Seth Waite is an author at one of the most exciting websites you can visit if your interested in learning about becoming a more effective blogger.

Seth is a married guy who’s working his way through law school.  He’s incredibly smart and he loves helping people grow and develop their skills as bloggers.

I would recommend Blogussion to absolutely anyone. Seth and his blogging partner Alex provide terrific articles, tutorials, resources and discussions all wrapped in an amazing template and a great community feel.

The Interview Begins…

Me: You run an amazing website full of great resources for bloggers called blogussion. What’s with the unusual name?  How did you come up with it?

Seth: My partner Alex Fraiser came up with name of our blog, Blogussion. It is the combination of Blog + Discussion. We felt like bloggers needed a place to come and learn about blogging in a fun community. So our name is both a goal of ours and the mantra we try to blog by.

Blogussion Is A Fun, Growing Community

Me: You mentioned that it’s your goal to allow bloggers to learn and grow in a fun, enjoyable community setting.

As I’ve visited your blog I’ve really felt that community feel. I find loads of comments with people sharing their own thoughts and experiences. I’ve also noticed that you and Alex respond to nearly every comment. What does it take to develop a community like that? What’s your secret?

Seth: Our secret is spending time on the little things. Alex has spent lots of time with designing our blog to maximize the users experience for learning and participating. We have tried to make every detail of the design user focused and community oriented.

Another thing we do, like you mentioned, is respond to almost every comment made on our blog. We read the comments and really try to think about what was said. Then we respond. Often when we are asked a question we go out of our way to find an answer and either post it in our comments or email the commentator the response. These details go a long way with our readers and develop a community feel.

I personally try to email new commentators with a unique look at their blog and perhaps some articles I think they would find useful on Blogussion. I also thank them for commenting and ask them if they have any questions. Over time we have gotten to know a lot of our readers on a much more personal basis.

I use Twitter to connect with other people quite regularly. If I see questions about blogging, wordpress, thesis theme, or other topics I can help with I always send a tweet. Over time I have built great relationships with these tweeters and many have become faithful readers. Once you have a community the nice thing is that they start to promote your blog for you, and a referral goes a long way

Me: I’ve noticed that you don’t have advertising on your website. Are you not trying to make any money while blogging or are you monetizing your online efforts in some other way?

Seth: Our method for monetizing is more subtle and focused on long term success. By minimizing our ads we keep our readers on our blog much longer. If you notice as well we do have one advertisement on our blog, but it is a banner that rotates through ads for our “own” content. This way we can introduce readers to our own content and keep them learning on our blog. The more useful our blog is too our readers the more likely they are to keep coming back. Its also a fundamental element to our community building.

Our monetizing method currently is through relevant and useful affiliate sales

We also are releasing very soon our own product. We get asked through email, tweet, and comments, weekyl for offers to buy Blogussion’s design so we are now offering something very similar! A Thesis Theme skin with fully customizable features and the style of Blogussion. We think Thesis theme is great and wanted to provide a fantastic resource for our readers. We will be releasing this theme in almost no time so keep a look out!

Me: We sure will. Will you be offering an affiliate program with your coming theme release?

Seth: We will be offering an affiliate program so not only will it be a great product to get for either your current blog or any new projects, but its also a great way to earn money. We do not have all the details to release now, but your commission as an affiliate will be competitive!

Me: What’s your ultimate goal for Blogussion? Where do you see this site a year from now or three years from now?

Seth: Right now Alex is only 16 and still in high school (amazes me everyday) and I am currently in law school so we both are very busy outside of blogging. Our goal over the next year is to continue to build our community and produce more content.

We are also looking into providing a few more tools and products for our readers. Its our 1 year Birthday in December so we are very excited with where we have come. Our growth has been very organic and besides spending $50 one time to test advertising we have never paid for traffic.

We are currently below 24,000 in the Alexa rank and are reaching our first year goals quite satisfactorily. For this next week we want to continue our organic growth and reach out to many more bloggers. Our goals for the future after that are to be able to perhaps work full-time (the two of us) in 2012 when we graduate from high school and law school. We are excited about our prospects and are in no rush to earn. Our main goal is to build our blog.

Seth: First off I would like to thank you again for this opportunity and also let your readers know what a fantastic blog they are reading right now. You have done great work and really enjoy not only getting to know you but also seeing what excellent content you produce. A lot of my favorite posts from around the web come from this blog.

Saying that, I also think your readers have an excellent chance to compliment the things they are learning here with additional ideas and community members on Blogussion. Know that you are always welcome to join in on the conversation and be apart of a thriving blog community at Blogussion.com.

Me: I completely agree.  Keep up the awesome work. I’m looking forward to the exciting future of blogussion.

Group Participation

If you haven’t noticed, I have a great deal of respect for Seth and for the work he’s doing over at Blogussion.  If you haven’t already done so then you really need to check them out.

Seth also mentioned that he would be reading all of the comments on this interview and working to respond to them so let’s take advantage of that and let’s learn from him.  What questions do you have for Seth?  What questions do you have about blogging, writing, online relationships, marketing or anything else?