How Carl Broadbent Went From Losing His Job to Successful Affiliate Marketer

Here’s the story of a guy who lost his job and typed into Google “how to make money online”.

Fast forward a few years; he’s full time, has a portfolio of 9 websites, a popular YouTube channel, and crushes it as an affiliate marketer.

The guy’s name is Carl Broadbent, and he’s the latest guest on the Niche Pursuits podcast.

His backstory is interesting and inspiring. 

Carl shares his knowledge, strategies, and approach to many aspects of website building and affiliate marketing.

We discuss how entering a competition at Income School changed his life and the pearls of wisdom he received from the experts who came to his home to coach him one-to-one.

Besides the above, we also touch on:

Jared (Our Host) winds up the interview by asking Carl what the most important piece of advice he has for people just starting out.

Resources and links mentioned in the podcast:

• Income School
• Carl's Youtube Channel
• Ezoic
• Mediavine
• Adthrive
• Upwork
• Keyword Care
• Affiliate Gathering Conference

Watch the full interview:

Read the full transcription:

My name is Jared Bauman, and today we are joined by Carl Broadbent.

Hey, thank you very much for inviting me. I'm really thrilled to video today.

Yeah, we're thrilled to have you, uh, to be honest and, uh, uh, excited for today. I it's really great to do an interview with someone who's, um, you know, just a fellow affiliate marketer or website builder.

Who's kind of in the trenches as you are. We'll get into a lot of the different. Case studies and whatnot that you have on your, on your YouTube channel, but it's going to be great to hear from you. I know you're doing this all day every day, so yeah, pretty much. Thanks for joining. Why don't you give us some background?

I know you have a really fun background to go through about how you got involved in, um, in this side of work and, and where you're at today.

Yeah, sure. So my name is Carl Broadbent I'm an affiliate marketer, an online publisher having the UK. And it's been doing this now for around four years, full time for about a year.

So it was, um, it was a transition from working a full-time corporate job. And I started to work part-time to build this business up and then a few nice things happened to be along the way that actually pushed me into doing this full time. And here I am now four years later, like seven, just about. Um, the complete my first full year as an online publisher.

So yeah, I mean, really good. Congratulations. That's a, that's big to go from, you know, four years ago, just having kind of a gleam in your eye and idea in your head. And here you are full-time event celebrating a full year of full-time as it. How, I mean, where, where did you first start? Uh, when it came to website building, what was the first thing that caught your attention about it?

So I was in between jobs, sign Wells, a training to be an area manager for a large company. And then I slowly got called into a room one day with about 20 of the managers. And they said, thank you very much for the last seven years of work, but you no longer needed. And it was kind of cam home. And I was like, okay, I've got two weeks to do something.

So I started looking for jobs and I got an interview pretty quick with a large supermarket chain. Went to the interview. I was lucky enough to get a really decent level job, straight away songs. Very fortunate. But I came home and I just thought, okay, I'm going from kind of one rat race to another rat race.

If so to speed, you know, there's nothing wrong with the jobs I have by any means, but I kind of been doing that for a long time and I just thought there must be something different out there. Maybe I can have a total career change, a total, you know, 360 flip on things and look for something new. So I just typed in, um, making money online or working from home, something like that.

And I came across a video from a fellow YouTuber, Alex silver WP Eagle on the video is about four hours long and it was how to build a website. So I just kind of sat there literally at my kitchen table and just thought, okay. What do I build a website on? I couldn't think of anything. I didn't have a single clue.

And I decided to do something that was a hobby of mine, or, well, it's been a passion for years and it was Monte Python. I loved everything about Monte pie from the films, the people. And then just four. I watched one video that said, do what you're passionate about. So, Barbara, I really liked these. I've watched all the films.

So I looked at the competition and there was one huge ones buying from site. And I thought, wow, Cal build a site. And I literally sat there and watched Alex's video for one to four hours. Well, Paul's an in-between. It probably took me about eight hours. My wife came home from work and I said, I've looked at this website and she looked at.

Well, that looks pretty good. Well, what is it? And I said, it's mine. This was like, would you mean it's yours? I said, I built it. She was like, how was it? I've just sat here and built a website in four hours. And it literally took off from there. Really. That was the first instance of getting into it. Then obviously I dived into YouTube and I've watched every video going for about a year later.

