This is a blogger interview with Bob Bessette from Totally Unique Life.

Tell us a little about your blog.

Totally Unique Life is a blog about solutions for people in their everyday lives. It may not be considered a niche blog but I chose to leave my content a little more broad after reading so much about how narrow niche bloggers simply run out of things to say.

I really didn’t want to have that problem and I haven’t up to this point. I am always looking for solutions in my life so I am simply imparting anything I have learned from living for 52 years. I want to add value to my readers’ lives. After reading one of my posts, I want my readers to feel that they learned something that could help them in their lives. It could be related to sending their child to college. It could be related to money management or time management. It may even be related to a home improvement topic or solution. As I said, it is wide open and I think that is what makes it fun. There are a wide variety of topics to blog about.

And I always welcome guest bloggers and have had the distinct honor of others guest posting on my blog. It really opens my blog up to a new audience and it opens up the guest posters to a new audience as well.

How long have you been blogging for? What made you want to start blogging?

I started my blog back in July of 2009 because I have always loved to write and, being a software professional, I have a technical background. So, I’ve been blogging for almost a year but I think probably most bloggers don’t even get this far in their blogging careers.

What were some of your biggest challenges when you first started blogging?

My biggest challenge was that I really didn’t know much about blogging. As a result, I started out on a different platform, Squarespace. I must admit that I loved Squarespace and it was easy to use. Also, the support was outstanding.

But it simply didn’t have the universal capabilities of WordPress. I was jealous that the WordPress blog sites had all of these really cool plugins and capabilities that mine didn’t have. The most important drawback was their poor commenting capabilities. I tried using Disqus with Squarespace but it was buggy so I went back to their generic commenting which didn’t support Avatars.

I knew I had to do something about it if I wanted my blog to grow in popularity.

How did you overcome these challenges?

I switched my blog to self-hosted WordPress. I utilized a consultant because I simply didn’t know enough about WordPress to move all of my content over easily. I have been on WordPress since November and I am really glad I made the switch. I am utilizing the FrugalTheme created by Eric Hamm and am really enjoying this theme and his fantastic support.

What is a recent milestone that you have accomplished with your blog? How were you able to achieve this milestone?

My blog’s readership is growing and my Alexa Rating is slowly dropping. I was around 150,000 before I had to take a break due to a death in my family. I am now right around 400,000 but am hoping to get back to where I was a few months ago.

One milestone I could say that I have reached is that I now have a PageRank of 3 which went from 0 to 3 in the last update. I think this has been due to a lot of guest posting which has driven traffic to my site. I think my greatest accomplishment has been sticking to blogging.

I’m trying not to think too much about milestones and I’m trying not to look too much at the Alexa rankings and PageRank, but I guess we all do.

What is your next goal that you want to achieve with your blog?

My next goal is to hit that one year mark and still be blogging. But that is right around the corner.

I am also trying to research what is the best way to monetize my blog. I have two affiliate links on my site at this point. I don’t want to litter my site with all sorts of advertising right now.

I could never understand why bloggers, just starting out, put every type of advertising imaginable on their sites when they haven’t even grown a readership yet. As soon as I see this, I go to the next site. I want to monetize in a way so as not to take away from the clean design and look of my site.

My brand, Totally Unique Life, is important to me and I don’t want to tarnish it.

What is your best tip for other people out there who might be new or struggling with their blogging?

Before you even start a blog, know ahead of time that it is a lot of work. I post roughly once a week and, having a full-time job, it can be hard to find the time.

I also think it makes sense to not make your niche too narrow or you’ll just run out of things to say. Maybe I’m going against the normal convention of having a narrow niche, but I think there’s only so much you can say about a narrow topic.

One thing that has really helped drive traffic to my site is guest posting. I have been fortunate to have guest posted on some popular sites, such as Daily Blog Tips owned by Daniel Scocco. Don’t be afraid to approach popular blog sites because I wasn’t. And, when you do get accepted, it feels great!

Also, try not to get too upset if you don’t even hear back from the popular blog owner. I sent a guest post once to a popular blog site and he immediately responded by saying that he would read it over the weekend and get back to me. He never did, and it bothered me for a while. But I got over it.

If my blog ever grows to the size of one of these popular blog sites, I will make it a point to never simply ignore a guest post request. I just think it is common courtesy to respond to your readers, whether it be in the comments, or to a request for a guest post.

Thanks again Bob for taking the time to do this interview.

Bob has worked as a software professional for the past 20 years and for 10 years prior to that was a research scientist for the U.S. Air Force. He recently completed his 3rd degree this past spring and tries to live his life by the quote: “The truly educated never graduate”.  Follow Bob on Twitter at @bobbessette.

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