I’m still working on my pile of Industry Interviews. The following 3 members are the latest in the Member Interviews series.

Many in the SEO industry know “Wit”. Always helpful, fun and witty, he’s become a fixture at Cre8 and we love having him.

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?

As far as I can recall, I once did a search for major SEO forums and linked out to those. Cre8 was one of them, but I didn’t become a member until much later. I was into SEOChat at the time and I didn’t really need to post on other forums. But hey the web wanted me to link, so I did.

2. Do you participate in other forums?

Nah.
Apart from being an admin at one of the snootiest SEO forums about today, and also at another SEO forum that is surely one of the darkest and most insulting. Oh and I’m also modding on various forums here and there, some but not all search related. Oh and then there’s some nice forums like the ones in my home language that I like to follow. Oh and I occasionally troll at the one that once had me as “the people’s mod” — the one that drove me here after messing with its mods in public.

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?

No comment (wink)

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.

Cre8 helped me see how social networking works outside the regular social media websites. Impressive.

5. What are your favorite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?

I like the blatant lies that need correcting and also the coding questions that need direct advice. Alas there are not a lot of the former on Cre8, but occasionally I come across one of the latter that is right up my alley. But mostly I like to bollock about.

6. Who is your favorite moderator?

Until recently it was (of course) Liz, but I really dig iamlost so I’m glad he’s been made a mod as well. So I’m torn. Maybe a bikini contest will sway my vote one way or the other.

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions. You can provide up to three links, including your own projects.

I’m not a web professional at all. Of course I have a number of websites (which I won’t spam here), but I’m lucky to have a proper day job (and a wife with an even better day job). Everything I do online – be it ‘code’, ‘design’, ’share’ or ’spam’ – is done because I wanna have fun. Also I’m easily bored so most of my projects are not even half-finished. Slacker, yeah, I know. Sue me.
I also like to attend SEO gigs in the UK now and again, so I can snog all the famous SEO chicks (hehe I’m keeping a sneaky photo diary). Oops did I really say that out loud….?

Fun

1. How many towns have you lived in?

Six. I was born in Germany (but no, I’m not a German), and lived there for 3 years until I could sing the Pippi Langstrumpf theme song in the local language. Loved the “Sandmännchen” and also the “Sendung mit der Maus” Lived in Holland for 6 years after that, then moved to Haacht, Belgium (great beer) to spend my teen years and learn to kiss and to drink. Moved back to Holland at the age of 18 and went to uni and finally ended up in Dordrecht (Holland, not South-Africa).

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I’d be a 2B soft black one, but with a metallic blue finish on the outside to confuse people.

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I always wanted to be a truck driver, a BP petrol truck driver to be precise. Needless to say I owned a Matchbox model of such a truck at the time. When I came to my senses (say: at the age of 4 maybe) I wanted to become an inventor like “Willie Wortel” altho I liked his Little Helper (“Lampje”) better. I guess my dream came true when I graduated as an Industrial Design Engineer.

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Deffo an early afternoon person. I used to be a night person before I got old and rickety.

5. Where would you retire to?

I think I’ll check out the next generation of cryo preservers and take a shot at living forever. Hope someone will find the fountain of eternal youth and defrost me to take a sip.

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Another longtime member, Lee Messenger, started SE Newslets, and it became so popular I combined it into what is now called Tech News and Lee’s SE Newslets. He also may be dropping by our blog as a guest blogger whenever he has time to report on industry news and happenings as well.

Lee is yet another example of what can happen here at Cre8asiteforums. Some members not only sit at our kitchen table, but they bring their ideas to the table and stay for desert!

Meet Lee.n3o:

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?
Blimey… Urm… I think it was when I started learning about SEO, I started reading a lot of Ammons stuff and found out he was an administrator in here. So stalked followed him on here and just stayed around”. That and I realised I was the token immature Microsoft lover, and every forum needs one of those J

2. Do you participate in other forums?
No not really, I mainly go on the ASP.NET forum but rarely post… I own a largish forum that I administrate, but it’s to do with niche Japanese cars and recently I haven’t been posting much on that but just reading stuff and moving / deleting posts.

