Interview With Tina Tobin From LuvemOrLeavem.Com

[ad#Google Adsense]

Interview With Tina Tobin

This is the first interview from my friends, a part of interview series. This time I bring you an interview with my friend Tina Tobin from LuvemOrLeavem.

LuvemOrLeavem is interesting because its special niche, its about relationship. This day we need to learn to create or manage good relationship with people around us, before you enjoy the articles and videos on LuvemOrLeavem, please enjoy the interview.

1. Please introduce your self. Where are you from, your daily activities, etc.
Tina Tobin of LuvemOrLeavem. I’m currently based in San Francisco, California where I run my website from my home while caring for my 2 sons, 2 dogs and one husband.

2. Please tell us a story behind your blog.
The blog started out as an additional feature for our relationship advice site, but as it grew it is almost a separate bit related business. Users create the content on most of my site, the blog is a place for my community to get to know me. I do my best to express my personality in my relationship posts, especially when they are topics that many sites are covering. Many of our readers say that they feel like they know me, so I guess it’s working.

3. What is you Blogging Goal?
My goal this year is to connect with more bloggers especially within my niche. I have a community of other relationship bloggers that have all been working together to cross promote, and this has been very successful. It’s easy to view these bloggers as competition, but most readers read several blogs on the same topic, so I think that we can accomplish more together than separately.

4. Do you plan your blog?
I put a lot of time into planning my blog. I like my posts to consist of short lists, so if I have a topic that I don’t have enough lists items for, then I keep it as a draft and wait until I have more to say. I try to always have 3 or 4 potential topics in mind in case some of them don’t sound as good once I start the actual writing.

5. People said niche blog is better, do you believe that?
I think that if you want to make money, then you need to have a niche. I know bloggers that have personal blogs where they write about anything that appeals to them. They are wonderful writers, but they make almost no money because they do not have a niche that appeals to advertisers or that would make a good fit for affiliate products.

6. Do you make money from your blog? If yes, how?
Yes. We started with Google AdSense, but now we only deal directly with advertisers to place ads so that I have more control over what appears on my site. I’m also an affiliate for a few e-books that have been selling well, but it has been a long process to understand how to convert visitors into sales when they click on my affiliate links.

7. What is your favorite article? is because you love it or is because the article bring you much visitor, or because its on Google SERPs?
My favorite article is Why Won’t He Marry Me? http://bit.ly/ccs4TI It ranks well in the SERPS, but it is really a timeless article, and we still get comments on it from time to time. It is always a question on many women’s minds, and it continues to bring visitors to our site.

8. Do you have an article on Google SERPs, its natural or with SEO?
Our articles tend to rank within the first two pages for our key words after a few months. I try to change my title slugs to be more SEO friendly, and we try to pick good tags but I never choose a topic based on search engines. Our articles are linked to from many related sites, so content over SEO is definitely what works for us.

9. Do you agree blogging is dead?
I don’t think that blogging is dead, but I think a blog needs to be an important piece of your business, which is different than a blog being your entire business.

10. What do you think about SEO and Social Media, can they work together to help our blog? How?
I think that we all need to have a presence on social media, but I am careful to not spend too much time there. We need to remember that it is more valuable to have 100 people on your mailing list than to have 1000 followers on Twitter. Social media profiles are showing up more and more in search engines, but I’d still rather have my best content rank well rather than my profiles.

11. How do you promote your blog?
My background is in traditional marketing, so I still focus on getting coverage in the press. I have been interviewed on national television and have been featured in magazines and newspapers. If the media outlet that covered me also adds my interview to their website (some have, some haven’t) then it is doubly valuable.

12. What is your main traffic source?
My subscribers responding to content updates are my biggest source of traffic. Second is Google. For new bloggers, I would recommend BloggersBase, I get between 10,000 and 12,000 visitors per month from them, and it is quality traffic that stays on the site.

13. Any blogging tips for beginner?
The biggest mistake I see new bloggers make is to not post within their niche. This is important not only to rank well for keywords, but also because you will build a base of regular readers if they know what to expect. Long term this is also critical to making money with your blog.

14. Any tips for making money online?
Build your list. This was my biggest mistake as I built more and more traffic. I was so happy about having so many visitors that I didn’t think about how they would be able to find me in the future or how to get updates to them. If you get them to subscribe to a newsletter, then you start to get some control over bringing traffic to your site.

15. Any favorite blogger? How come?
Well, of course you Latief, who I have seen grow by leaps and bounds. I also like Lynn Terry of ClickNewz. She was already a big and successful blogger when I found her blog, but her specialty is turning websites that cost you money into websites that make you money, so bloggers at any level of success can learn something from her.

16. Any suggestion a blogger for an interview?
Francisco at iBlogzone.com He is very knowledgeable and a very supportive blogger.

17. Any hobby or something not related with blog you want to share? Favorite Band, Movie or something?
My husband’s job moves our entire family every two years, so I’ve lived all over the US. I guess this is kind of related to my blog since a website is the only business that you just pack up and move without losing the progress you’ve made.

Thanks Tina for the interview.

Guys, if you want to connect with Tina, you can find her on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks