Q. Tell the World Something About Yourself and What You Do in Life

Mars: I am a Digital Crusader who is going to change the online world through personal branding and creative marketing. lol, I luv this line, and that’s why
I use it everywhere I can – it’s my very personal mission statement.

You can find me on Twitter and Facebook, my second home.

My passion lies in creativity – be it drawing, writing or video-making. I’m a huge fan of Japanese culture, and I try to show that in my work. Everyday, I have tons of ideas, but I need to contain myself and focus on the few, feasible ones. Right now, I’m doing freelance design in the real world, but I’m going to concentrate my main power on my blog to build a killer-sustainable business from it. I believe this is my destiny.

Q. What Is The Story Behind Your Blog?

Mars: I started blogging about 5 months ago. It started as a personal blog where I just wanted to share my views on the digital world, but the ambition bug bit me, and now I’m in the process of creating a remarkable business around it. I chose my own name Mars Dorian because I believe this the best way to spread your brand online. I want this name to spread like a wild fire, and burn into global consciousness. This blog is the core of my digital crusade, and from there I am going to take over the world. Sounds delusional, but life’s too short to play it small

Q. Have You Earned Any Money Through Blogging?

Mars: I’m in the process of earning money right now. I’m offering personal branding coaching, and I will expand: digital goods and another, multi-authored blog are in the making. My overall goal is to build an inspiring little digital empire, which I am going to merchandise as well. In the near future, I will have branded T-shirts, badges etc.

Big plans ! But that’s the way you have to go. The online world doesn’t need another cookie-cutter blogger, the world needs an inspirational hero.

Q. Would You Tell Us About One of Your Famous Posts?

Mars: My most popular post is How to Massively Spread Your Online Influence – The Superfast Way. It attracted over 700 views, 42 retweets and over 60 comments so far. It’s still burning like a wild fire. Why ? Mmm, because everyone who’s establishing an online presence wants to spread their influence. And the faster, the better. In that post I tell people how I increased my influence in a matter of a few weeks, and how everyone can apply it. Obviously I want you to read this post, but I give you a hint: it’s about a special form of networking. Shooosh. That’s enough info

Q. If I asked You to Suggest One Blogger Friend to Send Him/Her a Famous Blogger Club Invitation, Who Will You Suggest?

Mars: I would suggest Cori from Biggirlbranding.com. She’s a grrreat blogger, with lots of knowledge about copywriting and personal branding. Her style is very girly-ish, but in a good way. Her positive energy is infectious, and she brings a lot of much needed girl power in the blogosphere. She’s one of the few female ass-kicking bloggers out there, and that’s why we need her.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Andrew: I always enjoyed hard work – when I was 16, I had four part-time jobs!

And for the first 30 years of my career I worked for large corporate companies. The corporate world allowed you to work hard and get well rewarded – which I was. I ended up managing large IT departments.

But I’ve always thought about making it on my own. Over the years I was always looking for something that would make me more money!

I thought that if I worked as hard on my own business as I did in the corporate world – I could make it work.

Then, ‘out of the blue’, someone said to me, why don’t you write a book on Management and sell it on-line?

I started to investigate and quickly got excited. I knew I could write the book due to my experience and I naively believed the hype and thought I’ll make millions on-line by selling the book and retire!

This was 3 years ago.

I found a mentor, online, (I knew nothing about being on-line), and he helped me. He told me exactly what to do, and I invested my earnings from the corporate world into it.

I created a website and a free management guide to start building my own customer list, and then my management book. I did all this in the evenings while staying away from home in the hotels and while traveling in the corporate role.

I finished the sales page and launched, expecting hundreds to sell. I sold about five in the first week, but I was expecting 5,000!

I quickly sucked the mentor dry – he couldn’t help me anymore – I had all his knowledge now, so I found a more experienced mentor, and he helped me in the marketing and we created two more products to sell.

Then I got into blogging and created several blogs and more products.

So now I had a variety of products to sell and my knowledge of making money on-line was growing. I invested thousands of dollars in my education, and it was taking over – I really enjoyed the excitement.

Eighteen months ago, I decided to leave the corporate world and decided to take the plunge and work for myself, full-time. Since then I have created my own course helping others to build their on-line business.

Outside of work, I enjoy cooking and my wife and I are learning to ballroom and latin dance.

For more info you can check out my profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and my blog We Build Your Blog

Q. What Was the Story Behind Your Blog?

Andrew: Some of this I mentioned in the above question – sorry!
For me, there are two major concepts you must either learn yourself or have enough money to employ others to do for you:

1. Writing (and copywriting) skills
2. Getting traffic to your site

Have you heard of John Carlton, the Internet and copywriting supremo?

I expect you have, as John is the one many of the big Internet Guru’s like Frank Kern, John Reese, Jeff Johnson… turn to for copywriting advice.
Well, a little while ago I decided to splash out and join John’s Simple Writing System course. It cost me $2000 and it was the best money I have ever spent on an Internet Marketing type course.

It was perfect for me – a modular approach. Do A, get some feedback from John (and other experts), then do B (get more feedback), then do C…then pull it altogether.
The advice and feedback was priceless.

One thing I noticed about the course…a number of the ‘students’ on the course used WordPress for their blogs / websites.
So, that shaped up my writing / copywriting skills.

One concept covered, now…what about getting bundles and bundles of traffic to my sites.

What would be perfect for me would be another modular approach course…I asked John C for some advice/recommendation. He said Jeff Johnson would be perfect for me.
So, I go over to Jeff Johnson’s site and see he is giving away some free SEO software to increase the traffic to your site (if it’s based on WordPress).

WordPress again!

There must be something to this WordPress lark, I thought! I did some research and see that WordPress is firstly free and secondly easy to install. I registered and hosted a ‘throwaway’ domain. Installed WordPress. Played with WordPress. This is easy. This is simple. This is efficient. WordPress has an amazing list of features. I decided to join Jeff Johnson’s Underground Training Lab.

Again…it’s a module approach.

So I got hooked on WordPress…it’s easy, it’s simple, it’s free and it has an amazing list of built-in features.I learned so much and I thought I could offer my knowledge and experience as a service and hence the name www.webuildyourblog.com.

Have You Earned Any Money through Blogging?

Andrew: I now make my living via blogging. Well, when I say blogging – I mean I have my own on-line business and blogging is one of the main parts to attract traffic, visitors and customers.

Only the other day, I had a client who asked me, “Can I make money just by blogging?”

And the answer really depends on how you define blogging. If you define it as simply writing and sharing your opinions online, then it is difficult to make money.

But if you supplement your blog with selling services, products, perhaps, affiliate products…you then start to have an on-line business and not just a blog.

So my own blog is a catalyst to ‘sell’ my blogging set-up, maintenance and writing services. Plus I have numerous products I have created and sell on-line.

Q. Would You Tell Us About ONE of Your Famous Posts?

Andrew: Well, I’m going to pick one right from this site, 43 Blogger Tips – What you should do after installing WordPress.

As I write it has 157 comments and 126 Tweets.

Why?

I think because the post shares a lot of information on how to set-up your blog – all in one blog post.

It took me a long time to write the post but when I then did was go into a little more detail on some of the points and make videos. So from this one blog post I think I created 10 more video blog posts.

Q. If I asked you to suggest *ONE* Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Andrew: A lot of my friends are already members but I would have to mention one of my business partners, Joel Williams.

Joel is my business partner and we created the Income Blogging Guide course, together. It’s a great partnership. You see, I’m more of the marketing, getting traffic, promoting your blog type person and Joel is the technical one. Joel technically mentors some of the World’s biggest bloggers.

So when we perform our live weekly teleconference for our course members, we can cover the questions. Joel, the technical ones, me the marketing and promotion type ones.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Holly: My name is Holly Mann and I am 27-year-old single mom and entrepreneur. I started working online 5 years ago when I was pregnant with my son and financially in a very bad place. Prior to that I was in the Army and also worked as a civilian in Iraq, six months after the war started. When my son was 4 1/2 months old, I made a choice to sell all of our meager belongings and move to Thailand, where I figured I could live affordably while starting my online business, and providing for my son. I didn’t want to put him in a daycare facility in the states and work a normal job. To everyone’s surprise, I bought two one-way tickets to Thailand and we moved there and started a new life. I began to dive into working online so excessively that I hardly slept, while caring for my colicky baby and copying the techniques that I saw working for the wealthy marketing gurus. It paid off! By the fourth month of my relentless learning and applying -I made my first big check – which was more than I had saved the entire time I worked in Iraq the year before. Since that time, I have never looked back! After attaining that life change, I wrote a guide named Honest Riches. It is a comprehensive step-by-step guide to making money online, and I share all the methods I use to do so. The guide has sold more than 35,000+ copies and all updates are free to buyers.