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?
Hmmmmm…. They are useful for work in the fact that I sometimes see things I have missed, and find some cool sites through other people – And if I am completely stumped I can ask for help and there are usually some clever buggers around that help, its quite rare nowadays that you can’t get an answer from someone on a problem.

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.
SEO really… Reading Ammon, Rand, SoftPlus and a few others posts helped me a lot (Like the old reference to John … lol) and really launched me into the position I am in now. Its also helped me find some really cool sites, like the recent post of the photo site which was awesome (I forget who posted it now, maybe DCRX or whatever his tag is)

5. What are your favourite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?
Well my favourite topics are all the dev (Not php … lol) and CSS stuff – But the tide has changed and the forum is mainly pushed towards SEO. That and my time becoming less and less, I don’t have so much time to contribute as I did – Although the Dev and CSS stuff has made more of a re-appearance over the last few months.

6. Who is your favourite moderator(s)?
Favourite… Man I can’t stand any of them… All high and mighty php lovers … hehehehe… Only joking! Don’t really have a favourite to be honest, I like everyone J

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions.

Not much to tell really, I like to keep a low profile these days… I run a small web design company in the UK called n3o but also run a few other online businesses/stores. Fingers in way too many pies). I recently decided to release my own open source link / listing directory, which has proved pretty popular (http://www.n3o.co.uk/software/aspld.aspx ) and hope to keep improving it…. Oh and LONG LIVE MICROSOFT & ASP.NET…

Fun

1. How many towns have you lived in?

Approximately 3… I think!

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I’d be white! Hey I am white… How cool is that.

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I wanted to be (And still want to be) a stuntman, I even looked into taking out a loan just after I left school and coming the US to a stunt school over there – Just never quite had the balls, then met my other half and found breasts spending time with her much more interesting.

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?

Both… I get up at 6am and I’m straight on my laptop… come home, dinner and put my boys to bed and I’m 90% of the time back on my computer until I can’t keep me eyes open.

5. Where would you retire to?

Well I (And my other half) have thought about a lot of places (A little while back was thinking about USA, as Kim and Miriam had to answer my dumb questions) – But most recently we have more or less set our sights on Cyprus. Although I wouldn’t say I’m retiring at 30!! I wish!! We are just going to make a better more relaxed life for ourselves, then I won’t ever retire… I’ll still be on here winding Lyle up about why ASP.NET rocks J and tinkering with web stuff.

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This gentleman needs no introduction really. We love John Mueller here! When he went off to work for Google, it was quite like sending a kid off to college, only JohnMu isn’t a kid!

These forums are fortunate he manages to get away to stop by here. I was happy he had time to ask him some questions!

Meet JohnMu!

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?

I first learned about Cre8asiteforums because a thread there sent me some visitors regarding a Google Sitemap generator I made . The third post was someone asking if it had spyware – hey, don’t you all know that I’m an honest guy? – then Pierre (eKstreme) came in to recommend it, at which point I must have noticed it in my logs and so I came in to say “hi.” I had to try some of the other forums out before settling down, but it didn’t take long to realize that Cre8asiteforums is one of the most civilized placed on the web. Cre8asiteforums is a place which was (and is!) different than many of the other internet forums – users here are genuinely welcome no matter what their questions are. It’s not another anonymous chat with people trying to trump and beat each other up, it’s a friendly get-together with like-minded people who enjoy what they do & like to share some of their experiences with others.

2. Do you participate in other forums?

Yes, I spend a lot of time in the Google Webmaster Help groups. There’s something new and exciting waiting for me over there every day!

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?

Absolutely! I wouldn’t be working where I am now if it weren’t for forums . I think Cre8asiteforums played a large role in that because of the “Googley” spirit here – it’s fun, very friendly and really smart.

