Interview with Marko Saric from Howtomakemyblog.com

Have you checked out How to Make My Blog? Its awesome. Rather than rehash information, Marko reports on his own successes and provides tips on how you can emulate this.

His latest project is the release of his Twitter Marketing ebook. This is one of my favourite twitter products.

You have released a twitter marketing ebook. Do you have any plans for future product releases?

I am not working on any new product currently but yes, if I think that there is a topic I can be helpful in then I will definitely think about creating a product about it. It is a great way for people to learn about a topic in a concise format and also a much better way of monetizing your work compared to banner ads or AdSense ads.

You make a decent amount of money through the thesis affiliate program. What steps did you take to market your thesis articles?

I tried to make the articles as helpful as possible first of all. I wrote the articles with the beginner in mind, as I was just starting my Thesis experience. I just wrote everything I learned and I included all the codes that I used to customize my own blog. People like to see very practical and easy to follow advice like that, and that makes them tweet it, stumble it and in other ways spread the word about it.

You do a lot of personal case studies on your blog. Why do you think they are so successful?

Yeah, I have done 3 until now with Perez Hilton, Gary Vaynerchuk and Stephen King. I think the main reason for the success is the familiarity of these names. They are all big names, they are well known and they all have lots of people who love them. So kind of using the brand they have built to attract the interest to my own blog. Similar to all the big bloggers like Darren Rowse and the interviews you have done with them on your blog.

But of course all 3 of these articles were written so they are easy to read, they all have a short amount of text, formatted with bullet points, with very practical advice and no fluff. That always helps with getting the article to go viral.

What motivated you to create how to make my blog.

I have been a webmaster since late 1990’s, and at some point around 2006 I switched my old HTML sites over to WordPress as it was just much easier to update the site and I liked the interaction part of it as well. So in late 2008 I thought I have experience enough in this blogging world to start a blog about it and share my tips and what I have learned. And it also helps me as writing articles about blogging makes me analyse why and how I did things and which things work best, which can be improved and so on.

You have created two free ebooks. What techniques did you use to promote them?

Not much to be honest. I do send some tweets to my network of 20,000+ followers about everything I do. I think that the most important promotional technique you can have is to make a very good product that people find useful enough to share with their personal networks. Make it is easy for them to share it with Tweet This, Stumble Is, Delicious This and so on buttons and allow people that like the product to promote it.

Do you have plans to expand how to make my blog?

Since I started the blog in late October 2008 I have expanded with blog consulting services, and most recently with my first premium product, Twitter Marketing E-book. At the moment I keep producing new content and try to spread the word and increase the readership with some promotion on Twitter and a guest post here and there. But am always on the lookout for new opportunities to expand into… any ideas?

Do you have any tips for bloggers creating an information product?

>Start with building lots of great content for some 4-5 months and increase the readership, Twitter followers and search engine rankings as much as possible. At some point you will have a large enough audience to be able to create a product and have some buyers. Think what worked best on your blog, which topic got the most attention, which topic people see you an authority in, and look into starting light by creating an ebook first. You can even give it away for free to build some links and increase readership. That’s what I did with my first e-book. But all in all it is a great experience creating a product and bloggers should aim to do it at some point when they feel their readership is large enough (and I’m not talking about 100,000 subscribers, somewhere around 1000 should be plenty).

Tips From Jade

In this interview, Marko asked for ideas to expand his website. I’m always buzzing with ideas so here are some ways he could monetize his site.

• Do paid blog installs. I know of many people struggling with this. Have different price points for the amount of work involved.
• Offer group consulting. This is a growing trend.
• Create ebooks around other ways to market your blog – you seem to have a lot of succuess with this.
• Create video products on technical issues.

These are just based on what has been successful for a number of my friends. I wish you all the best with your blog, Marko.