An Interview With Nikola Roza
Aaron Iara: Thank you for taking the time to chat with me this week! Please tell the readers about yourself and the work you do.
Nikola Roza: Hi Aaron. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor for me to be featured on Effective Nerd.
Hi folks, my name is Nikola Roza. I’m a full-time freelance writer from Serbia who’s slowly (sometimes painfully so 🙂 ) making a transition into being a full-time affiliate marketer.
Aaron Iara: How did you get into writing about SEO and website-building?
Nikola Roza: I first learned about SEO and internet marketing in 2015. My mother got terminally ill at the beginning of the year, and since we were poor and she was unable to get treatment, I was looking desperately on the internet for ways to earn money online, to try and help her.
Of course, I found a bunch of different strategies but one that stood out to me was affiliate marketing, and specifically affiliate marketing based on organic traffic coming from Google and Bing/Yahoo.
I liked it because it was free traffic and I felt sure I could learn and master SEO even though it took me a while to figure out what the SEO acronym stands for 🙂
As for my mother, she died in September 2015 and I was left broke in debt and honestly, pretty lonely.
Because, when my mother got sick, everyone abandoned her. All her “friends”, all her family, only I and my grandmother (her mother) stood by her till the end.
And afterward, when I slipped into absolute poverty and started living on social help (which I remember was 7,334 Serbian Dinars or about $60 per month) my “friends” abandoned me too.
I’m not complaining because it’s good to know the truth about who has your back and who doesn’t, and it made me into a stronger and more capable man I am today.
Though I still have lots to improve and learn.
So, to answer your question, in 2015 I started to learn about SEO and internet marketing, but I started my website in December of 2017. It took me 2 years to save up for hosting fees and other expenses that come with running a website.
As I’m sure you know it’s not cheap, Aaron.
Aaron Iara: What do you think are the biggest obstacles facing the average creator in terms of online presence and marketing?
Nikola Roza: Lack of knowledge. The more you know the better choices you’ll make and better results you’ll have. The problem is that there’s so much to learn in the beginning. You often don’t know where to start, or what to do first.
My advice is to pick one traffic channel, for example, SEO, and master it. Don’t try to do too many things at once, as you’ll fail miserably.
Lack of funds. As you delve deeper into internet marketing, you start seeing there’s an infinite opportunity for growth and a myriad of traffic channels at your disposal.
Unfortunately, most require monetary investment to get them working for you and if you don’t have that, you’re going to feel frustrated and like you’re wasting time.
Once you have some money, it suddenly becomes ten times easier to scale and see results quicker.
Aaron Iara: Outside of blogging, what do you do for fun?
Nikola Roza: I read a lot. Currently, I’m reading “Gone With The Wind” by Margaret Mitchel. A terrific book.
I listen to music. I love classical music, Igor Stravinsky is my favorite composer.
I take long walks. They sooth my mind quite a bit.
Aaron Iara: What keeps you motivated in your work? How do you stay inspired?
Nikola Roza: I’ve been poor all my life and I don’t want to be poor ever again. I don’t care about the money per se, and pursuing money as a goal is so shallow to me. But I know what it’s like to not have anything to eat and not have anyone to help you out.
I don’t want to feel that again, especially since I don’t feel I deserved it the first time.
Things could’ve gone the other way…
Aaron Iara: Running a blog takes a lot of time and energy. What do you do to stay productive?
Nikola Roza: Two things.
First, I have a list of things I want to do for the day. And each task is divided into many smaller tasks.
Second, I do the tasks one by one and I force myself to think about the task at hand and not the one that comes after it, or one that was before, or anything else really.
This helps trick my brain into focusing very intently, and I’m able to plow through work quite easily.
Third, for every task I allot the time I think I’ll need to get the job done.
Then I hurry to beat the clock.
Aaron Iara: Do you ever have any performance/release anxiety when it comes to showing your work to others? If so, what do you do about it?
Nikola Roza: Not really. I have high standards for everything that I publish, so I’m not ashamed to show it to everyone. I know that everything I publish is as good as I can make it at the time of writing.
One notable example is this Unbounce.com coupon code I published 3 months ago.
If you click the link and visit the page, you will see that it’s not finished. It looks decent and It could pass for a finished product on any other blog, but I’m a perfectionist and I know that my coupon article can be made so much better.
And I’m not going to stop improving it over time.
But, I published it in a semi-finished state because I wanted to get it into Google’s SERPs as fast as possible.
It takes time to rank and even with perfect SEO, (which I don’t do btw), there is still a time lag between action and results.
And it’s crucial for me to rank by this year’s Black Friday.
But to sort off “hide” it, I set the published date several months prior. This immediately pushed the page deeper into my blog, on the 4-th page, and I know there it’s pretty invisible.
However,
In the next 1-2 week I will finish that page and promote it to the front page of my site.
Black Friday is coming and I want to rank my page for those lucrative hosting affiliate terms. I’m hoping big commissions come this November.
Aaron Iara: What advice can you give to those who want to start blogging?
Nikola Roza: Understand that blogging is not a hobby. If you want to make it into a business, then treat it as a business.
Don’t be afraid to learn. Don’t be afraid to invest. And don’t be afraid to work hard and long hours while seemingly getting no results.
Results are coming. It just takes a while and it’s normal.
Do know that if you don’t quit, but preserve, eventually you will figure this out.
It’s not rocket science.
Aaron Iara: Do you have any upcoming events/projects/releases you would like to discuss?
Nikola Roza: No, not really.
I plan to release an affiliate marketing course sometime in the future. But that’s at least a year from now.
Aaron Iara: Thank you for taking the time to do this! Where can readers find you and your work?
Nikola Roza: Thank you, Aaron. It’s an honor and a privilege for me. Your readers can find me at my blog nikolaroza.com or on Twitter, where I’m fairly active.
Also, as I mentioned previously, I’m a freelance writer for hire, so if someone needs a quality writer for their SEO or marketing blog they can inquire about my pricing here.
Thanks!
Check Out Nikola Roza
A huge thank you to Nikola for taking the time to speak to me this week! Make sure to check out their work at the following locations:
