So the interview you’ve all been waiting for is finally here. 
Who is the person? Well, the title sort of gives it away if you’ve been reading around my niche for a while. It is no other than the blogger that came back just a couple weeks ago: Benjamin Patton.
Ben was, and still is, one of my favorite bloggers as his blog always stands out as one that is personal, yet informative. As a subscriber since the mid-2008, I think I can testify that. However, sometime back in October 2008, my email stopped receiving his blog’s updates and he simply couldn’t be found. Thankfully though, he is back and I thought, “Why not interview this guy?” So here it is.
Static: Hey Ben thanks for giving me an opportunity to interview you. First, can you tell ahnternet readers a little bit about yourself?
Ben: Well I am going to be 27 this 13th, I am in the process of a mutually uncontested divorce. I am a type 1 diabetic. Those are the basic facts. I enjoy working for my business economy level chain hotel as a operations manager. I hope to someday in the near future have my own hotel as a general manager but I am in no real rush as I am still learning. As far as non Internet marketing and non hotel Ben goes I like quick cars of the Supra descent. I own an mk2 MR2 at the moment, will soon be getting a passat turbo wagon though I originally started into the whole Internet Marketing scene via list marketing within the blog niche itself. I saw a serious need for a website that was not problogger.com but was not to simple in its own right. I wanted to attack the niche from my perspective and actually share all my results even if it ment giving away a million dollar secret. I am really motivated to help others through my own experience.
Static: So I was an email subscriber to your blog, and I received an email just a couple weeks ago regarding a comeback. Where have you been the last few months?
Ben: The last few months are a little bit complicated, but I will go ahead and give you the lowdown scoop on what happened. I have not even published this on my own blog yet. Since last March when I was diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic which for those that are not aware means I can not live without injecting insulin after most every meal. Which is a serious adjustment. I have been a little more serious about life, getting stuff sorted out and taken care of and not being overwhelmed. Well the change was so great that I am not the same person and as such put undue stress on my soon to be former marriage. This on top of the worst economy for the hospitality industry since probably the great depression of the 30′s means I have had quite a bit on my mind like keeping my staff at the hotel working enough hours to support themselves and families and to keep my hotel open and in business. Now we get to the blog and Ben’s Internet marketing which took the greatest toll of it all first. I was out of commission, but wanting to write daily as I always had. Eventually it became apparent that something was going to have to give so in the hopes of not letting the hard work I had poured into this brand I had created I sold it to a fellow blogger who I will not reveal. They purchased the blog for nearly $1k. It was an undervalued sale and was on short notice but I had to get rid of it to surplus my savings and not let the project die. This along with the previous remarks finally coming to a head and being dealt with we arrive cozily to the end of January when the person in question I had sold the blog to had not paid the hosting and not done anything with the site. I pulled a back up and put it up on my new hosting account and got it back on par. I notified the now former owner that their was a 60 day clause and that he had failed to fulfill it. He did not mind and let me take back over the site without incident. Now I am back and writing and quite happier and better for it
Static: What motivated you to get back into blogging? What’s in it for you?
Ben: I honestly have to say that helping people achieve their goals makes me feel good no matter how insignificant the help is it really gets me revved up. I guess this is why I am in sales/marketing at my own job as well working with people. For me their is a small payoff I think the highest earned income I had from the blog before it went for sale was the $400 I made in the last month. I used it for projects and learning new stuff such as my site flip project that I had never done before or read any material on how to do it. I also once again have to say my supreme motivation and fulfillment comes from helping others though.
Static: Considering that you now have to rebuild the blog’s popularity, what are some methods you are planning on doing to get those readers and traffic back?
Ben: I am going to use the exact same methods I used to build the blog up to its former glory except now I am going to be much harder at it to get it done. Basically comment campaigns, emailing other bloggers, making it worth everyone’s while to read at least one post of mine to consider subscribing and becoming an active participant here at my site. Really nothing legal is off limits and as most know I have a pretty decent network to be able to start to reach people who may not have ever heard of me. My biggest goal to work on is more serps traffic though which has been a challenge in a niche dominated by well established blogs. Thats ok before to long I promise I will dethrone problogger.com.
