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Darren Rowse

Blogging ·

Darren Rowse is a full time blogger living in Melbourne Australia. He started blogging in 2002 and has since become one of the leaders in the professional blogging space. He is passionate about creativity, entrepreneurship, travel, food and communication.

His Blog Journey

How Does He Work?

Running Two blogs

Problogger

The Early Days

I launched ProBlogger in September 2004 after writing about blogging tips and making money blogging on my personal blog, in a category dedicated to the topic.

When I launched ProBlogger.net, I brought all of those posts that I’d previously written so when I launched there was already 60+ posts live.

I remember doing some brainstorming of post titles but I didn’t have any posts saved as drafts. Instead, I was so excited about starting ProBlogger that I published 40 posts in the first 10 or so days!
In hindsight – that was too many. I was naive, but I was so excited!

via How Much Content Should I Have Ready to Go When I Launch a Blog?

He moved Problogger to it’s own domain in February, 2005. At the end of 2005, he shared his reflections on the past year of blogging.

During it’s first year, he experimented with advertising and blog consulting. He asked his audience for feedback on possible business models. Later in 2015, he revealed that he had earned $14’436 from Adsense. The revelation led to a lot of conversation. You can learn more about it at The $14,436.45 that Got People Talking and ProBlogger Slashdotted. He later described this moment as Problogger’s Tipping Point. He stopped using Adsense on Problogger in 2007.

In 2006, Darren announced the first job boards at Problogger.net. In 2016, he gave the job board a complete overhaul.

He posted celebrating Probloggers 1st, 3rd and 4th anniversary. He had his 1,000,000th visitor in March, 2006.

Growing Problogger

In September, 2009, Darren launched a paid community at Problogger.com. He relaunched a new version of the program in 2014.

In 2010, Georgina Laidlaw was announced as Probloggers content manager. This was a year of many changes; Darren also unveiled a new design at Problogger after he moved over to the Genesis framework.

In early 2013, they changed the strategy for guest posts to focus on better content. Guest posts returned mid 2013 when the former editor left and they were searching for a new one. Read more at The ProBlogger Evolution: Our Halt on Guest Post Submissions

In 2015, he launched the Problogger Podcast. He’s shared more about the journey at:

Newsletter

Darren launched the Problogger newsletter on April 13, 2005. Within 36 hours he had 60 signups.

He sent out the first edition of the newsletter on April 20, 2005. The newsletter got put on the backburner as he become more involved in other projects. The newsletter was briefly on hiatus during 2008. He relaunched it in November 2009.

Problogger Event

In 2010, Darren held the first ever Problogger Training Day at a Melbourne hotel. 150 bloggers attended the event – which is impressive when you consider that it went from idea to launch in less than 4 weeks. In 2011, it had moved to a larger hotel and had a larger focus on networking. In 2013, the event moved to the Gold Coast (Queensland)

He has posted regular recaps:

In 2017, he ran a modified version of the Australian event called Problogger Evolve

He also ran Problogger Academy in Portland.

Problogger Book

In 2008, Darren announced the launch of the Problogger book. The book was co-authored with Chris Garrett.

He shared more about the process at:

In 2012, the third edition was released.

Buy from Amazon

Digital Photography School

When I launched dPS back in April 2006, I set out with a year and a half of extra experience and so I decided to take things slower.

The dPS blog was something of an experiment and I didn’t know if it was going to be much more than a hobby. But I decided to create more content before launching and went through the brainstorming exercise, with mind maps that I linked to above.
I had 20 or so post ideas mapped out and even wrote a couple of posts that I’d published before launching – but didn’t have too many posts written as drafts on launch.

My plan at launch was to only post 3 posts per week while I got going but again I got a little excited and in the first week I published 6 posts and from then on it was pretty much daily!

via How Much Content Should I Have Ready to Go When I Launch a Blog?

Later, he said:

I put off starting Digital Photography School for a couple of years before I actually launched it (I’ve never admitted that before).

I had previously had a camera review blog that did well but I always dreamed of starting a more ‘tips’ related photography blog. I thought it’d be more satisfying to write and would have more potential to grow a relationship with readers.

via How to Make Your Blogging Dreams Come True

He shared part of the journey of building DPS at Problogger. In May, 2006, he was averaging about 600 daily visitors and is earning around $10 per day. In June, 2006, the newsletter had 1800 newsletter subscribers and he was making $25 a day.

He posted a case study update in January, 2007.

By 2008, he had people offer to buy the blog for close to a million dollars. He declined.

In 2008, he also experimented with with increasing forum memberships. He wrote more about that at:

In 2009, the blog got a new redesign. He posted an announcement post at DPS. The designer, Matt Brett, wrote about the process at How to Redesign a Blog: Redesigning DPS and How to ReDesign a Blog [Part II].

Monetization

In September 2005, he realized that his daily adsense average was over $500 which meant that he was a six figure blogger.

He has provided regular updates about how he makes money from his blogs, although he doesn’t go into the specifics.

Tips

 How I Beat my Best Month Ever by Doing Something Good, Better [Case Study] An analysis of his 12 days of christmas promotion

He recently wrote about how he nearly lost his blogging business in 2004. The Day I Almost Lost My Blogging Business By Having Too Many Eggs in the One Basket

Information Products

Specific Launches

The Insiders View of How I Launched My New Ebook

The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography was the first ebook launched at Digital Photography School. He shared more about the launch at $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned

What I’m Learning from the Launch of My New eBook

This post is shorter than many of the others. It is useful though for understanding how Darren built on the skills he’d learnt from the previous launch.

