Jordan Cooper is a professional stand-up comedian and comedy writer who calls himself 'Entrepreneur. Creative Artist. Certified Wiseass'. He has his own unique and incredibly witty style of writing with a refreshing approach towards social media and eCommerce. 

He has been a part of marketing initiatives with many companies and entrepreneurs, including quite a few Fortune 500 companies, entertainment industry and even a strip club. "For all my consulting clients, I offer the full force of my expertise in all these realms, never hold back - and possible get a few laughs in the process!" shares Jordan. 

His humorous and forthright approach will make you laugh and ponder at the same time. Jordan, our 'Blogger of the Week' took out some time to talk about his blog "Not A Pro Blog" and share his views, ideas, story and other projects with us. Read further to learn some interesting insights on social media and how Jordan has perfectly blended his comic side with blogging. 

I'm Jordan Cooper. The guy that's going to bore you to death the next few minutes as you read this whole interview. Don't you have anything else better to do? Demand Media is supposedly pumping out 5000+ articles a day into this content landfill known as the world wide web, so there must be more interesting stuff to read than my drivel!

In the grand scheme of things I do as a "career", I'm primarily a stand-up comic. One of the many who you haven't seen on television whatsoever, but earning a modest living performing at the local comedy joints around the country.

My transition, though, to embracing the online medium stems from the fact that having a solely club-oriented approach in stand-up doesn't really have as much of a long-term upside as it once did. The standard pay hasn't changed for 20 years and unless you can be the person who specifically draws butts in the seats, stand-up comics are essentially just a commodity for these venues.

After filling my schedule for 30-35 weeks of club work in 2009, I finally realized this was the case and it completely shifted my mindset. Without a platform, a following, a business model, I saw that purely performing stand-up as a professional "unknown" is not the best use of anyone's inherent comedic talent. Applying it elsewhere and diversifying opportunities was key.

That's how "Not A Pro Blog" was launched in late 2009 - as a way to market my comedic sensibilities, writing skills, business prowess, etc. to showcase for any type of work that involves utilizing my core competencies. Whether it be for writing, consulting, web design, speaking, live performances, event hosting, joint ventures, you name it - the blog is my "networking" outlet for building a solid following.

Over a year later, I've made more money, directly and indirectly, though these online pursuits than I did putting 20,000+ miles on my car the year before touring around in comedy clubs around the county. Sure, most of what I do now is not live "on stage", but I'm still earning a living primarily through making people laugh - which was always my goal.

Early in 2009, I started reading a lot of blogs about social media, blogging, making money online, etc. This was due to being involved with another venture, FM-Britain, which was a fan site for the video game "Football Manager". I was attempting to make the shift there from giving away a ton of awesome free content for years and actually monetizing the brand that we build up there in some form.

Since I'm a bit of a research hound and information vacuum, I read virtually anything and everything I could find about the subject. Over the course of 6-8 months, I was implementing a lot of what a learned from sites like ProBlogger and CopyBlogger into the video game site. Basically, I was one of the many "lurkers" in that business space for quite a while. Didn't comment. Didn't tweet about it. No one would have known I was even there.

Then after seeing some success utilizing these business concepts at FM-Britain, I saw a lot of the inconsistencies going on within the "blogging" space. Some advice that was being preached was downright wrong, in my opinion. Some was way too broad, only applied to the "make money online" space and it seemed like many didn't actually understand the individual dynamics of certain niches. Of course, most of the information was dead-on accurate, but there was still plenty of downright B.S. being spewed.

As a stand-up comic with my natural sarcastic preclusion to make light of subjects, I figured that I could come out of the shadows, make my commentaries and be the wiseass in that space. More importantly, not just a curmudgeon who spews cynicism about everything and nothing more - but someone who can actually add value to the conversation. Instead of being the professional business guy who also happens to be entertaining - I'm the professional entertainer who also happens to know business.

That's simple. I think it's everyone's goal. To earn a comfortable living doing something you love. It doesn't matter what it is. That's why I've bounced around in a lot of different fields over the years. I don't buy into the notion of a "career path". It's quite possible that the thing you love right now may get stale for you in a few years - so why back yourself into a hole where you can't pivot into doing something else? Sure, it's probably not as stable as having a 9-5 position in an established company, but if you're not enjoying what you're doing, then what does that matter?

As I've said earlier, these sites were pretty much the first "guinea pigs" into my foray with online marketing. It's where I took the knowledge I was gaining in the field and applied it successfully. Some things worked better than others, and of course, you always have to tweak your approach fairly regularly - but for the most part, it's the cookie-cutter example of how someone can take a small niche and dominate it using fairly standard fare internet marketing concepts. Putting out great content. Building a list. Engaging with your community. Spreading it via social media. Selling your own product. (premium strategy guides for the game in our case) It really isn't rocket science and it's completely doable for anyone. That's why I'm so passionate about the subject and love teaching others.

"Social Media" and all that term entails is just the publishing and marketing of content. You create something. You put it out there. It either spreads through conversation/sharing or it doesn't. There's really nothing more to it than that - hence why I always find it laughable when I read anything that makes it out to be anything more complicated.

I really don't see anything different about e-commerce than I do about social media. I've always thought the term "e-commerce" was just the specified subset that just dealt with the actual sales of a product/service - while "social media" was just the vehicle of how others would find out about and talk about it. Why do we always have to make things so much more complicated than it should be?

I'm a firm believer in the mantra that content is king. Without it, there's nothing to "promote" in the first place. In the long-term, the cream always rises to the top. Just because you see others who you believe to be producing sub-par stuff getting traction, doesn't mean that content is secondary to marketing. There are many factors at play to what becomes popular and what doesn't. First-mover advantage. Leveraging existing networks. Large advertising spends. Downright payola or the good ol' boy "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". Sometimes it's just that a majority of the public is just stupid and doesn't know the difference between good and bad. (Look at how many horrible network TV shows still draw in millions of viewers)

My advice is to not let these examples of those bucking the common trend deter you from the path you believe will be successful. It may be a long journey, but at the end of the day, awesome content will always spread over time. Marketing can be a solution for short-term success, but without backing that up with killer offerings consistently, you'll end up in the same spot as you were before.

I believe so. I'm still essentially "performing" for people. The only difference is that on a blog, your audience isn't there live in-person. Even so, I pretty much write them in the same way I would say it in front of a crowd. That's why most of my posts have sentence fragments, many line breaks, ellipses and the gamut of grammatical errors. I'm not a "humorist" or an author. My goal is for people to read it with my tone and vocal style in their mind - and with that, much of the sarcasm and nuanced jokes come from it. Sometimes there are misses, but for the most part, I believe by writing for the spoken word rather than the written word is so much more effective for blogging than more sterile, yet more proper techniques.

I have zealous fans? That's news to me. Trust me, I can see my blog stats. I'm a small blip.

But I think that highlights the exact advice I'd give in that regard. Traffic doesn't matter. People matter. I believe more people know *of* me and what I do than actually read my blog on a regular basis - and that's what essentially gets me traction - being closer to the top of people's minds than others, regardless if they're actually visiting my site or engaging with me.

This is what I like calling "blogging for influence". If your site is based primarily around "You, Inc." then it really doesn't matter how much traffic you actually get if you're generating revenue opportunities. So don't focus on those traffic stats so much. Think of the people. I'd much rather have 5-10 people in my network who hire me and connect me with ventures than have 20,000 nameless faces visiting my site and seeing nothing from it.