Jason Pereira - TheUniversityKid.com : Blogger Interviews

 Interviewing Jason Pereira from The University Kid

Brief Intro about yourself?

My name’s Jason Pereira, I’m a 17 year old university student in the second year of a four year business course. Currently stay in Dubai, United Arab Emirates but was born in India. Play around a lot as an online entrepreneur, and specialize in website flipping.

How did you get started?

Got started in the summer of 2007, was looking for a way to pass time online. Started writing articles for shitty rates ($2/article) but slowly grew to learn more and more about online business including Adsense, affiliate marketing, website and products sales. Started my blog a couple months later, but only started seriously developing it at the beginning of this year.

Do you run your blog under any “Media” type site? Like I run mine under the control of Gurilla.net

Nope. Been meaning to get something like that developed, just because it would be cool but I’ve heard it’s a lot of work so I just use my name at the moment :)

How long have you been blogging?

On the main blog, around 7-8 months seriously, although before that I ran a few Blogspot and Wordpress.com blogs (not for monetization, but just for the fun of it all).

Whats your strategy with your blog in general?

Posting content that helps people.

How do you get rss readers?

Contests and creative marketing. For example I released a protected post a week or so ago talking about how I made $7,500 with a specific method – people had to do tasks to get the password and the post went viral, with more than 200 subscribers coming in during that time frame and dozens of blogs posting reviews.

Do you give out freebies?

Occasionally. PLR items like Wordpress themes and site templates, the occasional eBook with resale rights (written by me). The blog by itself is a good enough source of information (I hope). :)

Whats your opinion about the importance of PR in a blog’s life?

Don’t really care about it. It’s a number that people cream themselves over, and one of the biggest metrics used to judge a blog… I’d prefer more search engine traffic and making more money to be honest.

Do you consider the top100 list at 45n5.com as authoritative?

There are some blogs on it that are full of shit but on the whole it is a decent list and great linkbait. Good to see TUK high enough in it – I see Blueverse is top ten!

Any thoughts on my post on Blogs are not the authority, the Bloggers are?

I’d agree with the blogger being the main draw behind the blog, however I do think others can push on a blog and take it to the next level, as shown in a few recent website sales (like John Cow and Blogging Experiment). Depends who’s taking over, I guess.

Would you sell out your blog at some point?

Yes. If the time was right, and the money right, definitely. I’m considering an end of summer sale, mainly because I’ve not concentrated on university much and considering it’s the second year, I should probably start. :)

Do you think people should sponsor wordpress themes?

If they want to, sure - don’t see a problem personally. However, I’d prefer they make their sponsor links related and not for crap like gambling, payday loans etc. I’ve sponsored a few and they bring in links monthly without me doing any work which is great.

What’s your take on sponsored reviews?

For me – waste of time, which is why I don’t really do them anymore. If you were making $500 a review like Chow, sure – but for a blog of a standard size, there are far more effective ways to make money than a one off paid review (pushing affiliate products…). I do offer paid plugs though, which is written by the advertiser.

What’s the best thing a blogger can give to his readers?

Good content.

Did Aweber play a vital role in your growth?

In the growth of my blog? Not really, as it was big enough before I signed up for Aweber. I recently combined my IM list with the blog, so it should help with the metrics though.

Do you think Pagerank plays a vital role in a blog’s life?

Answered this question above, I believe :)

Did you ever consider selling links to those underground link sellers, youknow, the ones that mail you and ask you to sell in-content links and pay per year.

Never been asked, but if it was on some low traffic post and the number was decent enough, why not? :)

Did you ever get an offer of selling your blog out of the blue, if so how did you react to it?

Had an offer from a ‘broker’ a few months ago offering $6,000. I turned it down at the time, thought I was being noble – with hindsight, if we’re thinking for purely money reasons… I probably should have sold. However, I don’t really blog for money, but to network and give people ideas, so overall I’m happy I kept it.

What are your thoughts on my free wordpress themes here, be as blunt as you can.

People concentrate on quantity not quality – there are too many shit themes out there. A well done theme (look at UBD’s recent Money Maker theme) will get you thousands and thousands of links, so designers should spend more time analysing their market and creating themes based on needs.

Also, to all theme creators out there – cut down on the 4-5 unrelated links in the footer rubbish, it’s something that’s turned me away from using a few half decent themes. A couple hundred up front for footer links is not worth the lack of downloads in the long run.

Overall what do you think of blueverse, once again be as blunt as offensive as you can.

Theme is pretty sick, especially the ads above the fold, the buttons in the header and the logo.

As for the content, the topics are decent but the posts themselves are a little bland – I’d like to see more controversial stuff, or stuff that set it apart from the thousands of other blogs out there in the same niche. On the whole though, it’s decent enough – I like that you’re trying to shake things up with this blogger review thing :)

Any tips for my readers?

Yeah – work smart, not hard. If you had to work hard to do well online, I would have given up ages ago.

Cheers for the interview request, let me know if you ever need anything! :)

You can track all the blogging reviews under the Bloggers category or the Blogger Interviews tag.