Interesting interview. I agree about the forum registration idea. I’m so sick of reading nonsense comments from people who sign anonymous or forums that don’t require registration.
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Sometime ago I had the pleasure to feature Steve Pavlina on the Bloggers Face-Off series. Steve is a very eloquent and insightful guy – in fact, in his blog you will not find “posts” but rather “essays” – and his answers for my questions were really structured. On the face-off, due to the format, I was forced to cut them down. But since there were many important and interesting points that did not appear, I decided to publish the whole interview. Enjoy!
1. How long have you been blogging?
Since October 1, 2004, so a little over 2.5 years.
2. How many hours do you dedicate to your blog daily?
On average about 2-4 hours a day. I normally write 2-4 posts per week.
3. Do you make money with the blog?
Yes, I currently earn about $40K/month from my blogging activities. About 70%
comes from joint-venture deals with personal development product publishers. A
JV deal is like an affiliate program, but they tend to involve custom offers like special bonuses and discounts for my readers. Because of its traffic, my web site can sell tens of thousands of dollars worth of a single product within a fairly short period of time, so I have no shortage of companies interested in working with me. I generate income from commissions on these sales.
4. How many page views does it generate daily?
About 175,000.
5. What is the biggest blogging mistake you did?
The biggest mistake I made was enabling blog comments and keeping them enabled for too long. The prevailing wisdom is that comments are essential for a blog, which turned out to be total nonsense when I actually looked at the data. Even though I was getting over 100 comments a day when I decided to disable them, I saw that only a tiny fraction of my visitors — way below 1% — ever posted a comment, and hardly anyone even looked at them. I turned off comments in October 2005, and traffic growth remained steady. It saved me a ton of time not having to manage them.
I wrote a couple articles about why I turned them off:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/blog-comments/ and
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/more-on-blog-comments/
A much better alternative was to use forums. Forums require registration,
which cuts down on spam and useless juvenile comments, and they’re easily maintained by volunteer moderators. Whenever I make a new blog post, the forum software automatically creates a discussion thread for it, but visitors can start their own topics too. I added forums in November 2006, and my visitors have posted over 68,000 messages since then. The forums themselves become a draw to the site as well.
6. How important is the “niche” for a successful blog? (0 to 10)
That depends on the niche and the person, so I couldn’t give it a number. One
mistake people make is choosing a niche that’s too small, either compared to the
market or compared to who they are as a person.
For example, if you start blogging on computer role-playing games, you may run into two problems. First, you may end up succeeding. Suppose you become the #1 blog in your niche. Now your growth rate is limited by what the market itself is doing. If the market is growing like gangbusters, great, but if it starts to shrink, you’ll follow it down.
Secondly, you may end up outgrowing your topic. Suppose you blog about role-playing games for several years and then get sick of it. What will you do then? This doesn’t necessarily have to stop you, since you don’t have to blog for life, but do consider your exit strategy if you pick a topic you may outgrow.
Instead of choosing a niche, I suggest you choose a focus. Make that focus something that’s very important to you, a part of who you are. That’s why I chose personal growth as my topic. It gives my blog a solid focus, but it would be hard for me to get bored with it.
7. Digg, Stumble Upon or Delicious?
Stumble Upon for their steady flow of visitors. Second choice would be Del.icio.us. I appreciate Digg’s traffic swells, but a flood of sarcastic teenagers isn’t a great fit for a blog on personal development.
8. If you could give an advice for a novice blogger, what would it be?
Don’t be a novice. Nobody wants to read a novice.
Instead become an expert at contributing substantial value to your readers’ lives. Focus on giving people something that will actually help them as opposed to pumping out “content” that will just waste their time. Value generates referrals, referrals build traffic, and traffic builds income. Focus on giving the best you can, and the getting will come fairly easily.
9. Do you think blogging is declining, stable or growing?
Obviously growing, both in terms of writing and reading.
10. How many RSS feeds do you track daily?
About 5, but I don’t check them every day. The vast majority of RSS feeds are a complete waste of time. I find books, audio programs, seminars, and plain old conversation with interesting people a much better source of input.
11. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick?
My wife’s blog (www.erinpavlina.com/blog). I’m biased obviously, but I do think she writes beautifully. Plus I want to know what she’s saying about me. 
12. What is the secret of your success, expressed in one word?
Contribution.
