David Risley is a rare breed in the internet marketing / pro-blogging world. Knowledgable, friendly, doesn’t act like a know-it-all and is an all around nice guy, with family at the forefront of everything he does. I love him for that!
He has had success after success online, including his extremely popular Blog Masters Club and has been a full-time, 6-figure blogger for the last 6 years (although blogging for 10 years in total). In one year he even made over $200,000 with just two blogs. Yes, thats right – just TWO blogs. That’s 100 grand a pop. Nice!!!
Along with having dinner with David, I was able to corner him for this short, but jam-packed-with-tons-of-awesome-info conversation, at BlogWorld last year, and I’m sure you’re going to enjoy the resources, tips and tactics that he lays down for any aspiring blogger wanting to monetize their site, and especially for those that are thinking about getting a membership site up and running any time soon.
Throughout the course of our chat myself and David chat on, amongst other things:
- How David juggles being a ‘Work at home Dad’, getting things done and keeping focused.
- David’s success in membership sites and why he prefers this money making avenue to AdSense.
- Tips on how to build an online community from scratch.
- Getting the balance between creating the content and monitoring a forum for a paid-for community.
- David’s favorite WP plugins and other tools to start-up and launch membership sites.
- His reasons for attending conventions like BlogWorld – networking.
Play or download the audio of this VBL Podcast (below) to listen to it on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, too!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:18 — 14.1MB)
David was also very kind to allow me to publish a guest post on his blog a while back, on the subject of How to Avoid Bloggers Burnout, which seemed to go down pretty well, with 50-odd comments.
It seems that everywhere I turn online right now people are talking about pro-blogging and in particularly about membership sites and programs. I am glad that I held out on publishing this interview until now, as it is more than relevant right now.
My thanks to David for taking the time, and if you’d like to spend a little more time yourself getting to know him, be sure to check out his blog, follow him on Twitter and download his excellent, and free ‘Blogger Blueprint‘ guide, too!
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I look forward to listening to this when I get a moment. I enjoy these interviews because I learn about other uber successful bloggers.
When you line up these interviews I assume you have a relationship with them beforehand and then ask them for time to do an interview?
Hi Benny
Glad you like the Podcast chats, they are great fun to record / film and I also learn a lot from these guys!!!
In regards to setting them up – it actually depends. I met a lot of guys at BlogWorld, which certainly helped, but there have been some people that I have never met, and perhaps just interacted with online very briefly via Twitter, or similar. However, there are some, like HARO founder Peter Shankman, that I just ‘cold emailed’ out of the blue, and he accepted…
The fact is that I get ‘out there’ and I work on this Podcast properly. I push it, I market it, and thats the reason why I get great guests and thats the reason why I get thousands of downloads every episode!
Thanks for dropping by and for downloading, too!
C
Another good interview, Chris. Good to hear David’s thoughts about membership plug-ins like Amember and Wishlist, as well as forum CMSs like phpBB, vBulletin and BuddyPress.
Hi Rob
Glad you enjoyed it, buddy – along with the almost 600 other people that have downloaded it in the last 24 hours! Wow.
David is a great, great blogging mind… I learn a lot from his blog myself.
Thanks for stopping by.
C
Hey Chris, I only got around to listen to this episode now (I’m a little behind and go through iTunes).
Let me start out by saying that I love your podcast although these BlogWorld interviews are a bit short
In the interview you actually ask about what a newbie should do, and therefore I thought I would do a shameless plug, because I’ve written a totally 60+ page ebook on how to setup a membership site (without the help of expensive developers or designers…. even without VA’s
).
You do have to signup for my list to get it, but you can always unsubscribe and I do think it provide great value (at least that’s the feedback I’m getting). So if anyones interested, just head over to my site.
Cheers
Rasmus
Hi Rasmus
Thanks for the comment and the kind words. Yeah, I agree – the BW chats are shorter than even I would like them to be, but at that Expo everyone is rushing around – so the most you can nail anyone down for is 15mins or so. But, nonetheless – worth while, obviously!
In regards to your link, it was moderated out by my VA (she’s strict!), because this was your first comment at the blog. We do allow links, on occasion, but only if they are from people we ‘know’ already, and relevant, obviously.
So, please feel free to hang out with us a little more in the future, to build our friendship a little.
Thanks again, and keep rockin’.
Nice blog!
C
Sure, no problem (it was a shameless plug after all
)
Thanks for understanding, buddy.
Looking forward to communicating more with you.
C