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In this episode of GradBlogger, we interview Leslie Samuel about how to become a profitable science blogger. We discuss how you should get started by narrowing in on the right niche topic. We also talk about how you can become profitable by monetizing your blog.
Disclosure: Some of the links in the podcast show notes and transcripts are affiliate links (indicated with [Affiliate] in front). If you choose to make a purchase through these links, GradBlogger will earn a commission from that purchase at no extra cost to you.
Introduction
Chris Cloney: 00:08
Welcome to Episode #26 of GradBlogger, where we’re helping academics change the world through online business. We show you how to get started with blogging, podcasting, and shooting videos so you can build a profitable business and make your dent in the universe.
I’m your host, Dr. Chris Cloney. In today’s episode, we’re talking about how to become a profitable science blogger. To do that, we have Leslie Samuel from becomeablogger.com on the show. Leslie, I want to give you a big welcome to GradBlogger.
Leslie Samuel: 00:36
Well, thank you so much, man. I’m excited to be here.
Chris Cloney: 00:39
I’m excited to have you here. We’re going to get into Leslie’s story and go over all his tips for how to become a profitable science blogger, but I want to give a bit of his background for you who may not know him.
I’ve been a longtime listener and a longtime follower of Leslie. He is the creator of Become a Blogger, a website dedicated to helping people change the world one blog at a time. What makes him especially interesting for this podcast is that he’s a former university professor with a passion for education.
He founded and later sold Interactive Biology. It’s a blog dedicated to making biology fun for students and teachers worldwide. He’s also the head of training at Social Media Marketing Society, which is part of socialmediaexaminer.com and runs a podcast, Blogging With Leslie, which I’d recommend for anyone in our space, so you can see that he has a real passion for changing the world.
Chris Cloney: 01:26
That goes with our strapline too, but he also has an education background and has started and run science blogs, so I think he’s a great fit for this podcast.
Leslie, before we got on the call, I was mentioning how I was a big fan of your journey. I was introduced to you by listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast. I think you were on Episode 48: How a Part-Time Blogger Landed His Dream Job, and we’ll get into that because that’s a cool lesson for our audience.
Our audience is really academics: Ph.D.s, professors, and folks who are worried that they’re not going to make the tenure track and that they’re going to have to move from academia to the real world of industry and not know how to get a job. We’re presenting them with another way to go. So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to become a science blogger: what you need to know to get started, how to become profitable, how you monetize your blog, and more.
Chris Cloney: 02:13
Before we jump into that, Leslie, can you share some of your beginning story and how you even get started online and what might apply to academics there?
Tell Us A Bit About Your Early Story
Leslie Samuel: 02:22
It’s interesting. I was listening to you introduce the podcast and everything that you were saying is my journey, so it’s really cool.
Back in 2008, I was teaching at a high school. I was a science and math teacher. The reason why I was teaching at that high school was because, prior to that, I wanted to become a university professor. I was doing a master’s in neurobiology with the plan to go on for a Ph.D. in neurobiology.
While doing the master’s, I realized one very important point: I hated the research. If you know anything about a Ph.D. in neurobiology, you know that it involves a little bit of research, if not a whole lot of research. So I gave up on that dream and started to teach at a boarding academy. Both my wife and I taught there.
Leslie Samuel: 03:13
While I was there, I started stumbling onto different things. One was an industry called freebie trading, where you sign up through these websites, complete a bunch of offers, refer friends and so on, and you get a free iPod, TV, or something similar. I learned about a system where you could use those sites to make some money. So I started using those sites. I got very active on them.
Leslie Samuel: 03:50
Then I started learning about blogging. I started a blog called The Freebie Guy and got into this whole blogging thing just to teach people about freebies because the way I was doing it at the time, I always had to be out there in forums, trying to get people to come to me. I learned that blogging was a way for you to create content so that people would find you on the internet. That sounded fascinating, so I started a blog to teach people about freebies, and it just evolved from there.
Chris Cloney: 04:23
Yeah, I love that. I always point people to your past website, Interactive Biology, as proof that it can be done, that you can be a science blogger and also be profitable.
