I had a chance recently to interview Fabien, an aspiring teen blogger who owns SmallFishBigMoney.com.

Here’s what we talked about:

First of all, you grew up in the Seychelles, right? What was it like there?

Fabien: Seychelles is a very great place to live in, I have very fond memories of family and friends from when I was there and I go back there frequently for holiday. Most of my family are currently still there so that’s just another reason for me to go back often, but the country is not doing too well economically and it recently experienced a devaluation in currency, I left there 4 years ago to come to Australia as a result of the economy not looking very promising and as a result of escalating levels of political tension in the country.

When did you get started blogging? What got you to start?

Fabien: I started blogging in October 2007; it was a combination of things which got me started. I had wanted to immerse myself in a web venture for a while, but I was unsure of how to do so at the time, so I decided to check out how I can begin a business venture online.

I started searching for terms relating to making money online and I eventually discovered popular sites like ProBlogger, DoshDosh and John Chow. These sites obviously had a great impact and influence on me, that’s when I decided to start a blog – Small Fish Big Money Dot Com (http://smallfishbigmoney.com). My blog focuses on business, entrepreneurship, better writing skills and the elements of web design. I also blog about about technology, software and personal development.

You’re still in school right? How do you balance your time between school, friends, activities, family and blogging?

Fabien: Finding the right balance in life is always important, as I pointed out in this article Finding And Maintaining The Right Balance In Life, it is very important to prioritise important tasks, complete them and ensure that they are done properly, but efficiently. People sometimes spend three days doing one thing, when they could have accomplished their goal in the space of 2 or 3 hours.

My motto is prioritising and completing tasks in a given space of time. By doing this you allow yourself the time to go and participate in school activities, have more socialising time and live your life as opposed to sitting in front of a computer for half of it. I sometimes talk about “Relaxing And Taking Breaks Often” and in another post I asked, “When Do You Write Your Best Posts?”, because blogging at various times of the day definitely impacts on the success of a blog post, whether it will be linked to or not, etc.

A lot of bloggers sometimes run out of ideas for creative posts. What’s your advice for them?

Fabien: If you are in a niche that is too narrow, you won’t have enough content to give your opinion about, similarly if you are in a niche that is too crowded, your content may be the same as 50 other blogs out there. The key to continually getting ideas for posts is to ensure your blog is about quite a wide range of topics, in addition to this you should not restrict yourself to blogging about four or five topics … if something interests you, talk about it, the thing is, if you are interested in it, your readers may very well be too.

Do you use Social media to help you get more traffic? If so, which ones?

Fabien: In the blogosphere, social media is very popular. Do I use it to help me get more traffic? Of course! If you have this outlet that puts you in touch with literally millions of people worldwide…use it! If you Stumble an average article, you can get 200 hits to your blog by the very next day … if you Digg a great article, your server could go down, you could pick up 100 extra RSS subscribers (for your blog … the possibilities are endless.

Social media is very powerful, it cannot be underestimated under any circumstances and I believe it will be sticking around for quite some time. My advice to bloggers out there is, get acquainted with it. Go and sign up for popular sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit to name a few.

At the moment I am not using as many social media sites as I would like to be using. I use services like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Sphinn. It is without a doubt that this list will be expanding in 2008 to add to an always expanding blog readership.

What are some of your goals for the blog?

Fabien: In 2008 I know that Small Fish Big Money will experience massive growth. It has already proved it’s worth as a valuable site for information. But we will be expanding the site to provide our readers with even more information about online business development, branding, entrepreneurship, marketing and so many more topics.

My goals for 2008 are clear, solid and fundamentally sound. Build a strong RSS readership, skyrocket my Technorati authority and get into the Alexa 100,000. These goals are very bold, but they will not be completed without the hard work, commitment and dedication I put into my blog to share knowledge with my readers. I am always dishing out valuable tips, so I highly recommend subscribing via RSS.

Thanks for the interview, Fabien!

(Note: If you’re a blogger who is interested in being featured in an interview here, please drop me a line at hock AT moneymakingblogs DOT com)

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