Corbett Barr Interview

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Site: Corbettbarr.com

As creative freelancers many of us have the unique working situation were we can pick up move about, relocate, travel and work from just about anywhere — well at least if you set yourself up for that flexibility. Corbett Barr blogs extensively on this subject of location independence, and in this interview discusses how he has grown his blog ThinkTraffic into a full time business as well. There are some great insights in this interview for those of you looking to add an additional revenue stream to your freelance income through blogging, or for those of you interested in the freedom of working from anywhere.

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Editors Note: This audio interview was originally commissioned for Netsetter; however, that blog was put on permanent hiatus, so we’ve placed it here on FreelanceSwtich for you to enjoy.

Transcription of Audio Interview

Thursday Bram: All right, this is Thursday Bram with Netsetter and I’m here with Corbett Barr who has two phenomenal blogs that he’s working on. Corbett, could you tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got started?

Corbett Barr: Sure. Hey Thursday, thanks for having me; I appreciate it. Yeah, I’d love to chat about what I do. I have two blogs, as you mentioned. The first one is called Free Pursuits and that blog is really just about people living unconventional lifestyles, and also about how to pursue what you want to do for a living and how to carve out a life for yourself that you’d like to live. I guess there’s some overlap there with the Netsetter actually.

The other blog is called Think Traffic, and that’s all about how to build a high traffic Web site or blog.

Thursday Bram: Okay. And these two blogs are pretty much how you’re making your living now, right?

Corbett Barr: Yeah, that’s right, either directly or indirectly. So with Think Traffic I offer services and I actually help small businesses and individuals build high traffic Web sites and blogs, either through creating the sites and helping them develop them, or just by helping them with marketing. So I have a full range of consulting services there.

Then, I also sell products. I just released a product called Affiliate Marketing for Beginners, which is really sort of an introductory course to how to do affiliate marketing. I sell that product through both of the blogs. It actually has a standalone site, but I advertise the product on both of the blogs and plan to release other products in the future.

Thursday Bram: Do you have a personal preference for doing services or doing products?

Corbett Barr: Right now, I actually really like the mix of both because I find that services are nice because you get to interact with people. I also find that services are actually a good way to do market research, in a lot of ways. So if you imagine the customers that you work with one-on-one as sort of a case study or a microcosm of the things that the rest of your audience might need help with, then when you work with them one-on-one you learn a lot of things that you can turn into products later on. So I like to use services to get to know people and find out what I might be able to help the broader audience with.

Thursday Bram: Okay. One of the things I really love about your blogs is you’ve talked a little bit about the shift that you made and what you were doing before. Could you tell us about what you were doing before you started blogging and why you made such a dramatic shift in your life?

Corbett Barr: Yeah. So my background originally is in corporate consulting. So I was one of these people that flew across the country on a weekly basis to work with some big Fortune 500 companies and help them through technology transformation projects and to help them align their technology better with their business. The pay is fantastic in those types of roles, and you get to learn a lot really fast, and you meet some really cool people. But for me, I just really got tired of not having any control over my lifestyle and having to away from home every week didn’t really make up for the fact that I got to stay in nice hotels and made a really nice salary.

Eventually I knew that I wanted to be able to go where I wanted to when I wanted to and to be able to spend a lot more time with my family and friends. So at first I actually looked into the traditional startup route as a way to gain freedom for myself. So I founded a company in San Francisco with a former colleague and we actually got pretty far with it. We raised venture capital and launched the service, and then the downturn hit in 2008 and we weren’t able to raise additional money to keep the company going.

So at that point I decided to take a sabbatical and really just take a step back and reevaluate things and decide how I wanted to move forward; that was in early 2009, just about 18 months ago. My wife and I packed up our car and our dog and we headed off on a road trip through Mexico and spent about six months down there and then spent another month and a half or so up in Canada. We drove basically all throughout the country and all throughout Mexico.

While we were on that sabbatical we met a lot of people who were really interesting and who were living lifestyles that I didn’t know were possible really in the past. It really opened my eyes and made me sort of completely reevaluate what I had been doing and what I had been pursuing. These people basically had carved out lifestyles for themselves where their career was either flexible enough to let them take time off every year, or they could operate their career from anywhere in the world; they were truly location independent. That was the first time I had heard of that and here we were meeting dozens of these types of people doing that, living in the glorious sun of Mexico in the winter and getting away from the cold of wherever they lived in the U.S. or Canada or abroad.

So I started Free Pursuits, the blog, basically to explore those ideas and to introduce some of those concepts to other people because it seemed like something people would want to know about, and I didn’t know about a whole lot of blogs that were talking about that at the time.

Thursday Bram: So you’re now a digital nomad or location independent as well, correct?

Corbett Barr: Yeah, that’s right. I actually like to call it location flexible because I’m not a nomad in the sense that I don’t have a permanent home and I work from the road constantly. We actually have a permanent place in San Francisco, or semi-permanent. We live here for, say, six months or so a year, and then for the rest of the time travel. So far we’ve been spending winters in Mexico because we really like it there, and we’re actually headed back there this next winter.

