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In today’s interview we will be interviewing Jamie Spencer from Setupablogtoday.com 

1. Please tell us about yourself and how you got into blogging?

 My name is Jamie Spencer. I’m 32 years old and live in Cumbria, England which is in the North West of the country. Very rural and quiet, but I love it there. 

I used to work in London for a big investment bank. Getting up at 5:30am to get into work at 7am was a killer for me. I didn’t get home till 9pm and my life was just work, work, work. 

At weekends I was really into the outdoor pursuits like hunting, cross country running and survivalist training. It was this that I really wanted to do, but unfortunately it wasn’t going to enable me to quit my stressful but well paid job. Well that’s what I thought!

One day I stumbledupon a post that told the story of a guy who was in a similar situation and decided to set up a blog and affiliate amazon site, selling niche products. After I read this, I set up my first blog. I wrote about survival guides, reviewed survivalist equipment and blogging about outdoor pursuits that I was involved. Before I knew it, I was making good money on Amazon affiliate sales and pulling in over 50K unique hits per month. Within a year of starting my blog, I was making enough cash to quit my day job. 

2. Walk me through step-by-step process that you went through to get to where you are today?

There really isn’t a step by step process because if I were to list how it happened, it would make no sense. 

All I can say is that I kept at it. There were times when I wanted to give up when my first site was attracting zero traffic, but I knew it would eventually pick up. It takes time. 

If you continue to produce great content, then you will be rewarded with traffic from Google.

3. How would someone describe your blogging style?

I like to blog the same way as I speak to people. In a conversational tone, and in a way that anyone can understand what I am going on about.

This way people will come back to my site and want to read more, because its so easy to digest.

4. A lot of people are interested in blogging for some money earning potential. What are some tips for people interested in making money from blogging? 

• Don’t expect to make money. The most successful blogs started out as an extension to the author’s interests or hobbies. Concentrate on making your blog the best in your chosen niche. Then once you have the traffic and a good audience, look to monetize that traffic.

5. Name some of the bloggers whom you look up to and why?

Brian Dean @Backlinko has always been a great inspiration to me. I love his style, I love what he has to say on online marketing and it was him who inspired me to learn more about web promotion and SEO. He’s truly a great guy as well.

6. What tips can you recommend that you’d only share with a close friend about blogging?

When I’m looking for content to create for my blog, that will potentially get me traffic from new keyword sources, I use the tool SEMrush. It’s great at snooping on what other sites are ranking for and why they are ranking for that piece of content. It’s an endless source of content ideas for me.

7. How are you currently monetizing your blog traffic?

I don’t really monetize my main site, as most of my income comes from consulting and selling websites that I’ve had for years that make $60K a year + from amazon and various other affiliate schemes.

8. Can you give us three recommended tools/services that you use with your blogging?

As I just mentioned, SEMrush is awesome for snooping on your competition, and for getting ideas on what keywords to target.

SERPwoo is also pretty damn good for finding profitable niches and for understanding the SERPs within those niches a lot better than just typing in queries to Google.

9. What is next for you? What can we expect in 2015?

I’m planning on pushing out some more awesome infographics that help people to make their digital lives a lot easier. Things like this social images cheat sheet that I created for people who are well into promoting their brand on Twitter and Facebook.

10. How can readers of my blog get in touch with you?

You can find me on Twitter @setupablogtoday

Email me at hello@setupablogtoday.com or head over to setupablogtoday.com and leave me a message there or comment on one of my posts.

Thank you Jamie for taking the time to do this interview. Make sure to connect with Jamie and leave a comment below. 

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