Bloggers Face-Off: Amit Agarwal vs. Collis Ta’eed

After taking a long break the Bloggers Face-Off series is back. In 2023 I am planning to run at least one match every month, possibly more.

This edition will close the 2023 round, and I am glad to present two of my favorite bloggers here. Amit Agarwal was the first professional blogger in India, and he authors the popular Digital Inspiration blog. From computers to software and consumer electronics, that is the place to go.

Amit will be facing Collis Ta’eed. Despite being blogging for less than a year, Collis (and Cyan, his wife) already managed to establish two authority blogs on different niches. You probably came across them in the past: Freelance Switch and PSDTuts. Combined they have over 25,000 RSS subscribers, so he must be doing something right!

Now to the face-off.

	Amit Agarwal	Collis Ta’eed
1. How long have you been blogging?	3+ years	Exactly 10 months next week!
2. How many hours do you dedicate to your blog daily?	10+ hours	It varies a lot, some days the whole day, most days just an hour or less. Both blogs are written mostly by other people these days
3. Do you make money with it?	Yes, the blog is my primary source of income now. The yearly revenue is in six figures USD	Sort of, they make about $12k in revenue a month, but we spend most of that Next month will be the first profitable month for the blogs since we started which is exciting!
4. How many page views the blog generates daily?	The average is 45k+ daily	FreelanceSwitch does about 14,000 pageviews/day, PSDTUTS averages 46,000 pageviews/day
5. What is the biggest mistake you did along the way?	There was no email subscription form on my site for a long time	Thinking that it was easy to make money Like all things, it takes time to grow and expand
6. Is it easier to get readers with a tech blog?	Probably yes but again, this area has maximum number of bloggers so it balances out	Yes and no. It’s easier in the sense that ‘tech’ readers are more likely to know what RSS is. But there is much fiercer competition in tech niches than in less savvy ones
7. What is your favorite social bookmarking site?	Have a presence on these sites but rarely use them. Spend most of my time on Facebook and Twitter	I’m a bit of a digg-addict
8. If you could give an advice for a novice blogger, what would it be?	The first six months of blogging can be discouraging in terms of traffic. Don’t lose heart, they’ll come	What niche you pick is the most important decision you’ll make. After that just stay focussed and keep innovating
9. How many RSS feeds do you track daily?	Several hundreds	I don’t use RSS actually I did for a while but found it annoying. I just visit sites. The only blog I read consistently is Techcrunch though
10. What is more important, raw traffic or RSS subscribers?	For revenue, traffic is important but for reach and getting the word out, RSS subscribers matter the most	Traffic I suppose. Traffic sells ads, RSS numbers make you feel good I also don’t think there’s that much correlation between the two, RSS numbers are often comprised of a lot of dead weight
11. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick?	AllThingsD	I do only read one blog – Techcrunch
11. What is the secret of your success, expressed in one word?	Consistency	Innovation