Bloggers Face-Off: Darren Rowse vs. Jeremy Shoemoney

There are many interviews with famous bloggers around the Internet. After you read a couple of them, however, they start to get somewhat boring. Thinking about this problem I decided to try something more innovative and hopefully interesting, both for the interviewees and for the readers.

Bloggers Face-Off will be a weekly feature over Daily Blog Tips, where 2 famous bloggers will answer to some quick questions, and the results will be presented side by side. Apart from valuable insights the Bloggers Face-Off should also provide a nice reading for everyone.

Before introducing the interview I would like to thank both Darren Rowse from Problogger.net and Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney.com, I could not imagine a better couple of bloggers to kick-off this project!

	Darren Rowse	Jeremy Schoemaker
1. How long have you been blogging?	4.5 years	1.5 years
2. Did you start with the purpose of making money?	No	No
3. How many blogs do you have or write for currently?	I write on 3 personally, have another 5 that I own that others write and help manage a network of 172 others (b5media)	1 blog
4. How many hours do you dedicate to them every day?	I do blogging related activities 8-10 hours a day. I actively blog 2 hours a day on average	Less than 1
5. Digg or StumbleUpon?	Digg and StumbleUpon	Digg
6. How much do you make from your blogs monthly?	5 figures	$10,000/month from direct ads
7. What is your main income source?	Chitika and AdSense	My parent company, Shoemoneymedia
8. How many RSS feeds do you track daily?	666 - evil isn’t it!	10
9. Have you ever invested money in promotion?	Rarely - I’ve dabbled with AdWords but have probably spent less than $500 on advertising in 4 or so years	Yes
10. Would you use Black Hat SEO?	No	It depends on what your definition of is is.
11. If you could write a post on any blog in the world, which one would you pick?	LifeHacker	My own

Want to read more Face-Offs? We have dozens of them, just browse the Bloggers Face-Off category.

Daniel Scocco on March 1, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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151 Responses to “Bloggers Face-Off: Darren Rowse vs. Jeremy Shoemoney”

Terry Ng on March 1st, 2007 12:27 pm

Fantastic idea!

Can’t wait to see more of this VS. series.
Kat on March 1st, 2007 1:17 pm

What an excellent idea! It’s very interesting to see how these successful bloggers do things quite differently.

May I nab this idea for my music blog?
Daniel on March 1st, 2007 2:21 pm

Glad you like it Terry.

Kat, yeah no problems in using the idea!
Adrian on March 1st, 2007 2:37 pm

This is great! Strange the first things you notice though - don’t they kind of look alike in their photos?

Thanks for the interview; Keep ‘em coming!
Maki on March 1st, 2007 2:59 pm

OK. Am I the only one who thinks Shoemoney is really cool?

I mean.. he tracks 10 feeds and blogs less than an hour a day, while making $10,000 a month. Flat out awesome.
Daniel on March 1st, 2007 3:02 pm

Adrian, yeah they do look similar, but that was not done on purpose

I have chosen them because Darren is THE Problogger by excellence, and Shoemoney is one of the most successful affiliate and online marketers out there.
Broc on March 1st, 2007 3:29 pm

i find it amusing that this just proves a point i have always had in the back of my head
shoemoney is the douche of all bloggers
Daniel on March 1st, 2007 3:33 pm

Well Darren dedicates his time not only to Problogger.net but to a lot of other blogs as he mentioned. The 5 figure monthly income he mentioned is probably just from Problogger, he has a lot of others sources (b5media for instance).

But yeah both guys are extremely successful, you can just learn from them.
Christopher Scott on March 1st, 2007 3:38 pm

Interestign idea, and interesting responses. It’s funny cause at first I thought that since they looked similar they might have similar responses, but that was entirely off base (not to mention ridiculous to begin with).

Can’t wait for the next one!
Darren on March 1st, 2007 4:43 pm

clarification - the five figure per month is from all my blogs - not just PB.

thanks for the opportunity to participate Daniel.
Broc on March 1st, 2007 4:44 pm

oh
but great idea
and sorry for sorta/almost attacking someone through your interesting/helpful post man
Ariel Waldman on March 1st, 2007 6:19 pm

I like the blogger face off concept you’ve got going. I’ve got my boxing gloves on! - let me know when you’re ready for me
Buck on March 1st, 2007 7:20 pm

Jeremy making 10,000 a month reminded me of a poem I once wrote:

“Web Dreams”

There once was a keen web page designer
Who thought to himself, “there wouldn’t be anything finer
Than to make a web site that got ten millions hits a day
Ten thousand dollars a month, per ad, companies would pay.”
Yet, to this day, he remains pessimistic
Because, as any web surfer would say,
“Personal web sites are narcissistic
Nobody will browse your site anyway.”