For more info you can check out my profiles on Facebook or Twitter.

Q. What was the story behind your Blog?

Holly: I was never really into blogging until sometime in 2007, I decided to create Honest Holly. I wanted a way to connect with others online and share methods to making money online, so I knew I needed a blog. Initially, I wanted to purchase HollyMann.com, since it is my name – but someone I know bought it already. I was frustrated by that slightly, and decided to buy HonestHolly.com because I noticed people online started to refer to me as “honest holly.” They found my marketing methods to be really transparent and honest, compared to many of the other styles of marketing out there. I thought that was a good brandable or memorable name – and I took it and went with it. Later on, the person who bought my HollyMann.com domain, ended up handing it over to me. So I do occasionally post personal updates on there.

Q. Have you earned any money from been a Blogger?

I have earned some income from my blog – mostly from affiliate commissions and sales. I will at times write posts on a certain topic, like WordPress, for example. Then after writing a very informative and useful article on that topic, I will offer additional resources related to WordPress. The additional resource that I recommend will be an affiliate product. So if the reader buys it, I receive a commission. I haven’t created a real stable and solid sales funnel from my blog yet, as I still have my son home with me full time and I am lacking in the area of free time to do so. In the near future I will offer some type of free report and create a more profitable funnel for the blog.

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts?

Holly: One of my most popular posts is here: “How Working Online Has Drastically Transformed Me.” It was a reflective post with photos of my life 5 years prior to working online – when I lived in the hills and mountains of northern Thailand. It was personal and I shared about my time living there, my lack of money and how I paid $50 a month to rent out a little shack-type home. I think the post may have inspired others to gain hope in the possibilities that can come with working online.

Q. .If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Bloggers Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Holly: JK Swopes of ImwithJoe.com

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life? (add Twitter and Facebook profile link if available)

BenSpark: BenSpark: I’m a loving husband and attentive father. I spend much of my time taking photos and also blogging. I love technology and so I paired that with my love of kayaking to create an on the water video series that I called the Wired Kayaker Podcast. I get so many ideas every day that it is hard to remember or hold on to them all. The one constant besides my family is my Photo-A-Day project. I carry a backpack with at least 4 cameras in it all the time along with gadgets, whats-its and shiny things. I’m the guy that the family calls to take care of anything technical form programming the VCR to setting up internet accounts. I’m also a huge Transformers fan and have been collecting them since 1984. I’ve amassed a collection of over 400 Transformer toys.

You can find me on facebook at , Twitter at @BenSpark and one of my favorite sites because it is photo-a-day oriented Shuttercal.

Q. What was the story behind your Blog?

BenSpark: In 1995 I taught myself HTML and created a website on my college’s network. I quickly ran out of space and made the IT department very upset with me. From there I worked as the college webmaster and then with an independent web design company. I didn’t actually start blogging until 2003 with my girlfriend (now wife) Allison. We named the blog BenSpark because my last name is Bennett and hers was Sparks. I think Allison posted about 10 times and I posted much more. 2003 and 2004 were spotty at best but I tried to post regularly. I really hit my stride in 2005 when I decided to take and post a Photo-A-Day and my purpose for blogging was solidified. Each and every day I took a photo and posted it. Sometimes with commentary and sometimes without.

This format expanded more into a way in which I could chronicle our life together. Through it and through the photos I gained an audience. By replying to every comment I built a community. Staying active and engaged has really been an amazing experience.

