Interview with Alex Cristache – Blogsessive

This is our third edition of “What separate the men from the boys?” where each week we will feature one prominent blogger who has inspired us in one way or another.

This week we are pleased to grill Alex Cristache, a blogger cum web designer from Romania who runs Blogsessive – a blog with one of the best design I’ve ever seen.

1. We know nothing about you. Give us some interesting and completely unheard facts that make you a great blogger.

I’m Alex Cristache, blogger at Blogsessive, sharing blogging tips out of passion and web designer as a career. I’ll let other people decide if I’m a “great blogger”, but I’ll state that in order to be the blogger I am now, a lot of faith and focus were required. Do not confuse faith with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm tends to wear out in time, and is mostly the reason why we see amazing blogs dying every day. Faith in chances does a much better job in the long run.

2. When & what compelled you to start blogging?

I have a thing for writing. Ever since I was in high-school I wrote some short stories (SciFi mostly) and symbolist poetry. The more realist side of my creativity manifested in 2004 when I started a rap group, putting much of my writing and rhyming skills into my lyrics which approached mostly social aspects of life in my country.

With this background, it made a lot of sense turning to blogging in order to share my work experience with people and my writing experience, as lyrics-wise it had a very good impact on most of those I came in contact with.

3. How has blogging changed your life?

It gave me an extra goal in life and something to fill up some free time, but as time went by, this free time became more and more cluttered and blogging has became one of my main activities. It’s entertaining and rewarding considering the fact that it started purely out of passion.

4. To what do you attribute your blog success?

As I said before, to faith and focus. Focus on the smaller – present – steps required in order to achieve the bigger goal. From point A to point B there are always smaller steps like A.1, A.2 and so on. Dealing with each one at its own time made a lot of sense and results did not fail to show.

5. If you could give one sentence of advice to blogger, what would that be?

Don’t let blogging beat you down. We all have “downtime”. We all have jobs, families. We all get tired. If that’s what it takes in order to get you up on your feet, take a break. Take a week, take a month if you feel like. Yes, constancy means a lot to a blog, but constancy without quality means nothing. Don’t wear yourself out, but remember that you always have to deliver top notch quality.

6. What is one biggest blogging mistake you’ve done and in similar situation, how would you do differently today?

The biggest mistake? Going all-guns-out at some guy who copied Blogsessive’s design. Looking back at it, dealing with dirty laundry in public never does any good. There are other ways to handle such situations. And also, there is one other thing I regret: that I don’t have enough time to communicate with my friends and followers on Twitter. Sure, I do reply 100% the questions I’m asked or even simple hello’s, but beyond that, it’s very hard to throw in as much time as I would want to. I hope that will change in the future.

7. What’s the best way for a blogger to make money, in your professional opinion?

As you might already know, I’ve never preached about making money through blogging on Blogsessive. I do believe there are people more qualified than me to guide you through the required steps, but because you asked, i think that the best way is to exploit your professional abilities and try to turn them into services you could provide your readers with.

8. Where do you think the blogosphere is headed over the next few years?

The blogosphere is already big and popular. Blogging is an amazing opportunity for a lot of people, people that have discovered a new calling that they did not know they had. In the next few years, the expansion will continue and most probably, even if this expansion will stop and some point and blogs will be filtered out, it will still be big (in one form or another) as long as people will want to read, or hear, or watch other peoples’ opinions.

9. If you could write a guest post for any blog but were only allowed to write one guest post in your entire life, which blog would you write for and why?

Ha! You realize it’s a tough choice right? I guess it would be one of my all-time favorite blogs: SmashingMagazine.com. It is the one most related to my career and calling.

10. Lastly, tell us one goal in life that you haven’t accomplished yet but are still determined to reach.

Professionally, turning my design studio into a real success story. At a more personal level, having two kids (a boy and a girl) with my beautiful, soon to be wife, Oana.

11. Any other insight or thoughts, you’d like to share?

Experiment! Experiments can have either good or bad results, but unless you try things out, you’ll never know. And of course, you might just miss “the next big thing” in your life or your career.

Blog on folks!

Thanks, Alex for taking this interview. Your perspective on faith vs enthusiasm is right on money and it’s the very reason the blogosphere is littered with dead blogs.

Let’s keep the faith, shall we?

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