Bloggers Face-Off: Zac Johnson vs. Tyler Cruz

Time to get some online entrepreneurs on the Bloggers Face-Off.

Zac Johnson has been making money online since he was a teenager, and now he has a small empire. Some time ago he received a lot of attention after revealing that one of his websites was making over $200,000 monthly in profits….

Tyler Cruz also makes money from building websites and selling advertising on them. On top of that he also flips sites and domains, and he is already making five figures monthly.

Those two guys know what they are they are talking about, so check out their websites and bookmark it. You will notice that some of their answers were surprisingly similar, I guess it’s the web entrepreneur lifestyle!

	Zac Johnson	Tyler Cruz
1. How long have you been blogging?	Coming up on one year. My blog went live on March 17th 2007	My first post was made on October 21, 2005, so 2 years and 2 months. Has it been that long already?
2. How many hours do you dedicate to it daily?	1-3 hours depending on how much writing I have planned	On average I’d estimate around 2 hours, a lot more if I’m running a competition or writing reviews
3. How many page views does your blog generate daily?	Currently around 1,200 uniques per day	Surprisingly only 1,000… although it’s important to note I have over 1,100 RSS readers which affects this
4. Do you make money with it?	The site is on an upward trend since and now generating over $3,000 a month. Revenue sources are private advertising and affiliate programs	Yes. Last month my blog brought in $1,100 - a number which I’m aggresively trying to increase
5. What is the biggest mistake you did along the way?	Everyone learns from their mistakes and decisions they made over time, so I have no regrets. If there was something I might have changed, it may have been to start blogging earlier than I did	Writing multiple topics within one blog post. In 2006, I would contain many different topics and ideas within each post instead of creating a separate post for each idea. This was a very bad idea for many reasons including SEO, reader interest, and categorization
6. How long should a blogger wait before monetizing his blog?	I did not monetize my blog until it was live for 10 months and had over 1,000 rss subscribers. I would focus on content and subscribers first, revenue will come later	Once they have enough traffic to where they’d make enough income through monetization where it justifies the intrusion of ads - this will depend on the blogger’s situation and circumstances ($50 is a worth lot more to a 13-year-old or person living in India than it is a 25-year-old New York resident), but it should be understood that your blog or site will often grow much faster the longer you hold off monetizing it
7. What will be the biggest social bookmarking site at the end of 2008?	I’m not a big user of social bookmarking, but StumbleUpon looks like they are doing a great job. I’d like to see them continue to succeed, and provide quality traffic to quality sites	Oh no… I know very little about social bookmarking sites (I almost answered with “YouTube”), but I’m going to throw out StumbleUpon for my answer, as I’ve heard bad things about Digg lately and StumbleUpon gives me a fair bit of traffic
8. What is the best way to gain RSS subscribers?	While most sites run contest or promotions to increase rss subscribers, I think producing quality content is the best method	Offer RSS e-mail notification. For visitors who are not familiar with RSS or RSS aggregators, offering notification by e-mail is language they can understand
9. If you could give one advice to a novice, what would it be?	Write on what you are passionate about… otherwise it’s just work	Only do things that interest you. You will succeed far greater in doing things you love than if you are doing it purely for profit
10. How many RSS feeds do you track daily?	I prefer to visit the actual blogs, than subscribe to rss feeds. I bounce around a few blogs each day and see what’s new	I do not subscribe to any RSS feeds, and instead just visit a few select blogs daily. I do this partly because I’m always very interested in viewing physical changes on websites such as plugins, design features, and advertisements - all things you miss when viewing RSS feeds
11. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick?	That’s a tough one… maybe TechCrunch, just because of how it covers a vast area of the internet space	Why, DailyBlogTips.com of course! Let’s see if Zac answers this one correctly…
12. What is the secret of your success, expressed in one word?	Passion	Passion

Daniel Scocco on March 18, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

Bookmark

25 Responses to “Bloggers Face-Off: Zac Johnson vs. Tyler Cruz”

Michael Martin on March 18th, 2008 9:44 am

Those were 2 of the best responses I’ve read in Blogger Face-Off so far. Simple, honest advice, that has clearly worked well for them.
Zac Johnson on March 18th, 2008 9:45 am

Thanks for including myself in your Blogger Face Off. This is a great feature of your blog and thrill to take part in!
OldSailor on March 18th, 2008 9:56 am

Both of them have given very valuable information. It is the quality of the content and the passion to blog matters.
Michal on March 18th, 2008 2:01 pm

Thanks for valuable information.
Daniel Scocco on March 18th, 2008 3:13 pm

My pleasure Zac, thanks for participating.
Caroline Middlebrook on March 18th, 2008 3:52 pm

Lol very similar answers, they must have conferred beforehand!
Mike on March 18th, 2008 6:19 pm

Some pretty big differences between the two, particularly in their revenue and time they’ve been blogging.
The Masked Millionaire on March 18th, 2008 6:41 pm

All bloggers seem to have certain common traits and certain things that they do differently than others.

I think it comes down to doing what makes you feel comfortable.

It is interesting neither one of these two bloggers were all that interested in social bookmarking. It makes me feel a little bit better.

The Masked Millionaire
http://www.TheMaskedMillionaire.com
Jeremy Steele on March 18th, 2008 7:04 pm

I’d have to say I like Zac better for one reason. Tyler is good when he does informative posts, but unfortunately it seems like every other post lately is about his other endeavors (especially Publisher Spot). Have a feeling his RSS and traffic levels would skyrocket if he didn’t do that…
02millions on March 18th, 2008 11:45 pm

I like the part about starting off and revenue I’m always interested on how they got to where they did. I want to tweak it or learn from it and add it to my blogs.
Dan on March 19th, 2008 3:00 am

Oh gawd… please… get that ugly photo of Tyler off of here please.

Tyler Cruz is a lying, sleezy, greasy loser and needs to be banned from the internet for his obscene amounts of paid posts and crappy content.

He’s not a has been, he’s a NEVER WAS.
simon on March 19th, 2008 6:00 am

two great bloggers here…. and enjoy reading both there blogs
Jcyreus on March 19th, 2008 6:04 am

Daniel - this is a great format for a recurring feature article. I just found your site via a post on the same from Zac’s blog.

You have earned yourself yet one more subscriber.
Chris Guthrie on March 19th, 2008 6:05 am

Nice read. I like your point Zac, if you’re not blogging about something you like or are passioniate about it’s just work.
Daniel Scocco on March 19th, 2008 6:06 am

Thanks for the nice words, Jcyreus, and welcome on board!
Luke Smith on March 19th, 2008 11:25 am

I complelty agree with Zac : ” would focus on content and subscribers first, revenue will come later” This is so true do what you love the money will follow !
Michael Sync on March 19th, 2008 7:56 pm

>>Currently around 1,200 uniques per day

Strange… He can make money with only 1200 visitors?? I also have that much visitors in my blog but I earn only #20 per month. I believe that he won’t use the normal way of ads or etc.. or maybe.. —-
Albert on March 23rd, 2008 4:33 pm

How do they make so much? I get 6 times as many pageviews as Cruz but only make 1/4th of what he makes a month…
Stanley on March 23rd, 2008 7:22 pm

That was a great face off. There makeing pretty good money for only 1000+ visitors a day. Gives me inspiration and I dont feel so bad for only getting 100 or so page views a day!