Q. Have you earned any money from been a Blogger? (How you did it – add links to useful websites for making money online – If NOT then tell us why you blog)

BenSpark: In 2006 Allison saw Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA) on one of those morning TV shows and told me that I could make money from my blog. I joined PayPerPost in the early days and through that I was hooked. I started making some extra income which I funnel back into my blog to upgrade hosting and buying my own domain name benspark.com. I also bought cameras and equipment to enhance my ability to take more photos. In 2007 I attended the first blog world Expo as well as Postiecon and I got a chance to talk to a large group of bloggers. There I became much more involved in the blogging community. I am currently an IZEA Insider and as such I am an ambassador to the members of SocialSpark on behalf of IZEA. I created a crew called the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew and through that I educate other bloggers how to use SocialSpark and how to make money from it. I also do a little bit of affiliate stuff with Amazon Associates and a few Affiliate networks like Market Leverage and Share-A-Sale. Much of the money I have earned goes to improving the blog but also to attending conferences all over the country. I’ve spoken at PostieCon, IZEAFest and will be speaking at Affiliate Summit West 2010.

• socialspark.com
• izea.com
• sponsoredtweets.com
• payperpost.com
• marketleverage.com
• shareasale.com

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts?

BenSpark: My most famous post was one that I did as a review for the GiSTEQ Phototrackr. The reason it is famous to me is that it is my most visited post. I love taking photos and was looking for a quick and easy way to geotag my photos. I found the GiSTEQ company and pitched them the idea to send me a unit to review and keep. Then we turned that into a contest and gave one away. I set up a flickr group, a facebook group and many other groups to promote the product. It ranks pretty high and it gets tons of traffic, I added some amazon links and I sell about 1 a month. GiSTEQ just came out with the minitrackr and I asked for some to review and to give away as prizes. In the new year I will be setting up another contest and crafting a brand new review for this fun product.

Q. If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

BenSpark: I would suggest The Real Tim Jones – I met Tim at a conference and he is one of the fastest bloggers I know. By the time a session is over he’s already got a complete post up. His speed makes him a blogger to follow because he’s almost always got the scoop at conferences.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Kyle: My name is Kyle Judkins, and I am the owner of LostInTechnology.  During the day, I work as a market researcher, but my nights and weekends are filled with blogging.

The easiest place to find me besides my blog is on Twitter @kylejudkins.

Q. What was the story behind your Blog?

Kyle: A couple years ago, I become very interested in getting the most out of my computer. This interest led me to many great blogs, which led me to start my own blog. LostInTechnology is now about 2 years old and has expanded to include many authors in addition to myself.

Q .Have you earned any money from been a Blogger?

Kyle: It took me 6 months to earn my first $100, but my income has gone up fairly steadily since then. My main source of revenue is Google AdSense, Adphilia and private ad sales. It’s important to make sure you diversify your income streams and try out new ones. Google AdSense works the best for me, but I am constantly looking at other ways to make revenue.

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts?

Kyle: My most famous post would be, Top 10 Ways to Discover New Music. This post went viral on StumbleUpon and has seen over 500,000 page views in the time it’s been up. I believe it went viral, because it is something many of us search for all the time. Anyone that is into music is going to seek out ways to find new and interesting music.

Q. If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Kyle: It’s really hard to pick one!

But I would have to recommend David Pierce from The 2.0 Life. His posts are always very thought out and in depth. I always know that his new articles and going to be packed with valuable information.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Murray: I have been working in online marketing for over 10 years much of that in affiliate marketing. I started out as a lawyer and hated it, but I love online marketing. I started my first blog in spring 2009, couple of posts went nowhere. I then started my blog MurrayNewlands.com late spring 2009 and it has really taken off beyond my expectations. I still have what I think of as a day job running my own affiliate network but blogging is catching up. I have just been short listed to the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards for blogger of the year, not bad for my first year as a blogger. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward are wonderful people. I am up against two very well known blogger who have been blogging for years Geno Prussakov and Shoemoney.com, I am honored to be listed beside them.

I love connecting with people, please do connect with me @murraynewlands or at my Facebook fan page.

Q. What was the story behind your Blog?

Murray: I only found out what a blog was in 2009! I was asked to do some social media outreach for an affiliate marketing client. I asked a friend of mine at Affiliate Summit about blogging, Steve Hall, he runs Adrants.com . When he told me he gets 15,000 people a day and makes a living out of it I was shocked. I also meet Heather Smith, she is a review blogger, Izea insider and blog mistress at Affiliate Summit, Heather has been a inspiration (and co conspirator) ever since. Late October 2009 Eric Schechter from blog.clickbooth.com noticed my blog, Clickbooth coming on as an advertiser and the interaction we have had have been great. I have learned a lot from him and that relationship. Recently I took on Connie Roberts from BrainFoggles as a writer on my blog, she has been wonderful.