I then another big incident came my way. I was at work. And a few people knew what I was doing. And I got somebody came running into the cafeteria and says, you've won. I was like, what if alone? And it was like, you've won an income skill. And I was like, what are you on about income skill? And you're like, you've entered a competition apparently.

And you've won. And I was like, just running around, like they come to see and go, what have I won? I thought, what a car, a house. And it turned out it was a competition. Um, I just basically commented on the video. Um, they came home over to the UK instead with me here in my house for a couple of days. And they'd give me two days of one-on-one one-on-one tuition and it literally that's what it spring-boarded me then that's when I knew it was kind of real.

And it just wasn't this fake online, passive income that you hear about. It was real and it just snowballed from there. Wow.

So you had the income school folks come over and, you know, I think I remember catching, I think I remember seeing part of that video or something and, uh, I, I had not made the connection until just now.

And so they came over and, and just, was it the Monty Python site? They helped you work on I then kind of a year later. So I did them on PI for a long run with that for a few months and then realized, okay. There wasn't as much scope for its funding. The science, I thought I'll do something else. Uh, when I was younger, I used to, I used to manage and run a tropical fish shop at pet store, and I used to run the tropical fish department.

So I thought, well, I know more about that than anything. And every video says, you write about what, you know, and I knew that I settled the fish keeping website. Uh, which is still going to this day. Uh, I sold the website. He did really successful. They helped me grow it. Yeah. So they came over and they worked on that.

I actually had two websites. One was in the health, health niche, uh, of kind of skincare. And one was in the fish section. Drop the healthcare one. This can be so hard. It's going to be so competitive. Let's just focus on that one. So that's what we did. And it turned out to be very successful and I, I exited the site, uh, and I got a good amount of money for it and I'm really happy.

So, yeah. So that was about, so from starting the Monte platform about a year, To a year and a half later, that's kind of when it all happened. So I think this is interesting because I imagine that a lot of people watching would just love that opportunity, right. To have, um, a couple of experts fly out and just sit with you and roll their sleeves up.

And you said that it was a big turning point. What would you say were the biggest things that you were maybe doing wrong, that they came in and helped with? Uh, and again, I'm trying to think of people who might be. In those shoes and going, man, what could someone like that come in and say, that would turn the corner so much.

What were some things they said that turn that where the turning point. I think what they showed me is that there is a process behind it. I think I was kind of, you know, throwing things at the wall and hoping something would stick. And I think they came in and kind of organize me. So there was like, here's a spreadsheet for doing keyword research.

This is how we're going to cluster them into topics. And it was really organizing me and giving me something to focus on. So a clear path. Whereas I think I was just, I think I could have wrote a hundred articles and maybe 50 of them might have worked because the other 50 was so random that it just hasn't been searched or it was too competitive.

So I think the came in and showed me that, you know, there is a process to it. And if you do this very basic process, you have a really good chance of success and I'm not kind of typical. Off for me has been a business rather than cure something you do online. And hopefully it grows equals like, no, there is a process.

You come make it work. And this is how it works. And they give me some expectations and some realistic numbers. And it gave me, you know, my wife, obviously at that time, didn't know a clue about you. She still thought it was a pipe dream, but you know, she, they gave us some realistic numbers, showed us real life.

Examples showed us some of that portfolio. Um, and it was like, okay, light bulb moment. Oh, this could actually work. Yeah. So it was amazing. It was Ricky I'm Jim, the both kids in my house. That's wonderful. That's great. Um, I want to go back just one of the things you said right in the beginning, and it kind of dovetails with what you just talked about.

The, um, so the idea that you basically searched how to make money online or some variant of that and took action right away. I'm curious to hear, because you ended up ditching that side a couple of months in. Probably like you said, it just, wasn't a big niche that you could kind of go into and expand on, but you took action right away.

And so people, you know, especially people who are just starting out, there's this question that exists, which is, do I wait until I learn more until I do more niche research until I understand the process better because it'll make the niche more attractive that I go into. Am I delaying too long. Do I need to just dive in and just roll up my sleeves and start working and then I'll learn faster that way.

It sounds like you had a lot of success with diving straight in, and then along the way, once you learned enough kind of ditching that site and moving to something more, you know, but better, I guess you could say, I mean, what are your opinions when it comes to that? Yeah, absolutely. I think you'd need to, actually, it sounds silly, but I think you actually do need to build a site that fails and that might seem crazy.

