Young Blogger Interviews #1: Simon Rogers of Teenius.com

With myself being 15 years old, I love when I find other blog­gers around the same age as me out there to con­nect with.

I fig­ure with this being a blog that cov­ers young entre­pre­neur stuff, I should bring these blog­gers I meet up front and show you the peo­ple who I have been con­nect­ing with.

So here is the sec­ond series I have added to Asnio. Every Sat­ur­day, a new young blog­ger under the age of 18 will be inter­viewed. I won­der how many I can find?

To kick off the series, I am start­ing with my friend Simon Rogers from Teenius.com, a “how to make money online” blog. Simon is a huge con­trib­u­tor on both this blog and my other blog. We chat all of the time through MSN Mes­sen­ger and have just become great pals over the months of our blog­ging careers.

I have asked him 10 ques­tions below. Enjoy.

1. To start off, can you tell us about your­self and your blog?

I’m Simon Rogers, a 15 year old from the UK. I run two projects at the moment: Teenius.com is my main project and is a blog all about mak­ing money online. Although recently it’s turned in to more of a blog­ging tips blog. I also run BrainBite.com, which has dif­fer­ent posts that are designed to inspire.

2. What got you started in blog­ging at such a young age?

A few sum­mers back I needed some money as I seemed to be going out prac­ti­cally every­day so needed to be able to fund it. After search­ing around a bit, a friend told me about his prox­ies where he earned $5/day with no effort at all. It seemed stu­pid not to join in, so I built some prox­ies that (as promised) earned a decent amount.

Whilst search­ing for tips to improve the prox­ies, I stum­bled across a forum thread about blog­ging and decided it was for me!

At first I was just doing small flips where I’d earn a rea­son­able amount of money, and it wasn’t really until I dis­cov­ered the make money online niche that I decided to actu­ally build a long term blog­ging project, and that’s where Tee­nius came from!

3. Do you have more than just a blog? If so, tell us about it.

As of yet, no. That said, I am cur­rently in the process of start­ing affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing and am plan­ning a joint ven­ture with a friend which should be pretty good. Once I build some more expe­ri­ence in more aspects of mak­ing money online I plan to start some sort of con­sul­tancy busi­ness… I did just that on a small scale a while back and it went rea­son­ably well, but decided to try and expand my blogs a bit more.

If I’m hon­est I’m not sure how well a forum or some­thing like that would do on either of my web­sites, but if they con­tinue to grow at this rate it may be some­thing I con­sid­ered try­ing out!

4. In about a para­graph, what would you say your blog means to you?

Sur­pris­ingly, quite a lot. When I first started I thought it would just be one of those phases and that it’d prob­a­bly die any day soon, but I’ve had to adjust the way I do a lot of things to allow time to write posts and the sim­i­lar. Most the time I spend on my com­puter nowa­days is related to my web­sites, and it’s become a pretty big commitment.

5. How do peo­ple react to your age on your blog?

Very pos­i­tively! I’m for­ever get­ting com­ments that include things such as ‘it’s remark­able for some­one of your age to be doing this’ or some­thing sim­i­lar. It gives me a great feel­ing to get com­ments like that as it shows

6. What lim­i­ta­tions do you face as a blog­ger under 18?

At the moment, not very many. I’ve just fin­ished school so I’m cur­rently mid­way through three months of hol­i­day, which means that I don’t have to worry about a lack of time! I think the main prob­lem for me has come when sign­ing up to pro­grams such as Adsense where I’ve been too young. Still, my dad usu­ally helps me out with that sort of thing!

7. Are your par­ents aware of your blog? If so, what do they think of it and what impact do they have on it?

They know I run some blogs, but they don’t know what they are. I think it’s best that way as it’s great to have some inde­pen­dence and go off and do my own thing. I’m old and sen­si­ble enough now not to do any­thing stu­pid like give my details out openly, so my par­ents know they don’t really have to worry about me in that sense. Besides, my mum still thinks that any­thing where you make money online is a scam!

8. What are the advan­tages of blog­ging young that “older” blog­gers don’t have?

I think there are quite a few things actu­ally. For a start, I feel there’s a great sense of com­mu­nity between younger blog­gers where it’s easy to con­nect and make friends with some­one of a sim­i­lar age. As well as that, we’ve got plenty of time to improve, try new things and ulti­mately learn.

9. What is your biggest accom­plish­ment as a young blog­ger? What kind of things do you see your­self doing by next year? How about 3 years?

My biggest achieve­ment would be run­ning Tee­nius, which in my opin­ion is pretty suc­cess­ful. Hope­fully soon I’ll be mak­ing a good income from the inter­net, and within a few years I’m hop­ing to not only make a good income, but also do it with min­i­mal work. I have a few ideas on how to do so, but it’s just actu­ally imple­ment­ing them that seems to be the biggest prob­lem at the moment!

In three years time I should prob­a­bly be on my gap year, which will either include me lying on a beach in some par­adise or sat in front of this com­puter screen try­ing ambi­tious new ways to make money to fund what I hope is a pretty cool lifestyle.

10. What is your one best piece of advice for those under the age of 18 who are look­ing to start their own blog?

Just enjoy it! Try and learn as much as pos­si­ble and try dif­fer­ent things. If I’m hon­est I’m not sure the tips for an under eigh­teen would dif­fer that much from any­one else: just remem­ber to adver­tise and drive qual­ity traf­fic, as well as net­work­ing. Do those two and you should do pretty well in my opinion!

A big thanks to Simon for promptly fill­ing out these ques­tions and patiently wait­ing for these ques­tions due to my negligence!

Stay tuned for next Sat­ur­day with more young blog­ger interviews.

Tagged as: interviews, make money online, young blogger