Blazing Minds

Welcome to the first in a new series of interviews of bloggers from around the world, each week I will be bringing you an interview with some very interesting bloggers, so without further ado, let’s get on with this weeks interview:

Q: Tell me a little about yourself?
A: My online handle is “Dragon Blogger”, but my real name is Justin Germino.  I am an IT Security Engineer who was originally born and raised in Queens, NY and moved to Arizona 14 years ago here I met my wife and continue to live in AZ.

Q: Tell me about your blog, when and why you started it and how you came up with the name for it?
A: My primary blog “dragonblogger.com” I started on August 23rd 2008.  I originally started blogging as a way to try and earn a 2nd income from home without having to go out and get a 2nd job and spend time away from the family, I needed something I can do from home at night while the kids were sleeping.  I read research online and found some people were able to make money blogging, so I started it.  I know blogging and online identities need catchy names, I was a huge ungeons and Dragons fan, and Dragons stand for power, so Dragonblogger just fit for a handle.  I managed to be the only one to use it on all networks except myspace.com (that isn’t me).

I had always been interested in writing, I wrote poems for 20 years, creative writing, fiction, fantasy and it was a hobby of mine.   Shortly after blogging I felt something stir in me, and that is the writer.  I actually enjoyed writing and providing content for users, and I live and breath technology so the two paired well.  The next month in September 2009 I started 2 more blogs (JustinGermino.com which is my personal diary, and WandererThoughts.com which is my poetry blog).  Now I flex my creative freedom and can write about any topics I want and put the articles on whichever blogs fit my topic content.

Q: Having three blogs to run does this take up a lot of your time?
A: I spend about 50 hours a week at my day job, and another 15-20 hours a week on blogging and blog related activities.  I spend an average of 2-3 hours per night between writing posts, romoting, socializing, SEO..etc  So blogging definitely keeps me busy in my off hours.

Q: Where would you say most of your traffic comes from for your blog?
A: All of my blogs derive most of their traffic from organic google searches, this is good.  DragonBlogger.com gets about 300 unique visits per day, 70% from Google searches, with the rest from blogcatalog, stumbleupon, twitter and the like.  My poetry blog gets more traffic
from Twitter (20%) based on the fact that I do a Random Twitter Poetry game, but gets a large amount of traffic from poem searches on Google, this blog averages about 150 visits per day.  My personal blog averages around 30-40 visits per day and isn’t as heavily promoted as my other two blogs.

Q: Do you use social networks to promote your blog and if so which ones would you recommend to other bloggers?
A: Entrecard will get you traffic fastest, I started a new blog and could get 100 visits per day within 3 days just by doing massive dropping, this isn’t sustainable for long though, but is a good way to get some traffic to your site and get your site advertised. BlogCatalog is another one, go around making friends, commenting on other blogs and you will find many return the favor.
StumbleUpon is good for bursts in traffic when you stumble articles, but is unpredictable and you could get traffic storms that bring down your site if you don’t have a stable hosting provider. BlogEngage is one I just joined and am seeing good early results with. Zimbio is really good for getting your articles indexed on Google, but since your article is hosted on Zimbio, I think it creates duplicate content, or at least takes away you pageviews since people read your content there instead of on your blog.

I have not had much luck with Digg, Mixx, ReddIt or the other major social networks, as I just don’t get enough votes to get my articles noticed.

Q: If you could give some useful advice to new bloggers, what would it be?
A: Pace yourself, you will go through many emotions blogging, like a rollercoaster, there will be highs and lows.  When you are inspired and have tons of articles to write, queue several of them or rainy days if they are not news or current events related, because you will have writers block some days and not be able to write an article.  It happens to all of us and it will likely happen once and a while to you.  For the first 90 days after you start your blog, don’t even think about signing
up for paying sites.  Develop at least 50 quality posts first, list your blog on every social network you can find, comment and promote.  At 90 days your blog will qualify for SocialSpark, ayU2Blog and many other systems, but you have to choose your blog payment networks carefully.
Some do not mix, and you have to decide which way you want to steer your blog.

If you are serious about blogging you need to purchase your own web hosting plan and host a wordpress blog, many advertisers are no longer considering new Blogger.com or BlogSpot blogs into their system due to saturation, so if you weren’t grandfathered in, you are not likely to make money with these systems.

One other thing, I enjoy helping other bloggers and sharing my experiences, I have a whole section on my dragonblogger.com related to blogging and sharing what I learn.  If anyone has any questions they can contact me.

Thanks Justin..

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 7:22 am and is filed under Blogger Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.