Nice face off concept
Regards
Buck
Funky Guy on March 1st, 2007 7:28 pm

So who’s the winner? It’s a face off!
engtech on March 1st, 2007 8:05 pm

You should base all the face-offs by avatars.
Ariel Waldman on March 1st, 2007 8:08 pm

engtech - True…

Darren Rowse… Jeremy Shoemaker… Hot Or Not?
Razeen on March 1st, 2007 11:56 pm

Nice interview.
I hope you can interview more deeply with other great blogger.
ggwfung on March 2nd, 2007 1:42 am

anything with Darren in it is bound to get attention. He’s a blogging celeb.

ggw
Daniel on March 2nd, 2007 1:45 am

Thanks for the feedback, we can certainly model the face-off in the future!

Razeen, the next time I will let you guys submit questions in advance if I schedule the interview, but they need to be quick questions to fit with the face-off model.
Shankar Ganesh on March 2nd, 2007 4:10 am

The last question was good
Alex on March 2nd, 2007 5:47 am

Darren says 5 figures. Well, that could be anywhere from 10 000 to 99 999. Other bloggers usually come out with accurate numbers. Shoemoney rounds up to 10 000 and John Chow (whom I’m sure you’ll invite to face-off) reports his exact monthly earnings. Darren scores points for discretion
Daniel on March 2nd, 2007 5:54 am

I guess that every blogger has its own style and habits when dealing with money matters. John Chow’s blog is focused on making money online, and the readers love to see the exact figures.

Darren has a different style, and I also like the fact that he is pretty humble and down to earth despite being one of the most successful bloggers on the Internet.
Alex on March 2nd, 2007 6:28 am

That’s the point I was going for, it’s one of the reasons why thousands of people including me respect him more than other bloggers!
Jim Kukral on March 2nd, 2007 6:32 am

Cool idea, love to participate.
dobata on March 2nd, 2007 7:58 am

nice nice, I believe it’s gone be interesting
looking forward to the next one
George on March 2nd, 2007 9:05 am

Excellent idea. It was cool to see the differences.

There were two things that really stuck out for me.

1. The amount of feeds Darren follows (WOW).
2. The large difference in time spent per day on blogging.

I look forward to seeing future face-offs.
Joey on March 2nd, 2007 12:34 pm

Darren’s blog was the second blog I ever read. I subscribe to it now. I like this idea. Keep it up.
Brian Mark on March 2nd, 2007 2:00 pm

If you’re going to call him Jeremy Shoemoney below his picture, then it also needs to be Darren Problogger. I think you might have gotten confused.
Daniel on March 2nd, 2007 2:20 pm

Brian, I named him Jeremy Shoemoney cause that is how most people call him. In the post though I mentioned his real name.
Bes Z on March 2nd, 2007 4:41 pm

Thanks for this info Daniel.

Also, if anyone is thinking that one site is cooler than the other because of less amount of work involved, it may sound more relaxing, but work is work. You have to put your focus on work without wondering and comparing your amount of time compared to someone else’s efforts unless you want to improve or save time. One hour of work into one blog is good because it offers more time doing other things, but if that one blog goes down for any reason, that income is gone. So the good and the bad are known.

Putting more hours into more than one site is good as you have more sources of income because of being successful in multiple things. So if one thing goes down, other sources can back up your income. However, the bad thing with that is that you really have to put effort into more things.

Try reading how both bloggers approach blogging and how they blog. Then develop your own unique style that you are comfortable with. Everyone’s style is different: Darren may get nervous blogging only on one site because of having only one source of income and thus may mess up his offline life [like not having enough time to do things that do not involve the computer or any form of internet access], and thus may not be able to channel the happiness and efforts into his online work, while Jeremy may not produce good quality posts if managing more than one site, since he may have other things to do elsewhere or may be more comfortable sending effective bangs through fewer posts and fewer sites. Both of those people probably feel comfortable, after experimenting, with their own style.
Paula Mooney on March 3rd, 2007 6:18 am

I love it!

Clean read, very interest post.

Great idea to put up bloggers side-by-side like this.

