Here’s an Interview with Syed Balkhi the founder of WPBeginner (The treasure of WordPress training.) hosted by Kulwant Nagi
If you are on WordPress then you must have tried WPBeginner atleast once for sure.
A site which is always there to solve every WordPress related issue and helping us to make our blogging journey more awesome.
I am feeling very lucky to have Syed Balkhi with us who is the owner of this one of the biggest website in the world. He is managing this website from more than 5 years and he has provided almost all WP related problems.
With his hard work and dedication he has taken his website at such a big level that thousands of people around the world are talking about this website and visiting it to learn new WordPress related stuff every time.
Today we are going to ask him few interesting questions so that we can learn great lessons from his experience and implement them to make our blogging career more successful.
Let’s go through this interview.
1. Syed, I am very happy to have you here. Thanks for joining this interview.
My pleasure.
2. Please tell us more about you, how did you start and how you found your love for WordPress?
I first started with the internet in 1997 when I first got my computer. But I really got into it at the end of 2002 and early 2003 when I started buying domains and building niche sites. I started using WordPress in 2006 when I needed to add a blog to one of my sites.
3. Wpbeginner don’t need any introduction. Please tell us how you made this blog so popular and how much is your content writing frequency.
WPBeginner became popular due to the quality of articles. At the time we started, we were the only WordPress tutorial site written for users. Currently, we write 1 article a day (Mon – Friday).
4. Every time I am searching something on Google about WordPress, Wpbeginner is already sitting there to help me. How many efforts are you making to do SEO for your blog and please tell few of them which are helping you to get such high rank in Google?
We’re not doing any SEO. We’re blessed to have an awesome community and the reputation that we have in the industry. A lot of industry related authority sites link to our content. Due to the age of the site and good reputation, we tend to rank high in search results.
Also some folks think we’re always #1 because Google is showing them personalized results. For example, if you like our article multiple times, then Google will show you WPBeginner towards the top. You can do more research about how personalized results work, but that is a gist of it.
So there is no real secret. Just build a good community and write quality content.
5. Syed, you have another very successful blog List25.com. This blog’s Facebook page have 250k fans, how you achieved such a big number in short time what were the strategies you used to boost it?
I ran a contest when we first started that helped us. The content on the site is easy to share and attracts a mass audience. With the initial boost from the contest, viral content, support from other networks like Stumbleupon, Youtube, etc. the site grew. Our youtube audience is actually bigger than our Facebook audience.
6. We all are proud users of WordPress. At what extent it has helped you to grow your business and what are the great WordPress features which we can predict for future?
I love WordPress. It has made it easy for folks like me to create websites. Without WordPress, I don’t think I would be able to create and publish great sites like List25. The WP community is amazing and tons of new features are being developed at all times. You can learn more about new features here:
7. Making a blog successful always needs great strategies and time plan. How did you organize them what were the obstacles which you faced on the way?
You’re right in saying that creating something successful requires a lot of great strategies. What I can tell you is that I have faced more failures than successes. Listing all the failures here would be a dreading task. Some things I do now are:
– Identify Targeted Audience
– Find where I can reach them
– Establish an Editorial Workflow
– Create quality content
8. You have awesome people working with you on WpBeginner. According to you how easy or difficult it is to find great people and what are the things which we should keep in mind before hiring them or making business associates?
Hiring is definitely a challenge, at least for me it is. Before you go about hiring, you need to know exactly what you’re looking for. This way every one is on the same page. Make sure that the person you’re going to hire fits well with your company vision.
9. If you would have given chance to start from scratch once again then on which topic you would like to make a blog?
Often people underestimate the power of situation. I don’t know which situation I will be in and what are the circumstances surrounding me. All I will say is that I will start a blog that solves a problem that is important to me.
10. You are a graduate from University of Florida, How this education helped you in blogging and at what level you are using your education to boost your business?
The direct impact of my education on my business is hard to measure. From looking closely, I don’t think higher education helped me at all in terms of blogging. I was doing that before I started college.
In a grander scheme of things, I did learn a lot and the college experience definitely helped shape who I am today as a person.
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