Forest (Ian) Parks is a very creative individual who is inspired to make money online. Formally a print graphic designer of ten years, recently within the last year, Forest set out to learn the business of making money online with niche blogs. Forest invested time into learning about email list building, search engine marketing, the inner workings of WordPress and on WordPress themes. The only element Forest had coming into this venture was his graphic design skills and the strong desire to find success with making money on the Internet.

I first met Forest Parks back on October 22nd, 2007 when he shared his thoughts with me about his Google AdSense earnings in a comment on a post I wrote titled, Would You Walk A Mile For An AdSense Click. A lot has changed since that time and I am very happy to see how much Forest has learned in just under one year. Today, I want to share with you what I consider a success story.

Forest Parks is a regular reader of my personal blog and I think he is also a reader who truly is an excellent listener and someone who doesn’t take for granted the information that I myself as well as many other bloggers publish on the Internet about making money online. Forest is a sponge for information and does an excellent job executing the things he learns. Forest Parks recently launched a niche blog titled, Frugal Zeitgeist and I predict that this blog will become a huge success and make him a lot of money in the very near future.

My advice to you would be to visit his blog and study everything he is doing with this blog and learn from it. It isn’t often I give you examples of blogs that I predict to be successful. Forest Parks is knee deep into the Make Money Online Niche. He is a full blown MMO blogger, but make no mistake,  you will not catch him sporting a blog that duplicates John Chow or other famous MMO bloggers.

Forest Parks knows all too well that there is absolutely no money in the business of creating fake blogs about making money online. Forest is a very smart regular reader of mine who takes full advantage of my advice. If I were you, I would study him like a hawk. Here is my interview with Forest Parks on Frugal Zeitgeist.

Garry Conn: Hi Forest, Congrats on launching Frugal Zeitgeist. So tell me, what is this site all about?

Forest Parks: Hi Garry, firstly thanks :)… The new site is called Frugal Zeitgeist. It’s a very broad site about frugal living in any aspect of your life and looks at way to help people be a little more economical in addition to hooking them up with offers and freebies.

Garry Conn: That is pretty cool Forest. What inspired you to make this site? What were you thinking about and how did you come to finalize such a wonderful blog?

Forest Parks: Well, I just started watching TV again (after an absence of almost a year) and having CNN on all day I realized that frugal living, saving money and worrying about the future seemed to be taking up half of the days reporting. So I started work on finding a name and wanted something that would signify the situation today. For those who don’t know,  Zeitgeist means of this time and I think it is becoming a buzz word even though many don’t know what it is called. The design was built from a desire for me to finally build my own WordPress theme and evolve some graphics that I originally started on another project of mine called, NutritionHealthStore.com.

Garry Conn: Thanks for the educational moment, I’ll admit I didn’t know what Zeitgeist meant until now. It is so wonderful that you mentioned Nutrition Health Store as that was the domain name that you quickly registered after I wrote a post tipping my readers off that the domain name was available. Speaking of designs, WOW!!! I am impressed. One of the things that stands out the most about this blog is the very professional and graphically RICH design. Talk to me about this? Was this a challenge for you? What would you recommend to other bloggers out there that would like to have a really BEEFED UP design like you?

Forest Parks: I am a designer by trade. I have been working in the industry of print design (until I became a full time blogger early this year) for 10 years. Up until recently, I never managed to fully transfer my skills to my web work due to a lack of coding and some a lack of patience. With this blog I decided…. you will do a good job, and as I mentioned I really liked the groundwork that I had done on a previous site. I would recommend that a blogger NEVER settles for the first thing the design but still puts it up Seeing something living and breathing inspires positive change and good / bad comments from fellow friends / bloggers. So just keep working at it…. and always ask everyone’s honest opinion. Of course you could always hire me for the graphics

Garry Conn: Well it is funny that you mentioned that, because I was curious. With such an advanced level of experience and such a creative ability to make a blog like this, I was wondering if you provide a professional graphic design service for WordPress bloggers? Secondly, do you provide a professional WordPress theme design service? As you know, I dabble with my own blend of WordPress themes; however, I always encourage others to do the same. My believe is that graphic design as well as web design is an art. The more art available the better. Can people hire you as to provide them with professional services?

Forest Parks: Definitely, I am just in the early stages of promoting myself online as a designer and am very interested in getting into theme modifications and designs. It took me a while to understand coding enough to mix with my graphical skills and be confident enough to offer a “Theme Design Service” but this is now something that I will be offering I am a very personable person to work with and will always work very closely and socially with a client to get exactly what they want. (PS. I have learned almost everything I know about WordPress themes from dabbling with your fantastic free themes).

Garry Conn: Thanks for that, I appreciate it. I do love making WordPress themes as well. Moving focus back on to Frugal Zeitgeist, I’d like to touch on the topic of blog monetization real quick. What programs are you currently participating in to make money online with this blog? Secondly, I noticed that you have a few plugins running, the one that has caught my eye specifically is Max Banner Ads. If you could tell me more about how you are monetizing your site and also explain to me why you chose Max Banner Ads over the many other WordPress advertisement management systems available that would be great.

Forest Parks: The main thing I am running is AdSense. It is definitely the easiest way to monetize a blog and has started to bring me in a small income already on this 6 day old site. I am also pushing various affiliate links from Market Leverage, NeverblueAds and Pepperjam Network. I am pretty new to affiliate marketing but it is something I am putting a lot of hard work into learning and I have joined a great paid forum called Click Consultants. Which brings me onto max banner ads.. I operate OIO Publisher on many of my blogs and love the way it works. With Frugal Zeitgeist my initial intention was to sell the blog but that idea is fast fading as I am really enjoying it. So MaxBanner Ads was a free plug in that i could legally sell on with the blog It operates very simply and if you want you can pay to remove their backlink.

Garry Conn: What are your plans on marketing this site? Are you aiming to score traffic from Google? What other sources of traffic are you aiming for? Also, I see a mailing list option at the top right corner, what do you plan on doing with your mailing list? I love mailing lists because it is a great way to keep the fire burning and encourage people to come back to the site.

Forest Parks: I definitely want to push into marketing through mailing lists. Since attending Aaron Abbers classes I am realizing the potential of harnessing the power of email to provide readers with quality content and promote products that will benefit me and the reader I have just been throwing words into Micro Niche Finder and plan to create a posting schedule of Google targeted posts to start bring in search engine traffic as for Social Media this site is already doing extremely well in Stumble Upon so I plan to continue with this angle as much as I can. As for aims…. I have no real goal as yet. This blog started out as an idea in Wordpress default theme and almost accidentally became what it is now. It took me by surprise and I need to sit down and have a meeting with myself about long term goals.

Garry Conn: Accidental blogs as you know, are the ones that typically become a huge success. I hear stories like that all the time. I am very glad that you mentioned Aaron Abber, I can see that you must be one of his TOP students in his mentoring program. Congrats on that. All in all, it is so wonderful to see such a good online friend learn so much in just less than 6 months time. Thank you very much for your time and for sharing with my readers such a wonderful blog and by providing such awesome feedback. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Forest Parks: Thank you very much Garry, it was a pleasure and kind of weird to be interviewed :). I think I owe a lot to a few bloggers and you and Aaron are up there. Once you weed through all the information that isn’t too helpful on the web you can really start to get a good understanding of what you are doing and carve yourself out a place amongst everyone else. Thanks very very much.

Garry Conn: You are welcome and if you continue to build blogs like these, you better get used to being interviewed. It was my pleasure to speak with you tonight. As always, good luck in your blogging ventures.