Q. Have you earned any money from been a Blogger?

Murray: Firstly I started blogging as a means of communications, not for the money but. I love blogging. The possibility of making money from my blog only came latter. I am grateful to those who have supported my blog taking banner space and more recently get consulting from my blog. What I have learned if that you need to alight your audience and conversation with that of potential advertisers. Simultaneously you want to engage your potential advertisers and their competitors. Advertisers are attracted to join conversations with their audiences. It is all about the conversation.

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts?

Murray: I rank well for both famous blogger and celebrity blogger LOL. I also have a Blog Fan Club, I think it is important to enable fans to express themselves, I wrote a post about it here Blog Fan Club. One of my highest traffic posts is Top 10 Social Media Monitoring Tools it is a buzz topic and a very interactive crowed.

Q. If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Murray: Only one, just one does not seem fair, I know so many great bloggers, many of who are famous in their own niche. Anyone of the bloggers I have mentioned above would easily fit. One of the bloggers who inspired me early on was Arial Adams of  ABlogToRead, he also writes for several other blogs. He is the Gary Vaynerchuk of the watch world. This spring he became a full time blogger. People send him watches worth $$$$$$$$ for free, to review. He is a geek and collects them I was saying ebay ebay ebay. He told me that this year things have taken off for him. Seiko flew him from San Fransisco to Japan to see them! He has started a podcast HourTimeShow with John Biggs of CrunchGear fame.

]]> http://blog.newmediabloggers.com/celebrity-blogger-murray-newlands/feed/ 17 http://blog.newmediabloggers.com/karl-foxley/ http://blog.newmediabloggers.com/karl-foxley/#comments Fri, 01 Jan 2010 05:28:27 +0000 http://blog.newmediabloggers.com/?p=631 Finally I had a chance to publish a new interview with our Famous Bloggers Club latest member Karl Foxley the co-founder of FMS SEO, Karl seem be a hard worker, great bloggers and a very helpful guy, I meet Karl through our blogs and some social networking websites, and I must say that I enjoyed this interview so much, and I am sure you will also do, so let’s see what Karl have told us about his life and blog story.

Q . Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Karl: My name is Karl Foxley and I am an SEO Consultant, Business Coach and Internet Marketer. I am the co-founder of FMS SEO along with my good friend and Wife, Kelly-Anne. We both blog as often as we can and we cover everything to do with SEO and Internet Marketing. My background has been working in education with 5-18 year old and this has inspired a life-long desire to simplify education so that it becomes easily digestible. My aim is to share my  knowledge as snippets that the reader can act upon without having to go off and seek further clarification.

I started out online about 5 years ago making money on eBay and quickly moved on to affiliate marketing. A few years ago I left education to work as a partner with a web design company. The partnership involved building their web presence and marketing to their existing clients for upsells (SEO) and promotional packages. I still work with this company and have now added a few more partners under my belt.

I can be found on twitter at @karlfoxley and Kelly can be found at @kellyfoxley. I prefer Facebook for talking to people and generally add people I meet blogging.

Q.  What was the story behind your blog?

Karl: I’ve been blogging for the businesses we work with for a few years now, this is through white-labelled articles that we do in our clients’ name. I decided to start blogging for myself to raise our company profile and www.foxleymarketingsoltions.com was born (about 9 months ago). We recently moved domain to www.fmsseo.com. Like I mentioned, the majority of our business is through the whitelabelling of our SEO service. The site’s name is a play on my surname and the services we offer. Foxley Marketing Solutions (FMS) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). All of our work previously came through the web design companies that we had partnered with and our site now gives our clients a direct port of call to our services.

Q. Have you earned money from being a Blogger.

Karl: Yes, I do earn directly from the blog by sharing valuable resources that our readers would benefit from using. This can be anything from an email service provider, hosting, WordPress themes, to coaching programs. I only promote things that I use, would use, have used or would recommend to my closest friends.The money I earn from my blog would not become a replacement for the income I earn from our SEO service and is not our main focus.

