Bloggers Face-Off: Joost de Valk vs. Satish Gandham

As Eminem would say, guess who is back?

We got a bunch of applications for the Bloggers Face-Off last week, so hopefully we will be able to keep this column going regularly in 2009. I will aim initially for one new face-off every two weeks (so two per month).

Joost de Valk is a good friend mine, and a terrific SEO and WordPress developer. He blogs at Yoast.com, which is a must read for anyone interested in those two topics.

Satish Gandham is another popular tech blogger. GeniusHackers.com, his main gig, has just crossed the 7,000 RSS subscribers mark, and it covers a wide range of topics, from software to blogging tips.

We got a new table format too, which gives more room for the answers. Thanks Glen for that.

Joost de Valk	Satish Gandham
1. How many hours per day do you dedicate to the blog?
From 2 to 4 hours per day	I spend most of the time on line, chatting with fellow bloggers, reading other blogs and tweaking my blogs design. I can not exactly say “I spend 2 hours or 3 hours on my blog”
2. How many page views does your blog get daily?
Around 10,000	From 8 to 10,000 per day (70% of my traffic is organic)
3. Do you make money with it? From what sources?
Yes, about $4-5k a month, from direct ads and affiliate programs	I make around 400USD per month from links sales and direct advertising. GeniusHackers.Com is banned from Adsense for having some posts related to hacking
4. How long did it take for you to reach 1,000 subscribers?
Long	Initially I dint concentrate on increasing the feed count. You can take it to be around 15 months. My feed count raised from 500 to 7100 since December though
5. Do you think one needs to post daily to be successful?
No, being unique is way more important	I don’t think so, but you must consistently post quality content
6. What is the biggest blogging mistake you did?
Doing paid posts in the beginning of my blogging career. It’s a waste of valuable time and it pushes away you readers. I now only do sponsored posts when people have a topic that is truly relevant for my readers	My biggest blogging mistake was not having a .Com domain in the beginning. You can read more about it here
7. Twitter is a distraction or a good promotional tool?
A good promotional tool and a GREAT way to have meaningful conversations	I don’t tweet much, so its not a distraction for me. It sure is a good promotion tool if you have good number of followers
8. Do you think AdSense makes a blog look unprofessional?
Depends on how it’s used, but I’m not a fan	I don’t think so, adsense ads are neat and unobtrusive if used properly
9. If you could give an advice for a novice blogger, what would it be?
Only do it cause you love it, not because you make money from it	Write quality and original content. Learn some basic html and php if you want to have total control over your blog look and functionality
10. What is the best way to increase website traffic?
Write relevant, interesting and truly unique stuff / tools etc. Just give people something they can use or think about	The best way to increase traffic is to write good content, apart from that use keywords in your post and highlight the keywords with strong tags