So I like to be able to call a place home, like our apartment in San Francisco, and it’s nice to have that sense of regularity and a place to return to. But it’s also nice to combine that with the flexibility to spend winters somewhere else. Actually, next week we’re taking off for a trip up to the Pacific Northwest for three weeks or so. So it’s nice to have that flexibility and just to be able to take off. And then when we go somewhere I can take my business with me and operate it from the road, and in some cases I can take extended periods of time off as well.

Thursday Bram: Have there been any particular tools or systems that you’ve found that you needed to work with to create that location flexibility?

Corbett Barr: Yeah, definitely. I definitely try to make all of my documents and records and systems online and in the cloud so I don’t necessarily have to have a specific machine with me. So, for instance, I use Google Docs pretty extensively. I also use a service called Dropbox, which is a way to back up files to the cloud and then to be able to retrieve those files from any computer that you need them. That helps a lot when you’re working from different laptops and different locations and things.

So I just try to make sure that everything operates in the cloud. I am also looking for a cloud based accounting system for my business right now. I think I’ve found something, but I haven’t settled on anything yet.

Thursday Bram: Okay. I did notice that your background’s very entrepreneurial, consulting, start ups, that sort of thing; is there anything that particularly led you to be an entrepreneur, to work for yourself? Of was there an evolution?

Corbett Barr: That’s a good question. I guess for some reason I’m just one of those people who grew up always having this idea in the back of my mind that I would be an entrepreneur or I would be a business owner at some point. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s something that my parents instilled in me, or maybe it’s just the sort of general discontent I have with working for other people, or something. I’m not sure.

But yeah, there was certainly an evolution because, as I said, I started out working in the corporate world that was very hierarchical and very rigid, and where you have ten layers of managers above you. There was just something about that that constantly nagged at me. It was as if there was a voice in the back of my head just always telling me that no matter what I did in that environment I would never be truly happy and truly fulfilled.

So the transition that I’ve made to location independence to running my own business, my own very small business, I actually don’t have any employees now; that transition I think has been as much about being entrepreneurial and having the true control over my time and my business as it has been about being able to live and work from anywhere. Because I feel happiest and most fulfilled when I’m able to work on the projects that I want to work on and not have to necessarily answer to a giant hierarchical structure.

The transition I made from the corporate world as I mentioned earlier, actually involved running a sort of, if you can call it traditional, startup. Which is where you get a permanent office and raise investor money and then hire employees and build out a product, and so forth. That transition led me to understand that what people think of as being entrepreneurial and being a startup doesn’t necessarily afford you that much freedom, because in the end when you have investors and employees and an office and creditors and bills to worry about, and so forth, you end up having almost more bosses in a sense that you do when you work in a regular corporate environment.

So that’s really what led me to explore other avenues, and it just seemed that there was a lot of momentum gathering around building a business around a blog. And people like Brian Clark at Copyblogger had shown how that was possible. So that really intrigued me and I decided to take the plunge. Initially I didn’t have big hopes for turning my blog into a business, but I thought it was a good way at least to explore alternative career options for myself, and then it became apparent that actually there was a pretty big market and that I might be able to turn it into a business.

Then I just jumped in with both feet and went full on for it, and I’m glad I did.

Thursday Bram: Was there a particular way that you learned more about blogging as a business? I know a lot of people just sort of jump in and start trying things, but were there any resources, anything that really helped you get your start?

Corbett Barr: Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of what you need is validation that it’s actually possible, because the how-to stuff, there’s so many resources on how-to, right? We hear over and over again how to write a great article and how to sell a product and how to do affiliate marketing, and all this kind of stuff. So the how-to is readily available, but for me it was more about just finding the validation to know that it’s really possible that the people that I’m reading about aren’t BS’ing me in some way or that they didn’t have some sort of golden spoon or something handed to them.

So just reading personal stories about how people got started and how they succeeded. One of my favorites, obviously, probably a lot of people know him, is Chris Guillebeau. Chris started maybe a year or so before I started Free Pursuits and he was gathering a lot of momentum around the time I started reading those types of blogs. So it was really great to follow his progress and just see how he started a blog and launched a product, and just started gathering steam. And of course he’s, in some ways, an exceptional case because he’s had a level of success that a lot of people won’t get to.

But you don’t have to reach that level of success to build a profitable business. I actually am fully supporting myself at this point just about 18 months after starting my first blog, and I had absolutely no blogging experience to begin with and I don’t have the hundreds of thousands of visitors that someone like Copyblogger or Chris Guillebeau might have. But yet, I’m still able to support myself very comfortably.

I think for people just getting started it’s just that they need to hear those real life stories of people and also to realize that there’s no set way that you have to do things, there’s no magic formula. You can make things work however they work for you. If that involves copywriting, like you do Thursday, or if that involves consulting services, or selling products, or maybe advertising even if that’s a route you want to go. You just need find out what works for you and realize that there’s no formula you have to follow.

Thursday Bram: I know that a lot of new bloggers struggle with the content side of things. You write about two very different topics, is there a way that you manage writing about them? Is there a way that you’ve made it easier?

