Monday, September 20, 2010

Interview with John P., onemansblog.com author

Из блога Терехова Алексея. <td></td>
Hi John. Glad to meet you on my blog terehoff.com. When and where was you born. How old are you. Where do you live now?
I was born and still live in Dallas, Texas, USA although I also lived in the Washinton DC area for several years. I’m 39 years old. What is your education?
I attended the University of Texas at Dallas and studied Finance and Economics, though I dropped out to work before getting my BS degree. I have also attended programs at Harvard. How was your first work offline?
The first job I ever had, when I was 15, was working for an ice cream shop! Then most of my professional life was spent in sales management. What is your work now?
I am the CEO and a partner in iFusion Labs, the company that brings you Woopra. <td></td>
What is your first blog?
My first website was actually HTMLHelp.com. It was one of the first 3,000 websites ever. We taught people how to create Websites and it remains one of the top web authoring reference sites on the Net. Your blog onemansblog.com – you hobby or your work?
It’s just a hobby. OMB is a great creative outlet, and there is a strong community that keeps me entertained. Why do you start blogging?
I started blogging for two simple reasons:
1. People always ask me for recommendations and advice, but I was tired of answering the same questions over and over, so I decided to document them on a blog to refer people to the answers.
2. I always came across interesting things that I wanted to remember or be able to find later, and blogging was a good way to categorize them for later. Where do you take post’s themes?
Honestly, I just post random thing I find interesting or useful. So it’s kind of just whatever I felt like posting that day! Why do you choose such name onemansblog.com for your blog?
In the beginning I just thought it was a funny name for a blog. Now, it kind of reminds me every day that I’m just another guy – and I hope it inspires other people to be creative and give blogging a try. I hope they think, «If he can do it, so can I!» Why do you choose wordpress for blog platform? Is there any advantages?
Oh, we could write a book on this one, but suffice it to say that WordPress is elegantly coded, extremely easy to install and use, and has a huge support community. It’s the same reason I’ve organized and participated in so many WordCanp events. What hosting do you choose for you blog?
I’m the former Chief Marketing Officer and an investor in Layered Tech, so the do all of my hosting. I have a big dedicated serve. And use their DEFCON management so I have 24/7 support and monitoring. I recommend their Grid Hosting to new bloggers who are serious about growing their online presence because it gives you your own virtual server along with complete redundancy. The main page of youк blog have PagaRank 7? It’s unbelievable. What methods did you use for such big pagerank?
Well, it used to be a PR9 but after a little argument with the Google team under Matt Cutts it dropped. But it’s simple really. I’ve written over 1,500 articles on OMB. That is a huge amount of content for Google to index and send traffic to. A lot of my content also gets linked to, which increases my sites authority. Blogging for me is a joy, not a chore. So it’s easy to keep putting out interesting stuff. I feel sorry for people who start looking at it like a job, bucause then it’s not fun any more. Have you use SEO (search engine optimization) methods for promotion you blog in search engines. I use only two SEO methods on my blog. First of all, I build my own theme specifically to take advantage of Search traffic. The Rapid Access them I use is available for free download and linked at the bottom on my blog. Secondly, I use a plugin called Google XML sitemaps that helps Google spider the site accurately. It is available here: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/ What link building methods do you use for you blog? Not much really. I just write good content, and I announce it on Twitter, Facebook, and through an email list run by FeedBurner. Occasionally people submit the content to StumbleUpon, Digg and other sites as well. Matt Mullenveg’s blog in your blogroll. What can you say about Matt Mullenveg? Matt is a friend, and he was having some difficulty because he used to be #1 in Google for the word «Matt», but when he changed his domain name he lost his ranking. I put the link on my site to help him get back to the number one search position – which he did. Matt is very generous with his time and one of the most outstanding and visible advocates of the open source community. I admire his drive, vision and work ethic. I’m happy to call him a friend. By you mind, why wordpress is very popular blog engine in the world? The simplicity of installing WordPress, combined with the large and very active user community are alone enough for WordPress to be a major player. But the fact that there are so many people actively developing the platform and extending its functionality really keep WordPress growing exponentially. What is the woopra, say some words about it, please. Woopra is already one of the top 10 Web Analytics services in the world, even though it is still in private beta. We built Woopra to deliver real-time