sites, and I know that brings good traffic to mine.
5. Any tips of converting your traffic into profits?
We use different business models on the sites. Mike's Life is aimed at new and learning blogers and the income comes from a few affiliations, and three of my own products which we sell on there. On the other two blogs, the income is from direct advertisers, adsense and affiliations. The best tip I can give people is that the more good quality stuff you give away for free, the more your readers will want to buy the paid-for stuff. And products you create inevitably make more margin than selling other peoples!
6. What experiences - successes, setbacks have you experienced along the way & what have you learned from them?
I set out with some very clear objectives, and bar a few, we've exceeded them all, so I'm very happy! That's not to say I haven't learned a lot of lessons and here are some:
- Aim to grow your email list as fast as you can, and use a "proper" provider like Aweber
- Create a product of your own as soon as possible, it doesn't matter if you only sell two a week!
- If you plan to make money from your site, do so from the beginning, don't wait until you have lots of traffic
- Stay focused on the things that help you achieve objectives - it's easy to get bogged down in unimportant stuff
- Find one social media site you like (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc) and become an authority
7. What projects are you currently working on?
My Beginner's Guide to Blogging course starts again on 1st September, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm also working with Nathan Hangen on a book (not an E Book) called "Beyond Blogging" which will go on sale in December. We're excited about that project and so far Gary Vaynerchuk, Penelope Trunk, Chris Garrett and David Risley have agreed to participate. On the travel blog, we are working on a book called "The Insider's Guide to Lanzarote." So we're pretty busy!
8. Where do you see yourself in 10 yrs? What is the long-term vision for your business?
I'll still be running the blogs and still writing every day, but we don't have any plans to grow the business to include staff. It will always just be us. I love public speaking, so I hope to start offering my services to talk at events about blogging and social media. But overall, we'll still be doing what we're doing now, just for millions, rather than thousands of people, I hope!
9. Where do you see the greatest opportunity for bloggers?
The greatest opportunity for bloggers is to provide a great service for a lot of people. There are so many niches out there, and so many people looking for information. Find the niche, provide the information and then sell a product, a service or a membership that relates to it. There's a world of opportunity.
10. What do you do outside of business, to balance your life/work?
I'm a scuba diver, so I get away to dive at least once or twice a week. The best thing about being a blogger is that you can come and go as you please. We are also part way through restoring a huge house in our village, so that takes a lot of time, and we're into various outdoor stuff like water skiing, sailing, cycling, quad trekking and camping. We spend as much time outdoors as possible, which is a great antidote to blogging! For holidays, we love snowboarding and touring around the mainland of Europe.
11. Any resources for beginning bloggers (books, websites, blogs).
My whole site is a resource for new bloggers, but I do give away a free E book for new bloggers to people who join the community, and there are some good starter posts here.
12. Contact info
Skype Camelmediagroup
Email mike@mikeslife.org
Twitter @mikecj
Mike CJ is a full time blogger, author and social media consultant. His main blog Mike's Lifeis focused on helping new and learning bloggers earn a sustainable, long term income from their writing - something he achieved in six months. You can follow Mike on Twitter @mikecj
