06: PushInterview The journey of how a Solo Founder, , used Social Media to build a successful Blog Network, Pradeep Slashsquare https://unsplash.com More than 2 million blogs are created everyday on let alone the whole of Internet. WordPress , According to , this number was more than 3 million at the time of publishing this blog post. Shocking, isn’t it? Worldometers http://www.worldometers.info/blogs/ How many of them do you think are successfully generating business? In this era that we live in where every second person is a blogger, it has become difficult to differentiate and build a successful Blog Network. Read through this interview to know: How differentiated in this crowded blogosphere and used social media to build a successful Blog Network. Pradeep This is the sixth interview of the series “ powered by . PushInterview : Interviews that helps you Pushstart ” Pushstart Check out our previous interview on “ ” if you happen to miss it. How I built one of the most active startup communities of India _My journey of building a startup community from zero to one_hackernoon.com How I built one of the most active startup community of India 🕴Who are you? Hey ! I’m , a Blogger and an Internet Marketer from Chennai. I completed my bachelors in Computer Science in the year 2012. Pushstarters Pradeep Kumar Hey Pushstarters ! Pradeep here I started blogging during my school days and took it as a profession after graduating from college with . Slashsquare is a Web Consulting Media and Indian Blog Network. Slashsquare 🤔 What’s the deal with ? Slashsquare was started as a blog during my college days. Slashsquare The current version of Slashsquare Later on in the journey, I registered it as and started providing online services like Web Development, eCommerce Setup, and SEO. “ Slashsquare Media Private Limited” Social Media Marketing Currently, these are the 3 blogs on our Blog Network: : HellBound Bloggers (HBB) We talk about Blogging, Internet Marketing, Social Media, and other related topics here. : MoviesDrop This is our portal for film lovers where we discuss about Movies, TV Series, and Documentaries. : DeviceBAR Being a gadget freak, I created this platform to connect like-minded folks who love talking about mobiles, computers, and electronic items. Our upcoming blogs include and . We’ll be launching them soon in 2018. Stay tuned. FoodGravy BookWritten 💯 What motivated you to start ? Slashsquare I started my very first blog during my school days; I think it was in 11th or 12th standard. At that time, I didn’t have any idea . I just signed up on and thought that my blog was ready. about blogging Blogger.com But over the period, I learned a lot about blogging. I started to and share my articles with my online friends. Slowly I started developing interest towards blogging. write Blogging is a medium to share your thoughts, but, at the same time, it’s a weapon to twist human thoughts. was my first official blog. I decided to write about Blogging so that I can keep track of the things I was learning and also share my learnings to help other similar folks get started with blogging. HBB Later on in the journey, I realised that I couldn’t control my thoughts to a single blog and I need to expand the list of topics I want to blog about. That’s when I thought I should start a which goes by the name of and launch different categories of blogs under one common banner. Blog Network Slashsquare is like a bridge which connects all the blogs. Slashsquare 🛠 What all went into building the initial product? Our first product was our blog — . HellBound Bloggers (HBB) was not really HBB, when I created my first blog, that should be during the year 2007. I created “ ” and “ ” and hosted them on platform. HBB helpwithpcs mailexpress Blogger.com I remember stuff here when I started out. But over the period of time, I learned a lot of things about blogging. Following and helped me a lot. Capturing feedback from my online friends and interacting with other bloggers also acted like a boon. copy-pasting ShoutMeLoud MillionClues I started contributing articles properly. I decided to use a custom domain name and moved to This was when I changed the blog’s name to . WordPress.org . “ hellboundbloggers.blogspot.com ” The initial version of HellBound Bloggers (HBB) We started our journey with a as I was not earning any money from my blog. Rather, I was investing in and . free Web Hosting service Browsing Center Domain names Eventually, I got an opportunity to review a product and I learned about sponsored posts. I slowly understood how I could monetize my blogs. After almost 10 years, here we are, with . Our current blogs are designed by and hosted on . 3 live and 2 upcoming blogs 7Span Basezap 🤝 How did you get your initial users? My journey of building HBB: Starting was easy for me, but scaling it was tough. I had to think of all the possible ways to survive this overcrowded Blogosphere. HBB Branding: is just another blog in the blogosphere. It is not unique or outstanding. HBB So to reach out to more people, and most importantly, make them remember our blog, we made branding our . USP You can use branding anywhere, right from your blog’s logo to the URL. We used a shortened URL . hbb.me You just have to make them remember you once, it’s more than enough. Social Media: It is the easiest channel to reach your target audience. Make use of Facebook Pages & Groups. Start a Page to promote your brand and start a Group to build your brand. Thanks to our Facebook groups, I was able to understand Facebook better. Also, try to make the content more . ? I’m not talking about clickbait here, just reasonable title justifying the content. Social Media friendly “10+ Tips to increase your blog traffic” is good, but what about “10 actions you can do right now to double your traffic” If you are an active user of , try to start a Twitter chat with , . This is a good way to showcase your brand and increase your follower base. Twitter #HBBTalk or #HBBChat a hashtag with your brand’s name SEO: There is a fundamental misunderstanding about SEO: Yes, you need to optimize your articles for search engines, but before that, you need to write for yourself, then write for your readers, then write for the people who are seeking solutions online, and at the end, write for Google. Only if you do it in this specific order, you can analyze the other key factors to get more organic traffic. Investment: If you want to make $1000 per month, you need to invest at least $100 per month. Without investments, you can’t get anything substantial in return. Let them be or . Make sure you buy them and utilize them properly. WordPress plugins Online tools Public Relations (PR): If you have a blog, then you are the PR agent of your blog. Work on your personal branding to impact your blog performance. Whatever you post on social media, it directly impacts the way your audience perceives your brand. So, make sure you represent your brand properly on social media. This is how I roll on Social Media Network with fellow bloggers: We networked with several bloggers throughout our journey. Now they quote us frequently in their articles. This helps generate