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Here is an interesting interview with Matthew Rochow, owner of a prominent bidding directory.

What is your name?
-Matthew Rochow

Can you give us a short bio. on yourself?
-I'm turning 18 in December, and have been in the website scene for the past 6 years now. I'm a freelance designer, coder and seo'er, and dab my hand in proxies, directories, and webmaster related sites.

What's your profession online, do you have a day job?
-Doing freelance designing, with the occasional coding and seo job, no day job.

What websites do you own, any particular favorite?
-Couple off the top of my head: www.prmenow.com, www.shoutlinks.com, most are in development. Shoutlinks would be my favourite, as it's my newest and I worked very hard on it.

Let's talk about Shoutlinks, what inspired you to create it?
-I had created a directory shoutdirectory.com (in the process of getting back on after some hosting troubles) and decided I'd make a bidding directory to go along with it.

So is that what gave you the superfluous name?
-Shout originated from the concept that they should stand out, and not be just another site.

I've read your article on creating Shoutlinks, did it really take only 95$?
-That was the starting capital - that's why being able to create your own sites is so handy.

You have a bidding directory, and there are quite a few out there, what makes yours so different?
-Starts with the custom design, goes into the freebies and content which is added to the site for extra value, and ends with the quality and quantity of backlinks being built to give the best value for money to customers.

What is the future and goals of your directory?
-Future wise, something on the scale of aviva and alive if I had the time. Basically for it to be a common name which everyone is familiar with and likes, its not all about the money .

Money, thanks for mentioning that, do you make an income online?
-Sure do, I don't have a day job so it's my sole source of income.

How do you market your directory?
-Put simply, through the form of freebies, buying ads, and in the near future hopefully competitions.

Do you have any unique mods installed?
-Not yet.

Do you rank in any SERP's? A specific keyword you would like to rank in?
-Not at the moment, I had a site I entered in a SEO competition which ranked very well, it has since been sold. Got some nice rankings for clients, which we can't discuss here.

How are you dealing with the Pagerank update, any expectations for the one in August, or just building links for now?
-I've got a handful of sites in development which will be online soon, so this update is of no major concern, pagerank isn't a major focus so I don't get too fussed.

About your template, is it custom made?
-Yep.

You give out freebies, what do you have in mind in terms of items to giveaway?
-At the moment I have a collection of wordpress themes. On my computer I have a neat script which I'll make available in the near future, and when I can find the time I'll do up some guides on SEO, design and coding.

Do you advertise on Digital Point or any other webmaster forums?
-Signature link on digital point. I am waiting for the site to be more established before I take it to all of the forums.

How is your traffic for the first month, what is your main source?
-I wouldn't be able to tell you, it's been a while since I checked, the alexa was up in the 40,000 area when it was first released if thats a sign of anything.

So were almost done, let's ask a few more interesting questions.

Do you have an MP3 player, what music do you listen to?
-I used to have an awesome sony ericsson W810i phone which doubled as my music player - unfortunately it met its fate in the washing machine

Depends on my mood: sad - metal, everyday - rock, parties - techno.

Do you have any particular hobbies you would like to mention?
-I love to party. Although I rarely drink.

That's good to know.

What's your favorite part of running a directory?
-Now that you ask, I'm not so sure, can't name one specifically.

Since your a directory owner, are you going to stick with that forever, or venture in the blogsphere sometime soon?
-I believe in blogs working with sites, as a connection between the owner and visitors which is on a more personal level. We'll have to wait and see what happens in the future.

Finally, how did you like the interview, and what do you think about the Dev Network Developer and IT Community?
-Thank you for the great interview. I believe it's only a matter of time before it's a well known forum up there with dp, namepros and the popular others.

I enjoyed your interview Rochow, and hope for success on your new directory, as a treat, while we were interviewing, I took the liberty of placing a bid of my site on your directory, have a nice day!
-Thanks very much, it was a pleasure.