But I think you have to actually do that to understand why you failed, because otherwise you'll see some success straight off and you'll think that that is the key to everything. And you can get kind of a bulky status with it and you shut start shooting for higher keywords than you should be doing and you don't really learn.

So I think that first website really taught me. How I needed to do things and let's, let's go up. I just didn't get it right in the second website, all the third, all the fall. Um, you know, I'd probably still not getting it right now a hundred percent, but certainly I know more than I did then. And do you know the first website, the Monte pay for one?

I wish they kept that and crazy as it seems. This is nearly over four years now, just four years gone. I still get commissions. So even though, even though I abandoned it, I have tried looking it up in the archives to see if I can, uh, rejuvenating it. Um, and I can't find it, but I still get the old commission from it.

So there are articles and links still outlet. Yeah, it's crazy. Every now and again, I get this off commission that pops up and it just reminds me of, wow. That was four years. That's crazy. That's funny. Yeah. I think, uh, we were interviewing someone a while back and they were talking about a site that they had on, on, I think halo was the game they had and they couldn't find any more, but they sure wish they could go back and find it because it would've been fun to kind of almost use it as a, as a comparison to how, when they started versus now, how they do things and how, how, how night and day the processes.

Yeah. Particularly with me now being on YouTube and actually telling people what I do, you know, my YouTube channel is all about kind of what I do. It's not me saying, this is how you build a website. This is a step-by-step tutorial. It's basically just all in the life of somebody who does this for a living.

And I show everything whether it works or not. And I would love to have that as a base model to say, You know, you think your website's spot, do you want to see mine from four years ago? I love to do that. You know, so even just some screenshots, but yeah, I've got to wear a button machine. I can't even find any screenshots of it, unfortunately.

Oh man. I'm not even an artist. I've got a, not even on the way back machine half tried every few. I think it was only because it was only up for a few months. I don't think it got captured, but um, clearly see it in my head and some of the articles I thought were actually pretty good when I think back.

Yeah, I was on point with some of them, you know, but there is literally one website that is the official Monte pie for website and it ruins everything. So I didn't never have competed, but know it would have been a good to show as a case example. So w obviously now you're, you're, full-time at this, but what about the, the, the steps leading up to being full-time?

When did it become your goal per se, to exit your standard nine to five job and make this a full-time go. And then what did you do? What steps did you take to take your portfolio from where it was at that moment? To get it to a point where you could go full time? I think this, I think the process was led a little bit by obviously real-world need in a certain amount of income to come in before I could even contemplate doing that things.

Okay. Having that income, where would mom, I might hit $2,000 and you know, that might have been enough to pay the bills, but obviously my wife's very cautious and she was like, no way, you know, you're not giving this up until, you know, you have a solid income for a set amount of months. So I kind of set myself a target of hitting.

Uh, honestly, I think it was around $3,000 a month, every month for six weeks. Um, that wasn't really from one website. It was really from, you know, 1, 2, 3 didn't really matter. I just needed to make sure that every month, that amount of money came in and I told my boss at work, he was secretly a fan of doing this all day.

You'd like to say, cause he didn't want to lose me. You know, I was, uh, I was a trader for a large suit. Mike's out, it's quite senior position and didn't want to lose me in that position. But he was always, every time he walked past me and Cody was like, how's your site's doing? And it always asks. Uh, it's, they weren't interested, but then he'd ask me an hour later, they're done NMR up, you know, so, um, and yeah, he knew as well.

I said he, he was very specific as well. He was like, you have a good career here. Your income could be X amount in the next year. Are you sure you're going to hit that. And he even, he agreed with Mike and said, I'm not letting you quit until you hit this, figure it, get it took off. It took off. And I can't say it was one website that did it.

I think it was, uh, a number of would website and a couple of smaller ones. And then I started to do a little bit on YouTube and then, well, not so much YouTube, but online affiliate marketing, and then it grew from there. So yeah, only when I knew I had at least. One and a half to two times my salary coming in every month, did I then think, okay, I can risk this.

Uh, and it was even then I dragged it out even further. You know, I, I think I could have quit after possibly two and a half to three years. I think he could've quit, but I left it even longer just to make sure. Just to make apps and certain regrets. So a year later, the missing part of it now, what don't regret, what I'm doing.

