Interview with Paul "Scrivs" Scrivens of 9rules

September 12, 2005 in A person, An interview

It always bugs me when people younger than me are way smarter than me. Especially when they're nice guys. Paul "Scrivs" Scrivens is barely 25 years old and already has a productive entrepreneurial effort underway building a loose network of high quality blogs under his "9rules" banner. When I asked him if he'd be up for an interview he replied simply: "Sure, I'm down. I'll try my best not to look retarded."

For those unfamiliar, blogs are becoming big business. Heavyweights on the scene like Nick Denton (Gawker, Gizmodo, etc) and Jason Calacanis (Engadget, Cinematical, etc) have proven that there can be big money made from highly trafficked blogs. Lone power blogger Darren Rowse announced to much attention recently that he's personally making well over $10,000/mo ($15K in July) in Google AdSense revenue from his blogging ventures.

WorkHappy.net recently become a member of the 9rules family so it seemed appropriate to ask Paul a few questions about what he knows best.

Hey Paul, thanks for taking a few minutes to share some of your ideas.

Not a problem at all Carson. We love your site and we are here to help our members in any way possible.

1) You've managed to gain a fair amount of visibility online and I now see bloggers all over who are clamoring to become a part of 9rules. How were you able to drum up this kind of interest?

In all honesty it was a lot easier than we thought it would be. We were very nervous before the first round of submissions opened up because we figured we would only get a limited number of sites that wanted to join. To our surprise after that first 24 hour round was over we received over 120 submissions. Once we began adding sites to the network, many people understood that we really were going for quality and some of the sites were already well-respected in their communities. This led to a lot more interest from other bloggers that wanted to join the network.

Not everyone that blogs is willing or able to generate a lot of traffic or earn 4-5 digits per month from their blog and being part of the network helps you a tiny bit if you wish to achieve those goals. The main aspect of the network though is the community that the members have built around it. I would not be surprised if you see some new projects coming out in the next couple of months from our members that have been collaborating within the forums.

Quality is rewarded everywhere we look. Quality products get buzz, but how many times does a quality blog get the buzz that it deserves? I think this is a big reason why many people are wanting to get into the Network. Our values match theirs and the same goes for our readers.

2) For a while you were building a group of your own blogs, much like Darren Rowse, and you had some respectable success. You were making north of $5,000/mo just with that, you sold CSSVault for some nice change (5 digits I think you said). What caused you to change your model with 9rules?

Making money from blogs is not easy and making that much is really not easy. The effort I put in really didn't match the rewards in my mind. I have always wanted to be part of something big and simply working on my own sites was too limiting. There are only so many hours in a day and so much time and effort I am willing to spend on sites that I run. I enjoy tackling new challenges and running the CSSVault was no longer a challenge and I was quickly losing interest and I could see the decline in quality so I figured it would be best to sell it to someone who had more passion to run it.

The 9rules Network is a small part of the vision I have for something much larger and much more challenging to achieve. With this concept I was able to bring together a talented group of individuals and receive feedback and ideas from a much larger group of people than I would have if I tried to continue doing everything myself. I never thought to myself I want to be financially okay. I always thought that I want to be a millionaire and blogging for myself wasn't a path I saw that happening with.

3) You recently changed your agreement terms for 9rules members shifting from an ad revenue split, to not sharing any ad revenue that a site generates. Are you nuts?

It only made sense to make this transition because the sites were putting in the work to generate the money so they should be the ones earning it. It also sets us up for implementing a project we have had in our heads for a long time now. The real driving force behind this decision though was the fact that we knew we could get even higher quality sites into the network without the worries of a 10-page agreement or complicated revenue structure and it has already paid dividends.

It was a choice between adding a couple more dollars to the bottom line or investing in a greater number of high quality sites which increases the value of the network in the long run. We chose the latter.

4) What advice would you give other bloggers out there trying to build traffic so they can cash in on advertising revenue?

Hmmm, I get asked this a lot and there is never one definite answer.

1. Be true to yourself. As cliche as that sounds it is the first thing you must always do as a writer. On too many sites you will see people write what they think the public wants to hear instead of writing about what they really think. If you have nothing interesting to say then maybe you shouldn't start a blog, but I have yet to find someone without anything interesting to talk about.
2. Never think there isn't competition. You will find almost everyone says that you should find your niche, but unfortunately every niche is usually filled already. That's not the problem. The problem is not standing out. Too many people create copycat sites that do nothing different from the competition. How many Engadget/Gizmodo sites can you name? I can only name those two, but there are plenty of them out there being ignored because they offer nothing different.
3. Be controversial. Not all the time, but some of the time. Don't say something you don't believe yourself, but say something that is bothering you that many people fail to discuss. My Ignoring the Hype series did this and it was a huge success.

5) Can you share some of your favorite sources of business inspiration and ideas? (e.g. certain blogs/books/magazines)

Wow, there would definitely be too much to list if I decided to list everything. Books I recommend anything by Seth Godin (and his blog) and Tom Peters. Both offer common sense advice, but it's stuff that we overlook so often in our lives.

Magazines I enjoy Wired and Business 2.0. Wired simply because it helps you see trends in the mainstream that you might want to try and jump on. In the blogosphere we are usually the early adopters so we tend to think every new trend will be hot, but it isn't really mainstream till it hits Wired and other publications. That usually gives you an idea of if it will really be successful or not.

As for blogs there are really too many to list because I think a lot of business minded individuals are seeing the value in maintaining a blog. Of course I would have to put WorkHappy on that list. 

Honestly though, the best thing any person can do is read everything they can get their hands on. I run through multiple books and magazines a month and am constantly reading blog entries. I don't pretend to know everything and it's amazing how evident that is when you read a VC's blog for example.

Finally, experience is always the best teacher. There is only so much you can read without actually trying it yourself.

Thanks Paul!

Anytime Carson. Thanks for keeping a kickass site for everyone to read.

Paul has agreed to respond to a few reader questions in the comments of this post if you'd like to ask him something I missed.

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It's probably worth mentioning that workhappy.net is a member-site of the 9r network... just sayin.