and increase referral traffic Domain Authority . Building our blog’s readership: Find your audience before you start: We have this habit of starting our Social Media profiles before launching our blog. We build our audience on social media, analyze their needs and then kickstart our blog. We have already launched a for our upcoming blog Facebook Group and Page BookWritten . Facebook Group and Page for our upcoming blog BookWritten This way, it becomes much easier to find their needs and the things they like. This is how we curate our blog articles, slowly, one by one. ’s Blog Network is a combination of what they like + what I like. Slashsquare 💰 What is your business model? I started my blog without the intention of making money. But, when I decided that this was my full-time profession, I gave serious thought to monetization and prepared various strategies. When we were starting out, we didn’t really want to monetize our blog without proper content or traffic. There is no point in bombing your blog with ads and reviews without proper content or traffic. So, we decided to create an authority and readership around our blog first and then enable . Google AdSense is all about the people who visit your blog, view the ads and click them. But remember, the visitor’s source plays an important role here. Google AdSense helped us to make decent money. Eventually, I moved to a paid hosting and started to hire people. Google AdSense We also experimented with and other like and integrated them into our blog. Amazon Associates Affiliate programs ShareASale I love the way it works, the whole referral thing. I always had this thought in my mind before: is the answer for that. What if I get paid for the things that I normally do for free? Affiliate Marketing We started to keep banners and links and optimize them to get good organic traffic. We did have good conversions during recently. Black Friday & Cyber Monday We also did reviews for popular brands and got paid for spreading the word. Our income sources: (Indian Blog Network): Slashsquare When other brands want to spread the word about their product/service, they approach us and ask for an exclusive review or cover story. Sponsored/Paid Content: Not an excellent source of income, but when our articles go viral, we can expect a decent revenue. Google AdSense: We promote our products/services via Affiliate Marketing, and get paid. Affiliate Marketing : Slashsquare (Web Consulting Media): When a brand, which is majorly offline, wants to jump into the online world, we guide them in the process. Be it website development or online marketing. Consultancy: We help brands set up their E-commerce portal. E-commerce: 💪 Being a Solo Founder, how do you keep yourself motivated? It’s hard to find someone who shares the same mindset and passion for a specific thing. Being a solo founder, I respect everyone’s opinion and advice, but the administrative decision and rights belong to me; I just do the things I think are perfect. Of course, I do my research and analysis before jumping into things, but that’s more than enough for me. I don’t get demotivated quickly; I’m adamant about solutions. It’s never about winning or losing; it is just about being yourself no matter what. If you are progressing and learning each passing day, then there is no need to get demotivated. 🏁 What are your future goals and how do you plan to achieve them? Our future goals are all about expanding so that it reaches more people, who share similar interests and passion. Slashsquare These are the list of things we are focusing right now: Right now we have active Facebook groups and standalone forums for each blog on our Blog Network. We’ll be making them more interactive and informative; we are planning to rope in experts from various fields, and make the whole space more engaging. Expanding our online communities: conduct AMAs, do intensive case-studies We already have an for and we are planning to do the same for and . Pretty soon we will be launching the too. Our objective here is to make the app more so that it stays on the user’s phone no matter what. We are conducting surveys all over the web to make our apps as purposeful as possible. Jumping into mobile: Android app MoviesDrop BookWritten FoodGravy iOS version *useful* This is something we haven’t implemented properly yet. Even though I had a and I uploaded my very first video in the year 2009, I didn’t proceed with it further. Looking at the way videos are making our lives easier, we decide to grab this opportunity ASAP and make the most out of it. We will be launching our channel soon. Unlike traditional blogging, video creation will take time and patience, but it’s worth the process. Jumping into YouTube: YouTube channel 🌋 The biggest challenges you have faced till now? The biggest challenge I have faced till now is to build an active online community. We have done a lot of experiments, but at the end of the day, it is never satisfying. We are happy with the way our Facebook Groups and Blog Forums are running, but is that enough? What is it that makes a community successful? A prosperous community shouldn’t need any kind of moderation. It should take care of itself no matter what. If something goes wrong, other members should take care of the violation and prevent it from happening again in the future. There is a titled , I would request everyone to see this video to understand the benefits and beauty of a community. TED talk “How can groups make good decisions?” Right now, we have around in our , and 17k members HellBound Bloggers (HBB) Facebook group these are our stats from the past 28 days: Engagement stats from the past 28 days Although this is a decent number, we are trying out the following things to scale it further: This is a psychologically proven method, because, triggers people to think. If they can think of something and they want to share that, most of them will probably do it. Ask more questions: “?” We already have made a list of things we would like to focus on. This is not for making them more active, it’s more like, giving back to the community for their efforts. Conduct Giveaways: 🗒 What is your advice to starting out? Pushstarters Your startup is like a newborn baby; You can’t comb the hair, put a school dress, make him/her study and expect the baby to get 100 out of 100 marks. Take your time, don’t fasten the process just because you want to taste success quickly, take it as a learning aka sharing process, I’m sure you’ll reach your stop very soon. ✉️ How can we get in touch with you? You can reach out to me @ Linkedin , Facebook , Twitter or Instagram . I also blog regularly @ Pradeep Kumar . Thanks a lot for reading! If you liked it, please support by clapping 👏🏻 and sharing the post. Feel free to leave a comment 💬 below. Want to become part of India’s most active startup community? Send a request on Pushstart and become part of our ever-growing family. Hey! Neeraj here, the founder of Pushstart , India’s most active entrepreneur community. I release interviews with successful entrepreneurs every week. Feel free to reach out to me on Facebook | Linkedin | neeraj.joshi@pushstart.in | Twitter .
