Interview with Top 100 Blogger – Daniel Scocco

I always love it when I see bloggers extending their online businesses beyond their actual blogs to make money ‘because’ of their blog rather than just from it through advertising. One such blogger who has stepped out and done this in the last week is Daniel Scocco who has this week launched his Online Profits course that was released earlier in the week (see my announcement post).

I’ve always been impressed with Daniel and how he approaches his online business (I’ve had him as a guest post many times here on ProBlogger) and so wanted to do a short interview with him to find out more about the course and how he came to put it together.

How has the response been to the release of Online Profits?

The response was good. It was above my expectations, especially because I opted for a very clean and fact-based sales page.

We had close to 50 registered members at the end of the first day. My initial aim was to get 100 members on the site within the first week, because that is a good number of people to work with. I am sure we will cross that mark by Friday.

Getting mentioned on Problogger was paramount to that success though. In fact after reading your post I was twice as motivated to put a lot of hard work into the training program, making it worth for all the people that will follow your recommendation.

What’s been the #1 (or 2) question or concern that people have expressed about it and what’s your answer been?

The main question that people had was: “Why should I join the training program if there is so many freely available information around the web?”

I won’t deny that there is a lot of good and free information on the Internet. Problogger is perhaps the best example around. I started reading it back in 2006, and it certainly made a big difference on my “blogging career.”

Sometimes, however, people don’t have the time or the skills to find, organize and interpret all that free information and to transform it into a structured learning environment and into action plans.

That is where ebooks, books and training programs come into play. For example, back in 2006 when I started learning about SEO, instead of going around looking for bits of information here and there, I purchased the SEO Book from Aaron wall and read through it. The time that it saved me was well worth the money I spent for it, and I was also secure that the information was reliable.

Secondly, when you purchase an educational product or join a training program, you will be more motivated to act instead of just learn. You paid for the information after all, so you better do something with it! You will also be in a situation where you are encouraged to take action, both from the fellow members and from the mentors.

Another question that was asked frequently was: “Will I have access immediately to all the training modules?”

The answer is no. For this first launch we opted to make the training modules available gradually, so you will inevitably need to wait to access the advanced ones. The reason for this structure is to not overload the members with all the information at the same time (which is a recipe for making people not apply the knowledge that they will gain).

Over the last year there have been quite a few courses released that have had similar subjects to Online Profits – what’s different about this one?

Yes there are many eBooks and courses that teach Internet marketing. Most people that write about Internet marketing or “making money online,” however, do not earn that much. That is why I made an effort to bring credible names to this project.

I wanted the lessons to be written by people that have experience with real projects.

Additionally, I also think that Online Profits is unique in terms of content broadness. There are good training programs out there if you just want to learn SEO (SEO Book), if you want to learn how to make money blogging (Blog Mastermind) and so on.

For the people that want to get a complete understanding of Internet marketing (e.g., from setting up a website to optizing WordPress, from PPC to affiliate and email marketing), however, Online Profits could be more suitable.

The thing that I love about what you’ve pulled together is that you’ve managed to draw together a fairly amazing group of people. How did you get them all to agree to participate?

First of all I only approached people whose work I respect, and I explained my plan to them: to create an Internet Marketing training program that will be credible and worth for the members.

In other words, I wanted to create something that would add value to the Internet, and not simply to generate some quick bucks for the rest of us.

I believe that was the main motivator for them to join, even because most of those guys already make some killer money online, and financial benefits don’t speak to them.

What you’ve done with Online Profits is to leverage your current blog and profile to launch this course. Many bloggers aspire to do this – what advice do you have for them?

First of all you need to give before you ask. Before launching the training program I worked on my blog for 2 years, published over 1,000 posts, and attracted over 16,000 RSS readers (over 30,000 if you count all my blogs).

Secondly, I have also done all that with a genuine interest in helping other people, not expecting anything in return. When I started Daily Blog Tips, my only goal was to share the tips and tricks that I learned with previous blogs and websites. Period.

I guess if I had started my projects with the sole goal of making money people would have noticed it, and perhaps they would be less inclined to read what I had to share with them.

What’s your best tip for bloggers starting out today?

Let me try to summarize it in one sentence: create something you will be proud of.

Practically speaking, create value for other people, publish unique and useful content, network with fellow bloggers, give before you ask, and have fun along the way!

Check out the Online Profits course – it’s 50% off until the end of the week!