I absolutely love what I'm doing. There are elements to work in a full-time job, which I do miss. And I actually just produced a video to. And it was an it's about kind of nine things that I got wrong in 2021. And one thing that always surprises people when I mentioned it is I think kind of working from home for me, wasn't a great match.

I do think I enjoy that and getting up on a morning, getting showered, having breakfast and going out to work. And then that feeling of walking through the door and you've done a good day's work. And you just leave it behind when you're working from home. If you've not gotten office or anything, You just constantly are at it.

And no matter how much I've tried to train myself, I'm going to go to work eight till four, or I'm going to work. Never happens. Never, never happens. So, you know, I, I do miss elements of going out to work. I miss the camaraderie with my colleagues. Um, I miss that sort of thing. Yeah, definitely. I do still pop in there every now and again to see them, I'm going to go there.

I come out always thinking, cool. I won't want to do that job. Well, half of the girls. You know, the jokes and the chat and the sponsored stuff. So yeah, I do miss that side of it. Yeah. And that, you know, it's, um, you're a good example of how, you know, you've used your YouTube channel to connect with other people and to create a sense of community and, um, you know, things like this podcast and these things are good, uh, good outlets.

But at the end of the day, they're still not as interactive as going to a nine to five job. If this is something you're doing full time and it's important because, you know, I think. Everyone struggles with it in different ways, but certainly for full-timers, there's obviously you've gotta be careful of burnout and not getting so far down, uh, down.

Uh that'll hold it. You know, you, you miss, you don't have any connection, I guess you could say, like you talked about. Yeah. Yup. Yeah. What am I, what am I most popular videos is called blogger burnout. And it's literally because I have actually gone through it. Probably not all years. I've probably gone through it, I think seriously, a couple of times where I've literally.

For about a week, just thought, I just don't know what to do anymore. You know, that old imposter syndrome suspect, particularly if you're on YouTube, he sat and could fall into a trap of that way. You think, oh, wait a minute. His videos are so much better than mine. And then it puts you off mic in them. Then.

Yeah, you start looking on your websites more than there might be a Google car up there and your website goes down, so you fix stuff off. Can't even do that. And then it's just a vicious circle, but it's like a lot of things, then it just takes one thing to happen. You go whore. I'm right back in the sun.

I'm pumped to do it again. Yeah. It's it's night out, but I think a face blogger burnout kind of a couple of times really. Yeah. W what do you do to get around it? I mean, do you push through it? Do you take some time away or do you have any, any recommendations? Cause it, like you said, it's a real thing, you know, it's, it's just, it's so easy and it also, maybe not even bring up a distraction as well as it's kind of in a side camp, but next door to that, like, how do you, how do you get over that?

And Stephanie. If I'm really kind of at this burnout stage, then I just have to have time out. I just literally have to shut everything off for a week. Go play golf, go for walks with children, do whatever I need to do to set my mind off of it. And that is what it is. You do need to take your mind off it.

The good thing about this business is that if you I've structured it correctly, you can't do that. You come take time out and it doesn't affect you whatsoever. I've recently had, we have other recent issue in our family recently, and I've had to take about three weeks off. Um, Uh, Mike sounded a little bit big headed to say this, but my income never changed.

I, you know, I know there's the whole passive income. Everybody thinks it's kind of a swear word, but it pretty much is to a degree. Now I couldn't leave my business for three months and not do anything. It would decline. I would see some drop in my income, but I could leave it for three weeks. And, you know, that's what I've done this this past week.

And I probably have one of my best moms ever. So, you know, this business is really good for that. If you feel it's getting really too much tech proper time out, if you feel like you're just getting a little bit deflate or a little bit tired, then I just kind of ease up a bit. So I've learned to try and prioritize.

Uh, particularly the last few months, what is important to me? So, you know, producing YouTube videos is great, but I can go overboard. I had a month, a few months ago, I did 17 videos in a month. Oh man. I was, I was totally burned out. Uh, it took every minute of every day to do them. And I saw very little increase in the traffic and the earnings for doing that.

Whereas if I do one a week, I seem to get very, very similar numbers and it's very manageable. Let's talk about your YouTube channel 17 in a month is crazy, man. We, we, uh, w we have to push hard around here just to get, you know, to get our one out a week as well. And that's, you know, that that's, that's a good pace, but 17.

