ProBlogger is a popular blog that offers daily tips and information on running your own successful blog or website. While this is the primary blog this entrepreneur is known for, he actually has many more than that. What started out as a simple hobby quickly transformed into a major success for one entrepreneur who found career success through his blog. For this and more we take a look at entrepreneur Darren Rowse in the spotlight this week. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons any upcoming entrepreneur can learn.
Summary:
Name: Darren Rowse
Age: 38
Location: Austrailia
Claim to fame: ProBlogger.net (A blog that offers daily tips and information on running your own successful blog)
Initial cost: <$1000
How He Did It:
Darren Rowse was born and raised in Australia where he attended college. After college Rowse had many different part-time jobs, but his primary job was working as a youth minister for a church. He did this for about 10 years. Durring this time (in November 2002), Rowse started blogging casually as a hobby. He started a blog called Digital Photography School and later another called ProBlogger. It wasn’t until 2005 (3 years later) that he made the switch to blogging full time. At this point, Rowse was seeing traffic increase to about 80,000 hits on each of his blogs per day, which of course translated to some serious money to say the least. Rowse has since quit his other jobs to focus on blogging full-time. In the spirit of a true entrepreneur, Darren also recently started B5Media, which is a blogging network for others who are also interested in blogging. Today, Rowse sees over 100,000 per day with revenue to match as he contributes to roughly 20 blogs on a regular basis!
Lessons Learned:
- There are many different ways to enter the world of entrepreneurship such as starting a blog
- Making money with an online business often takes times (It took 3 years for Darren, which is considered fast)
- Gauge the effort you put in after the initial release based upon the return you are seeing
- Don’t be afraid to try more than one idea at the same time as long as you can keep focus
- Continue to research, learn, and grow as you pursue your goals
Did you miss last weeks spotlight? Check it out here: The Entrepreneur Spotlight: Rob Malda.
Be on the lookout for our next entrepreneur spotlight article in this ongoing series. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the success of this week’s entrepreneur and his entrepreneurship characteristics. Also, please let me know if you have an entrepreneur you would like to see featured here in the weeks to come.
Sources:
Thanks for the spotlight – but could I make a few clarifications/corrections as some of this is a bit dated and might lead people up a garden path. Times change so perhaps some of this was taken from pages that need updating elsewhere.
1. ProBlogger isn’t really my primary blog – my photography blog http://www.digital-photography-school.com is 5-6 times as big in terms of traffic and income.
2. I only have 3 active blogs these days, not 20. I did go through a stage quite a few years ago where I had 20 active blogs and have had 30 over the last 8 years…. but today I only focus upon ProBlogger, Digital Photography School and TwiTip.com.
3. b5media was started back in 2004, so not really a recent thing. In fact I’m no longer actively involved with b5 and am just a minority shareholder.
hope some of that helps to make this a more up to date spotlight
Thanks so much for taking a minute to read and comment! It’s not too often that the person I’m writing about actually shows up on my blog. haha I appreciate the updates and will make the changes soon. I’m a big admirer of what you’ve done with your online career. I’m currently working on a few things I hope will take off too!