Static: Good luck there Ben. It looks like you’re in it even more seriously this time around. By the way, are these methods that would work for new bloggers too?
Ben: The methods I use are the methods I write about every day and anyone from a day one wordpress newbie to a grizzled veteran of 10k+ subs can leverage and take advantage of.
Static: Speaking of tips, just out of curiosity, do you have any specific methods that you would recommend, but you aren’t implementing on your blog as after all, Big Ben Patton’s Place isn’t exactly a completely new blog?
Ben: I leave no specific method unused anything that can draw one subscriber I will do. This is a game of inches ladies and gentlemen and success is based off whether your giving inches or taking them. I choose to take them.
Static: So far the interview has been great. I won’t bug you so much more, so just before we close out, where do you see Big Ben Patton’s place going now that you are back? What are some new things you are looking to offer on the blog?
Ben: I see the blog becoming more refined really I want to tenderize my content a bit more so that when I get into mini series worth of pretty hardcore content it is easy to digest for those that may not have ever considered doing anything like what I am actively trying to teach by example. Blogging and Internet Marketing is a very broad genre but they all play off each other and all the subcatagories as well to make you better at everything to earn online, or write online and if you can do those two your doing very well and surely on your way to whatever goal your heart desires.
Static: Thanks for your time Ben. It interesting to get to know you a bit more and your secret tips to a successful blogging journey too. 
G’luck in the future please do keep in touch!
How did you guys like the interview? The interview was somewhat rushed, and thus, I wasn’t able to ever ask you guys for some questions you may have for Ben. However, he frequently has his own Q&A sessions too, so I’m sure if you have a question that you are dieing to have answered, you can get it.
Also, Ben mentioned that he sees “the blog becoming more refined” and actually, that is exactly what he is doing right now. BenjaminPatton.com will be officially making a move to RealBloggingTips.com, so if you used to be a subscriber of Ben, or are now thinking of becoming one, make sure you subscribe and participate over at RBT.
So, how did you guys like the interview? Informative? A waste of loading time on the blog? I’m thinking of periodically doing interviews, so if you guys like what you are seeing, I’m up for it. Tell me through the comments.
So I got back from Boston very late last night. Harvard, MIT, Tufts, and a few other schools blew me away. Loved the college town, and starting tomorrow, I’m starting my “trek” on making a transfer to MIT. I wish Harvard, but unfortunately, they don’t accept transfers right now.
Anyways, in regards to the blog, I just noticed that the interview was not posted. I’m not sure what was up with it, but I guess it was a mistake on my side for making a mistake with the timestamp. Regardless of the problem though, the interview will go up tomorrow. It’s a pretty good one, so you guys should all look forward to it.
I’ll keep this post short today, as there really is no substance to this post.
So tomorrow, I fly to Boston because of the Harvard National Model United Nations. I’ve been an avid fan of the whole MUN stuff since I was in junior high, so obviously I’m still participating in the whole thing in university too. Anyways, since I’ll be flying there tomorrow and although I do believe that I will have some connection, I should expect the worst, so I’m expecting none for now.
However, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to just let Friday pass by without a good post. Well, this upcoming post will be a bit special as although it is not a guest post, the majority of it was not written by me. Yes, it is an interview.
One of favorite bloggers last year made a sudden comeback a few days ago, so I decided to get in touch with him to see where he was up to. He’s been pretty successful online, so it should be a great interview. I have it here timestamped and just waiting to be published.
On a side note, it seems like WordPress 2.7.1 was released a few hours ago. I just clicked auto-update in my admin dashboard and it seems like that click was all that was needed. I love WordPress guys when it comes to installations and upgrades. Makes it too quick and easy to the point that it feels like you skipped a few steps.
Anyways, enough with my rambling.
So this week, the blog surpassed the entire traffic for January 2009. 
I guess that shows how inactive my blog was for the first month of 2009. Anyways, let’s get to some posts.
Post Roundup for February 2009 Week 1
I guess my posts weren’t of a quality that I had expected and I really didn’t post this week. Anyways, here are the two that I’d appreciate, if you gave some attention to.
Link Love for February 2009 Week 1
Here’s the first week’s link love. There were actually a lot of great posts this week (as if there aren’t any other week?!) so it was a little bit harder to choose the three that I would recommend without potentially embarrassing myself and this blog for recommending it. Maybe a solution could be more link love at the end of every month… Anyways…
- Building Backlinks For 2009 is an article from IBB and Shannon pretty much nailed the backlink building on the spot. Especially when PR is a lot harder to attain than in the past and with more and more bloggers popping up from here and there, it never hurts to have some massive backlink and authority in the blogosphere. Speaking of authority…
- The Power of Authority And How To Become One from Andre talks of how you can really be an authority in the blogosphere not through backlinks but just through how you speak. There’s a reason why John Chow and Shoemoney can get quite a bit of people to do stuff that mutually benefits them, such as those viral twitter contests.
- What Does Success Mean? from Enkay is another great post. I just want to highlight the second point that he made on how blogging is really a community thing. A blog is certainly not created by one person. Although the writer(s) behind it is important, visitors and commentators are just as important.
Conclusion
I guess this blog is starting to pickup from where it left off as I’m starting to see an increase in traffic. Now, I just need to get these traffic converted into subscribers. A few things I’m looking at doing the next week is maintaining the posting frequency, commenting more on other blogs within my niche, and an interview (hopefully) with a blogger that has recently come back to the scene.
So I’ve been going pretty good with Entrecard and in my opinion, especially for new bloggers, it is an easy way to increase exposure to your site without a lot of work. I mean if you just new which blogs to go to that had the Entrecard widget that you can drop your card in, wouldn’t racking up the credits be a lot faster and wouldn’t you be able to, on a daily basis, have “funds” to promote your blog?
Well, TysBlog actually did this already and made their own Entrecard list. However, the big downside of the list was that it quickly got outdated. Way too many sites on the list have the Entrecard widget hidden somewhere near the bottom of the page, some of them don’t even have the widget anymore, and worst of all, some sites don’t even exist. As originally, a big fan of the list, now, I have my own list that I accumulated. Plus, these are sites that are related to my niche, which makes it a lot better for me too. Anyways, let me get to the point.
I’m going to make a new list. Now, why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this because I want to give my readers an opportunity to be on this 300 Entrecard widget supporting blog. I will heavily promote this list, so for every download and user, assuming that they add the bookmark into their browser’s favorite list, you can assume a unique visit from them once per day. Pretty sweet deal, huh?
Obviously, as it is Entrecard, you’re not really submitting here in hopes of getting more subscribers or more comments, although that is a possibility. The primary reason I use Entrecard is to gain credits to promote on other related sites, which is a pretty good deal in my opinion.
Criteria
However, as I have some great plans on promoting this list, I need to ask you to do a favor for me. No, I’m not asking for your money, all I’m asking for is the following:
- Entrecard widget should be visible on a full screened page, above the fold. I will accept F11ed FireFox folds.
- No splogs.
- Make sure that the widget is visible. Don’t hide it or camouflage it as I want blogs where you can see the widget pretty much the moment you open the page.
- A focused niche within the field that ahnternet deals with would be awesome, but outside is still fine, assuming that it is not a splog.
- If your site isn’t in the first batch, don’t bombard me with hate emails. If your site meets the above requirements, it will be in it within a few updates as I am pretty sure people won’t stay on par with the criteria above, booting them out of the list pretty much.
How to Submit
Simply submit it using the form below. Please submit one form for every website you wish to have submitted.
Anything Else?
As much as I love my readers, I love my subscribers even more. It would be kind of you to subscribe to this blog in appreciation of my efforts in this mini project. Subscribers (by RSS and email) can notify me through the form above and they will be moved up the 300 list, which ensures them a greater possibility of their blogs being looked at as opposed to #300, as most people start off from #1.
Also, by subscribing, you will get the latest updates on the 300 Entrecard enabled websites, which allows you to pretty much not have to do the bad job of picking out the bad and replacing it with the new, good ones.
