Today we have an extremely impressive interview, so I shall not ramble on… everybody give a standing ovation to Mr Garry Conn!
Firstly, could you please tell us about yourself? (Who are you, where do you live, what do you do for a living?)
My name is Garry Conn. I am 32 years old, I live in Clarksville, Tennessee and I am a Internet and search engine marketer and full time online publisher.
How, and why, did you go about starting your first blog?
How I started my blog was just by going in there and launching something. I am very hands on, I learn from experience rather than from a book. Granted I make more mistakes that way, but I am one to believe that lessons are better learned from after making a mistake, rather than never making mistakes at all. I started my blog because I wanted to make money online. I didn’t want to work for my current employer any more. It was a very demanding job and I was never home to see my family. How I went about starting my first blog, as I already said, I just launched it and went from there. Still to this day I learn something new.
Who/what is your greatest inspiration for blogging and life in general?
Well… my inspiration for blogging clearly goes to Chris Pirillo and Joel Comm. These two individuals are very different, but if you combine the two into one, some really amazing things can happen. I like Chris simply because he is amazing with mass producing content on the Internet and monetizing it. He is an absolute genius. I like Joel because he has shown me that indeed, honest people can successfully sell products online and make a ton of money doing so. As far as who inspires me in general, my kids give me all my strength and desire to continue to be successful online.
You write on your blog at least once a day, how do you manage your time?
With a clock. {joking} I actually have more than one blog. I am reaching near 500 blogs. So how do I manage my time? First off, I have to say that I work very long hours and I work practically seven days a week. But, because I set my own times I am able to do just about anything I want when I want. Time really isn’t much of a factorisation to me simply because I deal with things immediately and as they come. I tend to delegate and assign tasks to other people. Which that in itself is a complete separate story, simply because I typically have the ability to assign tasks to people who do work for me at a very low cost. Make no mistake, I am a very busy person, but I never stress and I love the challenge of pushing volume.
What is the best way to make money online?
The best way to make money online is by creating your own products and selling them to a subscription only mailing list. However, that is not my main source of making money online. Formally in the past I have made my money by building micro niche blogs and web sites. However, that is slowly changing for me and I am getting more into creating my own products that teach people what I do to make money online.
How could a new blogger go about getting regular visitors?
Well, a new blogger needs to decide first where he wants the traffic to come from. There are many ways to get traffic to a blog. You can get free traffic from search engines and social networks. You can pay for traffic using PPC programs. You can start a mailing list and get tons of repeat/subscriber based traffic. The key to getting traffic is understanding what is needed in order to get traffic. Each source of traffic has their own elements. Search engine traffic is excellent for monetization simply for the fact that Google, Yahoo, Live, have weeded out the tire kickers and deliver you very excellent and solid leads. Social network traffic is different. With social network traffic you have to weed out the tire kickers yourself. Social network traffic works excellent towards getting people to subscribe to your mailing list, blog, or newsletter. While the same can be said for search traffic too… the difference between the two is that typically social network traffic is much harder to monetize. As far as paid traffic, I don’t know too much about that because I don’t need to pay for traffic in my business model.
Some people are using Twitter as an alternative to RSS or mailing lists, what do you think about this?
I think that Twitter is an excellent source for cherry picking who you want reading your blog. Many people don’t know this, but Twitter has a very powerful search engine (almost as powerful as Google) which allows you to follow, search, and track conversations based on topic. So with that said, if you have a blog about dog houses and you need to find people to subscribe to your dog house blog, then you can use Twitter search to find people who have been talking about dog houses and then jump into the conversation by introducing yourself and explaining to them that you have a dog house blog. While some people may think that this is too much manual work, you have to consider the individual value assigned to one subscriber in the course of a year. One subscriber is worth a lot! Twitter is an excellent source for finding new subscribers to your blog, mailing list, newsletter, etc… Simply because you can totally go in there and profile exactly who you want joining your blog, site, etc… Twitter however, does NOT replace RSS, mailing lists, etc… Your mailing list is your most valuable resource towards making money, your blog is your most valuable source for collecting email addresses and social networks, search engines are your most valuable source for pushing traffic to your blog or web site. Do you see the picture I am illustrating? It is like a triangle… the base is the source of traffic, the middle of the triangle is your blog and the apex of the triangle is your mailing list, rss feed, etc… (your pipeline of communicating with your customers / subscribers).
You have done some “Vlogging” in the past, what are you opinions on this?
Video blogging is awesome. It allows my readers to see who I am as a person. It allows my readers to look in my eyes and see that I am real and mean what I say. Additionally, it allows me to communicate much better with my readers. Some of the things that I talk about are really hard to put on paper, so by having the ability to create a video blog it really enhances the message I am communicating.
There are many people that are interested in Video Blogging but are too scared to get straight infront of the camera, do you have any tips?
I still have the same problem. It is something that you just have to get used to. I can’t offer much advice on this because that is a battle I deal with everyday. I am not a very outgoing individual and I keep quiet and to myself. So video bloggging for me is a huge challenge. But the reason why I do it is because it is very powerful and helps my business grow a lot. The advice I can offer you is to simply be yourself. Do not act, do not pretend to be someone you are not, and be real to yourself as well as the people who are watching. If you are silly in real life, then be silly in the videos.