That’s a great background on how you got started. You wanted to be a professor, but you weren’t able to do that because you didn’t like research. My degree was in chemical engineering and I had a ton of research to do. I know the difficulties involved and a lot of our audience will as well. But where did Interactive Biology come in and then where did that professorship come in?
Can You Tell Us About Interactivebiology.com?
Leslie Samuel: 05:00
When I was learning how to blog and teach people about freebies, I realized that I didn’t care about freebies. I cared more about blogging, so I started teaching more about blogging. Then I thought to myself, “Okay, I’m learning all this stuff about blogging and making some money online doing it. What if I were to take these same principles and apply it to something that I’m passionate about? Something that I really get excited about?”
I thought back to wanting to be a university professor and I said, “Wait a minute. Why not just start a blog and teach exactly what I would be teaching as a university professor?”
Leslie Samuel: 05:36
That’s where Interactive Biology started. It was a twofold thing. Number one, it allowed me to create content about neurobiology and physiology and topics that I was excited about. Number two, I could use that as a case study to say to people, “Hey look, it’s possible. You can do this.”
So I started that biology blog. It grew very quickly and opened up a number of opportunities for me. I know we’re going to get to some of that, but yeah, sure. Take me wherever you want to go and I’m happy to answer questions about that.
Chris Cloney: 06:15
Yeah, let’s dive into that a bit. I have my own story that the listeners will know from dustsafetyscience.com. There’s no one right way to build a profitable business and there are probably a couple of wrong ways to do it.
I’d love to hear the story of Interactive Biology. You said it got pretty big pretty quick. How big is pretty big? It probably blows mine out of the water.
Leslie Samuel: 06:39
When I started the blog, I got 400 people there the first month. I was like, “What in the world? 400 people are coming to watch my content?”
The next month it doubled to 800, and then it went to 1200, 2000, 4000 and it just went from there. Eventually, I was getting 100,000 people in one month watching my videos and consuming the stuff that I was creating. When it was 400 I’m like, “Man, if I were teaching a class, the chances of me teaching 400 students at one time in one month are very slim. But here I am in my little basement office recording these videos and putting them up on YouTube and then putting them on my blog and seeing it grow that way.” I mean, it was just amazing.
Chris Cloney: 07:34
Those numbers are awesome to see. How did that grow? Were you simply the first person talking about biology online or were there some techniques that you used? You have an amazing voice and you’re great on video, so that probably doesn’t hurt.
Leslie Samuel: 08:00
It’s interesting because I noticed that there were a lot of people creating biology content online. So I looked at what people were doing and I asked myself, “Okay, how can I be a bit different?” Because when you’re dealing with neuroscience and physiology, it can get quite geeky.
What I saw was exactly that. There were a lot of long research articles and complex things about neuroscience and so on. I said, “You know what? I’m going to go in the exact opposite direction. I’m going to create videos. These videos are going to be very simple and I’m going to break down neuroscience so that a little child could understand it.”
Leslie Samuel: 08:50
For example, I would ask, “What’s an axon potential and how does this work?” Then I’d talk about one phase of the axon potential and that’s the entire topic of the video.
I made it really simple. I was showing how the ions are moving across the membrane. To show that, I cut out a bunch of paper pluses and minuses. I had this line that was showing the membrane and I was moving these things around. it’s just very, very simple.
I think that because it was so simple, people really started to enjoy it. When they watched a video, I’d get comments like, “I’ve been trying to understand what in the world my professor is saying for the entire semester. I just watched this video for 10 minutes and now it all makes sense.” That’s exactly what I was going for.
Leslie Samuel: 09:41
I was trying to break down complicated concepts in a way that anyone can understand, and because of that, people were learning. When they were learning these complicated topics, they were getting excited and they were telling their classmates and professors about it and sharing it with everyone. It just went from there. It’s the idea of taking these complicated concepts and breaking them down in simple terms.
Chris Cloney: 10:08
I love it. You mentioned a couple of things I want to highlight. Early in your freebie trading story, you mentioned that if you create content online, people will find you. If you create content, people will find it as long as it’s good material. But there are a couple of things that you highlight here.
Chris Cloney: 10:31
If everything in the space is really complex and they’re doing literature reviews and 5,000-word tactical write-ups, you want to be different. In your case, you want a really simple and really creative approach, which helps your videos resonate with people. You’re obviously very engaging.