analytics, unlike Google, and we use a unique desktop application to allow our users to see live visitors on their site and interact with them by tagging them, chatting with them, and more. I’m told by many of our users that Woopra has changed their lives. :-) What kind of monetization methods would you plan use on OMB? I currently only have Google ads on OMB. This is because I donate all of the revenue from the site to charity. The site generates $1,500-$2,000 per month in ad revenues although I only show ads to search engine visitors. If you leave a comment on the blog or are logged in you will also never see an ad. OMB is my personal site, and I don’t want anyone to think that the things I say are somehow commercial messaging. This is why I donate all of the revenues, and then say whatever I want. How many visitors on your blog every day? The blog gets over 10,000 visitors daily and normally around 20,000-22,000 page views. How much operative memory use your blog? The dedicated server that my blog runs on has several other less busy sites on it, and it has 4GB of RAM. At most times, the server is only using 1 to 1.5GB of RAM to serve all of it’s needs. What wordpress plugins on you blog are very important? Pretty Link Pro – http://onemansblog.com/plp
FeedBurner FeedSmith – http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart
No Adverts for Friends – http://ocaoimh.ie/no-adverts-for-friends/
Woopra – Woopra.com
WP-DBManager – http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/
WP Admin Bar Reloaded – http://onemansblog.com/2007/04/08/wordpress-plugin-wp-admin-bar-reloaded/
WP Super Cache – http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/ Who is the author of OMB wordpress theme? I am. Please, describe the howl of the working day My typical work day involves checking in on the various members of the Woopra team who are located in different cities all over the world. I work on a lot of email, have a lot of instant messenger chats, and use the phone a lot to talk about the business. I also have to check in with my partners Cali and Neal from our WealthNation.FM radio show fairly often, and some days I have to go record the show. I also travel quite often to meet with investors, lecture at events, and attend other work related functions and meetings. I tend to get up around 9 or 10 am, because I don’t go to bed until between 2-4am since my Woopra partners are in Lebanon and timezones are quite difficult to overcome. How you use twitter? I use Twitter and Facebook both to communicate quick thoughts and updates as I travel or go about my day, and also to provide «announcements» about things I’m involved in. For example, if I post a new article on OMB, Woopra or Wealth Nation I’ll Tweet a link to the article. Otherwise I just try and put out Tweets that entertain my followers such as funny quotes, photos, or updates about some place interesting I happen to be. What do you think about twitter’s future? I think Twitter has already passed the point where it has critical mass, so it’s unlikey to go away any time soon. However, they still face some issues such as those having to do with scale and reliability, and they have yet to address any of the growing Spam issues users are beginning to face. For this reason, I think that Facebook is a good system to maintain as well, and would recommend that people divide their attention between these two. What do you think about social media’s future? Social media puts power back in the hands of the people. No longer are we reliant on big budget corporate advertising to tell us what we should be paying attention to. Now we have the option to build our own networks of friends and use them «crowd source» our problems. For this reason, Social Media is merely going to gain more and more momentum. Do you know any twitter’s competitors? Facebook will certainly do anything Twitter will do, and more. And Twitter had some early competitors such as Pownce, who are still around, but unless Twitter does something very wrong they are going to suffer from slow or negative growth. How much would you have agreed to sell your blog? Well, if you keep in mind that my blog is not designed to generate revenue for me, it’s not merely a monetary consideration. It would be foolish to say that I wouldn’t sell it at any price, because I would. But the price would be extremely high – probably higher than anyone would be willing to pay. ;-) Your wishes Russian bloggers? I am so grateful that we live in a world where we’ve been able to break down the barriers and communicate with one another directly as opposed to learning everything through the filters of someone in a powerful position in the media. My wish for my fellow bloggers in Russia would simply be to continue sharing your stories, thoughts, and experiences online so that we can all get to know one another better. Don’t forget that using social sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Digg and others help you make new friends with whom you can share your experiences. I bid you all well wishes, and hope that one day I can come to visit your beautiful country and experience all she has to offer! Cheers! John P. John, glad to meet you in Russia, keep well. Video today is from John P. FriendFeed channel.

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