If follow toonice4TV you would know that Paul Stamatiou’s blog paulstamatiou.com is one of My Top 7 Favorite Blogs. I’ve been visiting Paul’s site for over a year now and its definitely one of my daily stops on the web. Paul’s insight into the world of technology (sometimes even life endeavors) always delivers valuable information and enjoyment for his readers. Seeing as how I follow his blog so closely I thought I would try and score an interview! He graciously accepted and I’m lucky to say that I even had the opportunity to interview him in the first place. Having reached the ranks of the top 100 blogs as tracked by Technorati, a part of an awesome startup called Skribit and even appearing in his own Nike+ ad, Paul was extremely busy in 2007 accomplishing a great deal! See what Paul had to say in my interview!

1.) Where do you see paulstamatiou.com post your graduation and within the next 5 years?

While I don’t think it will be possible for PaulStamatiou.com to be my only job, I definitely plan on actively working on it after my graduation. If I could have one wish granted though, I would love to do PaulStamatiou.com full-time and have enough money to cover some of the more interesting conventions such as CES, CeBit, MacWorld and so on, while being able to have contacts at all the large companies so that I could attain products for review more readily. When I was
growing up I read computer magazines frequently and thought it would be a blessing to work for such a publication and get to test out the best in bleeding-edge technology first. Nothing has changed since then, except the ability for anyone like me to start a blog and share their passion with others.

2.) How did you get into reviewing products? Do you reach out to companies to review their products or have they been contacting you?

The products I review on my blog are half self-purchased and half evaluation units, with most needing to be sent back. Some companies reach out to me but I actively reach out to companies for the products I’m really interested in. Unfortunately, my blog is still “too small”
to be on the priority list for having companies send me their latest gadget to review so I will always be a few weeks behind the larger tech sites that get these gadgets in advance. Hopefully this will change in the next 5 years.

3.) You have mentioned that you’re interested in starting your own online/internet company at some point. Coming out of your recent Startup Weekend, is Skribit that new baby or are there other plans? If there are other plans, how soon can we expect some news and can you provide any insight on what you might have planned? Are you hiring?

I absolutely prefer the startup lifestyle to anything else, at the moment. Maybe when I have a family of my own I’ll want the security of a job at a large company but for now I want to get some friends together and just experiment with an idea. Skribit came along at the
right time and is based off an idea I’ve been sitting on ever since I started blogging in the summer of 2005. I can’t wait until the other Skribit co-founders and I put in some real features and unleash it to the public. I really think Skribit can go somewhere and addresses a
real problem faced by most bloggers. We’ll see where that goes in the next few months. I am devoted to Skribit and will work on it until it succeeds.

In the future, after I make my millions from Skribit (kidding!) and after my graduation, I plan on moving to the San Francisco area to join my other techie friends and either continue working on Skribit, create another startup or work for an established startup. If that doesn’t work out, I think working for a large company would be the next choice. I don’t exactly enjoy the large company environment as I don’t feel that I could make a big enough change to be noticed. Compare that to a 5 person startup where you can say that you did this piece of the application or added these features, et cetera.

4.) I’ve been an avid reader for about 6 months now and I notice you’ve just recently started incorporating ads by Adpinion. How is that going for you regarding profitability? How about your sponsorship 125×125 ads?

Adpinion is an interesting startup based around gauging my readers’ interest in each particular ad and letting them choose the ads they see. I like what they’re doing and am sticking it out for now until they grow and add more advertisers. At the moment I don’t make much at all with Adpinion. The 125×125 ads have done a bit better but I still don’t make enough to cover my monthly rent. I’ve never been too great at monetizing my site, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.

5.) How has your major in computational media helped in your growth as a blogger?

Surprisingly, it hasn’t really. Most of what I write about and learn that will be applicable in my post-college life has been learned online and in real life, not in school. I can’t say that I haven’t learned anything in college but the web changes so fast that formal education can’t keep up with it. For example, there are no real web-oriented classes in my major. I would love to take a Ruby on Rails class but the closest to that is a SmallTalk software engineering course.

6.) What are your top 5 favorite blogs to read and subscribe to?

I track too many blogs to even narrow down to 5 so I’ll say which sites I check daily. You’re probably familiar with most of these: Digg, del.icio.us popular, techmeme, YCombinator Hacker News, DZone and Reddit Programming.

7.) What is your next big tech purchase?

I don’t think I’ll be purchasing anything big soon as I recently bought myself a Panasonic HDC-SD5 high-def camcorder for the holidays.

8.) If you were to name the best thing that has happened to you because of paulstamatiou.com what would that be?

There have been a lot of things I owe to my blog but I think my recent Nike+ advertisement trumps the rest.

9.) What Mac application have you found most useful?

I use TextMate and Transmit substantially when developing and couldn’t use my Mac without them.

10.) If you could give one piece of advice to new bloggers everywhere, what would it be?

Stay motivated! Blog with a schedule and stick with it, regardless of whether or not your traffic is great.

I just want to say thanks to Paul for taking his time to answer some of my questions. I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about Paul Stamatiou and if you’re not doing so already, follow him at paulstamatiou.com

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 3:46 pm and is filed under News, Online, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.