Staying Bullish On The Net With Jim from TheNetFool.Com!
Jim started TheNetFool in October 2007, coincidentally, that’s also when I started developing SmallFishBigMoney.Com. The Net Fool has grown and flourished in a relatively short space of time. When I think of The Net Fool, the first thing that pops to mind is stock market, making money online and last but definitely not least, the logo.
Thanks for your time Jim; it’s great to have you here at www.SmallFishBigMoney.com! You’re currently enrolled at Penn State, a very highly ranked university. Was the application and acceptance process difficult as a result? How’s the overall atmosphere at Penn State?
You know, I applied to around 10 colleges… so after awhile it’s all a blur. Definitely a challenge (and a headache) to apply to colleges, but once you do a few, the others aren’t too miserable. I really chose Penn State because of the Smeal College of Business, which is consistently ranked top-twenty in the nation. Being a part of “Nittany Nation” has its advantages… and the atmosphere is the best in the world without a doubt. Nothing like having tens of thousands of students trapped in the middle of the mountains with nothing to do, eh? 
How do you balance your blogging with university related work? Is it something easy to do? What are your tips and techniques for balancing life activities and successfully managing time?
This is probably the hardest thing to do for me. There’s a lot to do at Penn State, so while you may say that all college kids have “down time“… blogging really can only happen in spurts when I both don’t have classes and also my friends aren’t bugging me to throw around a football or whatnot. My best tip would be to wake up early for classes and do it then, something that I never have and probably never will do. It’s the best time of day by far. Otherwise, you have to do like I do and try to squeeze in posts between classes and before bed… which is not the most fun thing to do haha.
As an entrepreneur with a growing presence online, The Net Fool has a very distinct blog design and logo; how much value do you place on branding and brand recognition?
If you don’t spend a bit on your design from the get-go… you’ll be in a world of hurt and you probably aren’t going to see any significant amount of traffic. I was blogging hard for about 10 people for the first 5 months of my career as a blogger. Yeah, five months… ouch. That’s when I realized that something needed to be done. That’s the point where I went out and made what you see today with some outsourcing and some elbow grease, started actively marketing my stuff, and got my foothold in the industry. So branding is definitely the first step any serious blogger should take.
The Net Fool is a rapidly growing blog destination, what has influenced your RSS readership growth the most? Does social media play a large role in this?
I would say that social media plays a “limited at best” factor in my RSS development. I’ve never hit a front-page on Digg or anything like that, so I’ve basically gotten what is cheap and sporadic traffic from the typical social book-marking websites. Most of my growth has come from word of mouth, high-ranking Google results for niche terms (based on good content, not SEO tricks), and contests that encourage people to actually enter in the ol’ email address.
As a blogger, I know I always find myself developing, furthering and fostering the author and reader relationship. Do you believe this is important? Why?
Absolutely, I think of myself as an online financial advisor of sorts. I leave my contact page open to anyone who wants to drop me a line or ask a question, and boy do they. What’s good now is that I have so many posts that I can just respond with a link and “go here” to help them out. But I answer pretty much everything that comes my way and like to form solid relationships with my readers.
There’s really a lot you can do here to form a partnership with everyone that comes. And I do things like throw 500-subscriber parties and mix in random advertising giveaways throughout the month to keep the troops entertained when they aren’t asking me a question. Active commenting is another great way to show your appreciation for visits. I did a LOT of commenting in the early days, and that’s an essential part of getting off the ground.
How do you stay in touch with your readership? Do you find services like Twitter, Plurk, Pownce and FriendFeed valuable to use as a communication tool?
They are, I just don’t use them very much. I’ve started to try and use Twitter more as I go along (http://www.twitter.com/thenetfool) and do answer the direct messages and such that come through, but I’m really a lot more open to instant messaging and email communication above all others.
To date, what has been the most effective way to drive traffic to your blog and subsequently convert these visitors into fully fledged subscribers and potential customers?
Contests. There’s no hiding it, give people free stuff and they will come.
Which social media sites do you believe are the most valuable hence frequent more? Why?
I’m really not that big on social media websites, as you have probably picked up on haha, but the ones I use are Digg and StumbleUpon. I’m always on instant messenger or something, so I get people about every 15-30 minutes just shooting me a quick “stumble/digg this?” and I usually just do that from the get go. I like helping other people out, so I leave those two social media websites well traveled in order to drive some traffic around… I feel like it’s a win-win.
What is the best piece of advice you can give to SmallFishBigMoney.Com readers who want to grow their blog or site into something more than it already is?
Follow your dreams. Never surrender… never back down…just kidding! 
My real advice would be to get an RSS reader and just start subscribing to blogs like SFBM and TNF so that you can learn from the best. Don’t be afraid to use the contact pages to get to know the pro’s in whatever industry you are involved in, and feed off their success! When I got my first start, it was a lot of question-asking and learning that I took from other bloggers. I’m not afraid to say it… use those that already know things to your advantage!
Thanks Jim, It’s been great having you here at www.SmallFishBigMoney.com On behalf of the readers and I, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions and in turn enabling us to broaden our knowledge!
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Tags: branding, drive traffic, instant-messaging, make money online, Marketing, rss reader, seo, stock market, thenetfool
Posted in Interviews
Cool!
Thanks for the interview, I really like how you laid this post out. The graphics that you modified look fantastic!
Not sure about the sporadic “bold”ing of words… but hey, whatever works. haha. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to get to know me a bit better!
To the bolding, I find that my readership tend to prefer it when I bold text, especially keywords, it helps them find what they’re looking for and jump to the paragraphs which interest them the most; especially because most of them rarely ever read the entire post. Just one of those things that varies between readerships I guess. Anyway, thanks again, all the best at uni and we’ll speak again soon!
Great interview Fabien. After spending a lot of my time email-marketing my site, Jim was one of the few who followed up and took a good look at what I offered. In the end I purchased a great review from him for an even better price. I then subscribed to his RSS feed and have been enjoying his useful posts ever since.
Just a real example of what positive communication can do for your business and reputation.
Just one suggestion Fabien, I didn’t notice the “Follow up via email” link until i’d already submitted my comment. I think it’d be a good idea to move it up towards the form little.