Yes, another interview! I’ve decided to make interviews a semi-regular addition to No Enemies, because everyone is interested in other people! Today I interviewed David Peralty of Blogging Pro. He’s a professional blogger, a podcaster, and dabbles in web development and other hobbies.

When and why did you decide to start blogging?
When and why goes back a fair way. I started out writing an online journal of sorts on a Geocities page that I coded myself in early 2002 after learning the basics of HTML. My friends and family liked the idea as it allowed them to keep up with what I was doing in life and in College.

After a while I realized thanks to Michael Heilmann that there was a better way to post news, but I would have to find a host that would allow me to use PHP. Once I found such a host, I set up WordPress 0.72 and began to write more often.

At that point it was just me letting my family and friends know what I was up to, as well as what I was interested in. Some mentioned that I had a certain skill for writing and I began to think of myself as a professional writer in training, but I could never get passed around page twelve in any of my stories.

I then found a blog called Problogger.net run by Darren Rowse, at one point he was going away on vacation and needed some help from bloggers to guest author on his niche blogs. I was given control over his Laptops blog(http://www.breakingnewsblog.com/laptop/), and the traffic grew. Jacob Gower, who had been buying up properties from Paul Scrivens then offered me a full time job with his network the Bloggy Network, and I have been blogging more and more ever since.

Currently, I blog currently and constantly on DavidCubed.com after selling my old domain Phoenixrealm.com for a reasonable amount of money.

You call yourself a “professional blogger.” How does blogging professionally compare to blogging personally?
Well, I guess the biggest difference is that the control is different. I haven’t always been able to control when I write about things, what I write about or where I write certain content. I end up writing some of my best material and handing it over to my employers to use on their site, rather than keeping it for myself. Professional blogging can be high stress, highly competitive, and sometimes rather low on the rewards side, but otherwise it is a great job.

When you are blogging personally, or even professionally for yourself there isn’t the same sort of stress as when you are doing it for someone else. There is also more control over how you want things to look, and function and the goal of the site. Jacob and I haven’t had any problems in regards to these things yet, but knowing that you have a boss that gets the final say, makes blogging professionally for a blog network much like any other job, at least in that respect.

Why did you choose to become a professional blogger?
I don’t suppose saying “because the option was available” is really a good answer, but that is really what happened. I was between real jobs, and having just finished up a stint on Darren Rowse’s Laptop blog, I was hungry for more blogging action. My personal blog just didn’t have the same reach and audience that his niche blog had, and so when Jacob was willing to hire me on to write on some great sites, I just couldn’t turn it down.

I never really intended on doing this as a career. I am a big geek, and always have been, and so for me to get a writing career rather than selling computers, or fixing networks and whatnot was never in the plans, but I really enjoy what I do, and am always amazed that I get to do something so amazing as a career. It sure beats selling computers!

You also seem very interested in podcasting – you are a part of two podcasts. Why did you choose to get into podcasting?
Well, pretty early on into podcastings emergence, I thought it was a great medium to be part of. Little did I know that it takes a fair bit of time to organize, produce, and edit a release worthy production. I started out with my own attempt at podcasting with the Digital Life News podcast. It was a way for me to cover all my technology obsessions in one short podcast. I stopped doing it after a few episodes because there is only so much monologuing you can do before you get sick of your own voice.

Then I became one half of the TechCanuck Podcast because Dailypixel.ca founder, James Cogan, and I would talk endlessly about the new trends in technology, web, and advertising, and so he decided that we had to record some of our great thoughts and opinions. It was also a way for us to test the waters and see how useful the audio medium actually is, and how well received it is. I think it is still going through some growing pains, but it is always better to get in and learn everything early, than be the last one trying things.

The last podcast I joined was the WordPress podcast. This is one that I kicked myself for not creating first, but Charles Stricklin decided to give me a try to see if I could be a worthy co-host. He knew me pretty well because he sourced much of the stories I gathered for Blogging Pro as his podcast material.

I really enjoy being part of both, and would love to be added to more podcasts in the future.

How does podcasting compare to blogging?
Blogging is text, and podcasting is audio, and despite them being able to both cover the same topics the mediums are very different. I find blogging to still be pretty superior over audio thanks to our ability to get the material out into the world very rapidly. Sometimes it takes a week to properly edit a longer podcast, meaning that most of the content, is a week old, and not as fresh in everyone’s mind. Being first always has an advantage, and even more so with information.

I can already see that your favorite blogging CMS so far is WordPress, but there’s been a lot of recent hype over Habari. What are your impressions of Habari?
WordPress was my introduction to blogging software. I had written some basic scrips using PHP before I started using WordPress, but without WordPress I think it would have taken a lot longer for me to really get into blogging.

With Habari, I see a chance to start anew. A chance to update the user interface, add features that WordPress is still lacking, and try something different. I don’t have anything against WordPress. I think Matt and team have done a wonderful job, but I was really expecting WordPress 2.1 to be a revolutionary release, and after trying the 2.1 beta, I can see it is just another evolutionary release which doesn’t impress me much.

I think Habari has some great names attached to it, and with time, it will be a great project. It needs more organization, a leader or leaders to decide what Habari 1.0 and 2.0 are going to be like, and just more community backing after the first release is pushed out. Do I think Habari will become the number one blogging tool of 2007 or even 2008? No, but I think that it will cover a wide group of people that are unhappy with their current tool.

(David also has a Habari Blog, which gets more traffic than his main D3 site. :D)

What kinds of web development have you done over the years? Do you enjoy it as much as you enjoy blogging?
When I was in College I worked for CodePoets.ca on a variety of smaller projects, and I have been known to do some web development for friends and local community members. I haven’t really worked on anything major as of yet, but what I have done, I have enjoyed. If I had the time to really concentrate on learning all the latest coding techniques, and really getting good at growing the set of skills I have, then I could see myself making a career out of that, but I think blogging will always be a major part of my personal and professional life.

How do you think your success in blogging will help you in the future?
I am still uncertain how everything is going to unfold in the blogosphere. If newspapers decide to go more and more digital, I will be competing against some of the best writers, editors and photographers in the world, and while there will always be niches that need writers to fill a spot, I don’t know if my talents and education will be enough in say five years for me to continue blogging.

I hope to use what I have learned and shift into blog consulting around that point, and eventually, as long as I keep my writing, web development, and computer skills up, I hope to teach at a community college.

David Peralty is currently blogging obsessively at Blogging Pro, David Cubed, and Digital Life News. He occasionally updates his Habari Blog with all the new things he learns about Habari. Thanks David for the interview!