I think there are some important things to highlight. These people who come from a science writer background are usually writing complex topics for magazines like Popular Science. If you can make it simpler, you may be able to find an audience that comes to you and says, “I never understood that until you explained it,” which is exactly what you’re saying. So I love that.
Leslie Samuel: 11:11
I always tell people, especially if they have an advanced degree, that there’s a high barrier to entry when it comes to the stuff that you know. You know things that are very high-level and as a result, you’ve reduced the competition significantly. If you’re just talking about a topic that anybody can learn in a month or so, there’s so much competition there.
Leslie Samuel: 11:42
But when you’re dealing with things like neuroscience, industrial safety or anything where you know there are a lot of academics involved, you have an unfair advantage when it comes to being online. You’re going to find exactly what I found: a lot of the content online is very complicated and if you can just simplify it, you have a recipe for success right there. That is one great way that academics can start creating content and get traction faster than the average person.
Chris Cloney: 12:34
You took the words right out of my mouth. You have an unfair advantage. That degree on your wall is likely an unfair advantage. You want to cultivate the ability to synthesize information and make it easy to understand and digest. That’s a skill that you have because you’ve done it for four or five, eight or 10 years depending on how long your degree took. So I love it.
Leslie Samuel: 13:00
Of course, there are things that I also did to market it and promote it and get it out there. We can talk about some of that. But being an expert at something and breaking that down in a digestible way really gives you an unfair advantage.
Chris Cloney: 13:17
I want to jump into some other parts of your story. Let’s talk about how you’ve marketed and maybe how you move to monetization. You also sold that business at one point.
Leslie Samuel: 13:27
Yes, I did end up selling it eventually. In terms of marketing the blog, the first part is that you have to create content and it has to be good content. We’re at a stage in blogging where there’s so much information out there that you can’t just put out mediocre stuff and expect it to do very well. You have to have great content.
The next thing I did was start looking for other bloggers in my space who were doing something similar but different. I remember reaching out to a bunch of different people and saying, “Hey, I love what you’re doing. If there’s any way I can support you, I would love to do that. By the way, here’s something that I’m working on.”
Leslie Samuel: 14:06
I would just throw that in there. With my first boost of traffic, I got to that 400 point because I emailed this other blogger and she saw what I was doing. She wrote a quick post because she loved the content. That’s how I got the first 400 and that’s how I got a little bit of a jumpstart. It just went from there. Other bloggers started linking to my content because it was different from the other stuff that they were seeing out there. That made a huge difference in getting things going.
Chris Cloney: 14:44
Love it. So what are the different ways that you monetized Interactive Biology? Besides the sale at the end, which is obviously another monetization option.
How Did You Monetize Your Blog?
Leslie Samuel: 14:54
When I started monetizing, I was very hesitant because I wanted to find a way to make some money. I had heard that you can make money from ads, but I had always hated the ads that I saw on the internet.
One day I was thinking about it. I thought, “Man, maybe I should do ads.” So I reached out to my audience on Facebook and my email list and said, “Hey, I’m thinking about maybe putting ads on some of my content.” I was very hesitant about it.
Their response was surprising. They said, “Yes, please put ads on your stuff. You are putting so much into this and we want to see you make money.”
Leslie Samuel: 15:38
When they said that, I thought, “Oh, really? All right.” So I put ads everywhere and started making some money with the blog. I started making a few hundred dollars and then it went up to a few thousand dollars a month just from the ads, especially the ads that were in my videos. That was a good side income for this high school science and math teacher.
The next thing that I did was to resell content. The videos that I created were based on the notes that I took in college. When I was taking my physiology class, I had extensive notes. I went through my notes, started with the first topic, and made a video. Then I made the next video, and so on. So I thought to myself, “Hey, why not take that same content and repurpose it and put it in a different format and sell it?”
Leslie Samuel: 16:27
I decided to make an ebook. It was my Human Physiology for Regular People Study Guide. That’s what I called it. I started selling it for 35 bucks and people bought it. The same content that was available for free -just repackaged- was being bought on a daily basis. That was an additional revenue stream from that blog.