To subscribe, just enter your email and away!
Conclusion
I’m looking at receiving about 100 submissions looking at popularity of this blog right now. However, the more I receive through the form, the better for me and for you as you will get more sites in a list that would be viewed by thousands while I don’t have to do the somewhat tedious job of going through the Entrecard directory looking for fast loading and above the fold Entrecard widgeted sites.
Anyways, so just feel free to submit the sites through the form above and if you would so kind to do so, subscribe to this blog so you can get the latest updates on the list of 300 that really works while also getting your site a good position within the list.
So we saw Shoemoney and John Chow do it. Now, everyone seems to be throwing free Flip Mino HD’s everywhere. Of course, I don’t have a problem with that (although I do have a problem with not winning any of them!) so by all means, if you feel like giving one away, hit me up and I’ll take part in it.
Talking of Flip Mino HD’s, Ryan McLean from Smarter Wealth is also giving out a Flip Mino HD to one lucky reader. The steps are pretty simple because all you need to really do is subscribe by email and if you have a blog, post about the contest. Heck, he even gives you what to post, so technically, it should all take at most 5 minutes.
Talking of Smarter Wealth, I’ve been a subscriber of this blog for quite a while and I can assure you that although Ryan is no Shoe or John, the substance he delivers to his readers is just as good. It is rather unfortunate that his blog is not read as much, because I’d prefer another tip on growing the number of subscribers over a pretty decent restaurant menu.
Anyways, it also happens to be Ryan’s birthday today, so go and congratulate him too if you feel extra nice. Maybe he’ll give you some bonus points for the drawing.
Okay, so WordPress 2.7 has been out for about a while now and since it’s the beginning of a new month, I’m sure there are old and new bloggers looking for some decent themes compatible with the latest version. After all, threaded comments are a must, which makes WordPress 2.7 a must. Using an old theme potentially stops you from being able to use such new features, so it’s pretty important to staying update with your themes.
Some notes! These 50 themes are themes I chose, want to share, and feel are quality themes. Thus, these 50 were chosen based on my personal preferences, so if you think one of them looks ugly, still take a look further down as you just might find one worth checking out. Also I haven’t tested all of them myself. I chose them after checking out either the screenshot or the demo, so don’t come to be asking for theme support! 
While I could, the theme authors are the best to approach! Click “Read the rest of this entry” to check out all the themes. I did this to prevent the first page of my blog from crashing down badly due to an overwhelming long list. (more…)
So I decided to try this out too and maybe see if this can help me get my blog a bit more organized for my readers.
Post Roundup for January 2009
So this month I did get back to my posting routine. Hopefully this routine will stay alive as I’ve set my 2009 resolutions for this blog. Also, I’ve pumped out a few articles from time to time as hey, recalling my experiences and doing some further research for my readers helps me too. Some of the highlight articles include:
Link Love for January 2009 Week 4
It seems like everyone is full of love these days. Anyways, before Valentines comes around, let me share some of the posts that caught my attention over the last week.
- Why Blogging Is the Undisputed Culture? is actually a guest post on thou shall blog, so while credits go to Yan for accepting the awesome post, credits go to Donny too as he wrote it in the first place. Anyways, a great article on just the reasons behind blogging. Why do you blog?
- What Kinds Of Posts Generate The Most Traffic? is a post from Iron Blogger and it makes you think… “Am I writing a post that actually would cause some vibe in the blogosphere? It is definitely one of Iron Blogger’s best posts (in my opinion, although he has too many!) and it definitely is worth a read!
- Hiatus Vs. Selling Your Blog from Enkay is a pretty good post to read if you are kind of lazy blogging and are even thinking about potentially selling your blog. I’ve had this debate many times myself too, so if you are like me, check it out.
Top Commentators
Well, this blog still needs to pickup its pace, so this place is empty for this the previous month. However, I’ll be sure to give free link back to the five top commentators aside from the link they get from the blog page itself.
