Interview with Juuso — GameProducer.net

We are please to announce that our very first fea­tured inter­view here at Blo­gus­sion goes to a blog­ger that deserves the utmost respect. Juuso, the blog­ger behind GameProducer.net has run a suc­cess­ful blog for nearly 4 years!

His blog­ging skills and pro­mot­ing tech­niques are pros that can­not be over­looked by anyone..

So, given Juuso’s vast expe­ri­ence — we requested if he would be inter­ested in an inter­view. His reply was very prompt and the answers to some of these ques­tions will really inter­est even the most of narrow-minded bloggers!

On behalf of Blo­gus­sion, and our read­ers — We thank Juuso for allow­ing this inter­view and wish him the very best for years to come!

1) Tell us a bit about your­self, who’s the masked blog­ger behind GameProducer.net?

My full name is Juuso Hieta­lahti which is pretty dif­fi­cult to pro­nounce or remem­ber… so I’ll just use my “game pro­ducer” nick wher­ever I go. I’m a guy who enjoys mak­ing games and write about mak­ing games. My short bio can be found from my web­site (http://www.gameproducer.net/about/).

2) When and Why did you first start blog­ging? How long have you been run­ning GameProducer?

I started blog­ging (just a moment… check­ing exact date…) in Novem­ber 24^th, 2005. That’s when I made my first blog post to Game Pro­ducer web­site and that’s actu­ally the date the site was launched too.

3) Game­Pro­ducer is one of the most tar­geted and spe­cific blogs I’ve seen in my entire life, do you blog about it because it’s your pro­fes­sion? Good Pay or it’s just your pas­sion­ate hobby?

Not sure if it’s so tar­geted, but the main rea­son I blog is that I enjoy it very much. It’s a pas­sion that has been turn­ing into a pretty sweet profits.

In ret­ro­spect it was a good ser­vice… but my approach was hor­ri­ble. I’m approach­ing sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions so that if I’m pro­mot­ing some­thing in my blog (like a new ser­vice or affil­i­ate or some­thing), I make sure that it’s in my read­ers’ inter­est, and make sure I won’t pro­mote it too many times in a row in my blog.

5) In con­trast to all the hype about social media, what do you think about Twit­ter, Face­book and Social Book­mark­ing? Has it worked for you?

Waste of time comes to my mind For most of the part Twit­ter and other time-wasters are noth­ing but a bur­den. I’m using some of them, but I’d rather use sim­ple email to net­work with peo­ple, and email lists when approach­ing peo­ple. I don’t use them for pro­mot­ing, but seems that my site read­ers are actively using them to pro­mote so it’s all cool.

Bot­tom line is that you need to be aware of them, and use some of them… but make sure you aren’t wast­ing time on them

6) In your per­sonal opin­ion, what is the best way for blog­gers to earn money from their blogs?

Tough one. I think too many peo­ple are focused on “mak­ing money”. I think blogs are excel­lent medi­ums for other oppor­tu­ni­ties such as net­work­ing with other peo­ple (I now have con­tacts from some of the world’s largest gam­ing com­pa­nies thanks to my blog) and job oppor­tu­ni­ties (I’ve got some offline & online job offers through my blog), but to solely “focus on mak­ing money” sounds bit bad. These deals can make you much more than any ad pro­gram ever.

Also, one must real­ize that it’s not you who “makes money”. Money is not made… it’s given by some other peo­ple to you, because you gave them some­thing. Money is much like “sig­nal of trust”. If I trust you enough and like your con­tent enough, I can give money to you.The golden rule applies here: the more you give, the more you get.

I think blog­gers should try dif­fer­ent ways to mon­e­tize their blog: adver­tis­ing, link sales, reviews, affil­i­ates… what­ever. I think it’s much about test­ing “what fits your style”. It’s good for learning.

Adver­tis­ing and affil­i­ates can be tricky. Reviews can be pretty good (but requires bit of work). Link sales can be good but can get you trou­ble (you can get Google slapped, and it’s bit bad)

But, since you asked the “best way” I’d say: sell your own product.

7) Now we all know your suc­cess story on Dig­i­tal­Point, where you told us hon­estly, how to reach a wide range of read­ers within weeks — could you elab­o­rate on what exactly you did?

Hmm… I think I’ve explained the major points in the DP thread — the biggest thing was my own deci­sion to say that “37 uniques is not enough, I’m going for 10,000 uniques per month” (and at that time it seemed totally impos­si­ble for me).

To sat­isfy our yearn­ing read­ers, I’m going to throw you a some­what rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. Here goes; do you come to a stage where you real­ize that you are “suc­cess­ful”?

Well, after get­ting to that 10,000 uniques of course

Just jok­ing… we all have to define what “suc­cess” means for us. I have my own goals and when I’m reach­ing some “suc­cess”, I sim­ply pick new goals. There’s always room for growth.

9) Lastly, if you could give out one tip to a new blog­ger — what would it be?

Focus. By focus I mean that you gotta decide exactly what you want, and take steps every day to go towards your goal. Focus, and leave irrel­e­vant projects and things aside.

(And of course remem­ber: if it’s not fun doing it, why bother at all…)

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