I think you’ll go viral.
Anita on March 3rd, 2007 11:03 am

If you ever need someone to go against another humor or entertainment site, let me know (my site, Say No to Crack, is only ~4 months old, but gets ~10K visits per day).
Hans on March 4th, 2007 9:44 am

Wow great stuff! thanks for sharing this round with us. can’t wait for another one…perhaps those from the designer world like Chris Pearson v/s Mike from 9Rules..
James on March 4th, 2007 11:31 am

Very clever..I like it:)

Like the previous poster said you need to get Mike from 9Rules up there.

Good, clean post.
Esrun on March 4th, 2007 12:00 pm

Why does the topic say Jeremy Shoemoney rather than Schoemaker?
Stuart on March 4th, 2007 3:02 pm

Isn’t his name Jeremy Schumacher(or something similar), not Shoemoney
DanielthePoet on March 4th, 2007 3:54 pm

If I could add anything, I’d add a few more questions like the last one that give us an insight into other blogs which the “contestants” might actually read for fun or for random, bizarre information.

How long will we have to wait for the next round?
Daniel on March 5th, 2007 2:11 am

Ersun and Stuart, yeah his name is Schoemaker, I used it on the post. But on the titled I used Shoemoney cause its how most people call him.

Thanks for the nice words everyone, hopefully by Wednesday the next face-off will be online!
phplemon.com - AdBrite Clone Script on March 5th, 2007 10:33 am

Very interesting stuff. Shoemoney and Problogger are the 2 man blogs i read so it was good to see them pitted against each other. I look forward to your next one.

– Phil
Lee Odden on March 5th, 2007 11:30 am

After having conducted many interviews with SEO people myself, I have to say this is very clever and refreshing!
Carlos Eduardo on March 15th, 2007 3:15 pm

It’s very interesting to see a “Vs.” series about bloggers…

I’m waiting for more editions =)
tantowi on March 20th, 2007 8:27 am

It can be a magnet to increase visitor.Excellent idea.
Jeremy on March 24th, 2007 10:39 pm

Are we ever going to be able to place our own votes? That would make it even more interesting.
Matt Keegan on April 17th, 2007 7:04 am

Man, these guys are so unalike. I wonder why Shoemaker isn’t blogging elsewhere?

Matt
http://www.thearticlewriter.com/blog
Ginene on April 20th, 2007 8:38 pm

Great post!!! I have always wanted a comparison of both. Can you do JohnChow and StevePavlina?
Daniel on April 23rd, 2007 10:04 am

Ginene, John Chow was featured already. I will definitely try to hook Steve though. Thanks for the suggestion.
Sarakastic on May 11th, 2007 4:47 pm

Wow, I think I’d rather work like Shoemoney less than an hour a day, sheesh
Wordpress Profits on May 22nd, 2007 4:56 am

Being an Australian blogger just like Darren, my monies with Darren. I find shomoney arogant sometimes and Darren is pretty much down to earth. I liked the shomoney/rowse interview so much I wrote a post on http://www.wordpress-profits.com

Come on Aussie, come on!
Maying on June 1st, 2007 2:57 am

Good idea Daniel!

This is a very inspiring read for someone like me who’s new into blogging.
ruud on June 23rd, 2007 12:40 am

Hmm, very nice.

Good idea.
网站建设 on June 25th, 2007 5:39 am

good
ritchie on June 27th, 2007 3:23 pm

Nice idea. didn’t know that shoemoney startet blogging so recently.
egforum on July 7th, 2007 6:28 pm

Wow, I think I’d rather work like
wordpressprofits on July 19th, 2007 12:25 am

I wrote about these to fellows a couple of months ago. Both have inspired me so much so I now make a 5 figure income myself.
betty muy on August 1st, 2007 6:56 pm

Superbul

GOOD
JTPRATT's Blogging Mistakes on August 21st, 2007 9:47 am

This was probably one of my favorite face off’s, out of all of them you’ve done so far! Good choices!
Doug M on August 30th, 2007 10:41 am

As a new blogger i’ve been reading several blogs and it’s funny to see a vs. of the 2 blogs i started reading when i got into all of this. Darren and Jeremy are both knowledgable and everyone can learn something from them.
The Credence Dot Com on September 7th, 2007 11:43 pm

Great technique Daniel. Certainly eye catching and great blog. I am surprised how did i missed it for so long ? There goes its feed in my reader…
angie on September 24th, 2007 9:42 am

Wow that’s great! thanks for sharing this round with us. I can’t wait for another one… LOL
JoLynn Braley on September 25th, 2007 5:42 pm

Hey, very cool, I love your idea and truly enjoyed this post. I’ll have to come back and read your others in the blogger face-off category, thanks!
Bob on September 27th, 2007 12:30 am

How can anyone read so many rss feed?
Work at home guide on October 24th, 2007 4:42 am