Q. Would you tell us about one of your famous posts.

If I had to say I had a famous post I would say it was when I wrote 30 plus ways to generate traffic. It got a lot of feedback and raised awareness of the traffic generation streams that are available on the web.

Q. If you had to suggest one friend for our coming interview, who would you suggest?

This is easy because I would have to recommend Kelly. Kelly adds a real unique and colorful flair to our marketing strategy and I love bouncing ideas backwards and forwards with her.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Jenny: My name is Jenny Rhodes and I am a hypnotist and online entrepreneur.  I used to work in the mental health field and currently work a few hours a week as a preschool teacher and selling Gold Canyon Candles .

I can be found on twitter at @jennyr777 and on Facebook.

Q. What was the story behind your Blog?

Jenny: After 12 years of on and off internet marketing and full time MLM, I decided there had to be a better way to help people, still make money, as well as leveraging my time.  Therefore I got into niche blogging.  I found a niche I was passionate about and began writing daily.  I learned a lot along the way with my first niche blog and continue to learn and develop new skills.  With this knowledge I created my current blog NEWRU which means “If you are a newbie and not a guru then you must be a NEWRU.”  Basically meaning that an individuals has skills with blogging or internet marketing but still has much to learn and share.

Q. Have you earned any money from been a Blogger?

Jenny: I do make money with some of my blogs, and I do this by using inline text ads (Infolinks), Google AdSense, and affiliate programs (Amazon, Commission Junction, Clickbank, etc.  I learned much of what I needed to know from a book called Honest Riches.

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts?

Jenny: I have two famous posts that I can think have that had the most comments, and emails from readers thanking me for the info.  One is how to create free traffic using Blog Carnivals.  The other is about Tips to lower your Google Analytics Bounce rate.

Q. If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Jenny: If asked for one blogger to send an invitation to it would be Lawmacs of Blogging the Future.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Marko: My name is Marko Saric, I am a blogger and I live in London, England. I write about blogging, helping out bloggers create their blogs, optimize them and make them successful.

I blog at How to Make My Blog and you can get in touch with me at Twitter @HowToMakeMyBlog and Facebook.

Q. What was the story behind your Blog? (how you start Blogging – since when – how did you named your Blog).

Marko: I have been creating and marketing websites since 1998. At university I specialized in interactive and e-marketing, which turned me onto blogs and social media. Then I transferred my old HTML sites into WordPress blogs in 2006 and that gave me insight into how blogs are run. That is how I got the passion to start HowToMakeMyBlog in late 2008.

When naming the blog I was thinking about keywords that people put when searching for topic like this and how to make a blog, make a blog, how to blog where some of the important keyword phrases.

Q. Have you earned any money from been a Blogger? (How you did it – add links to useful websites for making money online – If NOT then tell us why you blog)

Marko: Yes, I try to monetize my blog with affiliate links mostly. I use Godaddy as a host so I recommend them, same with Thesis theme. These 2 affiliate programs are where majority of my revenue comes from. I try to write valuable articles and in that way promote affiliates. For example in the how to install WordPress post I have links to Godaddy and in several of how to customize WordPress design posts I have links to Thesis.

I have an article about How I earned $1000+ in blog revenue last month.

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts? (Why you think it’s famous.. it could be because of “content – traffic – comments – search engines”)

Marko: My most popular post in terms of page views and buzz is “Top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever” . People love these kinds of posts. It is a top list post, easy to read, easy to scan, not much text, lots of bullet points, very useful, people love to share posts like these. And the best part of all, these posts are fairly easy to write compared to more detailed guides.

Q. If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Marko: Speaking of Famous Bloggers, there is a celebrity blogger called Murray Newlands, he actually ranks very close to top on Google for keyword phrases like famous blogger and celebrity blogger. He is perfect for the club invitation. Find him at Murray Newlands.

Q. Tell the world something about yourself and what you do in life?

Antti: My name is Antti Kokkonen. Online I’m also known as Zemalf, which is my gamertag, “callsign” and all that. I’m a IT Specialist by profession, with Master’s degree on Interactive Technology (Computer Science major and things like usability and psychology as minors). My life has been filled with technology since very young age as I’ve been around computers since age of 6 or so.

