BenSpark
Today I am joined by David from HealthLifeandStuff.com. David, please tell the readers about yourself.
David
My name is David and I am a 21 year old student at Brown University. When not studying for classes or wildly partying (it is college!), I sit down and force myself to read arcane medical research pieces. It’s hard but that’s the only way to learn and keep up to date with emerging medical issues.
Thankfully, at the moment, I can focus on blogging and my school work.
BenSpark
Wow, you are about 15 minutes from me. Arcane medical research pieces, interesting, you should call me if you are looking for a job in a medical software company after you graduate. In the meantime, please tell us about your blogs
David
I have two main blogs at the moment:
Health and Life (healthlifeandstuff.com)
This is a website that takes really hard to understand medical stuff and explains it so anyone can understand. It’s been up for almost a year, and I’ve learned so much from running it. Now we’re starting to bring other writers on board!
The Lynx Factor (LynxFactor.com)
This is a new website focusing on business and practical stuff. I started it so that when I get tired of reading articles like “Lorcaserin (APD356), a Selective 5-HT2C Agonist…” (hard to imagine, but it does happen! =)) I have something to do blogging wise.
Don’t check this site out just yet! It has been undergoing constant hacking attacks due to a hosting company security flaw and I have yet to make sure things are 100% OK.
BenSpark
I’ve been getting that hacking issue as well. So irritating. Why did you start blogging?
David
I started blogging because I was going through a hard time in my life and I always had a deep passion for medical issues. I needed something to do, and writing blog posts based off medical research struck me as cool and a good idea. Once I started it was just too much fun to stop.
BenSpark
Why do you monetize your blog?
David
I monetized Health and Life to help pay for expenses like hosting. Lynx Factor is just starting but I intend to mostly monetize it via selling books or affiliate stuff. Or maybe not! That’s what’s so exciting about starting something new; that you have so much to discover and decide.
BenSpark
What is your stance on Disclosure?
David
Disclosure is a sore subject with me but I’m glad you asked about it. You can’t imagine how much money I could get by selling myself out and writing a post saying some health treatment is a good idea or recommending a product. I routinely field and ignore letters from all sorts of shady characters like mesothelioma lawyers or weight loss products and so on.
Health and Life provides health information that is free of drug company influence and we’re proud of that. With drug company after drug company indicted for unethical marketing (Pfizer $2.4billion, J&J two weeks ago for Topamax, and many others), we try to avoid anything that could be taken the wrong way.
On the other hand, with LynxFactor, I have another attitude. A site focused on business topics has an entirely different set of expectations, and I see nothing wrong with making some money by recommending a book that taught me something.
BenSpark
Interesting thoughts on that. I think too that when you are talking medical information you have to be so transparent to your audience and not be swayed one way or not. As for business books, well that is subjective matter and opinion is valuable. How about SocialSpark as an advertiser, what is your favorite feature of SocialSpark?
David
SocialSpark gives you some very useful tools for making connections.
BenSpark
What should be improved on SocialSpark?
David
Sometimes functions aren’t as clear as they should be; a little lag sometimes.
BenSpark
What is the Ultimate Goal for a blogger, in your opinion?
David
The ultimate goal for me, at least, is to help people.
BenSpark
Which one plugin would you suggest all bloggers to have?
David
Most important plugin? For making your life easier, Akismet. For improving page load, WP-Super Cache.
BenSpark
What is the first thing you do when you fire up your browser?
David
The very first thing I do when waking up in the morning is check my email accounts, my analytics data, and make sure things are running smoothly. Then I wake up by reading various news sources and at about an hour in take care of all the important emails. I do all my emails in the morning if at all possible to free time later.
BenSpark
What is your best blog post ever?
David
What is my best post? That’s tough. It’s my opinion that the only measure of value a post has is how others value and perceive it. Using that metric, I’d have to say a piece I wrote on search engine optimization that I gave as a guest post to another blog because it was fairly popular.
BenSpark
What is amazing about you?
David
What is amazing about me?
If there is anything amazing about me, it’d have to be my firm belief that hard work, optimism, and helping other people is the way to go. I may be not so dumb, I may be creative, I may have insights that others don’t – but that’s just because I’ve been blessed with those qualities.
On the other hand, waking up at 6 or 8am as a college student and working hard for as long as I can – that’s something to be proud of.
BenSpark
Do you play Facebook games?
David
Facebook games have always struck me as a risky idea. At my heart, I’m a gamer, but I simply can’t afford to become addicted to any type of video game and spend weeks obsessively playing as has happened in the past. I enjoy a good game of the ancient board game Go, however, when I have the time and energy.
BenSpark
What are your favorite blogs?
David
Blogs:
- http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/
- http://www.futilitycloset.com/
- seomoz blog thingamagig
- howtogetagrip.com
- http://bayblab.blogspot.com/
BenSpark
Do you have any favorite podcasts?
David
Podcasts? Oooh, that’s a bit embarrassing – not a big podcast person. I listened to one from http://www.pharma-iq.com/podcenter.cfm?externalID=485 on bacterial treatment innovations and loved it but have yet to listen to more (yes, I’m a fascinating person =)).
BenSpark
What are some odd keywords people use to find your blog?
David
As for weird search phrases – I haven’t seen anything that bizarre which I can remember. Sometimes Health and Life gets searches which touch my heart or make me think, like ‘being alive is the worst disease’ and ‘adhd and feel bored life sucks’. Sometimes I wish I could figure out who wrote that and send them an email to try to cheer them up.
BenSpark
David, thank you very much for spending the time to be interviewed. Good luck with your blogs.
