Beginner Blogger

This is the forth installment of guest interviews where I had the pleasure of interviewing Derek Jensen from LifeNotion.com

Derek is a young passionate up-and-coming blogger that brings together technology tips and how you can apply it to your lifestyle. The approach of his blog is brilliant as he combines the specific niche of new technology and how to apply that to your lifestyle. So really anyone can benefit from reading his blog.

Derek has a lot of informative and interesting things to say in this interview so I invite you to listen to every word he has to say. He also has some great tips for bloggers.

Here’s the interview:

Firstly could you give a little information about yourself?

Hello everyone, I am Derek Jensen.  I am 20 years old from Ames, Iowa, which is a college town home to Iowa State University.  I currently attend the university, majoring in Community and Regional Planning, and staying busy in leadership roles in my fraternity (Beta Theta Pi).  As major hobbies, I draw and blog.

How did you get into blogging?

Blogging never really interest me until last year around this same time.  What sparked my interest was seeing how blogging could be a hobby that you could make money from and I would like to thank Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.  In addition, blogging really interested me cause I saw an opportunity to tell a lot of people my views, opinions, and ideas about really anything. (I think my family and friends were tired of me telling them all my ideas and views).

Is LifeNotion your first blog? What would you say the purpose/niche of your blog is?

LifeNotion was not my first blog.  Since picking up on blogging I have went through two main blogs prior to this one.  Those past ones were “Influlive” and “FeedMe! Post” .  Influlive was a blog that focused on what I was learning from my studies at Iowa State University, related to my field of study.  FeedMe! Post was a blog that was heavily inspired by boingboing.net.  At this blog I would write posts that were basically a repost of what had already been posted, but just offer my own opinion.

Many blogs these days still do this, but I wanted to go a different route so I started this blog, LifeNotion.  The tagline that I strive to base my content off of is “Tip to Make Life and Technology Easier”. This tagline is the niche of the blog and for further explanation, LifeNotion provides people looking for more than just what is new out there, they are looking to see what they should care about the technology.

Additionally, I have started a new category called, “Tech Help” that offers tips for a quick help instead of applying it to a lifestyle.  Lifestyles are basically the categories for this blog, with some of them being “at home”, “at work”. “educational”, and “personal”.  The main purpose for LifeNotion is to give readers and anyone else an idea of what they could do with specific technology and I offer detailed ways, since I apply them to a specific lifestyle.  I mean, why should someone that wants to see what they can do in terms of “at work” want to read something under the leisure category/lifestyle.

What made you select the niche that you blog about?

I selected this specific niche through a very long trial and error process.  During my early days of blogging (the blogs I previously mentioned) I basically was testing the water to see what my passion was and if I could express it to everyone through blogging.  One blog post that really made me rethink but still find my true passion, was a post by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, “How to Choose a Niche Topic for your Blog“.  This post not only allowed me to rethink on what my next blog was going to be, but it made me really think about every step in forming my blog from the ground up.

So, specifically I picked this niche because I feel there are many technology blogs out in the world today, but there are very few that actually are fully original content and strive to relate it to people’s lives.  See to me technology and life are very cohesive and in order to do that you cannot just report the most recent news. If they want the most recent news there are blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch, so I wanted to provide an originality technology blog.

How much planning and time did you spend before launching?

Before I actually got this blog up off the notepad, it went through lots and lots of planning.  I would say that the amount of time putting into the beginning stages of blog is a very mixed issue, meaning that some would say you should just start your blog as soon as you got the idea where others say you should spend quality time thinking it all out to insure its success.  With being in the field of planning and not wanting to have this blog all of sudden be tossed, I put a lot of time into planning this blog. I wanted to make sure my idea was reasonable, the name for it was catchy but understandable and that my tagline effectively described the content that readers can expect on the blog.

Do you make any money online? How are you monetizing your blog?

I currently do not make any money blogging online, but I have setup my blog with Google Adsense and some affiliate programs through LinkShare and Amazon.com. My personal opinion in terms of monetizing your blog is that in the beginning stages try and make it a less of priority because what you need to advertise the most is your content.

Is there anyone you look up to in the blogging world that you try and model yourself on?

