Welcome to another edition of the BloggeRoundup Interview Series where I feature Inspirational stories and blogging advice from successful bloggers and marketers.
For this interview, I had the privilege of inviting Anil Agarwal, Founder of BloggersPassion.com.
I’d like to thank Anil for taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions.
Let’s now dive into the depth of interview with Anil Agarwal and find out what he has to say. Are you ready?
Let’s get started!
Interview With Anil Agarwal From Bloggers Passion
Here is the Inspirational & Insightful conversation with Anil Agarwal. I hope you would take some motivation from him to make money online.
Q.1) Please introduce yourself to Bloggeroundup readers?
Thanks a lot, Ashfaq for having me on your blog.
My Name is Anil Agarwal, a full-time blogger from Gurgaon (Haryana).
I’m the guy behind Bloggers Passion blog which I started in 2010.
With Bloggers Passion, I’m trying to help a newbie as well as experienced bloggers in taking their blog’s traffic and revenue to the next level. With continuous efforts, I was able to take my blog traffic to 1.3 Million page views and revenue to $106,000 plus in 2018. You can know more in detail about the same here.
Apart from Bloggers Passion, I recently started a web hosting related solutions project at HostingMonks.com which focuses on providing the best deals around hosting besides in-depth unbiased hosting related reviews.
Q.2) What inspired you most to start blogging?
I was inspired by the success of big blogging guys like Darren Rowse from Problogger.com and Amit Agarwal from Labnol.org.
But when I started, I never thought, I will be able to reach to a level where I’m today. Best thing I like about blogging is, you can do it while being in your comfort zone and the potential is really huge (There are some bloggers who are able to make even six-figure income from their blogs every month).
Once you start making a decent income from your blogs, it ultimately gives you enough motivation to work even harder to grow your blog.
Q.3) What are the major challenges you experienced while building Bloggers Passion?
Since we started Bloggers Passion in 2010, that was a long time back, so we experienced lots of challenged and I would say changes we need to make as well during this journey.
- During the first few years, we were writing very short contents and were not doing any kind of keyword research at all.
- When we started, we were accepting guest posts, but soon we realized, the quality people are providing through guest posts was not top notch. So we stopped accepting guest posts even from top guys in the blogging industry.
- Since we are heavily dependant on Google search traffic, so we have to make lots of adjustments at content and backlinks level while trying to keep Google animals happy.
- For the last three years, I would say, we happen to do keyword research for every new topic we work on and try to target some keywords in old posts as well while updating them.
- On BloggersPassion, we have 900 plus blog posts, out of which we are currently indexing 350 only. For the rest, we either deleted, redirected or no-indexed them. Lots of them were contributed by guest bloggers and a few of our own (which we did in the starting years of our blog) as well.
- Since 85% of our traffic from Google search, so we are relying heavily on Google traffic. To diversity that, we are trying our hands on other channels as well (Facebook Groups, Pinterest and Quora to name a few).
- Email marketing is one channel we have been trying for some time now without much success. I think we need to learn more about this channel.
- There are two more challenges (video blogging and paid advertising) we will need to overcome in the coming days to diversify our traffic and revenue sources.
Q.4) What strategies/sources do you use to monetize your blog?
Most of our revenue comes from affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, we are paid a commission for every sale which is generated through our affiliate links.
We are selling web hosting, WordPress themes & plugins, and SEO related affiliate products to our readers through our blog, social channels and through emails.
Q.5) What is the best way to get success in affiliate marketing?
Only promote high-quality products to your audience. You should try the product before making a decision about promoting to your audience. Don’t pick a product just because their payouts per sale are really high.
Once you have made a decision about a few products matching your blog niche, it’s time to write contents sharing problems faced by people and how those products can solve their problems.
Q.6) Which are the 5 blogging tools you can’t live without and why?
The 5 of my most favorite blogging tools are:
- SEMrush: Most of my SEO needs are fulfilled by this SEO tool.
- Drip: for sending email newsletters to my list. There are lots of automation options available.
- CrazyEgg: for better conversions and more engagement.
- Ahrefs: to verify traffic metrics in some cases (it’s also a great alternative to paid tools like SEMrush)
- Moz: to check DA, Spam links and highest authority pages on a website etc.
Q.7) How is your daily schedule? how many hours you work on your blog?
From Monday to Friday, I try to give 6 to 8 hours to my blogging efforts.
6 AM to 6:15 AM – checking emails (marking the ones I need to reply), sales and traffic stats
6:15 to 8:30 AM – Kids school related activities
11:30 AM to 3 PM – Blogging related activities
3 PM to 4: 30 – Lunch and 30 minutes walk
4:30 to 7:30 PM – back to blogging
10-15 min again towards the end of the day to check everything
I don’t work much (1-2 hours if I get time) during the weekends as I happen to be busy with offline activities.
Q.8) What is your goal for 2019?
I have set some blogging goals for 2019, which I’m trying to achieve:
- Taking Bloggers Passion revenue to $150,000 (from $106,000 in 2018)
- Increase Bloggers Passion total traffic to 2 Million pageviews
- Build an active list of 5K email subscribers
- Get more success with our Facebook Group and Quora efforts (Through not chasing any specific numbers here because engagement matters more)
- I will not be surprised if we get some success with web hosting solutions related project towards the end of this year.
Q.9) What are your favorite blogs and books?
You will be surprised to know I haven’t read a single book since completing my education in 2004. Recently I purchased ‘The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment’, but haven’t managed to open it (due to time and my own habits).
I happen to be on a few blogs from time to time, which I’m sharing below:
- Seroundtable and SearchEngineLand to keep a check on latest Google algos
- Backlinko blog for SEO related help
- SmartPassiveIncome to learn more revenue sources and tools I can give a try
Q.10) What are the tips you have for new bloggers?
Blogging is not a get rich scheme. You are not going to become rich overnight with blogging. It took me almost 9 years to go from 0 to $100,000 a year.
You need to put continuous efforts for a couple of years at least if you want to get success with your blog. So don’t give up, keep learning and implement the learnings on your blog.
Q.11) What do you think is the best service a blogger can provide to his readers?
By helping them get rid of the obstacles they are facing in their blogging journey. Those obstacles can be:
- They are not getting any traffic to their blogs. You need to advice in a way they are able to build some traffic at least on their blogs to keep their motivation high.
- Another big problem lots of bloggers face is monetization. You can educate them about working monetization methods through your blog contents.
- If you are really good in coding, you could help them with the technical issues they are facing on their blogs.
Q.12) How BloggeRoundup readers can stay in touch with you and any message for the blogging community here?
You can connect me on Facebook here and on Twitter here. if you have any question related to blogging, you can ask the same in our VIP Group on Facebook. You can also email me at info@bloggerspassion.com if needed.
Q.13) What is your final words to our readers?
If you want to get success with your blog, try to understand what top bloggers in your niche are doing and try to implement all of your learnings on your blog. Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can help you in understanding your competitor websites in a better way.
Try to analyze the impact of your actions. And keep improving your strategy by the time you haven’t achieved your goal.
Cheers!,
Anil Agarwal
Founder of BloggersPassion.com
Did you like the interview with Anil Agarwal? Do you have any questions for Anil? Do let us know in the comments.
