Just Sold My Portfolio for 7 Figures USD, AMA.

How have you had to transform as a person to be able to accomplish what you've accomplished thus far? Were there any bad habits that you had to get rid of to be capable of sticking to the process early on, etc.
 
DanielS said:
How have you had to transform as a person to be able to accomplish what you've accomplished thus far? Were there any bad habits that you had to get rid of to be capable of sticking to the process early on, etc.
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Great question.

Learning to organise efficiently has always been a challenge for me. As you can imagine - handling this volume of content requires a certain level of organisation so I definitely had to up my game.

Complacency is another big issue for me. When you go from $0.15 a day to $40k per month it is very hard not to become complacent to some degree. Having a great team in place made this even more challenging as I effectively only worked about 3hrs a week for the last 2 years :smile:

Now I am starting fresh I feel the fear and excitement again and it feels good to be back to square one.
 
can you share the process you used to find a writer who would write at that rate? Are they from an english speaking country?
 
Frog said:
can you share the process you used to find a writer who would write at that rate? Are they from an english speaking country?
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Just send a detailed brief out on Upwork.

Work through a ton of shit and find the diamonds and when you get them, keep them no matter what. Use bonuses and incentives for good work, timely delivery etc.
 
MrMedia said:
Complacency is another big issue for me. When you go from $0.15 a day to $40k per month it is very hard not to become complacent to some degree. Having a great team in place made this even more challenging as I effectively only worked about 3hrs a week for the last 2 years
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Big problem for me, as well. When I hit my largest earning months, I find it harder and harder to even do the simple things.

So... what did you do to fight this... or was your team the golden goose allowing you to chill?
 
c4yrslf12 said:
Big problem for me, as well. When I hit my largest earning months, I find it harder and harder to even do the simple things.

So... what did you do to fight this... or was your team the golden goose allowing you to chill?
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Not going to lie... I definitely coasted for about 24 months. Looking back probably could have doubled the total valuation but complacency really is a bitch.

To fight this I did what brought me to this point... I sold everything.

Now I have ZERO income. Although the big payday means I am secure I have goals and plans that mean I need to do this all again in less than 2 years.

Now I feel fresh and the complacency has gone and I am working on setting up new teams and new sites.
 
MrMedia said:
Complacency is another big issue for me. When you go from $0.15 a day to $40k per month it is very hard not to become complacent to some degree.
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Were you ever faced with this issue before achieving success? Maybe you wrote "x" amount of articles on a new website, but no traffic came, so you started to second-guess what you were doing? Or, did you really nail the idea that SEO is a long-term game into your head?
 
DanielS said:
Were you ever faced with this issue before achieving success? Maybe you wrote "x" amount of articles on a new website, but no traffic came, so you started to second-guess what you were doing? Or, did you really nail the idea that SEO is a long-term game into your head?
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Of course. Right now I am manually uploading articles to my new site myself to get real feel for the niche.

80% of me thinks this will never work and it was all a fluke but my bank account reminds me that if I work hard it will pay off.

Can't argue with the facts so its up to me to get my shit in gear and get moving.
 
Are you starting fresh with an expired non dropped old domain with previous SEO metrics, or a freshly reg’d new domain with zero history etc?
 
MrMedia said:
Of course. Right now I am manually uploading articles to my new site myself to get real feel for the niche.

80% of me thinks this will never work and it was all a fluke but my bank account reminds me that if I work hard it will pay off.

Can't argue with the facts so its up to me to get my shit in gear and get moving.
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Would you say that it's beneficial for website owners to simply drown themselves in creating content or managing operations so they don't have the time or energy to think about "what-if" scenarios?

For example, for the past 3 weeks I've been writing 3 articles each day. However, this weekend I had to do some keyword research for future posts. While I was doing keyword research, I started thinking to myself: "Darn, I don't know if I'll have enough keywords to use to reach my target of 150 published articles in 3 months, and if I don't hit this milestone then I'll never succeed and I'll have to go back to freelancing. Maybe I should submit a proposal to a job posting just incase..." Maybe this thought only popped into my head because I allowed enough time and energy for this thought to enter into my head?

I would imagine looking at this thread here might be a good way to convince anyone to keep going though, haha!
 
MTUK said:
Are you starting fresh with an expired non dropped old domain with previous SEO metrics, or a freshly reg’d new domain with zero history etc?
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Yes - totally fresh nice brandable domain.

DanielS said:
Would you say that it's beneficial for website owners to simply drown themselves in creating content or managing operations so they don't have the time or energy to think about "what-if" scenarios?

For example, for the past 3 weeks I've been writing 3 articles each day. However, this weekend I had to do some keyword research for future posts. While I was doing keyword research, I started thinking to myself: "Darn, I don't know if I'll have enough keywords to use to reach my target of 150 published articles in 3 months, and if I don't hit this milestone then I'll never succeed and I'll have to go back to freelancing. Maybe I should submit a proposal to a job posting just incase..." Maybe this thought only popped into my head because I allowed enough time and energy for this thought to enter into my head?

I would imagine looking at this thread here might be a good way to convince anyone to keep going though, haha!
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The opposite of thinking is doing.

Stop thinking.
 
MrMedia said:
Not going to lie... I definitely coasted for about 24 months. Looking back probably could have doubled the total valuation but complacency really is a bitch.

To fight this I did what brought me to this point... I sold everything.

Now I have ZERO income. Although the big payday means I am secure I have goals and plans that mean I need to do this all again in less than 2 years.

Now I feel fresh and the complacency has gone and I am working on setting up new teams and new sites.
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Dude, why do you want to set-up a new team when you know the last one got you where you are, are you into hiring industry-specific writers as well that have to be different for each site/project?
 
fatalityhawk said:
Dude, why do you want to set-up a new team when you know the last one got you where you are, are you into hiring industry-specific writers as well that have to be different for each site/project?
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Different writers for different sites. Need a new team for a fresh approach and also to avoid anyone falling into any poor habits.

I keep them all on my books but I always start a fresh team for a new site and then if the volume is more than the new team can handle I bring in some members from the other team to pick up the volume.
 
I guess with writers that charge the rate you were paying it was more of a volume game than using any tools like page optimizer pro on the content?
 
Frog said:
I guess with writers that charge the rate you were paying it was more of a volume game than using any tools like page optimizer pro on the content?
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Nope, just followed my exact briefing docs.
 
@MrMedia Congratulations on the sale.

Q1. When did you start your largest site?
Q2. How did the idea for the largest site come about?
Q3. Were there any low points in your journey? Did you lose hope and question yourself?
Q4. Did you have any past experience that helped you achieve this success?
 
MBS said:
@MrMedia Congratulations on the sale.

Q1. When did you start your largest site?
Q2. How did the idea for the largest site come about?
Q3. Were there any low points in your journey? Did you lose hope and question yourself?
Q4. Did you have any past experience that helped you achieve this success?
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I will answer these pretty vaguely for confidentiality reasons.

  1. 5+ years ago
  2. Just random research
  3. Plenty lol. Traffic dips after months of work were very disheartening but then when the algo updated and traffic sky rocketed everytime it was a high that is pretty hard to beat.
  4. Nope.
 
What is your recommendation on SEO plugin for WordPress?
 
Thanks for sharing your story, definitely it's very inspiring.

When it comes to KW research what tool or tools would you recommend?
 
LiamGallagher said:
Thanks for sharing your story, definitely it's very inspiring.

When it comes to KW research what tool or tools would you recommend?
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SEMRush and AHrefs - take both with MAJOR pinches of salt and use them to guide you towards KW themes rather than laser focusing on precise kws.

Their data is off by about 50-70% in my experience.
 
Currently, I work with all affiliate sites where I do have about 30% info content. The affiliate content with display ads brings in very little revenue compared to the actual affiliate income.

This makes me a bit afraid to ever invest in a purely info content based site.

How do you mitigate the risk of this? Are you doing your topic research with CPC in mind?
 
tyealia said:
Currently, I work with all affiliate sites where I do have about 30% info content. The affiliate content with display ads brings in very little revenue compared to the actual affiliate income.

This makes me a bit afraid to ever invest in a purely info content based site.

How do you mitigate the risk of this? Are you doing your topic research with CPC in mind?
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Nope.

I trusted the volumes of traffic will come and make the numbers work.
 
Thanks for taking the time to share and answer questions.

You've had 3 successes, how many failed sites before/during did you go through? What is your hit rate?
 
Tenison said:
Thanks for taking the time to share and answer questions.

You've had 3 successes, how many failed sites before/during did you go through? What is your hit rate?
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One site was destroyed by competitors the month before I listed it and it cost me $130K.

I got an inside contact for a well known Google SEO person and set up a random dude email address and emailed the Google guy as a "concerned citizen".

The next day my competitor was removed (position 100+) for all the terms he stole from me.

So although I was still nuked he was fucked too and that gave me some cold comfort.

Still have no idea how he wiped me out other than a mountain of shitty links sent at my site.
 
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