Those were the two main things that I did with my blog. I experimented with some others and some of them did okay. But those were the two main revenue streams.
Chris Cloney: 17:08
This one’s a little bit selfish of me because I’m going down this road with DustSafetyScience, my other business. The people who are involved in the other business don’t even know this yet. So this is the first time they’ll hear it.
It should be live by the time this comes out, but we’re going to run a digital event. I’m hoping to get around a thousand people involved in this event, with researchers and industry experts presenting. Did that ever cross your mind as a possible path? Either a physical conference or a digital conference as part of Interactive Biology?
Leslie Samuel: 17:37
For the biology blog? No, For the stuff that I’m doing now, yes. But I could definitely see how that would work in your space. It’s just not something that I had a lot of experience with at the time, although it’s something that I have a bunch more experience with now. So if I were doing it today and that was my full thing, I could see myself doing something like that. Yeah.
Chris Cloney: 17:59
One more question on the ads. We do a lot of advertising through DustSafetyScience. We don’t do Google AdWords- we do direct deals with companies. We have member companies that pay a fixed fee every 12 months to be part of the industry directory membership. You mentioned advertising in your videos. Were those automatic Google AdWords or were you doing direct advertising at that time? How’d that look?
Leslie Samuel: 18:40
I started with just Google ads. Then, when I reached a certain point, I was approached by a company that worked with bloggers, and they claimed that if I went with them, I would get more money. I started to experiment with them and they were 100 percent right. I made significantly more money.
What I noticed is, especially in the beginning, that I was making a lot of money with Google ads. Then that just went down and down and down. That’s when this company approached me. I knew that my traffic was going up, but my earnings were going down, and I didn’t like that. So they were able to negotiate higher payments for me and as a result, my income went right back up. I didn’t do it directly through my business, but I went through that advertising network and they were able to negotiate higher deals for me.
Chris Cloney: 19:39
Yeah, I like that. it’s probably a good avenue. When we first monetized DustSafetyScience, it was mydustexplosionresearch.com. We had 250 people in our newsletter and I sent an email out. I can’t remember the amount now, but it was something like 300 dollars a month to sponsor that newsletter.
It was a small niche audience and we were able to sign 12 months with different companies in literally a couple of emails. It was a no-brainer for them to get in front of that audience and that’s what we’ve rolled out and grown.
Leslie Samuel: 20:15
Yeah, that makes perfect sense because it’s a very targeted audience, so they definitely want access to those eyeballs. Right. So that makes perfect sense. I love that.
Chris Cloney: 20:25
At some point, you had given up on the dream of becoming a professor. You started blogging online on a couple of different topics. Interactive Biology grew really well. Then you got a letter or a call or something and you ended up being a professor. What happened there?
How Did You Become a Professor?
Leslie Samuel: 20:41
I got an invitation to apply to become a professor. The reason I got it is because they were covering anybody who graduated between this year and that year and met certain qualifications. They weren’t necessarily looking for me.
When I sent in my application, they saw that I didn’t have a Ph.D. It was for a doctoral physical therapy program. I’m not a physical therapist. I have no experience with that. I was supposed to be an anatomy professor. I never even took anatomy. Everything was working against me. So when they saw my application, they just put it at the bottom of the pile.
However, I made an appointment to go in and meet with the chair of the department. When I went in and showed him what I was working on, his mind was blown.
Leslie Samuel: 21:32
At the beginning of the meeting, he said, “Okay, so why are you here?” I said, “I just want to show you some of the things that I’m working on.”
I showed it to him and he was so excited. He took me around to meet everyone on the committee that was making the decisions and said, “I just want you to have a face to put with the name.” Yet I felt like he was walking around with a son that he was so proud of. That’s the way he was introducing me to all these people.
Leslie Samuel: 22:03
To make a long story short, I applied for the job. I did my interview. In the interview, I told them that I was not qualified for the job, but I was excited about the potential opportunity. I showed them the stuff that I wanted to bring to what they were doing.
They saw that I was doing something different. They had around 30 applicants, but I was different from all the others because I had online content that looked good and was helping people all over the world. They decided to take a chance on me and gave me the job.