Corbett Barr: I wish I knew a way to make it a lot easier, because to be honest running two blogs takes quite a bit of time. I try to mitigate that a little bit by having really high quality guest posts over at Think Traffic, and that definitely helps. You wrote a great guest post for us a month or two ago, Thursday, thanks for that. But I guess the best advice I can have is just to keep a backlog of ideas because as you’re going throughout your day you tend to have little ideas, oh that would make a good blog post, or oh that would make a good one. And I think what you really need to do is jot those down.

So I like to keep just a running list of ideas and they’re pretty simple, I don’t flush them out too much more than a headline or an idea for a headline. But just keep a backlog of ideas, and then when you go to write something you just sit down and go through that list and something comes up right away. What I’ve found is that if I don’t have that backlog, then one of the most time consuming parts of writing is just sitting down and thinking of an idea. And when you pressure yourself to come up with an idea like that, you end up writing things that are less than stellar and maybe not up to the quality that you’d like to produce every week.

Thursday Bram: I did write a guest post for you when you were starting out with Think Traffic and I looked back on your site recently have you have something like 8,000 readers already.

Corbett Barr: Yeah. So I just wrote the five month monthly report for the site and I have about 8,000 monthly unique visitors, I had close to 11,000 visits last month, and I’m up to 1,835 subscribers or so so far. So it’s been going really nicely and I’m really happy with it. In some ways, there was no other path for me because Think Traffic is a blog about building traffic to your sites, so I really had to walk the walk, right?

Thursday Bram: Mm hmm. Could you give us a little bit of an overview on how you started getting traffic for that site? I don’t want you to give away the secret sauce for your consulting or anything like that, but just –

Corbett Barr: Yeah, no, there isn’t really any secret sauce. The key I think is that traffic isn’t just about promotion. I think when people hear that word, traffic, or if they think about building an audience, they think it’s all about promotional techniques and finding the latest, greatest social network to become a part of and to spread your content through. But really, I like to peel back the layers quite a bit and start out with fundamentals of marketing. One of the most important things that you can do early on is to consider what your unique selling proposition is and to figure out how your business is different and why people should read your blog.

Because the fact is there are millions and millions of blogs out there, and when someone comes to your site you have just a fraction of a second to convince them that your site is worthy of reading. One of the easiest ways to do that is to set yourself apart and create something that’s truly unique. That way, readers have only one choice, if they want to get what you’re writing about they have to come to your site because instead of competing you set yourself apart and decide to innovate.

Some ways to come up with a unique selling proposition could include your personality, if you’re a really interesting, outgoing person, then maybe your personality’s enough. There are a lot of great examples of that, like Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz has a really wild personality so that really has become her unique selling proposition. Aside from that, you can also mash up a couple of ideas. For instance, Everett Bogue at Far Beyond the Stars has basically combined the ideas of minimalism with running a business. Those two things have never really been combined before and he’s had really phenomenal growth over the past nine months.

So again, traffic’s not just about promotion, it’s also about creating great content and then also about the fundamentals of marketing and making sure that you stand out from the competition in a unique way.

Thursday Bram: Great. Do you have anything else that in the pipeline? What’s coming up for you next?

Corbett Barr: So, as I mentioned this – it’s been about 18 months since I started Free Pursuits and I have a few different revenue streams and I run two blogs. The way I’ve put that together, I think, I’d like to share with people. So I’m going to be releasing a book in the next month or six weeks, or so, and it’s going to be all about that journey that I’ve been on over the past 18 months and how I’ve grown to somewhat successful blogs and a fully featured business over that period of time. So watch out for that.

Thursday Bram: Wonderful. So I just have one last question: what would you recommend for somebody who’s only just starting to explore the idea of starting their own business online? Where would you tell them to start?

Corbett Barr: Oh gosh. Well, to be honest, I guess this may sound strange, but the thing that I actually recommend people do is to take some time off. I know that maybe it’s hard to afford taking a lot of time off, but the way I started with the sabbatical I think is idea. And if you could afford to take at least two weeks or a month or a couple of months off and distance yourself from whatever life it is that you’re living and reconsider what it is that you want, what you want from the business and what you want from yourself. Because if you just jump into trying to create a business online and you’re still fully connected to your existing life and the society that we live in that pushes traditional careers and consumerism and all of those trappings, then it’s going to be hard for you to succeed long term, I think.

Because you have to do some soul searching and really figure out what’s important to you and make sure that you’re not pursuing something just for the money and make sure that you’re not pursuing something just because it’s what other people think you should be doing. So I really encourage people to start by taking some time off and then really look to figure out what it is you’re passionate about and what it is you’re good at. Because just jumping on something because it seems like a good opportunity will probably lead you down the wrong path and it’s the wrong types of motivation.

Thursday Bram: All right. And people, our listeners can find you at FreePursuits.com or ThinkTraffic.net, or on Twitter, right? You’re @CorbettBarr?

Corbett Barr: That’s right, C-O-R-B-E-T-T-B-A-R-R.

Thursday Bram: All right, well thank you for joining us.

Corbett Barr: Awesome. Thanks Thursday, this was fun.