Very interesting post…
John on November 25th, 2007 11:45 am

What interests me in particular here, is how in just 11 questions, you can get such an accurate sense of the things making these two guys tick. Could have called it arrogance vs humility.
火狐浏览器 on November 29th, 2007 5:54 am

Nice idea. didn’t know that shoemoney startet blogging so recently.
Aneesh on December 3rd, 2007 5:02 am

Nice idea it is great to have guys like problogger giving tips..
wheemyawanync on December 5th, 2007 5:13 pm

mm.. nice post dude!
Robert on December 7th, 2007 8:33 pm

Shoemoney it’s the best blog about adsense earnings and he post his check very cool site and post frequently.
i'mkidding on December 28th, 2007 9:49 pm

hey…
i feel like reading an FHM magazine..

is it a battle?? where is the score?? who wins??
数据恢复 on January 1st, 2008 10:07 pm

Your website, I liked it, it has a collection!
CatherineL on January 12th, 2008 7:49 pm

This is a great comparison. Shoemoney’s hourly rate is pretty amazing. He’s only blogging 20 hours a month which means he’s getting $500 per hour for doing something he enjoys.
Jeba on February 2nd, 2008 5:39 am

Darren is more of a true blogger than shoemaker.. I will vote for Danner any day of the month..
Blogsha.com on February 15th, 2008 8:00 pm

Great people !

Shardul
http://www.blogsha.com
Jay on February 19th, 2008 10:59 am

Inresting to read blog gurus profiles. It gives some ideas to the blog rookies like me.
jose on March 18th, 2008 5:23 pm

great website!
Albert on March 23rd, 2008 5:21 pm

No offense but this seems more like a versus between a man who has no life and a man that has a life. Both can make good amounts of money…
Putonghu on April 2nd, 2008 9:20 am

hey…
i feel like reading an FHM magazine..
数据恢复 on April 4th, 2008 1:20 am

This is a great comparison. Shoemoney’s hourly rate is pretty amazing. He’s only blogging 20 hours a month which means he’s getting $500 per hour for doing something he enjoys.
locos on April 6th, 2008 9:00 am

they’re awesome, 10k per moth great..
Spigatcho on April 16th, 2008 5:21 am

I lost flavor with Shoemoney when he was exposed on DP forums for his so-called black hat/grey hat techniques. Somewhere around new years eve when it all happened … since then, no real peeps from him.
garry on April 26th, 2008 9:51 pm

Both of these guys are amazing role models, they don’t come much more successful than these two as far as blogging is concerned. I totally disagree with reader who says one has no life; you have got it all wrong, he loves his life, he loves what he is doing and he loves all the money he is making.
Abi Bakar on April 27th, 2008 7:09 pm

your idea is rock, you got 135 comments and 54 trackbacks…what a number
Masalaboard on April 28th, 2008 3:27 pm

Interestign idea, and interesting responses. It’s funny cause at first I thought that since they looked similar they might have similar responses, but that was entirely off base (not to mention ridiculous to begin with).

Can’t wait for the next one!
Xboard on April 29th, 2008 11:52 am

This is a great comparison. Shoemoney’s hourly rate is pretty amazing. He’s only blogging 20 hours a month which means he’s getting $500 per hour for doing something he enjoys.
ndah-ndoh on May 5th, 2008 6:02 pm

Wow, a very good interview, I cant wait for another VS series.
Good work.
Luis Gross on May 9th, 2008 10:36 pm

Hey I just came across this Daniel, How come I haven’t seen any blogger face off’s lately? Am I looking in the wrong places? This is a AWESOME Idea! Hope to see much more of this Daniel! Your a Genius!
网站制作 on May 15th, 2008 9:40 pm

Thanks for this info Daniel.
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garry on May 26th, 2008 10:12 pm

Great face off between two blogging legends, they are both winners and provide a huge amount of inspiration to anybody that wants to become a successful blogger.
Rita on May 31st, 2008 12:17 pm

fascinating. I’m somewhat new to blogging and haven’t heard of shoemoney before, but I visit problogger every day. will check into shoemoney as well.
SEO Genius on June 7th, 2008 1:37 pm

Great idea and i love this article
Wade Tonkin on June 10th, 2008 11:30 pm

I knew that Shoe would have some sort of hazy response to the “Black Hat SEO” question. Interesting responses guys. I love the contrast in time commitment and blogging activity.
奇瑞qq on June 24th, 2008 1:58 pm

Darren is more of a true blogger than shoemaker.. I will vote for Danner any day of the month?