Interview with Jonathan C. Phillips from Smart Wealthy Rich
Recently I had an interview with Jon over at Smart Wealthy Rich. I saw that in one of his blog posts he said that he enjoyed doing interviews, so I decided to give it a try.
Web Goodness: Ok, so first question is, what tool do you use to post your articles?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: To post my articles, I use wordpress, I usually write my posts in Text Edit (notepad for Mac) and then copy it in Wordpress.
Web Goodness: Is there a method to how often you post an article?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I usually write articles "on the spot" but I do have about 30-40 posts that are unpublished, in case I run out of ideas or something. I usually post 1 per day, sometimes 2. I don't really have a method as far as posting frequency goes, I just go with the flow and dedicate time everyday to write at least 1 post.
Web Goodness: 30-40 posts, woah, that is a lot of backup posts. How long did it take to accumulate that many "emergency" posts?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well I started writing on my blog in February, and right from the start I started writing those posts, but I didn't publish them mostly because a lot of them are not finished and incomplete 3-4 paragraphs and in need of serious editing, but I often use those posts as starters for new ones.
Web Goodness: So you basically have a topic and then try to build on that. I guess you could call it a "stub" (little wikipedia plugage ;)
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Exactly! :)
Web Goodness: When did you actually start posting?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: The end of February / beginning of March of this year
Web Goodness: So, you spent about a month writing articles before you posted your first one?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well, I started posting right away in February, but at the same time was writing other articles that I didn't publish, either cause I got a better idea and posted that instead, or simply cause some posts were incomplete. At first I wanted to write 2-4 posts a day, but realized 1 was already nice, and all the other unfinished posts still serve as starting points :)
Web Goodness: Is smartwealthyrich your first blog?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I also have jonathan-phillips.com, which is more like an experimental thing. It was a static website before, and after I decided to start blogging on smartwealthyrich, I decided to turn jonathan-phillips.com into a blog also, but it's not updated often (4-5 times a month) althought it will be updated more often eventually, but you could say smartwealthyrich is my first and main blog :)
Web Goodness: How large would you estimate your audience to be?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Humm, good question, well I have arouund 290 RSS Subscribers, but judging from all the comments and traffic this blog receives I'm thinking it's more than that, say maybe around 1200-1600 "casual" visitors (swr gets between 800 and 3000 visitors per day)
Web Goodness: Wow, congratulations!
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Thanx! :) :)
Web Goodness: How well do you know other popular blog authors?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I do know Liz Strauss from successful-blog.com pretty well, she helped me a lot when I started out. also Wendy Piersall from emomsathome.com, Phil from makeitgreat.typepad.com and many others, I met many when I attended the sobevent.com conference in May in Chicago :)
Web Goodness: I'll have to check out one of those conferences one of these days.
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I love those conferences! ;) It's really a great occasion to meet fellow bloggers. The sobevent one was really "taking the conversations out of the comment boxes" which is awesome
Web Goodness: What feed reader do you use and why?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I use Netvibes, mostly cause the interface is really user friendly, and you can add myspace profiles, weather, news and other stuff on top of rss feeds.
Web Goodness: Ok. I was wondering about your take on AdSense. Do you click on other people's adsense ads. Also, what percentage of people to your site would you say click on your ad links?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well, I don't click on other people's adsense ads, cause I wouldn't wannna see my adsense account cancelled for click fraud cause adsense verifies that. I'd say about 2% of the visitors on my blog click on those ads.
Web Goodness: I'm not sure i understand the fraud issue fully. What would you being doing that would be considered fraud?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well, since I use adsense, clicking on other people's adsense ads is considered click fraud. When you're in the program you cannot click on your own ads, or other people's ads
Web Goodness: Oh, I didn't know that. That's very strange. I've clicked on an ad before. It was actually something i was considering purchasing.
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I did that a couple of time, cause I was i nfact interested in purchasing something and clicked on the ad, but a couple months ago I got an e-mail from adsense to remind me their terms of service, so I just never clicked again hehe.
Web Goodness: What are some of your favorite social media sites?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: stumbleupon and reddit :)
Web Goodness: what percentage of viewers read your XML feed compared to actual site visits?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: I have around 300 feed subscribers, but get an average of 2000 visits per day, so about 15%
Web Goodness: Where does most of your traffic come from? (e.g. search engine, etc.)
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Most comes from social networking sites, especially stumbleupon, I get stumbled so often I don'T know what my "real" traffic numbers are hehe.
Web Goodness: Is this common for most sites that have been stumbled or have you optimized your site to receive stumble visits?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Well i really believe a blogger shouldn't focus on write "for" social networking sites, but for the readers and visitors, there are a couple of my readers who are really active on stumbleupon that stumble almost every single post I write, and I'm also realy active on SU and stumbe other sites a lot.
Web Goodness: What do some of your routine activities on stumbleupon include?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Hehe, well, I just use the stumbleupon toolbar quite a lot, I just stumbel sites and thumbs up or down. And write reviews and tag them when I like them. And I also check often for stumbles from my stumble friends, so I stumble those too.
Web Goodness: I read on one of your comments that you're in a rock band. Any information on that?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Yes, I'm a guitar player, been playing for about 13 years, and well, we're in the recording studio, recording an album, which should be out in October. And we plan on touring most of Canada, then the US, and then see where we can take the band :)
Web Goodness: How long has the band been around. Name of band/ website?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: it's been around for about a year, it's sorta like a rock/metal/alternative band, there are some samples you can listen to on myspace.com/thegodsofnow
Web Goodness: Awesome! I'll have to check it out!
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Cool :)
Web Goodness: I noticed that all the money donated goes to Kiva, how did you hear about them?
Jonathan-C. Phillips: Dave Olson (http://www.daveolson.ca/) told me about Kiva, and he held some sort of contest a while back and donated some money to Kiva, and I decided it would be a good idea to do the same, so I put up that paypal thing, and all the money I get on donations I send to Kiva (not a lot, but so far it helped 3 entrepreneurs, 3 X $25 each)
Web Goodness: Well, thank you for your time! I think that is all i'm going to ask for now unless there is something you would like to add?
Jonathan-C. Phillips says: Thanx a lot Tyler :)
I really like those interviews, if you have any questions feel free to ask :)
