Interview With Caroline Middlebrook on Blogging

Who is Caroline Middlebrook and what is her blog about?

I used to be a software developer and in 2007 I quit my job to begin an online business. My blog is a chronicle of that decision and the journey in building that business.

When did you start blogging and who or what did you learn from when you first started?

I started my blog on the day I handed in my resignation, which was August 2007. At the beginning I learned almost exclusively from other bloggers. Some notable ones that I still read today include Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse and John Chow.

What are some techniques that you used to gain over 5,000 RSS subscribers?

At the beginning I grew my blog by actively commenting on many other blogs. This brought in a steady trickle of new readers but it also started to get the attention of other bloggers, which resulted in links and even more traffic. After a while I began to embrace web 2.0 such as Twitter and StumbleUpon, which sent a large amount of traffic to the blog, and over time a larger portion of my traffic has come from search engines. As I always prominently publicize my RSS feed, that traffic always converts into new subscribers.

What is your e-book the Bloggers Bible about and why should people read it?

It is a complete step-by-step course that teaches you how to build a popular and profitable blog from scratch. Reading it alone will give you no benefit whatsoever – it requires that each lesson (there are 49 of them) be put into action! If the lessons are taken one at a time and acted upon then anyone should be able to develop a good income from their new blog using The Bloggers Bible.

What has been the most challenging thing about blogging for you?

The only challenge that I can think of is that having a public blog with a large number of readers makes you accountable and you always have to show up and post! There have been a couple of times when I have gone through some stuff in my personal life that I wanted to hide from and I didn’t much feel like blogging at those times and that was tough.

How long did it take you before you started seeing some serious income from your blog?

Depends what you mean by ’serious’. I had my first 4-figure month in January 2008 which was five months after I started and since then there have only been a couple of months where the income level dipped slightly below the 4-figure mark.

What advice do you have for the blogging newbie looking to make money from blogging?

Firstly, you need to pick a topic that you love and that you can inject your own personality into. Creating a real blog with real readers requires that you be authentic and passionate in everything that you do. Secondly, it requires persistence as in the beginning the growth of a new blog can often be excruciatingly slow! Lastly I would say to think about monetization right from the outset. A mistake I made was to add things in later as an after thought, which caused several problems.

What are the top 10 blogs that you enjoy reading?

I don’t read anywhere near the number of blogs that I used to, I certainly don’t have a top 10. But a few that are always in my feed reader are those of Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, John Chow, and Josh Spaulding. Others come and go

What is the greatest source of traffic for your blog?

Right now it is search engine traffic but that is a fairly new development. For the best part of a year it was StumbleUpon.

What are some of the top social networks that you use for traffic?

StumbleUpon … and twitter. I also used to get quite a lot of traffic from social networks that were specific to my niche such as Sphinn but I don’t really have the time to participate in them anymore.

Where do you see yourself and blog in 5 years?

Gosh that’s a good question. As long as I am doing something online to make money then I will share that journey on my blog. The internet and technology in general always changes so fast that I’m sure there will always be new developments, new traffic sources, new ways of marketing so there will always be something new that I’m working on and hence something new that I’m blogging about. I want my blog to be a complete history of how I have made money online.

Tagged as: Blogging, caroline middlebrook