An Interview With WordPress Expert Devesh Sharma from WPKube.com

In today’s interview series, we have Devesh Sharma from WPKube.com and he is also the founder of Blokube.com, a popular blogging community website.

Devesh is just 19 years old blogger, entrepreneur and affiliate marketer from India who loves to write about topics related to WordPress. Before starting WPKube.com, Devesh owned Technshare.com blog which he sold for $7000 via Flippa.

Without any delay, let’s meet Devesh Sharma and in case you have any questions for Devesh, don’t forget to ask him in the comments section.

Devesh, First of all thanks a lot for accepting my interview invitation. Please tell something about you and your online portals?

Thanks for having me, Anil.

My name is Devesh Sharma and I run a fairly popular WordPress blog called – WPKube. I got into blogging at the age of 15, and my first site was Technshare, which I later sold for 4-figures.

My current projects are:

WPKube – A WordPress resource site, which provides quality tips, hacks, tutorials, plugins, and themes for beginner users.

Blokube – A blogging community site for bloggers and internet marketers. It currently has around five thousand users.

How you get into Blogging and how you end up converting yourself into a WordPress developer who uses to work on plugins, themes and other coding related stuff. It really amazes me specially keeping in mind you are just 19 years old only.

To be honest, the main reason I got into blogging was to make money.

When I used to blog at Technshare, WordPress and thesis theme were two topics that I frequently blogged about on the site, so it was a natural progression to learn more about the technical side of things. After a few months, I ended up starting my own WordPress blog.

When your friends or relates ask you about what you do online, how you describe them about blogging and other related questions if you could share?

Actually I don’t.

Apart from my close friends and family members, no one really knows what I do.

You have been blogging for 3-4 years now. Please share some strategies that you find very effective when it comes about driving traffic to a blog. Your tips will be really helpful as you are blogging in the WordPress Niche which looks to be very competitive and saturated to me.

At the start I did nothing but producing content, but after a few months I started promoting through various methods:

Quality Content

Focus more on content, then anything else. Popular blogs develop huge readerships primarily because the content is awesome and in-depth. The time for 500 words post is gone, if you want to stay on top of your game then focus on writing in-depth content. Jason Acride and Neil Patel are two examples of how this strategy can help you get more traffic in long run.

Neil has been publishing quality content, in-depth guides, videos, and infographics for last 12 months. And most recently he started his own forum, which is doing really well, considering the money he put in design and marketing. Everything he does has one thing in common – quality of the content.

Guest Posting

There are very few people who properly use this strategy. Most bloggers focus on generating links, but what it really about is building connections that you otherwise never can despite your best efforts.

It requires more efforts and energy, than any other marketing strategy, but the results it drives will help you more in long term. I haven’t written as many guest posts as some other bloggers did. But what I did was took action and got good results. So stop reading and start taking action.

Read and learn everything related to guest posting. Check out my post on “What is Guest Posting‘, and addition explore the list of guest posting sites.

Forums & Blogging communities  

Participate in forums, communities, and other similar sites. This method will not only help build connections with influencers in your industry, but will also help you get more traffic to your blog. There are only a handful of blogging sites / communities available for bloggers.

Blokube – (Disclaimer: I am the founder of Blokube). Most active social site for bloggers & marketers.

Rise Forums – Premium Forums for Bloggers and internet marketers.

QuickSprout Forum – New-ish internet marketing forum.

While going through some of your earlier interviews, I came to know you are currently using Genesis theme on all of your blogs, any specific reason for choosing this premium theme over other themes? Which special features you like the most about this theme? Do we need a coding knowledge to customize our WordPress blog through Genesis framework?

I wanted something which is robust and doesn’t have too many built-in options. I didn’t want to clutter my theme with options that weren’t useful to me. So I decided to go with Genesis theme framework. It is perfect for building sites and doesn’t force users with extra options, unlike other theme frameworks.

Yes, you will need to have some basic knowledge to customize the genesis theme.

How you make decision about the topics that you will be blogging on WPkube.com blog? Are you using any other community, forum or blog to share your WordPress expertise to help users with their WordPress related problems?

I usually browse my RSS reader to see what other blogs are publishing, read blog comments, and look for questions / comments on twitter. I am currently active on two forums – QuickSprout and RiseForums.

Please share few blogs that you use to read and if there is any blog which you use to browse too often to check its latest post?

KaiserTheSage

GrooveHQ Blog

KevinMuldoon

If you have just $100 to start a new blog on WordPress, how will you go about it?

I would use that to get a clean design. You certainly will not going to get a branded custom design for $100. But there are at ton of premium themes available that you can choose from.

Where do you see WordPress going into the next 2-3 years time?

As more and more people involving in WordPress, I see it becoming more of an application platform. I think in the coming years, we will be seeing more developers & designers, using WordPress for building web based applications.

Please share some tips for newbie bloggers? And what should be their approach towards blogging?

Start by improving the design and content of your site. The best approach is to focus on producing quality content and building relationship with other bloggers in your niche.

Please share some promotional activities that you use to perform after publishing a blog post on your blog?

After hitting the publish button, I usually submit the post to social networking sites such as Blokube and ManageWP. Sometimes, I also use ViralContentBuzz to get extra social shares.

Are you using any paid or free SEO tool? If yes please share them with the reason for using.

Semrush (free version)

Which monetization methods you are currently using on your blogs and which method gives you maximum revenue or you find most effective?

For WPKube, I am using affiliate model. I am also experimenting with CPM, and it has become a nice source of side revenue. But it really depends on what type of niche you’re in. If you are running a niche specific site, chances are advertisement model is not going to make you enough money. You would be better off relying on affiliate commissions or maybe your own products.

There is no effective method for generating maximum revenue, it all come downs to what type of niche you are in.

Which web host you are using on WPKube.com and any specific reason for choosing this hosting over others? Do you have any good or bad memories about any other web host?

WPEngine. The main reason was to improve the site loading time.

The only bad experience I have is with Hostgator, when they upgraded their data centers.

Please share some plugins that you would love installing just after setting up the WordPress on a fresh domain.

WordPress SEO by Yoast – The most complete SEO plugin available for WordPress.

Backup Buddy – To backup your site data to Dropbox or Amazon S3.

Akismet – I use akismet and conditional captcha to fight spam.

nRelate – The best related posts plugin.

To find a complete list of plugins & tools that I’m using, you can see WPKube’s Toolbox.

Please share your message and how Bloggers Passion readers can get in touch with you?

The best place to find me is at WPKube.com. You can also follow me on Twitter here.