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.

To me, the things I remember most actually don’t have that much to do with creating websites directly. It’s the community that makes it special. When I was first contacted by Google, I was pretty excited – I couldn’t really tell many people since I was running my own company and didn’t want to drive everyone else crazy too – so I sent Bill (bragadocchio) a message through the forums, it wasn’t much, but it really helped me to calm down. When I later went to Mountain View for the interviews, I had a chance to meet Donna and relax after an exciting day at Google. I love this community — the personalities behind the posts.

5. What are your favorite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?
I like all topics that have to do with websites and I love it when small companies make great websites. It’s fascinating to see the creativity some of the webmasters put into their sites.

6. Who is your favorite moderator(s)?

(leaving this one out because I don’t have any “favorites” )

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions. You can provide up to three links, including your own projects.

I’m currently one of three Webmaster Trends Analysts at Google and we have the greatest job at the best company I’ve ever seen. We work hard at connecting everyday webmasters with our engineers, making sure that each side hears about and understands the worries & questions that the other side has, so that we can work better together, making more of the world’s information useful and accessible.

Fun

1. How many towns have you lived in?

I’ve lived in two in Germany, two in the US & just one in Switzerland. I enjoy living here in Switzerland, so I’m not planning on adding too many more.

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I don’t want to be a crayon, but if I had to pick, I’d be green – slightly different but not loud like red .

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I don’t remember – but while deciding what to study, I considered being a priest or studying physics (or both). That would have been a slightly different life .

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?

I’m definitely a night person. I worked at being a morning person for a while, I got up and went to work at 5AM, but the night time just seems to work better. Either way, I enjoy the quiet of the night.

5. Where would you retire to?

If retiring is when you stop doing things you have to do and only do things you enjoy then I think I’ve retired already. One thing I have been considering doing is helping non-profits with their websites, helping them to create great websites.

Please click their name to read their entire interview.

Poet, Gemini, mystery man – iamlost

It was the switch from long continuous hours to semi-retirement that encouraged me to join Cre8. More ‘family and friends about the kitchen table’ discussing subjects of mutual interest than business meeting or conference. And gaining new perspectives. The depth of knowledge, in Cre8’s archives and members, is comparable to most other fora but the community is ‘nicer’, for lack of a better word.

Gemini: curious, feminine, independent, inquisitive, mercurial, versatile, and whimsical.
Air: articulate, idealistic, intellectual, lively, and objective.
Mutable: adaptable, holistic, and resourceful.

I am so bloody marvelous that iamlost.

My Scorpio friend, WordPress hero and mentor on all things Accessible – Joe Dolson

Participation at Cre8asite has definitely increased my overall visibility in the web development community, and has gotten me a few jobs. I learn things here, and am kept up on current events sometimes which I would have missed otherwise.

I’m not a big fan of the constant contact method of interaction featured in systems like Twitter.

This Moderator is a Virgo and wanted to be a Forest Ranger when he was younger – Barry Welford

think an active forum like Cre8asite is particularly useful in making sure you are aware of what is going on. With RSS news feeds it’s fairly easy to cover a great deal of news but sometimes you may not realize the significance of a particular item. Having a few of the right people around to discuss the implications of a significant development is particularly valuable.

Currently the following are proving most useful: Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg. I currently am watching the new kid on the block, social median, to see how that evolves.

Remember…

Thank you “iamlost, Joe and Barry! I’ll be posting more in the coming days.

You can join the Cre8asiteforums Linkedin Group

Cre8asiteforums is a proud sponsor of Search Camp Philly

She’s faced personal hardships and used them to motivate her to work hard and build good businesses. While some folks may find her toughness hard to take, I’ve long admired her wit, drive and personal courage.

Rae, known for her famous tagline, “Never Mess With a Woman Who Can Pull Rank”, has an uncanny ability to flush out logic in chaos and get to the point. There’s no pretense. When you come upon Rae, you get the real deal, cuss words and all. She’s one of those Internet workers who works hard as hell and parties hard as hell. It’s a work environment I once thrived in myself, before I went out on my own. She was my first choice for Cre8asiteforums’ 6th Anniversary Industry Professionals Interview series this month.

