Blogger Series: Chris Garrett from chrisg.com
What can I say about Chris? The guy is honest, returns emails quickly (I was rather shocked about that), and he is very friendly to talk with. Chris Garrett has no ego and he communicates what he is trying to state without any effort. He really is a classy guy who just wants to help. Though i shouldn’t be surprised, as this is the guy who helped co-author the “Problogger Book” with Darren Rowse from problogger.net. The very first blogging book i read and learned my skills from. Reading that book opened my eyes to a whole new online world. The book is a bit old now (I think it was published in 2008) but it is still extremely valuable.
Watching what Chris was doing was one of the reasons I wanted to get into the online world. I was thrilled when i saw in my in-box his short and to the point response to my request for an interview “Fine with me 
“. I might have jumped up and down for joy, when i saw that email response.
Below is the interview I had with Chris Garrett:
When was chrisg.com founded?
I have had a website on that domain since the late 90s, but I only put the current incarnation of the site up in early 2007.
Tell us a little bit more about chrisg.com. Why did you start it?
For a while I had been associated with all the joint venture projects I was involved in and I needed to bring my own identity out a bit more. Be me rather than just “Chris from …”. People did know who I was, but always as part of something else, and I needed the freedom to write about the topics without stepping on toes.
You write very long articles on your site chrisg.com, do you feel this benefits your community of readers?
Partly it is just my style, but also I try to give a lot of value. The articles are not always extra long, but I do advise people to make their articles long enough to get the point across. Seth Godin can do it in a couple of paragraphs, but it takes me 4,000 words, ha!
I don’t post as often as some people but I think I probably spend more time. It’s important to me that I give people something they can’t find anywhere else, otherwise what is the point?
You recently mentioned you were thinking of stopping your consulting work, why?
It is getting really hard to keep juggling all the clients, projects, products, teaching, and so on. Lately I have got back into a lot of travel now also. Plus we are planning to move to Canada, so my UK clients will obviously not be seeing me face to face quite as much! We have to work out how we can serve people best with the resources we have and right now, time is my scarcest resource. I can’t keep putting my prices up, at some point I have to get out of the game!
What is your favorite blogging platform?
WordPress, by a margin. I have used a lot of platforms and am not ultra-religious about it. Drupal is a fine platform, for Microsoft folks there are a bunch of .net platforms, but WordPress is the one I focus on.
Tell us a little bit about Authority Blogger and Business Blogging Made Simple.
Authority Blogger is my system for getting folks from zero audience through to growing trust, traffic and subscribers, having fans, and launching products and services that people are happy to buy. The business blogging ebook is for people who have a business, or who work at a business, and want to use blogs as a powerful marketing tool.
Do you have any people helping you create all this content and consulting work or is just you?
Just me. My schedule is insane as you might imagine, heh.
Any tools you can suggest?
Other than WordPress mentioned above, this list is getting pretty old but it is a start, click here for the list.
I still rely on Skype, but TweetDeck on my iPhone is pretty important now, plus webinar services like GotoWebinar are a significant part of my business.
How can people find you?
Any helpful tips for beginners?
The biggest tip I can give is to focus on your audience. Who are you serving? What do they most want? How do they want it? People blunder in without thinking about who they are trying to attract, then wonder why they get no visitors and make no money
Chris Garrett