Daniel Scocco has lived and studied in several places around the world, including Italy, Chile and Brazil. After receiving a degree in International Economics and working for a year within a multinational company, he decided to quit and pursue entrepreneurial projects on the Internet.
His experience completely changed the way he interacted with the Internet. Through out these years he launched several successful blogs, and Daily Blog Tips is the place where he shares what he learned along the way. The blog was nominated under the “Best Web Development Blog” category on the 2007 Weblog Awards, and currently it is ranked number 29 among the most popular blogs in the world (according to Technorati).
Daniel Scocco is an inspiration to start this blog and his blogs have helped us a lot in learning about blogging. I highly recommend every blogger to subscribe to DailyBlogTips. And I take this privilege to thank Daniel for giving this interview.
1. How long have you been blogging?
I started late in 2005.
2. Where did you first hear about blogging and making money through internet?
On StevePavlina.com
3. Are you a full time blogger?
Full time web publisher.
4. When did you quite your day job — Was it before/after you started getting more money from your blogs than your regular salary?
I quit before I was making any money online. But I was sure in 6 months to 1 year I would already be earning enough to live. That was the case.
5. Did you start with the purpose of making money?
No, I started because the lifestyle was what I wanted (i.e. the possibility to work from home and have plenty of free time).
6. How many blogs do you have or write for currently(otherthan Daily Blog Tips, Daily Bits, Daily Writing Tips…and hope you don’t write in Techcult.com ).
Those are the main ones. I have some smaller websites, but they are all static.
7. How many hours do you dedicate to them every day? How much time do you spend for each of your blogs? Do you sleep at night
🙂 ? (kidding!)
I work around 8 hours every day. The time is spent reading new stuff, writing posts for Daily Blog Tips, managing the other 3 blogs, and on some consulting projects.
8. Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz! — Order them with your priority ?
StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Buzz.
9. How much do you make from your blogs, monthly?
Around $3000.
10. What is your main income source?
Direct ads and consulting projects.
11. Do you think Adsense makes a blog look unprofessional?
Depends how you integrate it. AdSense on the sidebar or below the posts are fine. Blended with the content they look spammy.
12. What were the 3 major mistakes you did on your blog?
On Daily Blog Tips I already had a good experience. On previous blogs I messed up pretty bad though.
My first web hosting was a Windows plan on GoDaddy…
My first blog was a hand coded HTML page.
My first WordPress install was not done on the root folder.
13. What would you suggest for a blogger, who have just started his blog.
i. Wait till they get direct advertisers or use ad networks?
Wait until you have 1000 uniques a day, then put ads. Direct or ad networks will depend on the niche.
ii. AdSense or anyother ad networks
Depends on the niche.
14. If you could give an advice for a novice blogger, what would it be?
Focus on the content.
15. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick?
TechCrunch
16. If you could read only one blog(related to blogging), which one would you pick?
Problogger
17. How many RSS feeds do you track daily?
Some 200
18. Have you ever invested money in promotion of your blogs?
Yes
19. What are your 3 main strategies for blog promotion- In a line each?
1.valuable content
2. contact with other bloggers
3. social media
20. What are your other revenue source, other than blogging?
Consulting projects and niche websites.
21. What was the most difficult situation faced by you in all these years, regarding blogging(except Spam 🙂 )?
Content theft.
22. Which are the 3 major traffic sources for your DailyBlogTips?
1. repeat traffic
2. search engines
3. social media
23. What is the secret of your success?
Consistency
24. How important is the design aspect? (0 to 10)
7
Some questions to which we expect some detailed answers.
1. How you spend your day?
Wake up at 6am more or less. Check email. Eat breakfast. work until 10:30. Hit the gym. Lunch. Work till 5pm. Train Jiu-Jitsu or Kick-boxing (depending on the day). Dinner. Go to sleep at 10pm or so.
2. Personal hobbies and interests?
Martial arts, swimming, weight lifting, saxophone, chess.
3. Life before blogging, blogging life, where you want to see your blog in next 5 or 10 years time?
Before working on the web I used to work for a multinational company. Boring.
Right now I love my life style.
Hopefully my blogs will still be going strong.
4. Some of your life’s ambitions?
I want to start my own Internet company some day.
5. What projects do you have in your to-do list for coming days(2008-2009 and even 2010, if any).
Buy a house, preferable at some nice beach location.
6. We see all over the internet that, people earning lot from Internet usually have cool life style, they will be going to holiday trips to their favorite places frequently etc etc….Do you think its true and do you also have such life style.
This is true for people earning bit time. I am not there yet.
7. Do you also complain of not having time?
No. I love the flexibility I have working from home.
8. 3 things you do, which you consider waste of time….
I don’t waste that much time actually. Don’t watch TV, don’t play games, don’t have gadgets or anything.
Only thing I could say is watching DVD movies.
9. How about your contacts with the outside real world(other than blogging life)? Do you meet and talk to people often or will you be busy almost all the time infront of your computer?
I think I keep a good balance. I workout or train martial arts almost every day, so I meet people there. On weekends I always meet up with friends and with my girlfriend, so it’s good.
I wish I would have more time for that though, but one got work hard.
We feel that everybody had great time reading this interview article. Daniel is one of our blogging idol and we are very happy as we started this “Interview” section with Daniel. If you have some interesting questions to ask your blogging idol or your blogging inspiration, then Ask questions here and Celebrity Bloggers will answer it(an Interview).
Orkut is a very famous Social networking site in Brazil and India. I have heard that, in Brazil, if 20 are in a cyber, 18 of them will be accessing Orkut. Hope this is not the case in India, but still Orkut is a popular site to get in touch with friends and family.