It's crazy. Let's see. So I was catching up on your YouTube channel before, uh, before today's interview. And I was fascinated just first off by how transparent you are. So basically on your YouTube channel, you're, you're kind of documenting every month, what you're doing on your sites, kind of the highlights you're going through the income, the revenue, the expenses, um, and very transparently.

I noticed, you know, last month, uh, you talked about how you had a really high month of expenses and you kind of went through why that is. And so I thought it was really good. What is your goal? On your YouTube channel. And how does that relate to what you're doing with your websites? So with my channel, it was initially just a way of documenting my progress, really, just to look back, you know, probably probably thinking of Spencer's videos on, you know, watching all the, uh, the series heated, you know, how you can document and tracking progress.

So I think that's why I started doing them. Uh, and then it turned into a little bit more helpful as people were asking. So how do you do. And I didn't really want to go into tutorials or anything like that. I'm not the best at video editing and things like that. So I just thought, well, all I can do is show you what I'm doing each day.

I'm doing this full time. I sit here at 8:00 AM in the morning and I start work. And if you want to see what I do, I'll kind of bring you. And then I thought to myself, well, I might, I might as well just be a hundred percent transparent and show you everything. So I even show my P and L and people think this is crazy.

It's like, I even show my affiliate incomes. I show everything. So it was literally my P and L that gets submitted to the account. And that's what people get to see. So I literally shot everything and I know that's going to come with some negatives and it's going to come with some positive. Uh, and I think it really helps people to see if they want to get to full time and do what I'm doing.

They can see kind of where they need to be in the kind of income streams they'll need to do. To take over maybe their full-time job. But like I said, the negatives of it is you can get some, obviously some comments from people you can get feedback that might not be great and that could hit you. And then you kind of think self, why am I doing this?

Wait a minute. Why am I sharing all this information for you to say these comments? So it does have its pros and cons. The M for the channel. I really don't know. I do love to grow it, and I do love helping people. And again, in this video I met today, I said how I spent probably more time in the last six months, helping other people than I have helped myself, which needs to be a bit more of a balance.

I have a full team of writers that the full team of the ears, and I have kind of neglected them a little bit and I need to make sure. My side of the business. Cause it doesn't need to provide me with an income each month is running smooth before I kind of help overs. If that sounds right, that sounds okay.

Don't want it to sound too, you know, selfish or negative, but yeah, you know, here's what I do for a living, but it's the old analogy from the final in airlines, right? They say put on your own mask before. Yeah, lean over and help everybody else. So, yeah. Um, and, and you talked about your portfolio on, on, uh, when you talk about every month and your P and L's, and I'm curious to dive in a bit on the portfolio that you have, you talked about how you have this, this YouTube channel, but it's really dovetailing with your portfolio of websites that earn your full-time income.

I think you said you have nine, nine websites right now in your portfolio. Is that, is that right? Roughly nine websites. I think three of them are kind of on the bigger side. I mean, we're not talking huge scales again. One of the reasons is I spent too much time doing other things to actually grow my own portfolio, but I've changed that mindset in the last couple of months.

And I'm really going heavy on a couple of websites. So what am I doing? Um, case studies is using an age demand and I've never used an age demand on a website. It's always been a brand new domain and I've used the stage domain. I've started the website off with a full team on an applet, the entire team on it to see what we're capable of, see how quickly we can grow.

How much content can we produce? What will it cost at that rate? And in the first month we launched the site, we have 200 articles on in month, one an hour up to over 450, and we've not hit month two yet. So, you know, he's on target for having like a thousand articles in six months, which is crazy. Um, but again, I like to see if the team processed.

Can do that. And what would it cost to get to that pipe and share it with everybody and let them know. So, you know, some people like websites with a small amount of really beautiful uni content, some people like the bulk content just, you know, get as much content on later as you can. So I've kind of gone from in the middle.

It's good content, but. That's a, that is a major push out of the gate. Um, and you're, you're kind of reading my mail. My, my question for you was why nine sites, do you ha do you focus on maybe having a broader portfolio? We had, um, we had Shawn Newman on the podcast a couple of months back and she spoke about wanting, I think she said she had about 17 in her portfolio at that time and spoke about.

