Sustainable Life Blog Interview

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It's another Sunday Blogger interview and I'm happy to share Sustainable Life Blog with you. Something unique about Jeff's site is that he branches out beyond personal finance and looks at the bigger picture of managing your health, taking care of the environment, and being in control of your finances.

Subscribing to his blog will definitely keep you in th loop and is a great way to get ideas on being more productive.

Sustainable Life Blog Interview

Why Did you start Sustainable Life Blog?

I started Sustainable Life Blog because I had been reading PF blogs for quite some time, and they really helped me out by giving me a wealth of knowledge on how to pay down my debt, which is something I had been trying to do for about 3 with little success. The sheer number of tips, hacks, tricks, plans methods and anything else under the sun allowed me to take the best parts from each (like a buffet!) and use them to head down the debt repayment road. The more I got to thinking about it, the more I saw an intersection between taking care of your finances, your health and the environment. What I didn't see, however, was a blog that talked about all 3 at the same time.

How long have you’ve been blogging? What has been the biggest surprise about writing for your site?

I've been blogging for about a year now. I think the biggest surprise is how much I didn't/still dont know. There have been so many surprises to me, like people using certain words in their posts to increase search engine traffic, strategies for copy writing for blogging and how to reach more readers. If you're serious about blogging, I fee like there are TONS of things to learn to help you turn it into an income stream that can replace your current one, but by no means is it easy.

I noticed while reading the site that you tackle personal finances, health, and the environment- how do you balance your time between the topics?

I have always had the intentions of doing 1 post each week. Mondays for finances, Wednesdays for the Environment and Fridays for health. If you have checked up on my website recently, I've been rather heavily tilted towards personal finances. This has happened because that is where most of my energy and focus is going to at the time. I have a few environmental posts drafted that still need to be complete, as well as a few health related ones as well, but I'm hoping to get a better balance in the future. I'm thinking that once I join a gym and start exercising regularly, more health topics will sprout up on the site, which will be good.

Also, when I'm writing about one that has can heavily influence the other, I try to mention that in the post. For instance, if I'm offering a tip to bike to work to save money on gas, then I also try to point out that it's great for the environment and it can help keep you healthy at the same time.

You must have some favorite posts that you’ve written start Sustainable Life, which are they and why?

Oh, this is a tricky one. On occasion, I feel like some of the ones that I think are of higher quality don't get near the traffic some of the other ones do. For example, I had one titled Realistic Goal Setting that got hardly any traffic (I'm talking like <10 hits, but got published by an industry newsletter). I thought that was a good post, and it was nice to get it in that newsletter.

One of my other posts detailed a stupid move I made in the world of personal finance, which I called The High Cost of Being a Moron. I really liked this one because I tried to get too complicated with my finances and got “cute” and got burned for it. A very powerful (and expensive) lesson.

Another of my favorites was on the wise use of water, and it's an issue that's rather dear to my heart living in the constantly parched western us. There are some great tips in there, and I learned a lot when I was writing the post.

What are your goals this year with Sustainable Life Blog?

My main goal for this blog is to provide people with a resource on health, finances and the environment. There is so much information out there, and some people may read “don't waste energy” but are not sure what they can cut, what they can reduce and typical tips for energy reduction. It will also show the reader why wasting energy is bad for the environment and for their checkbook. I'd also like to show people that you can build a healthy checkbook, body and earth with less effort, but more thought and planning, than it would to try and save each one of these things separate from each other.

I'd also like to finish my redesign of the blog by adding some color, a header logo and a slogan. I just have not found the right saying, although I have a few ideas I've been kicking around. Along with this, I'd like to increase the revenue from the blog, which should not be that hard, because I'm not getting any right now.

Finally, I'd like to “walk the walk” more than I currently am. There are a few things that I can't help (I cant ride my bike to work, commute is too long), but I'd like to get better with my composting and my exercising. It's not helpful to have someone preaching at you from the computer screen. To actually get people doing something, it would be great to offer tips and insights into my struggles and offer tips to make the difficult to form habits easier.

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I appreciate Jeff taking the time for the interview. It's fascinating to see how other bloggers write and grow their sites. Please check Jeff on Twitter and consider subscribing to his wonderful site. He's a friendly blogger and is helpful if you have any questions.

Joining the Sunday Blogger Series

If you’re interesting in being interviewed as part of the Sunday Blogger series, I have a few requirements.

• You’ve been blogging for 3 months on personal finance and/or entrepreneurship.
• You’ve publish genuine content. I want to connect to genuine bloggers, not linking to a spam site. I review all the sites before sending out interview questions.
• You’re willingly to promote other bloggers in the series. I don’t expect you to tweet  every interview, but I would like interviewees to spread the word on their favorite bloggers. By the way, I don’t want others to just promote the posts, please share posts from your favorite interviews. They are some wonderful bloggers out there.

By the way, if you're looking to work with other personal finance bloggers, you may want to join the Yakezie Challenge. We try to promote the best content from each other's sites.