Conclusion
I feel somewhat thankful that I’ve now found a time to blog. Last quarter, just entering the university and all… it was crazy and I really missed this place. Some things that I’m hoping to focus a bit more starting next month is putting out some quality content and receiving a steady stream of 5+ comments per blog. Help me by commenting, will you?
So in mid-2002, I built my very first website with FreeWebs. Later that year, I tried out Lycos.eu’s free hosting as they provided PHP and MySQL. On January 1st of 2003, I bought my first every domain, gamersfortress.net and my online adventure as a webmaster really began. Sometime midway through the year, I picked up the domain evee.net to ambitiously start a hosting company run by a kid. Anyways, obviously, it didn’t work out so well, so I pretty much gave the domain away for free. Now, that is one of the bigger regrets I have.
Why am I talking about this all of a sudden? Well first off, let me apologize for using the term “newbie” in the title as personally, I don’t think that is a great word. However, as I consider my days then as a “newbie newbie”, I just thought that I might as well put it there in the title. Second, well, it’s that time of the year. It’s the domain renewing season for most LLLL.net holders.
About a year or so ago, after a match of soccer, I was heading home when one of my closest friends sent me a text message saying that the quad-premium LLLL.net’s are nearly all registered. When I got home, as I had a pretty good .net TLD registration price with Moniker, I spent about $130 dollars investing in 20 quad-premium LLLL.net’s. Since then, I’ve sold three for a price of $5 per domain and I have 17 domains that I’m thinking whether I should or shouldn’t renew. It is not the money part that is bugging me. It’s the entire future of LLLL.net that I believe I don’t fully understand or see. At the moment, I’m feeling myself more and more leaning towards dropping this buying domains for investment purposes thing. Let me tell you why.
You Can’t Win, Win, Win
At least to me, this is what the domain industry has been. I guess you could say that the stock market is similar, but I would have to disagree. I personally believe that the domain industry is, in most parts, for those who were there from the early days. Unless you are planning on coming into the market with some money that you can afford to potentially lose, it is just not worth the risk. You need to learn the tricks, have the tools ready, and simply be ready to make this your living, which most people can’t. If you have a short domain or some premium domain, the chances of someone just knocking at your door asking for a quote with a blank check for you to write is just not possible. This takes me to my next point about time and how domaining as a newbie is definitely just not worth the time.
Too Much Time Consuming
For the amount of time you would need to expect, you probably won’t get a lot back. Chances are that you may just have to renew and renew and renew. I’m not just saying the domain names, but I’m saying the tools, the subscriptions, and a whole lot of other stuff to keep yourself updated. Forums just aren’t going to cut it. You need to spend that extra time to reach out even further to even make a slight impact on the sale of your domains.
I guess that could be the same with all things, but something I learned was that even if you do put in a lot of time into it, you won’t learn much. If you put your time into a field of science, a business, or even a blog, you actually find numerous opportunities to learn. As a domaining newbie (not anymore, but still) you won’t learn too much. The person that buys a domain from you at a reseller price isn’t too interested in you. They are interested in the price. Sad, but true.
No Real Exponential Growth
If you’re doing business, you want your revenue to rise per year. From what I see in domaining though, not many people see this increase per year. I think the problem lies in the fact that not much affects the price of domains except for time, which in this field is availability. Even if you decided to invest some time to seek out end buyers, there is just so much that you can do in regards to the revenue. I just don’t see an exponential growth, which is probably why most people I’ve talked to do this for a hobby (which then, you can pretty much forget exponential growth as you’re just hoping for some few pocket money) and not as a full-time thing. Anyways, the point is that exponential growth does not seem possible with domaining, especially for newbies and not so newbies.
I guess this could be considered one of my sore loser posts after not finding any good sales for my LLLL.net’s… or a post where I am sharing my not so pleasant all the time experience in domaining. You can choose, but personally, I think it’s the latter. Domaining is definitely cool and for those out there that are successful with it, props to you. However, I just feel that for someone without (or sometimes even with) a huge capitol and just a newbie in domaining, I just don’t see the market as being a profitable market.
Think differently? Hit me up with a comment as I’d love to try my skills in this industry again. However, at the moment, I think I’ll either give these domains away on this blog, just drop them, or renew only a few that I feel I could maybe turn into a website (as I have a few pretty nice ones).