Please welcome, Rae Hoffman:

1. Most everyone who knows you is aware that you worked your way up and are likely an “over achiever” type, meaning that no job is done unless it’s 200% perfect and meets your standards for excellence. You often praise your staff. Can you tell us a little about them, how you chose them, what they do…a day in the life of?

I really do have a fantastic and very loyal staff. They work as hard on our sites as I do and give the company 200% every single day. I just try my best to be a good boss in spite of my admitted perfectionism and control freakishness. You know, it’s funny, because when I did a post about things I’ve learned as a CEO, some people automatically assumed that because I demand the best from my employees, that I must be hell to work for, but I think my employees would tell you that’s not the case. I’m demanding for sure, but I also don’t micromanage, allow for a lot of freedom and experimentation, try to put them in a position where they can constantly expand their skill set and we have an extremely relaxed working environment. They actually tell me on a regular basis how much they enjoy working here. I’ve had bad bosses… my goal is not to be like them. I have several quotes hanging on the bulletin board in my office and one of them in specific is:

“Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

I’ve tried very hard to be that type of leader. I want my guys to work hard because they want us to succeed and not just show up because they need to pay their mortgage. And they do. I don’t have any “jobbers” working for me. I’m pretty grateful for that.

As for what they do, we have a pretty laid back office as can be seen in a recent video we took of it.

We work a lot – be it creating content, marketing that content or our sites, developing affiliate deals, monetizing the websites, catering to our various audiences, SEO – the usual. Mix in that work with a few trips to the bar (if we have to have meetings, that’s the place we’d most like to do it), lots of office pranks (if you go on vacation, your office might be filled with balloons when you return – one of which contains your mouse or one of the wheels on your chair might be missing on a random morning), lots of Photoshop creations (having two designers working in the office means some pretty realistic concoctions) hanging around and a ton of Guitar Hero smack talk (someone in my office has yet to learn how to use the blue button… but we won’t publicly out him for his inadequacies).

Oh, and I have a habit of “firing” people. They actually have kept a list of ways to get fired by me, which include things like taking the last beer from the fridge or by splitting tens in Vegas on your ten dollar hand and taking the dealers bust card which causes me to lose my fifty dollar hand. They’re actually working on a blog post to highlight what they consider the top ways to get fired by me.

2. I haven’t been paying attention to affiliate marketing the last few years. It’s part of your services and expertise. Can you please bring us to date on affiliate marketing as an industry? For example, is it growing or not? Where would beginners go to learn more about it? Are there popular products and tracking software? How or why does a company decide to market a product this way?

Wow, that is sure one tall stack of questions. I haven’t been quiet in the least about believing that affiliate marketing is an industry that will get harder and harder to survive in over the next few years. You either have to evolve to new levels with affiliate marketing or you’ll probably be forced to go corporate within the next few years.

I see those who “get” the challenges coming up getting pretty damn sophisticated at what they do, myself included. I see those who refuse to evolve watching their checks get smaller and smaller as more time passes. I definitely see the opportunities for people who understand affiliate marketing in addition to audience development and SEO growing, even if I don’t see the number of people taking them (or who have the skills to take them) doing so.

The sad part is that there is no real resource at the moment that I’d be comfortable sending a person new to the scene to and saying “here is the guide to learn affiliate marketing from”. Aaron’s SEOBook.com – a monthly fee based private community – is probably one of the places at the moment with a higher signal to noise ratio. And Aaron gets affiliate marketing and has the patience to teach it – and is very active on his own forums. I don’t have the patience to teach others. I’ve had the offer and suggestion several times to create a guide to being an affiliate – and been repeatedly told I would have a lot of success in regards to generating revenue through sales of said guide, but I don’t have the patience to be involved in that type of project.

