Meet a Blogger - Dan Rinnert

Allow me to introduce you to another good blog friend of mine, Dan from DCR Blogs. I find Dan to be imaginative in his writing, and and judging from his rising Technorati ranking, lots of other people are reading (and linking over!) to Dan’s blog, as well. Get to know Dan here in my latest interview for “Meet a Blogger”!

* Dan, how long have you been blogging?
Since 2005, but only heavily since July of this year.

* How do you describe your blog to other people?
At the start, I didn’t really have much of a description. After starting my “blog sparring” with Joanne of The Laidback Buddhist, I did a motivational post where I utilized the concept of “Believe. Act. Achieve.” She wrote it in her Quotes book, and I have since adopted it as my tagline.

* What’s your favorite part of being a blogger?
Timeliness. It’s a little bit easier to keep a blog updated than a regular website. I feel that a blog post doesn’t necessarily have to be as thorough as a website article. For example, this past weekend, I had a post with Apple Newton links and a post about the video website Revver. If I were doing these as articles on one of my websites, they would be longer and much more thorough, which means it would take longer for them to be completed or I might even hire a freelancer to write it. Both of those requires more time.

With a blog, I can post a shorter piece with whatever information I have already found. That way, readers can make immediate use of it without waiting for a full article to appear. If I do end up doing a more thorough article, I can also post a blurb about that with a link to the finished piece.

Or, you may serialize an article too, and break it into sections, posting as you write it.

A lot of bloggers will treat their blog like a full-fledged publication, and only publish complete, full articles. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But, if you have both a blog and a website, I think you have a lot more flexibility. I think you look at a blog more for timeliness than complete information. I think that’s why people are turning more and more to the Internet (and blogs) for news than traditional media outlets.

For example, how many times has the local TV news station teased you about an important food product recall, and made you wait until halfway through the 11 p.m. newscast to find out what it is? I just hate that. Am I not supposed to eat anything until I watch their newscast? If there is something in my cupboard or refrigerator that might be harmful or worse, I want to know now.

On a blog (or even a frequently updated website for that matter), you can get that information right away. You don’t have to wait until after the weather or after the sports report!

Even on things that don’t affect our health, we still want information right away. So, if I’m writing an article on cell phones, and I find a way to extend the battery life of your cell phone by a significant amount, why wait to post that? I can do a shorter piece just covering that, and mention that I’m doing a more detailed article. But, I can get that information into people’s hands right away so they can start taking advantage of it.

The less-constrained aspects of blogging, such as I’ve described, is what I like most about both writing and reading blogs.

I also need to mention the community aspects of blogging too. Who would have thought that blogs, which basically began as personal journals, would build communities that rival the forum communities of the old BBS and FreeNet days? Just blogging in this past three months I have met more new people than I have for the past few years participating in various discussion forums.

* Have you got a “9 to 5″ job on top of your blog? What do you do?
My day job is in the printing industry, where we do everything from black & white copies to full color printing. I do the computer prepress work. I always liked the title of Typographer, but people don’t know what that means anymore, so I have to say that I do typesetting and design, or design and layout. I do the page design and layout, illustrations, working with photos, and pretty much everything else that goes into producing the final master used for printing the finished piece. Sometimes I am the photographer too. Before we did in-house typesetting (i.e., before we had computers), I ran the copy machines, waited on customers at the counter, did paste-up work, camera work, made plates, ran the presses, did all manner of bindery work and even occasionally delivered jobs.

* Do you own any other websites besides your blog?
I have 7 blogs, plus 3 under development, and a couple dozen websites.

* Have you monetized your blog?
Only sparsely.

* What monetizaton strategies do you use?
Right now, I have some affiliate ads. That’s really about it. I don’t know that I’ll ever heavily monetize this particular blog.

* What’s your favorite blog to read?
The ones in my sidebar, which includes your blog, plus others that aren’t listed there. I don’t really have one that I’d call a favorite. I enjoy reading a number of blogs, and for different reasons.

* How many blogs do you subscribe to by RSS?
Technically, none. I use Safari as my RSS reader which, near as I can tell, doesn’t add to a blogger’s RSS subscriber count. So, I haven’t been too aggressive on subscribing. When I get a new computer, I’ll probably look at downloading an RSS reader of some type, and then I can help get some bloggers’ RSS stats up.

* Do you do your own technical work, like design, coding, and installing plugins? Have you ever outsourced any work for your blog?
Yes, I do it all myself. My caricature was done by Matthew Laznicka, whom I have used for a lot of my illustration needs. I did the header and the animation myself. That’s the only thing I’ve outsourced for my blog. The design was a WordPress template I modified; I did not create my own template. But, everything else I can think of I’ve done myself. I’ve done webhosting for about 11 years, so it’s not terribly difficult for me.

* Do you have a mentor? Who do you study?
No.I don’t really have a mentor. I read a lot of different things from different bloggers and adopt the things I find useful.

The ones that got me started were Phil McDonnell and John Chow. I’ve known Phil for a number of years, and he’s the one that I believe first suggested WordPress to me a couple months ago. As I mentioned earlier, I have been blogging (more or less, but mostly less) since 2005. I had always read that you need to be blogging and all that jazz, so I decided to give it a try. I wanted it as part of my own site, so I didn’t use the free blogging services and instead wrote my own blog code. But, it doesn’t play well (or at all) with Technorati or other blogs or blog services, so I never got much growth from them.

It wasn’t until I downloaded and read John Chow’s free eBook a couple months ago that I really “got” it. I mean, I don’t know how many eBooks and forums and articles I’ve read on why you need to be blogging, but no one ever had the “how” of blogging. But, John Chow had it all spelled out right in his eBook. It showed everything he did, the different services he used, etc. Then, that’s when everything began to finally click. I didn’t previously know about services like MyBlogLog and others. So, I’d have a blog, and the only traffic I’d get would be whatever would trickle in from the search engines.

And, Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, etc., sure, I’d heard of them, but never knew the “how” of them. It’s amazing how much you can read on stuff, and no one ever mentions the “how” of it. In the past, I’ve even paid for eBooks that offered far less information than what you get from John Chow for free. One website used to cost me $189 per year, and I feel I got far less information out of that than what I’ve gotten from John Chow and other bloggers for free.

After learning more of the “how” of things, I really went wild setting up blogs, but using WordPress instead of my own creation. Those other six blogs have been suffering lately, due to my focus on dcrBlogs.com, but I’ll be back to them soon enough.

* What’s one thing you wish you would have done differently starting out?
Maybe using WordPress sooner and getting a newer computer sooner so I could have been using all these services 2 years ago.

* Do you have any new projects planned in the near future?
Yes, but nothing I’m ready to announce just yet.

* What do you most hope to accomplish with your blog?
I’m torn between giving the world a Coke and filling the globe with bananas. Seriously, I hope that I help educate, entertain and generally enlighten my readers. I think that so many of us get wrapped up in the world as it is, that we give up shaping our world as we would like it to be. When our focus is distracted like that, we miss the opportunities to move things in the right direction, whether it’s for a personal goal or a larger goal.

With that in mind, I’d like to close with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Believe. Act. Achieve!

Thanks again, Chris, for having me and best of luck for continued success with your blog!

Thank you, Dan! Readers, if you’re curious to read more of Dan’s writing, drop by DCR Blogs and subscribe to his RSS feed. If you would like me to interview you for the “Meet a Blogger” weekly series, then contact me about it. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!