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), we all have 24 hours in one day. As a blogger and a whole lot of other stuff online, that is just not enough time a day to reap all the profits into my pockets. When I calculate the amount I make per dollar, it just isn’t worth it to do this all the time. This is why you need friends, partners, employees, and a lot more. This is why you need those people who will do what you would need to spend your time doing.
I first started outsourcing about a year ago and found that I had a lot of time in my hands. But exactly what do I outsource? The primary product I outsource is content. As a strong believer of “Content is King”, and that quantity is in fact just as important as quality, I am always on the lookout for quality writers who are looking to get consistent jobs at a decent rate. (Hint: If you are a writer, contact me and I may have a job for you.) Also, aside from the quality and king part, content is one of the most time consuming parts, which is also a reason why I outsource it.
Anyways, through outsourcing, it pretty much buys me time to focus on other aspects of development. So far, it may not seem convincing to throw (or in from my view, “invest”) money out there in hopes of making more while doing less work yourself. However, before you keep that thought, note to the wise: You can’t make free money. Even if you are outsourcing, you will need to do some degree of work to get things done. However, the benefits of that “free time” (and by free time, I don’t mean time to get on World of Warcraft, but I mean time to work on other parts of your business) are quite immense.
This post seems a bit unorganized, so let me quickly organize it a bit before I move on further.
- If you have a lot of stuff to do, you outsource some that would be time consuming and not worth the time for you.
- You pay the employee a bit.
- You make sure you make money off of that outsourced product.
- Simultaneously, you use that “free time” to work on other things.
Still not convinced to outsource? Let me then try to throw some numbers around. These are highly theoretical numbers, but hey, usually you can get something similar to work if you keep on tweaking it and optimizing it.
Let’s say that you allocated $50 into getting some content up to kick-start your blog. We’ll ignore the niche here as that is not so important right now. Anyways, with $50, you can get some pretty sweet content and aplenty of them too, especially at various webmaster forums. Usually the rate is about $0.01 per word, but as more and more writers are emerging, the rates are just dropping. In addition, if you buy in bulk, writers will usually give great discounts.
So with that in mind, let’s say that with $50, you can get yourself 12 articles each 500 words. That’s 6000 words right there and although the rate of $0.01 per word shows that it is worth $60, as I said, discounts and lower rates for quality articles can be found. Anyways, with this 12 articles, you are pretty much ready to go and kick-start the blog. Now, just for easier explanation purposes, let’s make the niche a bodybuilding website. Despite the niche being a bit saturated, it is still quite profitable if you know what you are doing.
With the 12 articles, you can pretty much copy them over to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, or whatever you are using. That should take you 15 minutes maximum. Now, with the content in its place on the web, you can focus on other parts of developing this blog. Publicity is definitely one you should and would be interested in. Marketing related products like muscle milk is also something you can look into.
I won’t go further down this road on explaining it as that is another completely different story. But, can’t you see how beneficial that $50 was in respect to time and stress that would have been on you? Hey, let’s admit this, but most of us aren’t professional writers and aren’t exactly research kings. You would have probably had to go through several HOURS of research, and then crafting your article with keywords and all those goodies to make it an “attractive” and fun article to read. IF you get finished with that maybe you would have some time to get your blog’s popularity up. After that would you really start to make some money. Why not cut the majority of the work and outsource?
At the moment, I have about $100 or so amount of work being outsourced only in the content area. I won’t disclose anymore regarding SEO, designing, etc., but I can tell you that I outsource a lot of work (and I do mean A LOT) which gives me a lot of time to connect online with others in my niche while also primarily focusing on the monetary side of the website. That isn’t to say that this blog is not written by me of course.
Anyways, hopefully some information in here was helpful and somewhat motivated you to try this path. If dishing out $50 is not something you are comfortable with, try it out first with a $5 article or a $20 design (to sell sponsorship links). In the case it doesn’t work, it’s not like you are losing an arm, so there isn’t much pressure on you. G’luck!