I wouldn’t be much help in regards to popular products or tracking programs… we build everything in house and don’t use any off the shelf programs. However, I would easily know a good resource/program/product if I saw it. I welcome the ability to review something when a company approaches me and the product seems valuable of checking out.

I think companies go to affiliates for a variety of reasons. Some are just using affiliates in an attempt to develop links or obtain free branding – but most are looking to increase their sales numbers – especially from the Internet and affiliates basically act as marketing representatives for a company who only gets paid when they deliver results. That’s pretty sexy to a company, especially those who don’t understand how to market online and those in highly competitive industries where large online ad budgets and highly competitive and crowded organic SERPs are the norm.

3. I think you’re one of the most detailed and eloquent writers in the search engine marketing space. Are you a natural writer or did you study writing at some point?

Thanks. I don’t really think of myself as a natural writer, but definitely never studied writing at any point. I think a lot of it has to do with being passionate about the subject I’m writing about. I could never be a “writer” as in someone who had to write on demand and about various topics. I envy those who have the ability to be that versatile and captivating with language on command. I write when I want to and about things that interest me or in many cases, fire me up. And I’ve simply been good at explaining things from my point of view since I was a kid. For a long time my mom thought I was going to grow up to be a lawyer. I think I definitely would have done well on a debate team had my school had one.

4. Where did “Sugarrae” come from?

Ha. Most people think it is due to the band. It’s not. It’s actually a hat tip to Sugar Ray Leonard, one of the greatest boxers who’s ever lived. I’m a fight fan, as evidenced by my well known love of MMA. Also, I have to point out as part of my perfectionism disorder that it’s Sugarrae – only the S is capitalized. And my incessant need to correct people’s casing of it is something I am made fun of for often by my friends.

5. What’s on tap for you and/or your companies? You’re in a new office, still thriving…what would you like for us to know about your work, business plans, services…any new ventures planned we should keep any eye out for?

Well, I own a few different companies – most notably are Sugarrae and MFE Interactive. All are doing well at the moment. Sugarrae will continue to be my voice and my brand. I’m working with a few talented marketers now to be able to refer out requests for SEO and SEM consulting instead of simply turning people away as I had been for a long while prior and I’ve offered to personally work with local small businesses located in Guelph at special rates as a way of giving back to my adopted home. On a lighter note, you’ll also see me posting about some of the items I’ve completed from my list of 25 things in the next month or so.

MFE’s plans aren’t as open, but the basics are that we have new sites coming out on a regular basis and continue to market all of the sites we currently have in our portfolio.

As for me as an individual on a professional level, I’ll be speaking at SMX East in October and at PubCon in November as well.

6. And finally, other than being online and working your butt off, what else trips Sugarrae’s trigger?

You mean on a personal level? Well, I am a known BlackBerry fanatic, so in total geek fashion, I am absolutely drooling to get a hold of the new BlackBerry Bold the second it is released on Rogers (which hopefully will be this month). I’ve been going to a lot of UFC events (please, please, please let the rumors of a return to Montreal before the end of the year be true), have been playing a lot of Xbox (I am beyond pumped for Rock Band 2 and am playing a lot of Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Soul Caliber these days) and am glad to be at the start of another football season (and yes, I am aware that I’m a girl). I also spend a lot of time enjoying myself and spending time with my kids, my friends and my boyfriend.

Thanks for your time Rae. You’re admired by so many people (I hear this all the time). It’s a pleasure to get to know you more.

You can find Rae active in Twitter. Subscribe to her blog here. Professional connections and inquiries are also taken at Linkedin.

We’d like to introduce him to you:

Forum questions

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?

I don’t exactly recall the moment, but I do know I’ve been searching for answers on some problem (possibly, hyphens vs underscores) and either arrived to the forums from Google or from another forum or article (there were few blogs at the time, ‘04), where the forums were mentioned.

