Scouring the net for great information to deliver to our subscribers, we recently stumbled upon Skelliewag.org as seen in an earlier post we mentioned how great of a site it was and posted a link to a pretty informative article posted there. So we thought, wouldn't it be better even to contact the author and request an interview. We did and sure enough Skellie was happy to take some time and toss us a few answers to our questions all the way from Australia.So who exactly is Skellie and what propelled Skell's to create a site like Skelliwag.org ?
I'm an Australian blogger who has always been fascinated by creating and promoting web content. I've been doing it for about nine years now. Generally I would start projects and lose interest once they started to become successful. I eventually realized that it was the process of starting and growing these blogs and websites that fascinated me more than the topics I was writing about. So I decided to start a blog about that!
How do you stay motivated, continually providing the pretty in depth content you make available to subscribers.
In the last few months my posting has slowed right down as I devote more time and energy to some other opportunities that have arisen, but I'd say that's due to shifting priorities rather than a lack of motivation. Over the last year I've become much more interested in online business and that's what's taking up a lot of my time at the moment. But even though Skelliewag doesn't generate any income at the moment, I know I will always pick it up again because I can't imagine not writing about those topics. It's very rewarding for me.
What would you say the initial process for starting a new blog for a novice should entail? What are a few essential things a would be professional blogger needs to be aware of?
A few dot-points:
- Define your target audience before you start. Who are you writing for, exactly, and what do they want?
- Work out exactly what you want to get out of blogging. If you want to give talks on personal development your content is going to be very different than if you want to get work as a video game reviewer.
- Your posts should take at least an hour to create if they're over 500 words, at least half an hour if they're over 250. If not, your content isn't going to be valuable enough.
- Make friends on StumbleUpon and send a few of them your best posts. This is a good way to draw some traffic into your blog initially. Forums and guest-posting are also great for this. Commenting on other blogs is not enough on its own.
I'm a university student so quite a bit of time goes into my studies. The rest of the time I try to spend with other people, either with my family or with friends. That's essential if you work at home and I think it's also important to my happiness.
Where do you see this ever changing web taking us eager net-farming cultivators of digital croppage in the year 2010?
It's kind of hard to say. I do wonder if there'll be some kind of backlash against content that is optimized for social media. Instead of 'Top 10 Ways to Skin a Cat' type posts being popular, I'm wondering if we'll see the ascendancy of some new kind of content that I can't really imagine yet!
Growing Money Trees blog would like to thank Skellie for taking time answer our questions and we most definitely appreciate the valuable insight shared with our audience as a result. Make sure to check out and subscribe to Skelliewag.org
