I’ve always been exciting about using Amazon.com, whether it’s to make money through their affiliate program or to launch an ebook or a real book. They have millions of customers on their site and their name is a trusted brand that no one questions. In short, working with Amazon in any form is quite powerful.
A few months ago I was looking into the business of ebooks and how to make money by selling digital books through Amazon. One of the best sites and guides I came across was the one from Eric Lass over at Shuckabuck. I did focus a lot of time and effort into releasing my “Blogging Tips: Confessions of a Six Figure Blogger” book, I didn’t get to really spend any time working on releasing other short books and guides… however Eric continues to do very well in this niche, which makes him a perfect candidate for today’s “Meet the Bloggers” interview.
1.) Please tell us about yourself and how you got into blogging?
I found out about blogging and affiliate marketing through a magazine article back in 2008 from Entrepreneur magazine. The article was written on John Chow and he “make money by teaching people how to make money”.
That article got me to read his blog almost daily and finally start my own blog – shuckabuck.com. Which at that time was a blog about online poker. I did a lot of online poker from about 2002 till 2006, and I used shuckabuck.com as a way to refer people to other poker rooms and training aids.
I later found out about search engine optimization and getting traffic to my website, so I started doing SEO and created about 50 new sites from 2009 until about 2011.
2.) What is the focus of your blog and why did you choose that niche?
My focus was online poker until the United States Government shut down all the sites. My blog is now about kindle ebooks and self publishing for the most part – my little affiliate websites still make a little income, but most of my revenue comes from kindle books now.
I chose kindle books because that’s what I actually know a lot about and I can teach other people what I do.
3.) How are you currently monetizing your blog traffic? (adsense, product, paid ads)
I sell an eBook on shuckabuck.com called Publishing for Profit which teaches people a step-by-step “formula” to create best selling kindle books.
4.) What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started blogging?
Oh boy, everything. I wish I knew everything I know now back in 2008. But in order to get started you just have to do it, some of the stuff you can learn from a couple youtube videos, other things you may have to purchase a training course or “learn on the job”.
5.) What are three blogs that you visit almost daily?
I don’t visit any blogs almost daily anymore mainly because their isn’t much I can learn from them since I’m doing kindle stuff and other people are still in the SEO and affiliate marketing world.
I do recommend checking out LostBallinHighWeeds.com – he has some very interesting stuff. I would also recommend checking out NichePursuits.com and SmartPassiveIncome.com.
6.) Can you give us three recommended tools/services that you use with your blogging? (search tools, keywords, content, social)
First – Keyword Researcher (keywordresearcher.org)
This tool I still use quite a bit even though I don’t do much as far as “blogging” on a daily basis. The tool is THE BEST for finding long tail keywords from the google auto suggestions.
Second – SocialOomph.com or Hootsuite.com
Those 2 tools will let you manage and schedule your social media stuff pretty easily.
Lastly, I recommend hiring someone to do your backlinking for you so you can focus on creating awesome content and marketing your blog. The last thing you want to be doing is creating backlink articles when you can growing your facebook page or marketing your products and services.
7.) What advice would you have for someone who is just starting with their first blog?
Start now – ask questions later. It’s fine if you don’t know exactly what to do – you just need to know that you do need to start. The earlier you start, the better off you will be later.
8.) What’s the best advice or tip you’ve discovered about blogging since getting started?
Quality over Quantity. Create a valuable blog, then create valuable services or products and people will come back, and eventually the search engines will like your site. Focus on quality content 100% of the time.
9.) If you only had $100 to start a new blog, how would you use it?
After hosting you wouldn’t have much left, but other than that, I would use about 50% to get some facebook fans so you can get instant traffic when you post new stuff.
I would then use the other 50% for your first few months of an email marketing service like Aweber.
10.) How can readers of the blog get in touch with you? (social/blog urls)
They can contact me at shuckabuck.com using the contact form, at facebook.com/shuckabuck, or on twitter @shuckabuck.
Thanks again Eric for taking the time to share your advice and story with the Blogging Tips community. If you would like to learn about other bloggers and how they are finding success online, be sure to read through our blogger interview series.
