In this interview Rhys Wynne talks about finding his niche and how he reached his first visitor traffic milestone.

Tell us a little bit about your blog.

The Gospel According To Rhys began a year or so after I finished university in 2006, and was originally a Blogspot blog for about a year before I received the domain name as a birthday present, at which point I bought some hosting & switched over to WordPress.

It really has been a bit of a brain dump of my thoughts for a number of years, so I kind of grew up with the domain – a lot of the older posts are a lot different from the current posts, but in essence they are the same: me offering opinions on things. For about the last 6 months or so it’s been more blog, social media, SEO & programming focussed.

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

I’ve been blogging for over 7 years now. 8 if you count a short lived LiveJournal. I first read about blogging in an age old issue of Computer Active. It stated that “bloggers were all self obsessed and very few are worth reading.” I thought “I’ll show you!”, and so started a blog on Blogger.

I stopped for 3 days after the first post, as Blogger (at the time was independent of Google) was down for three days. Hard to imagine that now, isn’t it?!

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

The biggest challenge was actually getting somebody to read it. You wrote & wrote & wrote, and seeing “no comments” everywhere was disheartening.

Occasionally you had a comment from a friend or family member, but it was tricky starting off.

Having friends & family was also tough, it did stop the things which I could write about (especially if they were more “personal” blogs), and a fair few of my mates thought that blogging was “sad”. They had a point though – who would want to read about what I do at weekends?

How did you overcome these challenges?

Well eventually over time I learnt you had to network with other bloggers. About 3 months into my blogging adventure I began networking – though this was helped as the mainstream media was just beginning to jump on board – Blogger had a “Blogs of Note” section, and the UK Newspaper The Guardian had a list of the “top UK blogs of the week”. That – and the Blog On & Blog Off section of Web User magazine – had a list of the biggest, best & brightest blogs of the time.

I started checking out the bloggers mentioned & commenting on their blogs. Some responded, some didn’t, but I ended up getting a few readers for my blog in return. From there it grew, just networking with bloggers.

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

I recently broke a regular 500 visitors a day, which was a bit of a goal for me. I had got spikes from Digg, Reddit & Stumbleupon before now, but getting close to a guaranteed 500 hits was big.

I achieved this by finally finding a niche. I figured that whilst I’m considered to be the blogging “expert” (their words, not mine!) within my circle of friends, I’d wonder how I’d come across on my blog blogging about it. My reader demographic over time has changed to be more of a “Blogging, Social Media & SEO” crowd, so by throwing up articles which I would enjoy reading, I hope that my readers do too.

And they do, comments are up, interaction is up & traffic is up.

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

The next goal is to release a product. It’s not an e-book, but hopefully it’ll be well received within the blogging community. I am aiming to get it out by the end of February.

I’m also planning on starting a new blog soon dedicated to one of my main interests – travelling. I’m planning on making it a little different to travel blogs currently out there, but hopefully it’ll be enjoyable.

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

Don’t worry about the money. It took me 3 years to earn me my first money (£30 a month for a paid link). I’d even go far as not put advertising or generate revenue for six months at the beginning – just worry about blogging. If you’re interested in the subject, your passion will show through, trust me.

Success isn’t overnight, like you won’t wake up in the morning, check your bank account & see you’re a millionaire. It’s a lot more gradual process – opportunities will arise as your network grows. When they do, grasp them with two hands.

And I guest the other tip is enjoy it. Most of us have day jobs – everybody does when they start out, and really there isn’t enough hours outside of work to do things that you don’t enjoy. So enjoy it. I love meeting new bloggers, networking & generally sharing my knowledge.

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

Rhys runs a number of websites & blogs on his various interests including retro gaming & professional wrestling. His principal blog – The Gospel According To Rhys – features commentary on social media as well as tips on blogging, programming & SEO.

Tagged as: Blogging, Interviews, Traffic