I managed to score a quick 10-question interview with Mr. Scocco recently, and rather than bore you with more prologue, here it is:

When did you get into blogging, and why?

I started blogging late in 2005, as a hobby. I always loved the Internet, and always wanted to create websites (I had tried with Geocities before, but they were pretty crappy sites). Then in 2005 I found myself with a huge load of material that I had written for my degree thesis (it was about innovation management). So instead of letting it accumulate dust on my university I decided to share that stuff with people via a blog. That is how I got started.

Can you give us a brief overview of your average blogging day? When do you blog, how much time do you spend looking for ideas, doing research, writing?

I check emails first thing in the morning (usually I clean my inbox in 1 hour). Then I write articles in the morning, and in the afternoons I work on promotion, networking and maintenance tasks.

Did you originally intend to make money blogging?

No, asĀ I mentioned before it started as a hobby.

You seem to have done well monetizing your network of blogs. Do you have any advice for those who have fairly well established blogs and are trying to do the same?

Focus on growing the blog and its traffic. If the traffic and the audience is there, monetizing it will be easy: you just need to test the different revenue options and see what performs best on your niche (e.g., affiliate, adsense, direct banner selling).

How much time do you spend in a day reading RSS feeds? How many do you subscribe to?

I would say one hour a day. I subscribe to over 200 RSS feeds.

How many domain names do you own?

Around 50.

What are your favorite social media/social bookmarking sites? Which do you enjoy the most? Which do you find the most beneficial to your blog?

I use Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Delicious pretty much daily. StumbleUpon is definitely the most beneficial one to my blogs, as it sends a consistent amount of traffic month after month.

What is your opinion on the importance of design? How much of a difference does a unique design make?

Having a unique and professional design is a positive thing, though it is not essential. There are plenty of bloggers out there making a lot of money with freely available WordPress themes.

But if you have the budget, then yes grabbing a custom made design can take your blog to the next level.

What is the most helpful advice you would give to a newbie blogger?

Focus on providing useful and unique content.

If you could travel back in time and register five domains, which would they be?

Sex.com, Business.com, Mobiles.com, Computers.com, Beer.com

Wondering what post I submitted? How to Feature Your Best Posts in Your Sidebar, which I wrote not long after seeing the contest. It was in my mental list of “Things That Would Make Good Tutorial Posts, If I Can Remember Them.” The contest got me to invest some time actually writing it (Thanks, Daniel!).

Here are my favorites from the list of entries (and I say again that you may find them useful):

Blogging

• Backup guide for bloggers – Back up your content! It’s irreplaceable. And just how much time have you spent working on it? Also, don’t forget to backup your template! (Just use your FTP client to copy the files to your hard drive). Blogging is like carving your words in stone. Your posts should be there for hundreds of years.
• A complete guide: How to make your post attractive using images – Images aren’t a substitute for good content, but they can really improve a post.
• Protect Your Blog And Counter Copyright Thefts – Eventually someone will “scrape” your blog. When it happens, know how to fight it.
• How to Write Scannable Content: A 6-Step Approach
• Absolute Guide to Losing Readers – I really did Laugh Out Loud when I read this: “I believe in the 80/20 rule. Eighty-percent of the website should be devoted to some form of advertisement with twenty percent being the content.”

Make Money Online

• How to go from $0 to $7000 per month and back to $0 again
• A 5-Minute Method to Redirect Your Affiliate Links – A great idea if you tend to refer people via certain affiliate programs frequently. For example, you’re a writer and you push people to your book’s Amazon page.

SEO & Web Development

• 5 Easy Steps To Oodles Of Search Engine Traffic For Your WordPress Blog – A great tutorial which I had read previously to the posting of the contest entries. If you’re new to the world of Search Engine Optimization, you should definitely read this.