Blogger Interview: Mark Wielgus

Todays interview is with Mark Wielgus. Mark runs the blog 45n5.com. 45n5 is the home of the now infamous Make Money Online Top 100 list. Mark also runs the ad network ShowYourAdHere.com.

• Question 1: In your about page you state that you started your 45n5 site in October
  of 2005 and made over $1000 in the month of December 2006. Care to share
  what an average month clears you now?

  When it was hobby money it was fun chronicling the adventures. I keep
  my earnings to myself now 😉

• Question 2: Are there any specific experiences related to the rocket-like success of
  your Top 100 list that you’d care to share?

  Create something cool and let people know about it. Promotion was the
  key to the top 100’s success.

• Question 3: You recently pushed out your ad network, ShowYourAdHere.com, which is quite the undertaking. What growing pains have you had to overcome that you
  didn’t expect? Also, originally the network was to be named nofollowads.com.
  Why the name change?

  The name change came because I thought ShowYourAdHere was more viral and not tied to an initiative by the search engines.

  The biggest growing pain was actually doing the initial programming.
  I worked on it two weeks straight night and day to get it started.

  Another hurdle was figuring out how to do a hosting setup that
  wouldn’t lock up websites if the host went down. I’m now using DNS
  failover and 2 hosts. They aren’t completely redundant, however they
  won’t return a dead page now should one host go down.

• Question 4: You recently made the decision to try and post a video post every day.
  What helped you make the decision to go video? And was it worth it?

  I have missed one day already which I’ll make up soon 😉 I enjoy
  video so I wanted to do more of it.

  I wish more blogs would do video. I want to create the type of blog
  at 45n5.com that I would want to follow, therefore it for sure needs a
  bunch of original video.

• Question 5: Do you feel that your location in Kentucky, and more specifically your
  distance from the heart of silicon valley, has any negative effects on your
  business?

  It has some good points. It’s dirt cheap living. I can still
  communicate with the same people around the world. It’s central to
  most of North America.

  Business wise it’s a good bet living in Kentucky. Personally Kentucky
  is way too conservative for me.

My thanks go out to Mark for participating in the interview and for giving some really great answers. You can go see the Make Money Online top 100 at 45n5.com or check out the best revenue share ad network at showyouradhere.com