Mar 16th, 2007
Interview With Matt Coddington
Recently I had the chance to sit down and interview Matt Coddington, of Net Business Blog fame. In case you’ve had your head in the sand the past month or two, you’ll know who Matt is, and you’ve probably read his blog. A fellow web designer, Net Business Blog is about anything and everything related to online business. In two short months he’s exploded on the scene, taking his blog from an unknown, to an immensely popular, and well respected blog. Here’s what he had to say in response to a few questions.
Tutorial A Day: Thanks for agreeing to the interview Matt. I’m an avid reader of your blog, and I’ve definitely gained a lot of knowledge from following it. To start off, please take us through your average day?
Matt: Well my average day begins with class. Since I’m still a full time student at the University of South Carolina I spend much of my mornings and into the afternoon on campus. I normally find time in between classes to check my email a little bit and do some reading here and there, but most of my early day is spent in class or doing school-related work. When I get home from school anywhere from 4 to 7 PM I have dinner and sit down to work on my blog. I usually write 3-4 posts at about this time for the end of that day and a couple for early the next day. Then I catch up on my emails and get into my design/development work. I work for about 4-5 hours then go to sleep so I can wake up the next morning to do it all over again!
TAD: Did you have a plan for your blog to achieve the success and traffic it did in such
a short time frame?
Matt: Honestly I just played it by ear. After reading John Chow’s blog for about a year and seeing what he did in just the few short months he decided to tackle blogging for money I saw the potential in Digg. In January and February I actively tried to get Dugg at least once per week, and I did. That brought huge traffic numbers but more importantly skyrocketed my number of backlinks and gave me a huge amount of traffic spread very wide. Now I get traffic from places I’ve never even heard of from people mentioning a post of mine here or there. As far as post planning I didn’t (and still don’t) spend too much time planning what to write ahead of time. I pretty much just post whatever is on my mind at the time. Usually it’s in relation to something I’ve read recently or just experienced myself that makes me stop and think about it.
TAD: What steps do you take to ensure readers are loyal and keep reading your blog?
Matt: Really the main thing I’ve done to encourage repeat readers is to just make sure I post everyday with quality content. I put a lot of work into every wave of updates I do, and I think my readers see that. I’ve also had a competition where I gave away a free copy of World of Warcraft which went fantastic, and I hope to have more.
TAD: How have you chosen to monetized the blog, without “selling out” so to speak?
Matt: I’m really open minded when it comes to monetizing my site. The cardinal rule I follow is just to make sure I don’t push any product or service that I wouldn’t use myself. That being said, I do a lot of direct ad sales, text links, Adsense, affiliate marketing, paid reviews (disclosed and objective), and Adbrite.
TAD: Where do you think the blogosphere is heading, in terms of the latest trend of reviews and sponsored blog posts?
Matt: I think paid blog posts are really going to separate out the people who blog for their subject and the ones who blog for money. You’ve always been able to make money off of your blog but paid posts make it so much easier. I’ve seen a ton of “made for ReviewMe” blogs popping up where their only goal is to game a high PR/Alexa rank so they can get as many reviews as possible. It works. But I don’t think those will ever take the place of or take away the authority of high profile, content-filled, quality blogs.
[…] Josh over at Tutorial a Day just put up an interview with me. It’s some pretty basic stuff but a good read overall. We talk mostly about blogging, and NBB specifically. […]