What, in your opinion, is the best way to get into affiliate marketing?
The best way to get into affiliate marketing is to one, have a blog set up, two have a way to start a mailing list, and three find a product or service that you believe in totally and sell and support it as if it were your own.
What would you recommend for Search Engine Optimising a brand new blog?
I suggest to anyone to use a self-hosted WordPress blog and to use a very simple and well coded WordPress theme. From there the article content you write needs to be original, rich in words and of high quality. In addition to that, there are many tools available to help you with getting your content indexed in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Live. One tool I should mention is Google Webmaster Tools. This is a free program offered by Google that allows webmasters to see their overall search health in the Google Search Engine. In fact, most all the tools I use are free and provided to me by Google. I use Google Analytics, I use their free AdWords Keyword Tool, etc… Ultimately, my advice to anyone who wants to place focus on search engine marketing / ranking is to be natural, never game Google or other search engines by purchasing backlinks, and never try to tweak their ranking systems. Google is very smart and they catch on to more than most people realize.
What is the best way to obtain good backlinks?
The best way to get backlinks is to write amazing content on the Internet. It is human instinct to have the desire to share things that are cool with other people. So online, when people find something that is really cool, they share it with their friends online. An example would be Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Sphinn. Those places are all about submitting things into the network that users find to be really cool from there their friends vote on it. In many cases people will find things that are cool from social networks and turn around and write a post on their blog about the “something cool” they found somewhere else. Backlinks should come naturally. And that is one of the things that most all people fail to realize that Google is amazing about sniffing out. Google tracks more things than most people realize. They track surfing behaviours; they know if your favourite colour is red, they know if you visit CNN.com in the morning, they know if you check your email everyday at lunch. So what happens is if you do things out of the ordinary, they don’t find those behaviours to be natural. Of course, I don’t work at Google so I can’t prove any of this… but those are my beliefs and that is how I base a lot of my SEO.
Have you ever had times where you thought yourself or your business as a “failure”? If so how did you stop feeling like it? If not how do you keep yourself so optimistic?
I don’t believe in failure… I believe in mistakes. I believe also that one of the best ways to learn and educate yourself is by making mistakes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like many people learn from their mistakes. Having the ability to learn from an error in judgement makes you become a very strong person. I believe in competition and I am extremely competitive. To win… you have to lose, and therefore if you believe that… you really never lose, because with losing, you’re always winning. The only logical way I see that anyone can fail is by doing nothing. Everything a person does has energy and it creates cause and effect. If you don’t move, don’t talk, don’t type, or do anything physical or mental, then you lose.
What advice would you give to somebody wanting to start their first blog?
My advice to anyone who wants to start a blog is to first (within themselves) understand the objective. “Why do you want to blog… what is your purpose?” After understanding what the purpose is, then you need to make plans towards reaching goals. “Do you want to have 1,000 subscribers?” If so, then you need to set up a plan to achieve that.
What was the best advice you have ever been given?
I can’t really answer that because I don’t have any form of advice that sticks out above and beyond anything else. I do know that it is always best to be honest, and true to yourself and in doing that they you can be honest and true to other people. If you are in a position to help others those two core elements are crucial.
If you could tell yourself something when you first started blogging, what would it be?
If I were to be able to start blogging again for the first time, one of the things I would have told myself if I had the opportunity to go back in time and tip myself off would be that blogging and making money online is not easy. When I first started, so many people on the Internet had set such false expectations and it took me months to get a real perspective on how things are online. That in itself is one of the main messages I communicate on my blog and mailing list. Making money online does not come easy, but indeed it will come if you plan ahead, work smart and put forth a ton of effort towards doing the right thing.
If the Internet was not around, what would you be doing?
I would build it.
If you could trade lives with someone else, who would it be and why?
I would never trade my life for someone else’s. My life isn’t perfect, but who’s is…. my life is amazing and in my opinion that is something that can’t be replaced or traded for something better.
What plans do you have the future?
Make as much money as humanly possible.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
For those who are interested in making money online, do not fall for the hype. Do not purchase any products or services that make promises… the only promise you can make is the one to yourself that you will find success. No one can offer you a promise to make money, only you can. Rome wasn’t built over night and nor will your make money online business. My ultimate advice for anyone is to figure out what it is you enjoy doing for free and then figure out a way to take what you like to do and make money doing it. As far as I am concerned, I have the best job in the entire world and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I love my job and that is one of the reason why I make so much money.
Thank you very much Garry.
I do not know about you but I believe that is possibly the best interview I have ever read! He shares a lot of very solid advice. I think one of the reasons as to why I liked this interview so much is because whenever I have answered questions like some of these (on forums and msn etc.) my answers are almost identical to his (When I have answered, in the past, If the Internet was not around, what would you be doing? I had the same answer as Garry, word for word! Please comment giving your opinions and if you ask questions he might even answer them for you.
I hope you liked it as much as I did,
Shane
