Part 1 : Aka "Boogie Jack", income, pageviews, and success

OK, let's get the obvious question out the way here - what's the story on the name Boogie Jack?
A really dumb one! My first graphics were posted on another site and the webmaster wanted a name to credit the images to. I was new to the net and my wife didn't want me to use my real name. I was listening to a blues tune and a line came out like "you sure boogie, Jack" or "he can sure boogie, Jack"...so I grabbed "Boogie Jack" to use.

By the time I got around to building a website I was known by it, having had graphics published with software programs, CD-ROM book inserts and things like that; so I was stuck with it unless I wanted to start over. Most any marketer will tell you it's better to build on publicity than to try and create it anew.

And tell us about your new book - what's in it and why should we buy it?
You should buy it so I can become filthy rich, fly to exotic locations and film guest spots on TV. Either that, or because you want to build a website and like tutorials that are in plain English, with a minimum of technobabble - and like a little humor with it to prevent dryness and chapping.

A lot of people have written saying my tutorials are easier to follow than any books they've read. Some silly publisher checked me out and agreed, and asked me to write the book. It covers website creation from square one to the end, including many tips and tricks. I even reveal most of my secrets for search engine optimization.

Go to any search engine and look up "left border backgrounds" - which is one of my most important keyword phrases - and see what you find. Of course, search engine rankings fluctuate regularly, but I'm usually on the front page of more than half of the major engines. I checked four right now, and I'm number one on Yahoo, Google, MSN, and Alta Vista for that phrase. So even if you know how to build a website, there are things to learn in the book that I don't reveal anywhere else.

By the way, you'll find the book's Table of Contents here. 

Ok, let's take a look at the website. Would you describe it as your day job, and if so, how are you going about earning money through it?
It is my day job, and night job. I work long hours, but it is my only job. I'm one of those guys that can sit at home all day and work in their underwear. I'll save all the window peepers the trouble; I don't work in my underwear, but I could.

The money comes from many sources. My site dishes out about 700,000 page views a month, so I make about half my income from advertising, but I also have several other income streams. Income streams are important. When one starts to dry up, it doesn't affect you as drastically as when you only have one source of income.

I also make money from affiliate programs, but I choose them carefully and only recommend products or services I believe in - you don't want to lose your credibility and certainly don't want to do a disservice to your visitors.

Then I also sell products and services of my own. The hottest product I have right now is my Background Magic program. It's received rave reviews, including a best 5-Star rating from ZDNet. It lets anyone make professional looking custom backgrounds and buttons for their own websites with button clicking ease. People no longer have to look at graphics archives like mine and wish they could make their own graphics - now they can, without learning any complicated techniques or buying any high-priced software. It comes as freeware and shareware.

Is there a masterplan behind site development and income generation, or have things happened more by chance?
To be honest, it started out by chance. I built a personal site just to see if I could, and added a bit of free graphics so I had unique content to offer. I noticed I was being asked many of the same how-to questions over and over, so I added some tutorials and things started snowballing. Traffic went up, email increased, people started making me offers like I was somebody special - then I realized I could probably make some money at it, so I started planning for it after that.

What do you think have been the key reasons for your success, getting several hundred thousand pageviews each month...?
I bought a huge mailing list to spam with and told everyone, "I know what you did, visit boogiejack.com or I'm telling" and traffic skyrocketed. There must have been a lot of guilty people on that list. Okay, just kidding, I never spam.

The truth is, there are several reasons. I think honesty and integrity are chief among them. If I don't know something, I'll tell someone I don't know it. I will also only promote things I believe in, and I don't publish a lot of negative content. Most people want to feel good about things if they had their druthers.

I offer a lot of free content, which is always appealing if it's quality content. There are free professional graphics, free HTML and graphics tutorials, free sound effects, and more. These are all popular draw cards.

Then, my content is original. Original presentations of unique content is a prime traffic tool, and I have over 500 pages of it. Well, most of it is pretty good anyway. There is some general silliness that I wouldn't call high quality, but it is some folks' favorite part so it helps too.

I also decided early on that even though I was striving for a professional site, it would be friendly and homey, not full of corporate style officiousness or artificial superiority. I use humor a lot and plain talk my way around most of the site, tossing in personal anecdotes or little oddities here and there.

And even though I get up to 300 emails a day, I try to answer each one personally. This is becoming increasingly difficult, and at times I just can't keep up, but folks do appreciate knowing you took the time to write to them. Everyone wants to feel they're important, and they are, but a lot of sites don't give you that.

A few other reasons are that I update and add content often, navigation is easy, and I write two ezines with original content (and that keeps your name in front of folks eyeballs even when they aren't visiting your site). I also offer contests in which folks can win prizes, I try to keep pages fast loading yet attractive looking...and attitude.

Attitude? Yes, put yourself in your visitors place when you write pages, answer email, and in any other ways you deal with the public. It's only common sense, but some sites act like they're doing you the favor by being there, when the opposite is true. It's your visitors that make your site...without them, your site is like unmined gold buried underground - unseen and useless to all.

Continued...