Chris Cloney: 22:36
How long were you working with that group?
Leslie Samuel: 22:39
I did it for three years and absolutely loved it. I really couldn’t complain about anything where that job was concerned, because it was my dream job. The only thing I could complain about is the fact that I had no time for anything else because I was working full-time. I was learning stuff and teaching it the same day or the next day. They were paying for me to do a Ph.D.
My wife and I had our first child, our son, and I had no time to be around, so it wasn’t working. My wife and I made the decision that I would leave my job so that I could do this blogging thing full time.
Chris Cloney: 23:21
That’s a great story. I love that. If anyone wants to hear the amazing voice of Leslie’s wife, just check out his podcast. She does the intro. You guys are both singers, I believe. Or maybe you play the piano or an instrument?
Leslie Samuel: 23:36
Yeah, I play the piano and she sings the eight, eight, eight call-in number on my podcast.
Chris Cloney: 23:51
It’s so catchy. I remember listening to it and every time I’d hear it, my ears perked up.
Leslie Samuel: 23:57
Yes, indeed.
Chris Cloney: 23:59
I want to move on to Become a Blogger and talk about what that is today.
There’s a lot of information out there. If you go to Google and type in, ‘I want to get started online’ or ‘I want to be an online marketer,’ or ‘I want to start a blog,’ a lot of what you get is misinformation. A lot of it is from people who failed at creating a blog.
I know you’re heavily into the space. You’re helping a lot of people in your community with your podcast. What does someone need to know to get started in science blogging?
What Does Someone Need To Know Today To Get Started With Science Blogging Online?
Leslie Samuel: 24:36
The first thing that I would say is that you want to do some basic research, like I did, and see what’s out there. I remember that I had a spreadsheet of 86 different sites that I was analyzing. I was checking to see what they had in common, what they were missing, and how I could be different. Because it’s that difference that makes the difference. That’s redundant, but you get the point.
I was thinking about what I could bring that was slightly different, or maybe who I could target so that it makes this project a little bit unique. I wasn’t just targeting biology students because there are biology students at all kinds of different levels. What I was targeting was upper-level biology students who were taking university classes in subjects like physiology.
Leslie Samuel: 25:28
That’s very specific. If you’re that person and you’ve stumbled onto my content, you know that my content is for you. It’s exactly what you want.
A lot of times, when people are getting started in blogging, they want to tackle a big topic. No- start as specific as you can and then, over time, you can grow from there. That’s the first thing that I want to point out.
The second thing that I want to point out is that when people think about blogs, they think about someone writing content. My blog had little written content. It was more about the videos that I was creating and sharing with the rest of the world. I did have transcripts of the videos that I paid someone to do because I know that the search engines are going to do a better job at indexing written content. But I focused on video.
Leslie Samuel: 26:20
We live in a world where there are video platforms like YouTube. We live in a world where there is social media and it’s becoming more about building a community as opposed to just creating content online. Right? So you want to think from the perspective of how you can build a community around this specific topic in this specific niche. The more you can focus on things like that, the better a chance you’re going to have of standing out from all the noise that’s out there.
Chris Cloney: 26:59
I love it. So, the Coles notes version is to do some research. If you go back to Episode #19 with Pat Flynn, we talked about [Affiliate] Will it Fly? That’s a great book for understanding the process of doing market research. I encourage anyone who’s trying to get started to check that out.
So, do some research and be different. That’s where you were really successful with Interactive Biology. Be specific. Also, pick a specific subset to focus on: everyone wants to be really general and it almost never works. The people that are very specific do really well.
I’ve mentioned dustsafetyscience.com a couple of times, so the listeners will be familiar. It’s not about industrial safety, it’s about explosion safety involving solid particulate matters. So not gas explosions, not liquids- only dust explosions. I thought there were only 500 people in the world who cared. There is more, and they care a lot.
Leslie Samuel: 27:56
That’s exactly where academics have that unfair advantage, especially if you have a Ph.D. You are focused on something very, very specific. You may think, just like you said, “Oh, there are not that many people that are interested in this particular topic. It’s such a narrow niche.”
Start there. Start there and gain traction there because the people who are interested in that are VERY interested. Then, as your audience grows and as you’ve covered more of that content, you can start expanding.
