Its time for another interview. Today I am presenting Matt Coddington, person behind NetBusinessBlog, that became successful in a course of only couple months. Matt is 22 years old. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina where he is attending the University of South Carolina.

You became a celebrity almost over night. Was that the original plan?
I’m not so sure I became a celebrity (even an e-celebrity) but I do acknowledge that my name is much more known now than before I started the blog. Honestly I never expected the blog to grow as fast as it did although I certainly imagined it. I saw what others were doing and even though there is a lot of great information being given out I thought I had a lot I could contribute myself. One of my slogans is that I’m not an expert at anything, so don’t confuse me with those “gurus” but what I do offer is the knowledge I’ve accrued over the last 7 years. So overall I just wanted the blog to be a place where I could share with others what took me so long to learn and hopefully show some people how to make their living online.

How much do you earn now from blogging? Do you have any goal for this year?
Blogging is still an extremely small portion of my income. Most of my money is still generated through web development. The total amount I do make from blogging, however, is around $1500 at the moment. I expect that number to go up quite a bit when I get a public PR (I think it’s arbitrary, but advertisers rely on it for whatever reason). My goal for the end of this year is to become a problogger. I’d like to spend all of my online time blogging. I still do enjoy development, but I like blogging so much more and would love it if it became my job.

You work as web-designer. Is design really important for blogs?
In my opinion every serious blogger should at one point hire a designer to give his or her blog a unique look and feel not because design is essential to blogging (after all, content is king right?) but because it’s much much much easier to pull visitors into your blog and keep them there when you have an attractive and intuitive design.

What do you think about people using ready to go themes (templates)?
I think they’re fine, but if anyone wants to really be taken serious they need to eventually get a real design. Of course there are plenty of instances where one doesn’t need a custom design (Matt Cutts, John Chow, etc) but in these instances there is usually something going on at the blog that transcends all of the rules that us everyday bloggers would benefit from following. Read the rest of this entry »

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I like interviews. I like to do interviews, read interviews and be interviewed. I figured it will be worth while to do some interviews with accomplished probloggers. It is a great way to learn something new, discover great ideas, and start thinking outside the box. I really hope you like it.

I am starting the series with a little chat with Chris Garrett, professional blogger and online media consultant who helps people make the most out of the web.

Chris, could you please tell us a little about yourself?
I’m a blogging and Internet marketing consultant based in the UK. I help businesses and bloggers become more famous, focused and profitable. While I have been working in the Internet field since 1994, and blogged since 1998, in 2005 I launched my own company and started blogging full-time.

How and why did you start blogging?
Well it wasn’t called blogging when I started. My website reading habits revealed a number of websites that I visited daily had started writing daily journals or articles and I thought it would be fun for me to do the same thing. A lot was going on in my life at that point, had just got married, was trying for a baby, just changed job, moved house, the idea was to write a diary.

Why did you decide to do blogging full-time?
I had been working for other people at various marketing, advertising and new media agencies and decided that being an independent consultant and blogger was what I really wanted to do. Other people separate my blogging and marketing consultancy but in my mind they are facets of the same thing. Read the rest of this entry »