Meet Jaime Jay of SlapShotStudio.com

By : Unknown

On : 8/31/2015

In : Tips And Trick

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One of the my favorite things about being an online entrepreneur and blogger is that I continually get to meet new people all the time. During a recent podcast interview, I had the opportunity to meet with Jaime Jay, who in addition to a podcaster, also has a great background in sales, wordpress, online marketing… and of course blogging!

Another exciting thing about Jaime and the brand/business that he’s created for himself online is that he’s had some fun with it as well. With hockey being one of his passions, he’s built his own little empire online around that concept as well, hence the “slap shot” in SlapShot Studio.
Learn more about Jaime and his online and blogging journey in this latest edition of Meet the Bloggers.

1.) Please tell us about yourself and how you got into blogging?

My name is Jaime Jay and I have a wordpress marketing company. I have been working online for a little over 5 years and really enjoy the digital lifestyle.  I got into blogging, perhaps as most people do, to see if I could make money online; however, what happened as a result of my first blog was the inspiration behind what would be my WordPress marketing company.

2.) What is the focus of your blog and why did you choose that niche?

The focus of my past blogs have been about online marketing strategies.  What I’ve learned over time is that I’ve had to niche down on my topics.  So, what I’m in the process of doing now is creating several sites for my specific products so that when I create blog posts for those sites, they will be much more specific. This will make the posts more relevant for that specific audience; therefore, readers will be more attracted to a topic they are interested in and they won’t have to read the other blogs that they are not interested in as much.

3.) How are you currently monetizing your blog traffic?

I focus on indirect monetization efforts first and foremost. Indirect monetization is our way of creating great content to gain exposure for potential clients for our marketing company. We do WordPress development, video animation, graphic design, social media, branding and SEO.  As you can see, these are different niches and this is the reason we are building different blogs and platforms for each product to drill down on each specific niche.  What does this have to do with monetization?  Each niche or blog includes separate affiliate products on each blog (i.e., sidebar ads, etc.). While I don’t receive a large amount of affiliate commissions, this is definitely a good way to supplement your income.

4.) What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started blogging?

This is a great question.  One of the first things that pops into my mind that I wished I would have done better is to learn about and understand my target audience better.  When I first started blogging, I just started writing blogs about what interested me with no thought about my audience.  As I grew my knowledge about marketing online, I learned how important it was to define my audience in terms of an avatar.  Once I started writing directly to my avatar, I started seeing improved results.  My biggest fear was that if I developed a small niche that I would be missing so many opportunities.  What I learned was that I needed to start small, gain authority within that niche and then I was able to expand from there.

5.) What are three blogs that you visit almost daily?

The three blogs I visit the most are Social Media Examiner, Gary Vaynerchuk and http://www.smashingmagazine.com/.

6.) Can you give us three recommended tools/services that you use with your blogging?

Three services that I use to enhance my WordPress and online marketing include a plugin called SEO by Yoast.  This makes optimizing my pages and blogs for the search engine so easy.
For social media, I use a relatively new plugin call getsocial.io.  This is a social media plugin that provides me with all kinds of metrics that show me what social media channels are converting and I can have actual data that supports a true example of ROI for social.  This is huge.
The last tool I recommend using is postplanner.  This is a great tool to schedule posts on Facebook.  It’s a great way to share articles, images and text posts that are trending.  This is a great way to increase motivation for your target audience to participate with you on a social level.  Postplanner is getting ready to launch a new app and they will be including a twitter tool that will work in much the same way.

7.) What advice would you have for someone who is just starting with their first blog?

For anyone starting their own blog, I would recommend one of the first things they do is to understand what their passion is.  This will give them the basis or foundation for creating a blog.  Blogs take a lot of work and in order to have a successful blog, people need to understand that they need to stay consistent with regard to their publications.  Because of this, if you aren’t passionate about what you are blogging about, it will very difficult to maintain a consistent presence by continually submitting fresh content on a consistent basis.

8.) What’s the best advice or tip you’ve discovered about blogging since getting started?

The best advice I got was to be yourself.  We’ve moved from a transactional based economy to a relationship based economy.  What that means is that your personality has to come out.  In order to provide a product or service to clients or customers you need to share a common goal or interest.  If you don’t have a common understanding, then it’s more difficult working with them.  People do business with people they like, love and trust.  Be yourself and attract those that tend to believe in the same things you do.

9.) If you only had $100 to start a new blog, how would you use it?

If I had $100 to start my own blog, I would use it to invest in the tools I spoke about earlier.  While I would consider advertising on social media, I don’t think I would go that route because I think it’s more powerful to continually create new content so that I could get my posts ranking high in the search engines through online optimization.

10.) How can readers of the blog get in touch with you?

Readers can get in touch with me by visiting me on twitter @slapshotstudio, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/slapshotstudio, YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/theslapshotstudio, Podcast: http://stopridingthepine.com, Website: http://slapshotsocial.com, Website: http://slapshotstudio.com