Welcome to another edition of the BloggersPassion interview series. This time, weโve around Fabrizio Van Marciano from Magnet4Blogging.
Heโs a full-time blogger and a talented website designer who has been in the online business for a long time now. In this interview with Fabrizio Van Marciano, letโs explore how his daily routine looks like, his goals and his strategies that you can use to build a profitable blog in the long run.
Letโs get started without much ado and find some cool stuff.
Table of Contents
- Interview With Fabrizio Van Marciano: Lessons from The Expert
- 1. Welcome to Bloggers Passion. Please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us what your blog is all about?
- 2. What are your goals for 2024?
- 3. How do you monetize your blog?
- 4. If you had to start your blog from scratch, how would you start over?
- 5. Whatโs your #1 tip for beginners whoโre jumping into online marketing?
- 6. What are the major challenges did you face while building your blog?
- 7. Can you share all the blogging tools you use? Why do you use them?
- 8. What are your favorite blogs?
- 9. How do you promote your blog?
- 10. How much time do you spend a day on your website? Whatโs your daily routine?
- Final Thoughts on Interview With Fabrizio Van Marciano
Interview With Fabrizio Van Marciano: Lessons from The Expert
1. Welcome to Bloggers Passion. Please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us what your blog is all about?
First and foremost, thank you so much for the interview opportunity, Anil, itโs a real honor to be here. My name is Fabrizio Van Marciano, Iโm a full-time blogger, freelance web designer, and front-end web developer at Magnet4Blogging.
My websiteโs blog provides practical tips, advice, and solutions for bloggers, entrepreneurs, and marketers in the categories of blogging, online business, website design, and WordPress hacks, and inbound marketing.
2. What are your goals for 2024?
My goals are a little different this year from my past blogging goals.
Firstly, Iโm taking a small step back from blogging to focus on creating a lot more content for my YouTube channel and growing my YouTube audience.
I plan to continue using my blog to promote my videos and to grow my blogging and web development business.
I also have plans to launch a new digital media company later in the year.
3. How do you monetize your blog?
My monetization strategy is fairly simple and has always been split into three models. I have an affiliate marketing model in place that generates 50% of my monthly blogging income.
That passive income comes directly from a variety of online reviews, video tutorials, blogging and business guides, and banner ads on my website.
40% of my monthly blog income is generated through the services I provide as a freelance web designer and WP developer. And, 10% of my monthly blog income comes from the sales of eBooks, marketing, and landing page templates.
Thatโs it, just three models for the time being, however, I am working on a course that I hope to launch, market, and sell later on in the year.
Key take away: 50% of Fabrizioโs income comes from affiliate marketing and he diversified his blog income sources into ads, web development, reviews and so on. Diversifying your blog income sources is always a good strategy as you should never put all your eggs in one basket.
4. If you had to start your blog from scratch, how would you start over?
This is something Iโve thought about many times. I think, after defining my blog, my goals, target audience, topic, etc. I would spend the first 6 to 8 months going all out creating the best content that I possibly could.
I wouldnโt do any marketing or monetization. I wouldnโt waste my time on social media or anything like that, I would just be 110% focused on content creation. I would set myself the goal of creating at least 100 or more high quality, high-impact blog posts in the first 6 to 8 months.
Why would I do this and nothing else?
Well, itโs really simple, because blogging is about creating and providing useful, actionable, memorable, human-friendly content.
If you donโt have enough good quality content, thereโs little point in entertaining anything else. Marketing, building an audience or readership, monetization, all of those things wouldnโt matter, unless you have the rock-solid content, to begin with.
Key take away: Thereโs no other better alternative to creating a profitable blog besides creating great content. Your job is half done with great content. Make sure to focus on creating actionable content that drives traffic even after years and also try to focus on building your blog audience to drive profits.
Read: How to Start a Blog in 2024 [Step By Step Process]
5. Whatโs your #1 tip for beginners whoโre jumping into online marketing?
Yes, OK, so Iโve been creating online businesses for 15 years. Iโve been blogging for almost 10 years. And the best tip I can give anyone starting online just takes your time. Be patient. Iโm still learning after many years and Iโm in no rush to get where I want to be.
The problem we have now is that we live in a society where we expect โinstant resultsโ, and โinstant gratificationโ.
Simon Sinek said this and he is right.
And yes, we can blame technology for much of this, but youโre not going to get instant results from starting a blog or online business in a few months or even a few years from now. So focus your energy on building and growing your brand, blog, or business and donโt be in a rush to do it.
At the same time, learn, learn, and learn. It gets a little easier the more knowledgeable you are, and in all honesty, the entire process should fun and enjoyable.
Key take away: Building a profitable blog takes time. Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme and you canโt see overnight success no matter what niche you are in. Focus on learning and aim for long term results to succeed online.
6. What are the major challenges did you face while building your blog?
Iโm going to be 110% honest here and say the biggest challenge I faced was comparing myself with other bloggers.
