An Interview with Pradeep Kumar- Founder of Slashsquare

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Today, we have with us one of my inspiration to start a blog,  Pradeep Kumar, Founder of Hellbound Bloggers and Slashsquare.

An interview with Pradeep Kumar


1. Though we all know you, please share a bit about you, HellBound Bloggers (HBB) and your Career life.

Hello everyone! My name is Pradeep Kumar; I’m the CEO & Founder of Slashsquare, it’s a blog network and a web consulting media. HBB is my first official blog, and this blog is the primary reason why I decided to make Blogging as my full-time profession. Slowly I realized I couldn’t rely on HBB alone for writing all the topics I love, so I gradually expanded the whole network. 

2. Who is your role Model and why?

There are like a lot of people I followed initially, and I still have a lot of people who I admire in this field, I can point out my elder brother (Prabhu), Harsh Agrawal, Arun Basil Lal, Amit Bhawani, and much more… it goes on. Each and every day I learn something from someone, all thanks for our groups! 

3. When did you start Blogging? Who or what influenced you to take up Blogging?

My first blog was around during my School days, maybe 2007 or 2008, and  I just started it out of curiosity. Back in those days, the Internet was pretty unusual for everyone. If I say something, they won’t believe or be skeptical, the kind of technology we did had even back those days shocked and surprised us. Just like that, I signed up and published articles, but they didn’t help or impact me in any way. But once I understood the whole Blogging thing, it quickly enabled me to upscale myself and contribute more to this blogging world. 

4. The Most Expected question :) How did you Manage to get initial Traffic for your blog and How are you monetizing your Blog? 

It was challenging initially to get traffic, I was not doing this professionally during that time, so I never really worried about heavy traffic. I worried more about the engagement part, if I see five people visited my website, I will be curious, like, why haven’t they commented, why haven’t they tweeted the article, etc. These are the real metrics that haunted me because I considered these as my motivation to blog well. 

Slowly I networked with various bloggers online, and I made it clear that I'm (Pradeep Kumar) a Blogger who runs Hellbound Bloggers So, making this clear helped me a lot to promote my brand overall, whenever they see any HBB article, they started to read/share out of professional courtesy. 

Most of our primary blogs are monetized by Affiliate Links and Sponsored Content. We also use AdSense now and then to experiment.

5. What do you think is the Best thing about Blogging - Money, Followers or Knowledge?

I always wanted Blogging to be a combination of all that, but deep down, I find it’s more about sharing what you want to share. It’s a platform to express your thoughts. If you write something online with your passion and with purpose, then the people who read it will probably become your follower and follow your ideas. You are making a significant impact on someone’s life even without knowing him/her personally. If you think about this, it gives you an invisible pleasure that’ll make you satisfied forever. But, of course, satisfaction alone can’t feed you, unfortunately. So Money and Knowledge joins with them. 

6. What's your first earning as a blogger and what was your feel back then?

When I started my first blog, I slightly had an idea about AdSense and how it works, but I never really had the interest to use that on my blog, I felt it would be too technical for me to handle as well. I was just blogging usually, then one day I got an email from a person (who represents a brand), and she asked me to review a software product, it was like difficult for me to understand whether it was a genuine email or a spam one, but still, I replied positively. During the whole process, she gave me the license key to the software (some DVD stuff) and also $20 for writing the same. It was like a massive thing for me because earning INR 1000 online by writing something on my blog felt so powerful. I started to understand how this whole thing works, this online review world. The same client after a few months paid me $50 for the same product but new version review. I understood why the pay increased and I started to work on my blog accordingly. 

7. Share Some Experiences of your Blogging life.

I take life as it comes, I never expected anything out of it, just happiness and knowledge. Blogging helped me a lot for that, each and every day I try my best to learn something and share something, it’s not like a count, but it’s more like a habit for me, learning from others and their life is something that helped me to understand people better, which helped me a lot to build my career online as well.

8. You're Maintaining More than half a dozen Blogs, How do you manage time?

There are some blogs under Slashsquare network, and others are just private experimental blogs, which I might sell or stop anytime I want. Time Management is pretty hectic if you have a complicated personal life. You have to first sort that out. Give time to your family. Sleep well. Eat properly. And there’s work time. So, when you work, it can be at night or daytime, you need to keep away from unwanted disturbances. Have a private space and avoid unwanted notifications. 

The key to managing time is to make a checklist and complete them at the end of the day, as much as possible. You can use an app or use a standard notebook for that. But, you should definitely keep one and after completing your tasks at the end of the day, when you read them, you might feel like you skipped something, 1 or 2, or 3 or 4 tasks, we often forget them in a hurry, so you can start to prepare your Day 2 tasks with that and you can brainstorm on how to complete them quickly. 

I learned to type and proofread them quickly, that helped me a lot to chat and send emails as well. Time Mangement, for me, is to eliminate unnecessary tasks and focus on what’s essential or natural at first. 

9. "Every Blog should have a Facebook group than a Facebook page" What's your view on this? 

I would actually prefer both; you need to focus on all the popular aspects to gain the audience. We decided to have Facebook Groups for all our brands/blogs because we found it the best way for us to analyze what people need. Their queries and suggestions ultimately helped us to build a better platform with solutions. 

10. Can You Tell Us Some less known tips in Blogging or SEO?

Okay, so, no matter what kind of niche you are in, I’m sure you’ll be using a lot of images on your blog, it can be a food blog, travel blog, fashion blog, etc. anything… so try to find the products for which we don’t have that many images online. This might sound confusing, but you need to prepare a strategy to figure out ‘which’ doesn’t have a lot of images. Let’s say “IKEA” so when they launched in Hyderabad, I’m sure it’s pretty new for Indians, so you can either go there directly and take the pictures, or you can hire or ask your friends to do the same. When you use those images on your blog and promote the overall article, I’m sure other media or bloggers will use your images and give credits. It all depends on fast you are and how you promote it organically. “Image Credits” are one of the best ways to generate quality backlinks and you should never miss this. 

11. What's One piece of advice you want to give to our Readers?

You need to make a proper strategy and arrangement between the kind of articles ‘you like writing’ vs. the kind of articles ‘people search the most.’ You can have your personal thoughts about something, and that can become viral, but if you want to build your blog, you need to find the audience who are desperately searching for a solution or any result online. Have two tabs and make a content strategy according to that. 

12. Tell us Your Opinion about our Blog.

I enjoyed reading your blog posts, my best wishes to reach every blogger in the world and guide them further. :)

Signs off

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  1. great interview,i have been following pradeep he's awesome. managing many popular fb groups and blogs. mainly i like foodgravy & moviesdrop group.

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  2. Pradeeo sir is a great inspiration and from hellbound bloggers facebook group i have learnt so much things.

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