An Interview with Paul Crowe of SpiceUpYourBlog

Learn the basics of blogging and web development from the Guru himself, Paul Crowe. He started his first blog in 2006 and has not looked back since. A professional blogger with over 500 inspiring and helpful articles, He is the owner of the popular, 

SpiceUpYourBlog.com. With an impressive PageRank of 5 and a readership of more than 300,000, the blog is one of the most widely read blogs on the web.  

A non-computer guy from the start, he confesses “I have never taken a class even at school on computers never mind studying it”. The following is an interview excerpt on his methods and his story.

An introduction

Mohit - You have blogged about nearly everything under the web umbrella from AdSense, design, gadgets, Jquery to templates, themes and Social networks. What is the genre that interests you and is it different from the genre that your readers like to read?

Paul - At the start I focused a lot on Blogger and I learned blogger design so well I could almost write a template from scratch. So I do enjoy creating blogger gadgets or design edits. We also have a lot of readers that use Blogger so those posts are always popular.

On Blogging

Mohit - You have been blogging since July 2009, you must have had hardships. What is it that keeps you going?

Paul - "At the start it was just the fact I was helping people and learning so much along the way. I started the site just to do that, help people. For the first year I actually had no ads on the site at all, it was not about money. I actually think that helped the site grow at the start, the fact there was no ads.

Now I guess I rely on the income from my websites so money has become a small bit of the driving force but knowing you are helping people every day is amazing."

Mohit - What is your all-time favorite post?

Paul - Wow that's a tough question. I guess on Spice Up Your Blog the post that really launched the site was on How To Remove The Navbar on Blogger. It was one of the first posts published in September 2009 and it sent a lot of traffic which was great. So in a way it showed me that I could have a successful blog.

Mohit - You have a Google page rank checker on your website; in your opinion how important is a Google PageRank for any website?

Paul - You know a lot of people play down the importance of Page Rank and it is not something people should get hung up on. But it is still important; when it comes down to direct ad sales it's important. People looking to contribute posts to websites also look at Page Rank. 

So it has its place but I can honestly say when I see this question I checked our Page Rank and it's the first time I have in probably six or more months.

On Social Networking

Mohit - You have near 6000 followers on Facebook and 1300 in your Google+ circles, so how important is Social Media in comparison to Search Engine Optimization for a website?

Paul - For me SEO is more important, but the gap between the importance of each is closing all the time though.

Finally,

Mohit - Having been in the blog atmosphere for so long, you must have seen the rise and fall of many bloggers and blogs. What advice do you give to passionate amateur bloggers?

Paul - Simply be patient and take (even seek out) advice from experienced bloggers. But patience is the key; you won't have big traffic or make money from blogging straight away.

Further,

Paul was fun, but we have another blogger with an experience in non-English blogs, take the interview with Vinay at TechPrevue

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