Ben Barden: “I play to my strengths”

Zsolt Balla — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:36:17 +0000

Ben Barden is a versatile guy, busy with blogging, coding and occasionally composing. The 28-year-old blogger, who is the mastermind behind the increasingly popular Top Ten Blog Tips, and the Zen Working productivity blog tells us about moving to a different continent, his new venture of launching an advertising network for bloggers and why IT people shouldn’t make excuses.

How much of your grown-up life have you spent with blogging?

I had a LiveJournal account as far back as 2002, and wrote an occasional personal blog on my site from 2005 onwards. I didn’t get into blogging “seriously” until November 2007, when I started writing about blogging and website tips without the jargon. I launched Top Ten Blog Tips, my current blog, in late 2008.

Was it a linear growth and development, or was there a trigger point when you decided to “take it seriously”. Did you have a particular reason or motivation to do so?

Well, the personal blog only had a handful of readers, and I got sick of talking to myself. I wanted to write about something that people would actually want to read. It wasn’t much fun posting and getting 0 comments time after time. Once I started writing about blogging and website tips, the blog had a fairly slow but steady growth.

Was it an all-linear growth, or did you discover something to give it a sudden boost?

The only major growth spurt was after I moved to Top Ten Blog Tips. Many of my subscribers moved across, but there were quite a few people who stayed subscribed to the old site. So I decided to kickstart my new blog by writing a guest post at ProBlogger.net. This significantly boosted my subscribers.

I guess I was one of the many, who joined in back then. You seem pretty versatile. Is it because you hated school and preferred to learn a lot of things you were interested in but they never taught you?

Well, school has a bit to do with it, but I didn’t completely hate school, just didn’t like some of it. When I was younger there were a lot of things everybody else seemed to be able to do without a second thought, especially stuff like sports, and I was never that good at anything like that. Since then I’ve found a number of things I am good at. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I play to my strengths.

What brought you to Australia? How come there are so many bloggers located down under?

When we lived in the UK, my wife and I worked full-time, we were well paid, we had no children, and no personal debt – and we were still unable to buy a house. All of those are still true in Australia except for being able to afford a house. But having done it, we have come to realise it wasn’t what we wanted after all. As for Aussie bloggers, the thing about Australia is that it’s a big country and quite spread out. Blogging is a great way to meet new people and I think this may be why blogging is popular here.

How long did it take to reach financial independence? Have you managed to reach it, by the way?

I have a lot of things going on, but I haven’t yet crossed over into making any serious money online. I have made some, but we’re talking a few hundred rather than anything close to making a living online. Many of my projects are done simply because I enjoy doing them. Though it would be good to make some more money, I’d rather have a regular job and enjoy what I do online than do things I don’t really enjoy just to make some money. Blurring the lines between the two is something I haven’t mastered just yet.

You are planning to launch an ad network shortly. What will make it special?

CMF Ads is run by three bloggers who understand the needs of advertisers and publishers alike. We’ve placed loads of ads and we know what it’s all about, we know the target market very well. Our widget will allow a site to run multiple ads on the one widget, with each ad running for 30 days, and the ad that is shown on each widget is random. Costs are low – the base rate is 5 credits, or $1.25, to place an ad for 30 days (although this can be increased if needed). The publisher will get 100% of the credits paid for each ad on their site, which they can use to place more ads or they can cash out, at which stage we’ll take a cut. This is the only tax in the system, which is to cover our costs.

Which social networking site is your favorite one? Is it also the one that brings the most traffic to your sites?

I like StumbleUpon for finding new sites, it’s also been a good source of traffic. Twitter has been good for me too. Those are the main ways I promote my blog at the moment, along with commenting on other blogs.

What do you do to avoid blogger burnout symptom?

Posting three times a week instead of every day. Writing lists instead of a mass of long sprawling paragraphs. Planning my posts before writing them – I list the headings first, then once I have 10, I write the detail.

Plus, it helps to enjoy the process of writing new posts.

What will be the main difference between the state of the blogosphere now and one year from now?

Other than new versions of blogging software, more social networks, greater use of Twitter, more people starting blogs but probably just as many people quitting blogging altogether… not much.
You know, some people have these crazy predictions about the future of the web, and I think too many people get caught up in the technology – hey, a new social network, ooh a software upgrade.
What I’d LIKE to see is people stopping to think WHY they want to blog instead of just jumping right in, then realising they have no readers because they don’t have a clear focus for their blog. I’d also like to see fewer blogs that assume everyone is a PHP developer who uses WordPress, and more blogs that write original content that isn’t only for techies.
Oh, and less of the “Web 2.0″ buzzwords, too. It’s the web, it can’t be versioned.

It’s a bit odd (but nice) to hear it from someone who actually is a php developer. You say on your sites that you okay with your age, still, I proved unable to figure out how old you are…
I may be a developer, but I’m still a user of other people’s applications, and I use my own, too. I can see why tech people go to tech conventions, but what they need to remember is that though technology may be cool and all that, you need to make it do something that people will want to use.
A big issue I have with social networks is that they all do the same stuff- you sign up, log in, you can make friends, send messages, maybe post blog entries… but there isn’t anything particularly compelling with the majority of these sites.
Part of the reason I got into IT was because I was sick of having IT people making excuses for things like bugs or missing features. Once you know how things work, you know when someone’s being up front with you or if they’re just making excuses.

You moved to a different continent to spend most of your days in front of a computer. Have you managed to keep your off-line friends, relations all the while?

Some of them yes, but life moves on, and it is very hard to stay in touch with friends when you move abroad. Even if I’d stayed in the UK, I’m sure we would’ve drifted apart, mainly due to finding a new job.

Facebook is a godsend, but there is only so much you can do when people don’t reply to messages.

Who is your blogging hero?

I’m not sure I can answer that question. Things seem to be in a period of transition at the moment, as quite a few of the blogs I was reading in 2008 have slowed down, disappeared, or haven’t kicked off since Xmas and New Year. I don’t read a lot of the bigger blogs because they seem to post more often than I can keep up with. I do read ProBlogger but he’s had a lot of guest posts, and a lot of them don’t interest me.

What I will say though is that interacting with other bloggers is what makes blogging so enjoyable. Reading and commenting on blogs is something I love to do. The true heroes of blogging are the ones I interact with each week.

More on Ben:

Turnip of Power’s interview in August, 2008

Jamie Harrop’s interview with Ben in September, 2008

ZsoltBalla.com » bloggers talk

Ben Barden: “I play to my strengths”