merkal2005: Hi Stephan, please tell us about your background

eristoddle: I have worked a lot of different jobs from retail to contstruction. Along the way I taught myself what I could about the internet. Never knowing when to stop I have been a product developer, ebay powerseller, programmer, affiliate marketer, and finally a blogger. It is my way of knowing just enough about what I need to before deciding the best route, plus I get bored sometimes.


merkal2005: When did you start blogging? When did you launch your blog?

eristoddle: I started my blog back in February of 2005, but didn't do much with it until the Fall of 2007. Up to then it had mainly been a way to keep track of my activities for a potential employer, a resume of some sort. I don't have a degree and I hoped experience would count. It was my way of hedging my bets while I explored affiliate marketing. I am not hedging any longer with a "job". So now it is more like the blog I would write for myself and I have started getting the word out.


merkal2005: How do you make money online via your blog?

eristoddle: I make a little via advertising and a little via affiliate sales from my namesake blog. The money from that will come in the future. I am still ripping Wordpress, blogging, and social networks apart to see what they can do for now. And when my name is attached to something, I want to be sure about what I promote. That takes time.

But I do make money from other niche affiliate sites that I am slowly converting to niche affiliate blogs.


merkal2005: What are your 2008 goals? Do you have any new projects?

eristoddle: I have big plans. For one, I plan on shortening my day job hours down even more or quitting once a for all.

Blogging is the direction I want to go. I can write a lot very fast now and enjoy it. I don't see it as work. Other things I do for money only have an end that is worthwhile. Blogging is the whole package for me.

So I am building a monetization, Wordpress structure and promotion strategy that is scalable to any type blog, so that at the end I can just write and answers comments and not worry about the inner workings of the machine. A intermediate stopping point on this long circuit I have taken.


merkal2005: What are your suggestions to new bloggers? Which areas should they focus?

eristoddle: There are so many areas and I am not one to really ask about focus, but I will try my best. I believe that quality in the end wins out. Do at least weekly research on how you can get more traffic to the quality that you are consistently trying to improve on. Write about everything loosely related to what you are doing because you will reach a wider audience. Learn to be productive. Learn to spend less so that earned money can be reinvested. Write so that you can understand why you do things and forget there is an audience. That is a hard one.

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