Remarkable Blogging

He started blogging just to make some extra money to pay his mortgage debt.

Now he’s ready to take the Internet by storm and rake-in big bucks with his latest blogging ventures: Bloghology Blogging Magazine and Bloghology Social Network.

Find about Mert’s trials, errors and success in this brand new interview…

Click here to download the PDF version of this interview, or read the text version below:

1. Would you mind sharing a few things about

yourself and your background for our readers?

My name is Mert Erkal. I am 34 years old, and from Istanbul, Turkey. I worked for Maersk Line Turkey as Marketing Analyst between 1998-2008. As of August 2008 I left my full time job after 10 years of hardworking and dedication to earn my living from problogging and Internet projects. I am the chief editor of Bloghology Blogging Magazine.

2. When did you get started blogging, and why?

I started blogging in 2006. My aim was to make some extra money to pay my mortgage debt. Between Dec 2006 till Sep 2007 I was using Blogger.com. Take a look at my blog at that time : Meeting-Continents. I used to write paid reviews from PayPerPost, Reviewme, Smorty etc. with that blog. I was making $20-30 per day with paid reviews. On the other hand I was writing about my lovely city Istanbul.

3. What’s the biggest mistake you

made getting started with this?

Even though I was making good money, I realized that writing paid reviews was taking so much time. I had no time left for social life. I was working for a full time job, and then at nights I was chasing for paid review opportunities to write. I started to think about smarter ways to make money online before it is too late. That was the biggest mistake I made when I started.

4. How did you come up with the

idea of launching your blog?

I was so lucky that I somehow got an invitation from Yaro Starak for his mentoring program Blog Mastermind. The lessons were coming to my email address on weekly basis. Yaro wanted his students to take some action in every week. It was not a one way communication. Yaro honestly told us that there is no easy way to make money online.

Yaro was giving us some weekly tasks to accomplish. One of the tasks was having a self hosted blog with your own domain name. At the moment I was reading a book by Viktor Frankl titled “Men’s Search For Meaning”. I inspired from the book title and put the name as Search For Blogging — http://www.searchforblogging.com.

5. How often do you publish and

how do you get content ideas?

I publish 5-6 times a week. I got the ideas from my own experiences. I try out tools, products, books, websites, all kinds of idea related to blogging, and then share my own experiences with my readers. Main topic is making money online.

6. How do you mainly receive (or generate)

traffic to your blog?

It has been more than one year since my blog was launched. So I am an established blogger with 300+ RSS reader. Still I use social bookmarking tools like www.socialmarker.com to send my blog posts to 30+ social bookmarking sites. In addition I regularly use Blog Catalog, My Blog Log. Recently I discovered Twitter as a good promotion tool for bloggers.

7. What is your most closely-guarded

secret about blogging for money?

Don’t cheat your readers just to make some extra income. First try out before selling something to others. Don’t put money on the first place. Focus more on your content quality. Money will follow anyway.

8. What differentiates your blog among

all the others in your niche field?

My blog is powered by my personality. I believe that all bloggers should take a share from the online money pie. Today popular pro-bloggers are talking about ways of make money online with blogs, yet they are getting richer, majority of the bloggers are making less than 10$ a month. I want to break free from this vicious circle.

9. If you had to get a boost in comments

from your blog readers, how would you do it?

I would finish my blog posts with some questions to be answered by the readers. Also I would use some plugins which encourages readers to comment on one’s blog.

10. Which are the blogs you visit frequently and why?

I rarely spend my time reading other’s blogs. Having said that I visit blogs when I feel that there is something in them for me. Not a specific blog.

11. Which are your favorite bloggers and why?

Alex Sysoef at http://www.howtospoter.com/, Stephan Miller at http://www.stephanmiller.com/, Louis Liem, and Miguel Wickert at http://miguelpineiro.net are my favorite bloggers. They are quite natural most of the time, and adding value to their readers.

12. Which plugins you can’t live without and why?

Comment Relish and What Would Seth Godin Do. They help me increase my readership.

13. What is the most important thing you learned about blogging that you could share with your best friend?

Blogging is no different than running a marathon. It is not a 100 m race. You should keep running all the time.

14. What plans do you have for

the future with your blog?

I am the chief editor of Bloghology Blogging Magazine. Also we launched the new Bloghology Social Network for Bloggers with my partner Vasilis Pasparas, owner of Interactive Global Media and publisher of the Bloghology Blogging Magazine.

What is next? It is not a secret. I am planning to provide design, blog support, and blog mentoring services through my blog by making joint ventures with experts on these fields.

We wish Mert success in the future and thank you very much for sharing your BLOGGING tips, tricks & secrets with us all!

If you want to get further into blogging, check out these resources:

WordPress Profit Maximizer – The BEST WordPress Plugins sent to you weekly via e-mail!

Lazy Blogging dot Com – Everything I learned about blogging!

Thank you,

Codrut Turcanu.

http://www.CodrutTurcanu.com