With all that, I’ve used Internet since the 1980′s, before we had World Wide Web, in the days of bulletin board systems, golden age of IRC (which was created in Finland) and MUDs (multi-user dungeons). All that had an effect on both my professional and personal life, so I’m working in the industry and still love all kinds of computers, gaming consoles and gadgets.

For some reason, even that I am the geek I am, I never got around building many websites until 2004 or so. I’ve been blogging since 2005, starting by blogging about online games I played, like World of Warcraft and EVE Online. Later, I’ve moved on to write about other things as well, like blogging, social media and Internet business. Blogging has been, and still is, a hobby for me, and I write about things I do on my “non-work” time. I like to share my experiences and expertise on things I do and know a lot about, you know, to help others.

If you’d like to connect with me, follow me on twitter: @Zemalf

Q. What was the story behind your Blog? (How you started Blogging – since when – how did you named your Blog).

Antti: My first blog was Zemalf’s Haven and I still write there every now and then. It’s a blog about gaming and games, mainly about the games I play, like I mentioned above. I’ve also published some World of Warcraft videos on YouTube (TheZemalf on YouTube), which have gathered well over 100k views over time. The blog’s name was given, as my “name” was Zemalf, but that name has been with me for quite some time as I made it up when playing computer roleplaying game called Naklakh. If you’re interested solving the mystery behind the name, the story is here: Where did the name Zemalf come from?.

On April 2009 I started looking for something more, so I got my own domain, zemalf.com, started a WordPress blog there and haven’t looked back since. The blog didn’t really have a name, it was just Zemalf.com, which evolved into “Trek in the Blogosphere”, as it’s been quite a journey during the first 6 months on the blog. I’ve learned a ton of things about social media and blogging over the years, a lot of things I wish I knew several years ago. That experience and information I’m now passing on and I’m learning more and more every day. In a way, I’m on a journey to build something great and want to make sure I can give back to the wonderful blogging community that has helped me a lot.

To summarize, it’s a personal blog of mine where I write about things I do to help others. The topics I cover varied at the beginning, but during the last six months, the blog has evolved into Social Media and Blogging Guide, but the name of the blog is still Zemalf’s Trek in the Blogosphere. Nothing too catchy, and definitely not “keyword smart”, but hey, it has worked very well for me.

Q. Have you earned any money from been a Blogger? (How you did it – add links to useful websites for making money online – If NOT then tell us why you blog)

Antti: I have some some money with my blogs, mostly from Google AdSense, and other advertising networks, and also some commissions from affiliate sales. In addition to this main blog (and that one older one), I have several “niche” blogs about various topics, which I have experimented different strategies on. Making money blogging is great, but it’s not the primary reason why I blog. I want to share what I know to help people, build relationships, have fun, and if at the end of the road I can earn little extra on the side, it’s all icing on the cake.

Q. Would you tell us about ONE of your famous posts? (Why you think it’s famous.. it could be because of “content – traffic – comments – search engines”)

Antti: I have several posts that get nice amount of traffic, some older and also some more recent ones, like How To Connect Your Social Media Profiles, which attracted nice amount of attention and has brought in quite a bit of traffic as well. It’s still too early to say how much traffic it will get from search engines, but the traffic from Twitter and other social networks has been great.

In the post I shared how I’ve connected all my social media profiles and tools together using FriendFeed and how to automate certain social media activities we all do, like tweeting your own blog posts and such. I think the post became popular, because it’s filled with information people have been looking for and even that the information has been out there, it hasn’t been put together into single post or article like I did.

I like to write in-depth guides and really long posts, so a post that goes well past 2000 words feels more valuable than a shorter one (I’ve never paid much attention to the 400-700 words “guideline”), so there the post had loads of bookmark and viral potential in it too.

Q .If I asked you to suggest ONE Blogger friend to send him/her a Famous Blogger Club invitation, who you will suggest?

Antti: I think you should talk to Mike Cliffe-Jones (@MikeCJ) from Mike’s Life. Mike is a professional blogger and published author, so you should definitely have him here.