Darren Rowse runs ProBlogger, a site instructing readers on how to blog professionally and earn money from writing online. His turnover amounts to just under one million per year, with two million visitors to his site every month.
“If you can solve a problem for someone or meet a need that they might have, whether that is to learn how to do something or a need for entertainment or a need to feel a part of a community, if you can fulfil those needs and solve problems for people, they’ll tell their friends about you.”
“I created the site because I wanted to read it. I was searching for information on how to make money from blogging and people were sort of talking about it but there wasn’t any site dedicated to it. Again it’s about solving a need.”
“Once you build a site to a certain point, people seek you out – if you’ve developed a prominent voice in that industry.”
“You need to have great communication skills and some written skills, but it’s really about nailing down a topic that you think you can write about and you can continue to write about.”
“A lot of bloggers can choose topics which they think will be profitable but when you ask them to name 10 topics they can write on in that overall niche, they struggle to come up with more than three, because those three is all they know. Choose a topic wisely and have patience.”
“Many blogs don’t actually look like blogs any more. They’re starting to look like portals or normal websites so I sort of see the way blogs are being used are changing slightly.”
Read more about Darren Rowse and ProBlogger.
Smart Company is a sister publication to The Mandarin, catering to Australia’s entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and business managers.
