Today I inaugurate this section devoted to interview people from all over the world who are successfully making money online. In this section I’ll feature bloggers, online sellers, internet marketers, successful freelancers, dot com moguls and many more, so if you want to know how the best ones make their money online stay tuned with this section from now on.

For this first interview I chose a very special guest: Thilak Raj Rao, TechBuzz’s owner. Thilak is a truly self-made problogger. A young man from India with just 17 years, Thilak has been able to become a professional blogger and turn his blog into a successful way to be self-employed in just a year. Thanks to blogging, he made the trip from being a poor secondary student, to be a recognized blogger that makes as much as 4 times what can make a young engineer in India. How did he do it? Please read the interview

1. Please tell us about yourself before TechBuzz
   I’ll try to introduce myself in the shortest possible way: I’m a 17 year old full-time blogger from India. Before TechBuzz, I was just a normal high school student completely mad about technology. I shamelessly admit that I’m not a champ when it came to academic studies, but I had a serious desire to learn things that interest me.
    
2. How did you come with the idea of TechBuzz?
   I started a tech blog on Blog*Spot when I was in 9th grade, but it never really took off because I lacked maturity at that point. I was unethically scraping posts from other blogs, but soon I realized that I was seriously wrong. TechBuzz started as a repository to share and help my friends with stuff related to computers and internet.
    
3. Can you please explain your readers how is your day? How do you spend your time blogging during the day?
   My day starts at 11.00 AM and ends at 4.00 AM. I spend nearly 10 hours per day blogging, but that includes reading over 600 feeds, doing research, writing for my blog and interacting with my readers. Music turns me on and generates a sense of mood to blog. When working from a home office, we tend to neglect ourselves, so I try to take breaks between my schedules to refresh my mind. Lately, I’ve realized that Instant Messenger kills productivity, so I’ve completely stopped using it.
    
4. When was the moment you knew TechBuzz was something big and that you could make money out from it?
   When I started writing on my blog, I had no real intention of making money, but I always knew that blogging could turn out to be a serious career. I came across folks like Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak and started to follow them closely. I used get those wild fantasies of having a successful blog and making serious money out of it. And soon, those fantasies turned out to be a reality.

   Right from the start, search engines were my primary source of traffic. I managed to reach the Digg frontpage, which significantly improved my RSS readers count, but that eventually dropped down (I’m not sure if that’s what people call “the Digg effect”). I remember that these articles got a lot of traffic:
    

   • How to Fix Google Reader in Opera
   • Get Ashampoo Burning Studio 2007 for Free
   • Free Mobile Calls With Fring

5. Can you tell us when was that you made your first earnings thanks to TechBuz, and how much was it?
   My first payout came from AdSense on the 7th of November, it was $287.
    
6. In March 2007 you reported net gains of $3204 USD from TechBuzz. You gain a very high salary to be living in India and being so young. How much has your life changed giving the nice income you are doing?
   Yes, $3000/month in India is considered to be high, because engineers working for IT companies get $600 - $800/month (they are seriously underpaid). I truly believe that age doesn’t matter on the web, as long as you have the time and passion to learn and work. They say students are meant to be poor and I was one of them.

   Actually, working from home has been problematic because people in India aren’t aware of Internet (at least the older generations), so they quickly reach to the conclusion that I make my money by illegal means (which is seriously stupid).

   My life style hasn’t changed much. The only difference I see between now and the past is that I don’t have to ask my parents for money and I get the freedom to buy what I want. Occasionally, I organize local bloggers meet ups but in India there’s not a lot of people interested in blogging.
    

7. What has been the growth ratio on your blog for money and traffic?
   In the end of each month, I have the habit of analyzing my progress. I create spreadsheets and graphs in the process and I came to the conclusion that my traffic grows by 23% every three months. The revenue is somewhat linear to the traffic and keeps improving.
    
8. You have recently started another very good blog: Blogtalks.net. What are your goals for this year?
   I have no big plans for BlogTalks, as it has some heavy competition in the blogosphere. I’m not a guru when it comes to blogging nor do I know it all. I simple write what comes to my mind and I’ll continue doing that. As far as traffic and money is concerned, I’ll try to escalate the traffic to around 5000 pageviews/day by the end of this year. I’m not sure if I’ll take contextual advertising approach to monetizing this blog, but I’m thinking of accepting sponsored square banners (like you see on TechCrunch or Daily Blog Tips).
    
9. You are very young, what do your parents think about your blogger career?
   To be frank, I didn’t have an internet connection at my place when I started TechBuzz. I could still remember those days when I used to secretly snip into cyber cafes and upload stuff to my blog, but once I started generating revenues I had to tell my parents about it. At that point, my parents knew nothing about internet or blogging. I had a hard time explaining things to them. Right now, I see them advising me to resume my studies and keep blogging at the same time (which is next to impossible).
    
10. Wow, it should be difficult to have a blog without an Internet connection. Is this common in India? or your family couldn’t afford paying an Internet connection and thanks to your blog now you can?
    In late 2004, DSL/Broadband arrived in India. Before that, we were forced to use expensive dial up connections. It was very pricey, no one could afford it (somewhere around $2 per hour). My family was economically stable, but students are meant to be poor, so I was forced to stay poor, hehehe…
     
11. Do you see yourself as a professional blogger in the future or do you have different plans?
    I would continue blogging for the rest of my life, but I’m not sure if I can do it professionally. One of the joys of being your own boss is the freedom to do whatever you want. Right now, my primary focus is without any doubt, blogging. However, I am seriously considering resuming my studies. I have some big plans ahead, but it’s too early to reveal specific details of my ideas.
     
12. What recommendations can you give for those readers who want to make money from a blog?
    Most bloggers start a blog with an intention to make money, which is good, but they quickly run out of steam and abandon their blogs losing all hopes. I firmly believe that *nothing* comes overnight and there is no such thing as easy money. If you want to earn money from your blog, you must be passionate towards your topic. It took me 8 long months before my first earning. I’ve come across bloggers who made money as quickly as 5 months, but there is no way you could make money instantaneously. In short words, Patience + Passion = Lots of Money.
     

Thilak has done all his money thanks to advertising on TechBuzz. If you want a detail of all the income sources he uses you can read his post about his earnings for March 2007.

Thanks a lot Thilak for being so nice answering my questions! To know more about him don’t forget to visit his blogs TechBuzz and Blogtalks. You’ll surely get something useful there.

Now that you were amazed by Thilak’s success, why don’t you consider being amazed daily by RobertoAlamos.com subscribing by email or RSS? It’s an investment

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Blogging, Interview, Make money online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.