The one person that I look to in blogging is Pete Cashmore.  Pete Cashmore is the founder of the ever popular blog, Mashable.  I look up to him because of the content that he publishes and his history in blogging.  There was a Pete Cashmore interview published on YouTube that really sets the tone of why I look up to him.

He is a true entreprenuar, which is someone I have always wanted to be and since I read his blog almost everyday if not every four hours and I have informally connected with him.  I try to model myself not only after the content he provides his readers, but his overall goals.  I do not really knowing his specific goals, but I get a feeling that he wants to provide the best content out on the web related to his niche, social media, and do it because it is fun and enjoyable.  Sure, he is out to make a profit, and so am I in the future, but the behind the scenes work from him is what really inspires me as a blogger.

How well has your blog done? (Stats wise)

Since LifeNotion’s founding this October, I have had 487 visits, a 54 percent bounce rate, and an average time on site being around 8 minutes.  Additionally, on a daily basis I get an average of 20 to 30 visitors. But, with my blog being very new I  plan to expand it further and hope to see more traffic.  One thing I enjoy, in terms of stats, and continue to focus on keeping is the amount of average time on site the same and the bounce rate pretty low, not going above 60 percent.

What is your main source of traffic?

For sources of traffic, Twitter and Facebook have been heavy contributers with me having a specific account for Twitter (@lifenotion) and then a LifeNotion Facebook Fan Page for the blog. But other than these social networking sites, I get my traffic from the blogs I tend to comment on the most.  These blogs are SteitBlog, Problogger, and Mashable.

What are your main strategies for your blog?

Here are my top five strategies for my blog, LifeNotion:

1. Write original and great content!
2. Keep the blog transparent to the tagline, mission, or purpose of the blog.
3. Connect with any readers through the comments.
4. Meet and connect with people through Facebook and Twitter.
5. Offer great feedback when commenting on other blogs to gain the trust.

What are typical tasks you perform for your blog, both content and marketing wise? Are you organised with lists or you just take action on what you feel needs to be done?

The typical tasks for my blog are first checking any messages or comments I have received in the past day to see what people are saying about my blog. Then, I go out into the blogosphere and see what people are writing about.  That is when I make a decision to write about something that would be perfect timing or I write about something I have been planning to write anyways.

Then, for marketing LifeNotion, I publish links to any of my new posts with the StumbleUpon shortening service on Twitter and Facebook.  The StumbleUpon shortening service (http://su.pr/)  is known for creating more traffic than bit.ly or just a regular hyperlink.

If you could start your blog over again, what are 3 things you would do differently?

I would do these 3 things:

1. Make sure you are able to set aside the same amount of time each day to work on your blog for at least a months time.
2. Meet new friends that would be of interest with what you are blogging (and connect with them) before you actually start your blog, because then you could just be annoying them instead of just saying hey yeah I just created a blog about this.
3. Do not heavily promote your blog in the beginning.  Have your comments on other blogs and just talking to others about it that maybe interested to the promoting.

What advice would you give to beginner bloggers?

While coming up with your niche for your blog and then all the details that come with it, come up with your first 10 blog posts.  Make sure these first 10 blog posts represent all different aspects you want to talk about within your niche on your blog.  Content is very important on blogs and this will not only help you determine whether this niche is your passion, but it will get you a head start on your blog when you “release it”.

What are future plans for your blog?

The future plans for my blog are to keep writing great content, attracting people to my content all over the blogosphere and general public through connecting with people and commenting on other blogs.  As soon as I got a good amount of content already published I will begin to work on promoting the LifeNotion name to make is a brand.  I will do this once I have a good amount of content because then I can promote my most popular posts or posts that best resemble the purpose of LifeNotion.

Best Regards,

Derek
http://www.lifenotion.com
@lifenotion

I hope you enjoyed this guest post interview with Derek. If you have any questions or comments leave them in the space provided below.

If you would like to be interviewed for Beginner Blogger head on over to the contact section and shoot me an email – I’m sure we can work something out

If you enjoyed this interview you may also enjoy…

1. Guest Post Interview with Mike CJ

2. Guest Post Interview with Jay Bailey

3. Guest Post Interview with Zeeshan Siddiqui

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