Interview with Jeffro2pt0 - Jeff Chandler

You have interviewed a lot of people for Bloggers talks and various podcasts. What techniques did you learn to make an interview compelling?

The best technique I have for conducting an interview is knowledge.  Out of all the interviews I have conducted whether it be by text, voice, or video, the best ones have been those I have background knowledge in. Knowing your subject matter as much as possible before the interview enables you to come up with good questions. Also, since most interviews end up in the public limelight, it's a good idea to sound like you know what you're talking about. One other technique that I learned is to tap into the audience surrounding that person or subject and get them to submit their questions.

You were a staff blogger at Performancing for a while. How did you get that job, and why did you quit?

The gig for Performancing.com came by a stroke of luck and good timing. Actually, a fellow by the name of James Mowery was writing for Performancing.com at the time. James and I had made contact before and he knew I was looking for a better paying writing job at the time. One of the writers for Performancing left and James contacted me to let me know of the opportunity. I did a bit of interviewing for the job and eventually took it on. When I was brought on, it was only James, myself and Ryan Caldwell.

I wrote for Performancing for a total of 9 months. In that time span, I helped to keep the site afloat. For one reason or another, I never did feel comfortable writing for the site, despite the good pay. Shortly after I was hired, I discovered that the site was running on Drupal 5.3, a number of things were broken and spam was out of control both in user accounts and comments. To be quite frank, Performancing.com under the hood was a complete disaster thanks in large part to incompetent management over time. Managers for the site had come and gone and either through lack of funds, time, or knowledge, nobody seemed to do anything about the site just as long as content could still be published on it because apparently, that was the only thing that mattered and the only thing that helped pay the bills. One day, I decided to take it upon myself to look at the history of Performancing.com to figure out what the site was all about. I then wrote a long proposal on how to revamp the site along with the brand. However, since the site was running on Drupal 5.3, used all sorts of fancy things for comments, content types, and the like, it was very difficult to contemplate a move to another platform. In the end, I quit because I was no longed interested in writing for the site, putting up with a broken platform that didn't provide the tools I needed, and I had better things to do with my time than fight with software. Thankfully, David Peralty is now at the helms for Performancing.com and unlike everyone else, he actually got the ball moving and the site is now on WordPress.

The wordpress community is quite crowded. Why did you decide to create WPTavern?

On November 19th, 2008 Kyle Eslick of WPhacks.com published a blog post where he offered the domain names WordPressTavern.com and WPTavern.com to sale to his audience first. He then offered the domains for sale on various sites but apparently, no one took the bait. Two months later as I was working my 9PM-5AM shift at the grocery store, an idea popped into my head. The idea was to create my own WordPress centric site which I could use to foster a community while at the same time, write about the software and community I love. I figured WPTavern was a great name as Taverns seem to have a sense of community around them. Also, Taverns in my mind are places to hang out, have friendly discussions with a warm and inviting atmosphere. I wanted to replicate those feelings through WPTavern.com.

I contacted Kyle regarding the domains in December of 2008 and found out they were still available. I was shocked to be honest considering how good the domain name sounds. so in late December, I published a post on my personal blog, Jeffc.me and laid out my ideas to see what my audience had to say. They unanimously told me to GO FOR IT. That's what I did.

Has it been hard managing the community as well as your other commitments?

Yes. I've recently discovered that keeping up with the WordPress community while participating in my own is very tough. In fact, it's darn near impossible without burning out. I've come to realize that although I'd love to, I can't be everywhere at once. I spend some days just creating content leaving me no time to participate on the forum or respond to comments. Other days, I spend interacting on my forum and through the comments but I have no time for content. I'm not sure where the balance lies but I can't do it all. How people like Darren Rowse and others with big communities manage to do it is beyond me but I'm grateful for the fact that those who participate in my community understand the nature of what I'm doing so there is no expectation that I will be around 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On top of participating in the community and generating content, I also have no time to experiment or play with new plugins or themes which is one of the cool perks when it comes to writing about WordPress. I'm hoping that a few
changes in my personal life will enable me to get back on track.

What have you learnt about monetizing websites throughout your career?

I've never been a big fan of the monetization topic myself because I never had anything to monetize. However, that's different now with WPTavern.com. I can't say I've learned anything valuable other than to put up display advertising and make it easy for people to give you money to show their stuff on your site. However, I'm a web user myself and it really annoys me to see pop-ups, pop-unders and intrusive advertising, all of which I stay clear from. One thing I've learned which is not strictly tied to monetization is to not anger your viewerbase with crappy advertising methods. If people need to use Ad Block Plus in order to read the content on your site without anything getting in their way, your advertising strategy is wrong.

What tips would you have for those looking to become staff bloggers?

If you're looking to become a staff blogger somewhere, you better have a blog or two yourself in order to show that employer what you're capable of. Specifically, any posts that have shown up on the front page of Digg or StumbleUpon. Let them know that you can write content that generates traffic. When I started blogging seriously in 2007 just to see where it would take me, I had no idea that I would be offered paid writing gigs by the end of the year. Another method of getting onto a blog of your choosing as a paid writer is to publish thoughtful comments. Also, submit story ideas or guest blog posts. All of these techniques will mean that you have an interest in that site so when the time comes around to hire another writer, your name is in the hat.

What tips would you have for those looking to lead a community?

This is a tough question. One of my all time goals for the web was to either lead or be a valued contributor to a large community. It's thereby awesome that due to the WPTavern forum and website, I have accomplished that goal. The first thing I would do is to come up with a consensus of what your community will be about. For example, WPTavern is a WordPress enthusiast community that invites anyone who is interested in the software to stop by and talk about it. So, the forum, the site, the podcast, it's all about establishing why the community exists. To talk WordPress with like minded folks. So, everything I do on the site or the direction I take it is in line with that basic idea. As a leader, I make sure that the community and those in it stay within the confines of that idea. Once you start branching out to other things, the community loses focus and no one knows what it's all about anymore.