2. Do you participate in other forums?

The only other forums I participate are SEO Refugee Forums. They have a vibrant community of professionals (a self-taught expert on local promotion among them) with an easy-going attitude, so it’s fun to hang around there. It doesn’t have many new members, so signal to noise ratio is pretty high and there aren’t many new discussions to follow (which is good, if you have work to do or need to ask a question).

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?

Cre8asite Forums is what actually taught me a lot of things about how the search engines work, how websites are and should be built and promoted. I have to say that the forums was the starting point of my learning process, which has allowed me to become the professional I am today (I’ve read all the posts in subforums that interested me most, when I started). It was a habit to start reading at the Cre8asite forums and to jump to articles/posts that Bill (bragadocchio) linked to and then jumping to links from those articles and again and again.

At the moment, the forums allow me to stay up to date with most important online quirks and discuss them, as it is nice to stay in a quiet place away from bait, controversies and such.

I can’t say that my personal life is affected. I have only met one member in real life and he is the local person I met elsewhere and recommended him the forums

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.

Aside from hyphens and underscores, possibly the biggest help was in the form of confidence that I can build sites for humans, not the search engines. Back in ‘04 the concept wasn’t very well formed (at least in my head), so it was of great help. I’d like to thank Ammon Johns for this, because he had always shown simple, but effective ways to get the most results with the most human-focused approach possible.

5. What are your favorite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?

It is not just the topics, but the fact that several expert people share different point of view on a topic. This is what allows a member to see the full picture and make an informed decision. Sometimes, the topic starter gets a piece of advice to fix a problem he didn’t ask about.

If you insist, however, it will probably be easy ways to substantially make sites easier to use (and more effective at the same time) and various ways of online promotion. The former allows one to increase conversions immensely, the latter is not so exciting, but a very useful topic for a newcomer like me (yeah, I am still learning, as I didn’t have specialized marketing education).

6. Who is your favorite moderator(s)?

Each moderator/admin has his own virtues.

Ammon Johns (Black_Knight) is one of the most notable people on the forums, offering effective and at the same time “But it’s obvious! I could’ve done it!” advice and has played a role in making this place my home (at least in the first several years of my online activity). Garrick Saito (Respree) often offers another perspective from a business owner about taking care of the customers and keeping your back-end safe.

Ron Carnell has plenty of experience and brings unthought of aspects of a topic to threads, often sprinkling them with humor.

Other mods definitely bring spice to the forums, with Kim (cre8pc) successfully managing to bring up important usability topics and get out of the way of other mods and posters, for example.

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions.

As most members know, I live in Russia (the hardest place to get to the conferences from). I like to run, eat vegan food, enjoy outdoors, gardening and woodwork in my summer house (a house with ~700 sq. y. of land: a dacha, as they call it here).

I work in-house as (currently) the one managing an online presence for a company, which includes all kinds of work. The company enables businesses to work smarter using custom Lotus Notes or .NET applications.

I prefer working inhouse to running my own online business, because it isn’t that hectic and allows me to think about other things in my life. Besides, not having a side project allows me to bring energy and inspiration to work, which makes it better.

FUN!

1. How many towns have you lived in?

I’ve always lived in Novosibirsk.

Technically, it’s all called Novosibirsk, but we do have a science center called Academgorodok, where more than 40 research institutes are situated. That’s where I have been living mostly, but I did live in the city for a couple of years.

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I don’t want to be a crayon, so others could spend me however they wanted. Sorry. Unless you mean a self-controlled crayon, then I’d probably be a sky blue one.

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I wanted to be many things, but probably a bus driver, a cosmonaut and maybe something else. Certainly not an Internet marketer.

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?

I’m a hardcore morning person. Partly because I need to do 1-3hr runs before work, partly because I really enjoy the morning spirit (did you ever walk/run on a pathway, covered with snow, and you were the first human to leave tracks on it?).

5. Where would you retire to?

A log house somewhere far, far away from the civilization, possibly closer to the north (I like winter).

Yura Filimonov

Web Creator

Effectize