Interview: Stan Schroeder of Franticindustries

Stan Schroeder is the man behind the very popular blog FranticIndustries, which is one of my personal favourites. His quality articles on topics such as Web 2.0, Social Networking and IT and Technology Trends has brought him fame and glory, and his blog is widely recognized as one of the authorities on Internet Trends. I was lucky enough to get the chance to ask Stan a few questions about him and his blog, so be sure to read on to see what he had to share with us.

Lars-Christian Hey Stan. I'm happy that you agreed to take some time to answer a couple of questions. I am sure our readers will be thrilled to hear what the author of such a popular blog as Franticindustries has to share. Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, like where you are from and what you do for a living? Stan I'm a professional IT journalist and editor living and working in Zagreb, Croatia. I'm writing for both online and paper publications, and although I actually have quite a lot of work to do every day, I've somehow managed to start a site of my own. It's been interesting for me because it's a chance to write in English, among other things. Lars-Christian FranticIndustries focuses mainly on social bookmarking and internet trends. I think it's safe to say that like many of us, you're a "web 2.0" addict! Can you share what your favourite web services are these days? Stan On a daily basis I use Gmail, Netvibes, Google Calendar, Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Techmeme, Daily Rotation. I'd say these are essential to my work; I could live without them, but it would take time to find new sources of information and adapt to them. Of course, I have many other favorites that I use occasionally; some of them are Geni, Twitter, MyBlogLog, Bubbl.us, Google Maps, Yahoo! Pipes. Lars-Christian Do you use any of the "web 2.0" services, like for instance Digg to actively promote your blog? Stan Not really. Most of the traffic I've received from sites such as Digg - and it has been considerable - has come spontaneously. Here and there I notice a good spot to post my article, for example I've posted a couple over at news.ycombinator.com just to introduce my site to new readers. But that's nothing like a concentrated effort to actively promote my site. Luckily, many people have found my site to be a good source of information, and support it actively by linking to my articles or submitting them to social content sites. I'd like to thank all of them for their support. Lars-Christian I read a lot of blogs around the web, and quite often I see your name popping up and being mentioned at other, respected blogs. This indicates that you are a pretty well connected man throughout the blogging circles. Can you share some ideas and suggestions with our readers on how they can best approach other bloggers in their niche to make new contacts? Stan Heh, thinking that I'm 'well connected' is a wrong assumption. I've started FranticIndustries completely anoynomously, I didn't even try to use any of my local IT connections to promote it. I wanted to start from scratch. All of the links you've seen to my site have come naturally, because those people liked what they've read. However, every time after I've been linked to by a big blog or other type of publication, I have written a polite e-mail thanking them for their support. Most of the answers I've received were very nice and supportive. I realize that this might be a hard road to take for many. If getting links in the first place is a problem, I can only suggest the very basics: comment intelligently on sites whose attention you'd like to get, and occasionally e-mail the owners, but only when you really have killer content. Be quick and to the point; don't ask for anything; just politely point out to your article. Sometimes it works great. Lars-Christian If you don't mind sharing, which methods are the most lucrative for generating revenue with your own blog? Stan This is a tough question for me, because my site is not generating revenue at this point. But there is a good reason for it. Most bloggers won't like it, but this is my approach: I deliberately chose not to have ads on the site in the first 3-4 months. If you see some AdSense it's either going to charity (via Socially Given), or I'm just experimenting a little. Why do I do this? Well, I don't want to chase people away with excessive ads. While some may consider my site quite successful, especially given its age (less than 4 months), I'm still not nearly where I want to be, so I'm still at the phase of gathering audience. I do plan to monetize the site in the future, but I'll make sure that the ads are related to my topic, and not excessive. Lars-Christian Can you share with us some of the tools you find to be the most valuable for you as a blogger? I do for instance know that you're a member of MyBlogLog - have you found it to be useful for your blog? Stan Akismet is invaluable. Without it I'd be drowning in spam. Also, anything that can show you your traffic stats. Google Analytics, or Sitemeter, for example. I would go so far as to say that carefully watching your statistics is the single most effective way of making your blog better. Since you're asking about MyBlogLog, it's a nice tool, but I have certain reservations about it. Let's just say that if the developers lead it in the right direction, it might be great, but it could also become quite useless. Lars-Christian As far as I can tell, you don't monetize FranticIndustries very heavily except for a few AdSense ads here and there. Would you say that blogging is mostly a hobby for you, or do you make an enjoyable income from it? Stan As far as income goes, I've answered a couple of questions above. Currently, the income does not exist. Since we're on the topic, I'd like to add that I'm not the marketing type, so I'd gladly hand over the advertising business to a blog network - as long as they promise not to overdo it. However, that doesn't mean that what I do is a hobby. I take my work at FranticIndustries very seriously. In 4 months time, I've written several hundred articles, most of them quite long and well researched. I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't love what I write about, so in that sense you can call it a hobby. But I also see it as being in the business of delivering information timely and in a professional manner. Lars-Christian Do you run any other blogs apart from FranticIndustries? Stan I have two sites completely done, and ready to go public. However, at this time I cannot devote enough of my time to them, and I'm not going to even start if I can't deliver what I intend to. Perhaps I'll seek the help of additional writers. Lars-Christian I've also made a habit of asking everyone I interview about this, so as a final question, how important do you feel that the design of a blog is for its chances of becoming popular? Stan Very important. Good design won't help you much to get popular, but bad design will ruin your chances to get popular. Even worse than bad design is generic design. To every aspiring blogger out there, my first recommendation is: think about branding, and think about design, and do them well before you even start. If you can't do it yourself, find someone to do it for you.

Thanks a lot to Stan for taking the time to answer these questions for us, and hopefully you enjoyed reading what he has to to say about blogging as much as I did. If you like our interviews feature, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed, as we are constantly trying to get in touch with some of the most prominent bloggers out there, and we will post them on a regular basis.