It’s been a while since we started to follow Aeryn Lynne, the awesome blogger behind Geek With Style. We were really curious about her beginnings into the blogging adventure and she kindly accepted to answer our questions and revealed all her secrets!

Tell us a little about Geek With Style? How did it all start?

Geek with Style is my little place on the web where I can talk about my love and need for plus-sized fashion, consumer technology, as well as interesting happenings online and in my city.

GwS has been in the making for at least five years, though it’s about to celebrate its first year anniversary this month.  I’ve been blogging off and on since 2002 (initially as a school project,) and it was something that I loved doing, but I could never find the right “voice” that felt comfortable.

My blogging began with a site pretentiously known as “Eyre of Lore” that was a graphic design portfolio Drupal site that I made for college, then two years later I had moved on to a Joomla site known as “MyLifeMinder” that was my first attempt to run an online biz, but again had a blog that I really didn’t know how to navigate in content publishing.

Then there was “ChickTalk”, which is the closest incarnation to Geek with Style – in fact, I had the same Toronto background image that I have in my current header. If I had thought of GwS back then, I would have kept up with my blogging all these years.  “PaperSweets” was mostly DIY crafting (paper, jewelry, home décor), based on Stampin’ Up! Product; “Habitue” that no one could figure out how to spell/pronounce, lol, but was based on my current themes: fashion, technology, and local happenings.

Then finally “Geek with Style,” where I found my home online in a way that I now advise friends and clients to find their perfect web home.  I had sat down with a pen and a pad of paper, and I just began to write about who I was and what I wanted to do without really taking spelling/grammar into account.  I had ended up writing about this internal conflict on whether I should focus more on my passion for fashion or my uber love for technology, and after three pages of pros, cons and wants, I wound up at the end with the question, “Can I be a geek with style?”

I think it took me all of thirty seconds to log into GoDaddy and purchase that domain right after questioning myself.  And I had spent all night changing and rebranding Habitue into my favourite place to be.

Your blog deals with style, as well as geek subjects and Toronto events. Who are your main readers?  

Demographically, my main readers are female Canadians, between the ages of 24 and 45. 50% have a secondary education, and most are parents.

By going through my stats, I do get a lot of Google based traffic from people who have questions on technology and plus-size fashion.  It’s interesting to see how many people are looking for plus-sized fashion specifically in Toronto, as well as how many Rogers users want to turn off the Rogers-ware on their Samsung Galaxy SIII phones.

And it truly makes my day if someone finds the answers they’re looking for on my site.  I love being able to help people find exactly what they’re looking for to make their life better/easier (as I’ve been an avid fan of Life-Hacking for quite some time now, lol.)

How has blogging affected your life? What has been your favorite moment as a blogger so far? 

There is nothing more awesome than having like-minded friends.  We may all talk about different subjects, but we just tend to get each other based on our mutual love for blog reading and writing, and generally sharing our lives en masse.  I’ve been to a number of blogging conferences now, and have said more than once at more than one conference, “I’m home!”  For fashion, I’ve met and had lunch with some of my favourite icons, like Jeanne Bekker (Fashion Television), and have sat in some amazing tech-based meetings at headquarters like Microsoft.  Getting these chances a little bit of both worlds that are not available to the general public is so cool.

You design websites for businesses and bloggers. In your opinion, what are the main elements of a good blog design? What are the things to absolutely avoid?

I happen to follow the School of Gordon Ramsey by encouraging simplicity, lol.  Your readers are there to read your blog.  If you’ve got a fabulous design, that’s great, but don’t distract your readers too much by what surrounds your work.

– The more contrast between the font colour and the background colour is best, if you can work with white background and dark-grey or black text, even better.

– Avoid a lot of motion, like scrolling images/bars/buttons in your sidebar (not to be confused with a carousel on your front page.)  These can actually cause motion-sickness for some of your readers.

– If you have a whole bunch of affiliate websites, and favourite blogs, see if you can move those buttons and badges to their own page instead of your side bar.  Side-bar hoarding and clutter can distract a reader from the very important info that you’re trying to impart.

How do you imagine the continuation of your blogging adventures? Any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

My New Year’s Resolution for 2013 is to get organized and blog more, and with a mere 12 posts made for January, I’ve already made an improvement from last year!  Thanks to some Canadian retail companies and designers, I’ll have more up to date information on upcoming style trends in the curvy fashion industry.  I can’t wait for spring and the promise of peaches, pinks, and the return of minty-green collections.  Geek with Style also has an amazing contest coming up really soon for tech lovers!  I can’t wait for this technology for Valentine’s Day project to go live!

What advice would you give to aspiring, up-and-coming bloggers?

No matter what your stats say, don’t give up if writing and sharing is something you love to do.  And please don’t play the numbers game, i.e. “That blogger has better stats than me,” or “They’ve got more followers than I do!”  Concentrate on your blogging voice and the subjects you’d like to speak about on your blog and social media outlets and your community will grow naturally.  And whether you’ve blogged for a long time or if yesterday was the first time you’ve ever published a post, I really recommend finding a blogging conference to go to in the near future.  The next one I’m looking forward to attending is BlogHer ’13 in Chicago, and I can’t wait to meet up with “old” buddies and new friends.  If you ever need a little guidance, the seminars provided at the conferences are a great place to start.

In one word :

> If you had to pick one social media, would you choose Instagram or Facebook? Facebook (especially since they’re rolling out their own Instagram…)

> Your favorite brand of clothes?  Addition Elle

> If you had to pick one accessory, would you choose a bracelet or a necklace?  Bracelet

> Flats or high heels? Flats

>Your favorite tablet? Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

>If you had to pick a smartphone, would you choose Samsung galaxy S3 or Iphone 5 ?  Samsung Galaxy S3

When you’re not blogging, what do you like to do?

Watching movies on “On Demand”/Netflix with the Hubs, read tweets, DIY home décor and making jewelry pieces, shop downtown for the latest clothes, shoes, makeup and tech. My favourite days are the ones where I can do all of the above between 9 to 5, lol.

So, if you want to be our next blogger of the month, tweet us @madeinblog !