Blogosis

Ever since I started this whole online business and wanting to blog for money back in Early December, I didn’t know too far ahead of what I was doing. Well, the blogging thing has fallen through, but not all my online endeavors. They have since grown and expanded, and I am becoming a self-made entrepreneur. Just off of my freelance writing, if I were writing 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, I would be making about 1500 - 2000 dollars a week. Of course, I wouldn’t dare work that much on writing, because I am just far too lazy. Haha. Thats one of the great things about being at the head of a company, or being self employed. It’s all about you! Be your own boss! Let me show you why I love it!

I get to make my own work schedule

I don’t have a paper schedule pinned to my wall telling me what days I need to be in the office and what time in the morning I need to get there. No bell goes off to tell me its break time, and I am not limited to just 2 breaks every 4 hours or however you people with an office job are suffering.

Instead, it is my watch and a very loose schedule. Most of my clients know this about me. They work with me, providing a very loose schedule, sometimes only telling me “No rush to get these articles, but whenever you have the time could you please write about _____ for me?” I can schedule 2 seconds before I am going to start writing. I can spend a sleepless night pumping out articles and working on developing graphics and other websites. I can take as many bathroom breaks, lunch and snack times, and nights out with my friends as I want without having to worry (too much) about a developed work schedule.

If I only want to work 1 hour a day (and that is about the average as of now), then I only have to work one hour a day. No more tedious 8 hour (or 14… yup I have had one of those) days for me. I take on as much work as I can handle for an hour a day and churn out the articles that need to get done the soonest (talking about my freelancing). Then I am done. I can go out, I can visit the beach or my supermodel girlfriend’s latest photo-shoot set, and enjoy the other 23 hours of the day.

Being my own boss has me freer than ever, giving me the time I need to do whatever I want while still gaining enough money to pay well more than the expenses I incur for daily life. That’s another great thing about being your own boss: It’s your prices and your terms. I think that will be a future post. Yeah, I think I just turned this into a series post.

So, you sent out your interview questions in that email format I was telling you all about in the 1^st and 2^nd posts in this series. Now, have you gotten some responses? No? Well, let’s figure out why this is.

Too Busy

If you are sending out your questions to big bloggers, you can’t always expect them to reply. Some bloggers get a lot of questions and emails every day, and they don’t have the time, or patience to sit down and read them all. Honestly, they skip over a lot of them. This is why you need a unique subject tag. If it’s generic and something like “Hey” or “What’s up, xxx” then they may not respond. Those are things good friends and clients might send to each other, not complete strangers.

Boooooorrrrrringggggg

Did you make that email of yours way to long? I don’t want to read through 500 words to get to your main point. Like I said, make the intro and body short, and get straight to the questions. Make it easy to find the question to. Don’t bury it in a paragraph. Good formatting of your email comes into play.

You Should Already Know This

What questions did you ask? Are you asking questions they’ve answered 100 times on their blog? Avoid these questions that are already blasted on their blog. Read back a few months into their blog. If they’ve been questioned and answered, there is no reason to ask that blogger again. Ask unique and creative questions that they wouldn’t have normally come up with.

That will wrap it up for this series. I’m going to be emailing my interview questions to a few bloggers around the blogosphere and you should see some answers starts to arrive here soon.

Anyone want to see more short series or interview me? Send me an email at justindupre@blogosis.com and let’s get talking!

If you missed the first post in this series, make sure you check it out here.

Beyond getting in contact with your interviewee, you need to be asking the proper questions to him or her. If I were to pick anyone to interview, they would obviously be in my niche and someone successful at it (Darren Rowse for instance). Now, these top guys get 100s of other emails and inquiries every day, so I need to make my subject title stick out. These guys are immediately deleting the emails that ask “How can I make 10,000 dollars in my first month of blogging?”

Make the Subject Interesting

I won’t be asking “Can I interview you?” in the subject. Generally, these get turned down because they are just so busy and can’t take enough time out of their day to do a little networking with you. Instead, say something interesting in the topic. “Hey, did you know this about your blog?” or “I’ve got something interesting to share with you about blogging.” Anything, be creative, use your imagination, but you need to stay friendly. I sure as hell wouldn’t reply to an email saying “I want to know why your blog sucks so much.” Then again, that could work.

Introduce Yourself

So we are past the subject. Now, you will want to say Hey, (Blogger’s Name), or whatever formality that you feel appropriate. I discussed this in the first post of this series. Then, put in a small introduction. When I mean small, I mean short and sweet and small. Your name, your blog, and a few other short details about yourself are enough. You aren’t interviewing yourself here, you are interviewing them.

Why did I decide to interview you?

Leave a short message about the interview next. Why you chose them, and what you plan to do with any answers. Let this, again, be simple. You can’t bore the blogger into closing your email. A few sentences about the details of the questions is enough.

Get on with it

Now what? Just get into the questions. Don’t wait to see if they agree to arranging an interview. It just creates hassle and once again, the blogger won’t want to separate time from daily activities to answer your questions.

Make it Easy

Write your questions out and make them clear and noticeable. Maybe bold them, bullet them, make them bigger. Do anything to draw attention to this point. This is the most important part of the email, and you won’t want to skimp.

Say Goodbye

After your questions have been asked, conclude it. Say thanks and I hope to hear from you; all that goodness and candy to make them feel appreciated. Don’t threaten them by saying you won’t read them anymore if they don’t reply. That’s pretty ridiculous to think anyways. I don’t need pissy readers. Just realize they were probably too busy to answer.

Ask the Right Questions

Or, perhaps, you just asked the wrong questions. I will be covering that in the next series post.