I focused on physiology. First, I focused on the physiology of the nervous system, and then I went to the cardiovascular system. Then I went to the other systems in the body and expanded from there. Eventually, I moved on from the physiology and started adding some anatomy.
Chris Cloney: 29:02
Yeah, that’s so important. Start specific. There’s no one stopping you from being more general later, but it’s really hard to go from a general audience to a specific one because you’ve got to start cutting off parts of your audience.
Leslie Samuel: 29:12
Exactly.
Chris Cloney: 29:13
Another point I will add to that is to create the type of content you love. I wrote for a long time. I’m a terrible blog writer. I’m a good academic writer. I can write a textbook and papers and stuff, but I’m pretty verbose. I love podcasts. I love talking. I love doing video. That’s my content medium.
We have a team at DustSafetyScience to help us do the writing, and it’s not a small amount. We did 500 posts last year on explosions and fire incidents. But my strength is not writing. I’m as slow as anything.
Chris Cloney: 29:57
Find your strength, and then start to build a community. Use words like ‘we’ not ‘you.’ Do what the community wants, not what you want, and always be trying to ask, “Where can I help? Where can I add value? What are you struggling with?”
If you’re thinking that six months from now, you’re going to create this amazing course that everyone’s going to love and you haven’t asked anybody if they want that course, you might need to switch your thinking and design something that’s going to fit your community.
I think we’re coming around full circle. We now have a blog up and running. It’s amazing. What are the first things people might be looking at for monetization of that blog? We talked about some options based on your experience with Interactive Biology. We talked about some options that I’ve done. What are some other things that people might consider?
How do we go from running a blog to building a profitable business?
Leslie Samuel: 30:36
One of my favorite ways of making money, especially when you’re getting started, is by doing some affiliate marketing. There are online companies that are selling a whole bunch of stuff in all kinds of industries. You’d be surprised at the industries that have affiliate programs.
You can sign up as an affiliate for that company and they will give you an affiliate link. If someone clicks on that link and they make a purchase, you get a commission. It’s beautiful because you don’t have to make the product, you don’t have to provide a service, you don’t have to deal with the customer support and any refunds and that stuff.
Leslie Samuel: 31:16
What you can do with this process is learn how to sell to your audience and market stuff to them. You can test out different ways of doing that and see what your audience responds to and what they’re willing to buy. I think that is a great place to start when it comes to making money with your blog. That’s the one that I tell people to get started with.
Chris Cloney: 31:46
You don’t need to get over the fear of selling because you’re not selling your own stuff, but it allows you to start. It’s like a micro-step.
Leslie Samuel: 31:53
It is, right? Because for some people, selling is a little bit of a challenge. But then you add the fact that now you’re not just selling, but you’re selling online and it’s probably not something that you’ve ever done. So this is taking that one step. You can sell without having to go through the process of creating products and all that stuff.
Chris Cloney: 32:15
Totally agree. I wrote a book chapter for a dust explosion textbook. There are 13 authors and we have an affiliate link through CJ Affiliate. We were promoting it and encouraging people to buy the book. I don’t get any royalties from this book, unfortunately, but if you go to CJ Affiliates or Amazon, you can get started with affiliate marketing pretty quick and it’s a good way to get started.
Leslie Samuel: 32:48
When I was building my biology blog, I said, “Hey, you know what? Let’s experiment with affiliate marketing.” This was early in my career and I found that there was a human anatomy and physiology course that had an affiliate program.
Well, that was perfect. I had a small email list at the time. I don’t remember exactly how big it was, but I remember sending out one email talking about it and that one email made me 200 bucks. That was awesome because I didn’t have to do anything, but at that point, it was the most profitable email I had ever sent. It was such an easy process because it was related to my audience. All it took was me writing a few lines and sending it out and that worked very well.
Chris Cloney: 33:40
Alright, I love it. We went over a ton of tips and hints, and you can get them in the show notes at gradblogger.com/26.
Maybe the place to end on is success stories. We mentioned your success story. The listeners will know my story, which I hate calling successful, but my story that has worked so far for me. Do you have any success stories from others in a similar field?