Lessons from Our Biggest eBook Launch Ever

In 2014, the DPS team launched the Posing Portraits guide – which ended up being their biggest launch (at that point.

Behind the Scenes of our Latest Six Figure Product Launch

Darren goes through the complete life cycle of Lightroom Presets Pack, from how we came up with the idea, how we marketed it, how we launched it, and how it went.

13 Lessons (& Tips) Learned Launching an eBook 31 days to build a better blog

Darren shares the lessons he learned from the launch of his first ebook at Problogger in 2009.

Behind the Scenes of ProBlogger’s First Course Ever

In 2018, Darren announced the first course at Problogger. This post shared the behind the scenes details, including technology used.

Tips

Amazon Affiliate

Darren has made a lot of money through the Amazon affiliate program. A 2016 estimate placed the total amount around $660’000 (USD).

Here are his top tips:

Adsense

Making Your Adsense Earnings Grow – Exponential Blogging. A post from 2005. He followed up with Exponential Blogging – Part II

AdSense Turns 10 Years Old: Why I’m Grateful for it!

How I Diversified My Blogging Income Beyond Having All My Eggs in the AdSense Basket

Chitika

Chitika was a search-targeted advertising company that ran for 15+ years. Darren had a lot of success with it in the early days of his blog.

In 2005, he shared how he had made over $700 in one day using Chitika eMiniMalls.

In 2007, he posted about how he had earned over $250’000 thanks to Chitika.

In 2009, he wrote about a change he made that tripled his earnings with one ad unit.

Income Reports

Strategy

Social Media

Pinterest

Facebook

Getting Traffic

Content Tips:

His Other Blogs

Most people focus on Darrens later work, which is understandable. However his earlier blogs, and business evolution, make for a fascinating story.

Darren’s income can be traced [with a bit of investigative journalism] back to a variety of blogs coming from 2 major domain names. The two domains are breakingnewsblog.com and livingroom.org. If you go to the main page of either domain you can see very basic graphics, limited text and no monetization. So how did he do it?

The key was each of these domains had many sub-domains. Each sub-domain was very targeted to specific topics like digital cameras, printers, camera phones, and even unmanned aerial vehicles. The blogs were then very keyword specific and advertising inundated. The blogs brought in lots of search engine traffic and if you look at them today they are still bringing more traffic then 80% of other blogs even though many have not been updated for years.

via Little Known Ways Darren Rowse Makes Money Blogging

He shared more about these early blogs in the 2004 post Pro-blogging >> My two year Journey of Discovery. He also shared that it took two years for him to start earning a decent income.

Living Room

Darren started blogging at The Living Room in November, 2002. This article covers a lot of his early days, especially the experiments at Digital Photography Blog.

It’s a fascinating time, and it’s well worth tracking down articles from this period. Here’s my favourite: Interview with ProBlogger Darren Rowse

Breaking News Blog

Mid 2005, Darren announced the launch of the Breaking News Blog Collective. He wrote about it further in an FAQ  at Problogger, including why the he called it a collective rather then network. One of those blogs was about the Pope. It reached 1500 visitors per hour at its peak. 

One highlight from his experiences was the massive amount of traffic he received for his Michael Jackson Trial blog. Interestingly, most of that traffic was from MSN search. He also had success with Blogger Idol.

TwiTip

In November, 2008, Darren soft-launched TwiTip.

TwiTip was a blog about Twitter. The articles contained posting tips, news and reviews of tools for those wanting to improve their use of Twitter. The blog is no longer active.

He shared more about the experience at:

FeelGooder

In November, 2010, Darren launched FeedGooder. He shared the backstory behind the launch at Problogger.

6 months later, he launched 7 Ways to FeelBetter – the first ebook on the site. He experimented with a different launch technique by offering the first 500 for free and the second 500 for half price. He wrote about the launch at Problogger.

Past projects

Six Figure Blogging

In 2005, he released the Six Figure Blogging e-course with Andy Wibbels. They released an updated version in 2006 and launched a second version in 2008.

In 2005, he posted Reflections on the Six Figure Blogging Course/

B5 Media

Later in 2005, he launched b5 Media with Duncan Riley, Shai Coggins and Jeremy Wright. The strategy was to have extremely niche blogs organized into channels – at one stage, they had 350. He wrote about his experiences during the first four months here. He stopped being a part of the network in 2010 and was just a shareholder.

Problogger formally joined b5media in November, 2005.

Third Tribe

Darren was one of the original co-founders of the Third Tribe Marketing community. He wrote about it more at The Third Tribe – Launched [My Back Story]

Features

Interviews

Newspapers

Personal Posts

11 Things That Have Helped Me With Depression

How I’m dealing with my third mid-life crisis

Finding a Balance Between Family Life and Blogging Life

Day In The Life

A day in the life of a ProBlogger

(Another) Day in the life of a ProBlogger

Remember

One of the reasons Darren is so successful is because he’s been blogging for such a long time. He has more content that can lead to income.

Example 1 – when I dig into my Google Analytics account and drill down into the AdSense stats there, I see that last month my post ‘Aperture‘ on dPS earned me $233.23 and this Wedding Photography Tips post earned $222.61.

Those posts were published in 2007, five and a half years ago!

Example 2 – when I look at my Amazon Affiliate earnings, I can see that my Popular Digital Camera and Gear post generated $60 yesterday for me. That post has been up since 2009 and while I do update it from time to time, it has been over 2 months since I reviewed it.

via Is Making Money from Blogging Passive Income?

I also recommend checking out his World Domination Summit presentation, How to Get Dreams Out of Your Head [And a Video of Me Wearing Tights]. He dresses up as superman.