There, I said it.
If youโre doing this to yourself right now, stop! Because it will crush you.
I used to compare myself with plenty of other bloggers that were at different levels from me, and I would often ask myself;
Why is everyone else doing it better than me?
I was always comparing everyone elseโs results, stats, income, comments, social shares, traffic, with my own, and it made me feel demotivated. Eventually I came to the realization that comparing myself with other bloggers wasnโt going to push me forward, instead, it would always create a massive mental block or obstacle for me. So I learned to let go.
I literally stopped following a bunch of bloggers that I was too frequently comparing myself with. Instead, I began comparing myself with the blogger that I was 6 months, or 12 months ago even.
When you compare the version of yourself today, with the version of yourself from 6 months ago, or a year ago, you begin to realize that you are making progress, and you begin to push yourself even harder.
This doesnโt just apply to blog or online business but you can also apply it to other areas of your life. For me, that was one of the major challenges I faced while building my blog some years back.
Key take away: As Fabrizio said, comparing yourself with other bloggers is one of the big mistakes most bloggers make. Just donโt worry about others doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records every day. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
Wow, the list would be huge if I did that, but here are a few:
Thrive Themes Membership โ I was one of the early users of Thrive Themes product, and when I discovered their conversion tools like Thrive Content Builder (now Thrive Architect), Thrive Leads, and Thrive Headline Optimizer, it became clear to me that I needed to become a member and use all of their tools to help grow my online business. I have been a Thrive Themes member for over 4 years.
CoSchedule App โ I started to use CoSchedule back in June 2018, and since then Iโve been able to claim back so much of my time. Iโm using that time to focus on growing my blogging business and providing a better service to my audience and customers.
I that CoSchedule is not for everyone, and itโs pretty expensive, to say the least, but after using it for over six months myself, I couldnโt go back to the way things were with my marketing and content schedule being all over the place.
FinalCutPro (Mac) โ I have to include this in my list because I spend a lot of time editing my videos through FCP. I use it because itโs quick and pain-free, and it gives me the complete freedom to create any kind of marketing video that I want for my blogging business, from screencasts, product reviews, to vlogs.
8. What are your favorite blogs?
Oh, thereโs so, so many, but the blogs I find most useful and relevant to read right now are:
- Thrive Themes Blog (WordPress, online business tools)
- HubSpot Blog (Content marketing)
- Neil Patelโs Blog (Marketing)
- The Miracle Morning Blog (Iโve been practicing the Miracle Morning for over a year now)
- Creative Bloq (Web design blog)
Discover some of the most popular blogs in India and start following them today!
9. How do you promote your blog?
I seem to be spending less and less time marketing and promoting my blog and content as of late, however, as I said, most of the marketing that I do is now automated through CoSchedule.
Here’s how it looks like;
I use email, web push notifications for promoting new blog content.
A far as social media goes, Iโm no longer using them all like I used to. The platforms that I use mainly are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Thatโs it!
Iโm really pushing content out on my YouTube channel this year, as I mentioned earlier. Iโm in the process of creating videos for pretty much all of the posts that I have over on my blog.
Key take away: Fabrizio mostly automated his content promotion as he uses CoSchedule (which is a fantastic tool that lets you easily promote your contents on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and so on. Make sure to spend your time mostly on promoting stuff on various channels to get more exposure to your content.
10. How much time do you spend a day on your website? Whatโs your daily routine?
So, I start each day at around 6am to follow my Miracle Morning Routine.
My kids get up around 7am and we mess about for a little bit, we then have breakfast and then they go off to school.
My schedule starts at 10am and finishes around 4pm, every day. I work no more than 6 hours each day.
I begin with emails, followed by scheduling my content and social media marketing at 10am.
At 11am, Iโll either begin working on client projects, if my client schedule is free, Iโll begin creating new content, i.e. record video content or begin writing a blog post.
Lunchtime is at 1pm and I give myself 1 hour for lunch, I may even grab a 20-minute power nap! Yes, I love to sleep.
From 2pm to 3:30pm, Iโm either working on website and blog improvements, product creation, or more content creation.
I spend the last 30 minutes of my daily schedule to quickly check emails, check website traffic, income, stats, etc.
From 4pm itโs family time again and it gets pretty hectic in the Van Marciano household. But, from 7pm until 10pm itโs back to business, and I can usually be found reading a book, catching up on some of my favorite blogs, improving my skills or learning something new in my business.
Thatโs my daily blog/online business routine.
Final Thoughts on Interview With Fabrizio Van Marciano
We hope you enjoyed the interview with Fabrizio Van Marciano and learned some useful lessons related to blogging and digital marketing.
Being consistent and working hard on your blogging goals is what sets apart from bloggers like Fabrizio. So be consistent, focus on what works and aim for long term results.
If you have any questions, shoot your thoughts in the comments and weโll be glad to respond to each and every comments.