What Success Stories Have You Seen From Academics Or People With PhD’s?
Leslie Samuel: 34:19
I have two friends whom I met while growing my business. One guy focuses on people who are studying for medical school and they’re trying to learn about the interviewing process. They’re trying to learn about passing their MCATs and so on, and he specializes in helping them get into medical school. He is a former physician who gave up his practice and is now doing this full time.
Leslie Samuel: 34:52
I have another friend who has an organic chemistry blog. She’s the person that I sold my biology blog to because she started going into MCAT. She has coaching programs where she’d get a bunch of organic chemistry students together on a zoom call and help them with their organic chemistry. She has courses too. It’s just fascinating to see how they were able to grow so quickly and do it so well.
Leslie Samuel: 35:26
Like I said, we have an unfair advantage and I wish more people would see it. It gave me an unfair advantage when it came to landing a job, and it gives you an advantage when it comes to growing an audience. So there are so many examples of people who are doing that stuff. It works if you do it the right way.
Chris Cloney: 35:46
So there you have it. We have biology and neuroscience. We have dust explosions, medical school prep, and organic chemistry. If you think your topic doesn’t apply, we probably can’t help you. But if you think it might help, then continue listening to my podcast, gradblogger.com, and definitely check out becomeablogger.com and Blogging with Leslie podcasts to learn how to continue through your journey.
Leslie, I really appreciate your time. I love what you’re doing. Keep helping to change the world. That’s part of our tagline too and it’s no coincidence that, after many years of listening to you, we get the chance to talk to you today. Where’s the best spot for the listeners to find out more about you, your work, and your podcast?
Where Can People Find You?
Leslie Samuel: 36:36
First of all, thank you so much for having me on. I hope your audience got a ton of value from this and if you’re listening to this right now and you’re thinking, man, this was awesome and I want more, search for Blogging with Leslie and subscribe to that podcast. That’s the best way for us to stay connected and you’re going to get tons of more valuable content about starting and growing a blog and being successful online by changing the world one blog at a time.
Chris Cloney: 37:09
Thank you so much, Leslie, and I’m looking forward to hopefully getting you back on the show at some point in the future.
Leslie Samuel: 37:13
Awesome. Thank you.
Chris Cloney: 37:15
You’ve been listening to myself, Dr. Chris Cloney, and Leslie Samuel from becomeablogger.com and the Blogging with Leslie podcast.
We were talking about how to become a profitable science blogger. We talked about how your degree, your knowledge, and your experience give you an unfair advantage. The rest of the world doesn’t have that. You’ve heard me say this before: if you go to Google and type in ‘become a blogger,’ you’re going to find that you don’t need to be an expert to build a blog or online business. That’s great. But what if you were an expert? What changes could you make in the world if you were the expert, if you could rally people behind causes that are really important today?
Chris Cloney: 37:55
We went through Leslie’s story with Interactive Biology. We talked about how he became a professor because he put himself out there and created this content. I gave some tips on how to become a blogger: do some research, be different, be specific, and make sure you pick the content medium that you’re good at. We talked about how to go about monetizing that and building a profitable business.
Chris Cloney: 38:37
I’ve talked about what I call the map to building your grad blog: mission, authority and profit. So, create a mission, create a goal, create what you want to do in the world, create the best content in the world, and get it in front of the most people. Create authority and build a profitable business. You can use that like a laser to focus on the change that you want.
Chris Cloney: 38:56
I appreciate everyone listening to GradBlogger. I’m so excited to bring these experts in from the world of social media, blogging, and online content creation to help academics grow and be able to facilitate the change that we can put into the world. I hope you have a great week ahead. I’m really looking forward to talking to you next week on GradBlogger.
Resources
Dr. Leslie Samuel
Become a Blogger
Interactive Biology
Blogging With Leslie
Episode 48: How a Part-Time Blogger Landed His Dream Job (guest)
YouTube
Twitter
Instagram
Companies:
DustSafetyScience
Social Media Marketing Society
Social Media Examiner
Smart Passive Income
CJ Affiliate
[Affiliate] Books:
Flynn, Pat. Will It Fly?
Previous Podcasts:
GBP019- The power of superfans to grow your blog and business with Pat Flynn
