Darren Rowse has in the last half year become a six figure blogger.

Whats a six figure blogger?

Well its somebody who blogs (updates their web blogs) and makes more than six figures a year from doing it.

A lot of Darrens revenues come from Ad Networks like Google Adsense and Chitika Minimals.

I asked him what his secrets were to becoming a six figure blogger in this interview:

Hone: When did you know that there was an opportunity for you to make a full time income on the internet through blogging?

And how did you stay focused on making it a reality when its such a new and relatively unproven away of creating a income?

Darren: Blogging was purely a hobby for me for the first year that I did it (I started in November 2002) and I never considered that it could make me ANY money initially.

When I started experimenting with putting ads on my blogs a year later I only ever hoped it would pay for my ISP/hosting costs.

It was probably about 12 months ago (2 years after I started blogging) that I realised it had the potential to make me a full time living. That’s when I started to get serious.

Hone: What are the fundamentals to success in blogging and building any kind of long term traffic to a website?

Darren: Substantial traffic is one of the main keys to making good money online. Without it you decrease your earning potential so much.

To build high levels of traffic you need to write original and quality content on a regular basis.

Ie work on quality and quantity at the same time. You also will need to find a way to build community around your site to get people coming back for more as well as work on building your search engine ranking.

More on SEO -

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

More on Quantities of Content -

How To Generate A High Quantity of Quality Content Fast

Darren: Another factor is that all of this takes time and a lot of work. Online income is not easy money - it’s not a get rich quick scheme. Some people get lucky but the luck rarely lasts.

If you want to build a sustainable long term income online you need to work hard and consistently for years.

More on this -

Making Money From Blogging Takes Time

Hone: With so many opportunities for distraction in the modern life how do you manage your time daily to make sure you get the key fundamentals completed? (posting goals?)

Darren: I have a blogging system where I have daily posting goals. I aim for 25 posts per day - ie 25 new pages of content to my blogs each day which means I am aiming to add over 9000 pages of content each year.

Some days I do up to 50 posts - other days I take time off.

The key is to develop a system of writing that enables you to write quality content quickly. Each blogger has to find their own style and rhythm.

Hone: How important has been building a community and loyal readership to your business been? And how do you go about it?

Darren: It is and it isn’t important depending upon the site that you’re creating.

I have some sites that have little community but a very high search engine profile that earn good money whereas I have other sites with great community and little search engine presence.

It depends upon the goal/style/topic of your site I guess.

Building community generally happens best through interacting with your readers. If you create a place where people feel comfortable, listened to and have opportunity to contribute then they generally will come back for more.

It’s like any place that you find community really.

I’ve written a bit about this at:

Converting One Off Visitors Of Your Blog Into Regular Readers

And at:

Building Blogging Relationships

Hone: What tools do you use to run your blogs and what is your preferred blogging platform?

I use Movable Type and WordPress mainly as my blog platforms.

I also use Bloglines as an RSS feed and Ecto (for Mac) as my blog editor.

Lastly I use my trusty G5 Apple Powerbook.

Hone: How early in the game is it? Is there still time to get in? And whats the risk to reward senario in terms of costs setting up and potential money you can make?

Darren: The web has always been crowded but these days it’s getting more and more so. So many people are using blogs and websites to create income streams that it is getting difficult to find a niche.

The risk depends upon how much you’re going to put into it. I recommend people gradually increase their time and effort on website creation. Ie don’t go out and quit your job to be an online pro - it takes time to build a revenue stream and learn how to to it.

The way I did it was to work full time on other things and dedicated spare time to web stuff. Then gradually over time I was able to decrease my other work and increase my online time.

Read about how I recommend this at:

Monkey Bar Blogging

In terms of the Rewards - again this is pretty dependant upon many factors including:

• Luck - so much is out of your control - sometimes things work and you don’t know why - other times they ’should’ work and they don’t.
• Time - how much effort you put in
• Focus - if you pick the right niche topic to focus on you can do well - especially if you’re the first to do it
• Skill - obviously like anything - the more skilled you are and the more experience you gain the better you’ll get

In terms of numbers of how much you can make - it can range from a dollar or two a day (it can feed your coffee addiction) through to people making millions of dollars a year.

Hone: Who should buy your course on six figure blogging and what gives it the edge over other similar courses? (are there other courses?) How can they order?

Darren: SixFigureBlogging.com is a course for people who have some understanding and experience of blogging already and who want to take their blogging to the next level and add some income streams to their blogs.

It’s a six week course that runs people through the alternatives for making money from blogs and then gives some skills to do so. It’s not a get rich quick scheme - we talk a lot about hard work and patience.

There are other courses out there that promise the world but we try to be realistic.

You can order at SixFigureBlogging.com

I’d probably wait a week or two though because we’re working on a home study version now that we’ve finished the first ‘live’ run of the course. It will be a bit cheaper than the live version.

Hone: Many thanks for those pearls of wisdom Darren.