To her, the benefits of that. I know a lot of people who like to focus on one or two sites and just pour everything they have into it. So I'm curious what made you ultimately decide to put so much effort on these three bigger sites and really this, this one aged domain site that you're working on? So I think the benefit of having let's say nine or 10 sites is that you kind of get to see what's working and what isn't rarely.

So rather than. Putting all your hopes in one side, because I have, I have a, some sites that are failing. I have wool that I call my mega website project, and this was going to be the biggest site of ever bill. I was going to pull a lot of content on there. We are talking thousands of articles and I got to 350 articles and it's not doing anything, but we were a year in and it's still not moving.

Now if I had to pull all my eggs in one basket, and that was my only project out of. Yeah, I did. I lost $20,000. It's going nowhere. I can't get rid of it. I would have been really in trouble, but having them over websites that while I was doing that with taking off, I can then go, okay, wait a minute. Let's pause that.

Now let's Google figure that side out and let's flip our attention to what. So I've got at the Moonlight, say three sites. One of them that I didn't think I would really push this month because it's out of season, it's a seasonal website. And, uh, even though it's Alex season, he's doing tremendous, the trophy's going off the ad revenues going up.

So I've literally just shifted half of my team and said, you go on that site quick. It is working. Let's dump a lot of content on there quickly, and I'm able to do that. So having that spread of portfolios. Easiest the thought process that, I mean, I would dread having everything tied down or one website, you know, you know what algorithm up there, no matter how good your site is, it can be a train wreck and you are in, you know, back to square one.

So how do you think it's safer to have a smaller portfolio websites and really just see what's working? I can test more things as well across different leashes. Yeah. Well, I think we're in the middle of a, of an algorithm update now, or it might be just wrapping up. I mean, there's many of them a year and yeah, like you said, it doesn't seem to matter to some degree what type of site you have or how you built it.

You know, most sites are getting hit at some point by that. So, yeah, that's a, that's a good point to make. Um, let's, let's talk about the way that you're, that you're building sites. Are you focusing, um, across your portfolio mainly on. Uh, are you, you, I've heard you touch on ad revenue. I mean, what's, what are your, um, what are your primary monetization channels when it comes to, to your websites?

Yeah, pretty much informational content for display ads at the moment. Um, probably about an 80 to 85% informational and the rest on products. Uh, if I do product guys now, I am trying to do real product guidance. That column, where you actually buy the products or a borrower or a rent it and try and do.

Product. We use with videos so difficult now where here in the UK, we come into winter. So I can't really do anything that's outside. So the most of the product reviews are put on hold. And that's fine because I can just focus on informational content. Uh, I'd revenue is just such an attractive thing. It's you wake up every day and it's there each, each, not if somebody clicks that and buy it.

It's just a constant stream of income. And I love that. And there are times of year where it's good and times of year where it's bad, but when you hit those times a year where it's good light wearing Potiphar, now it is, it is fantastic to wake up and see their mud revenues double in and sometimes even triple it overnight.

And you've done nothing else other than just science being there. So, yeah, I love that. Yeah. The, uh, the Q4 ad revenue bump is just a thing of beauty. Is it not just great? Like you said, it makes you just want to start all info sites after that. Yeah. I'd say it every year. I can't wait for Q4 next year and I've just said it again in my video today.

I'm like, I can't work for coupon next year because every year we say, yeah, it's going to get better. And if you look at the advertising trend on, on revenue, it. Exponentially growing each year and it just doesn't seem to be given in. So an informational context, it's easier to write. It's easier to run.

It's it's so much easier to build sites like that. So, yeah, my focus is pretty much on that. I do have a few affiliate, Amazon products and affiliate links in there. And one or two of my sites are obviously more affiliate based, but not much. I'm trying to really focus on the infamous. When it comes to the, the ad networks that you use, do you have a preferred one?

Have you tested different ones? Um, do you have, uh, are there any reasons why you might choose one of the. So I primarily with Zoe and media vine, um, the reason I'm not leaving at thrive thrive is I'm usually selling my site before we get to the point where there could be accepted to add fries. Um, so yeah, he's though we can use a lot, basically, because you can get them pretty much on a website from their wound.

Uh, um, there are a lot, lot of functionalities on Zoe that you can play around with and test. And I, everybody knows my chart. I love to test things. Yeah. That's a great platform for being able to do that and report back to people at media. Vine is just so solid. You just literally, you know, when your site hits the certain potential in traffic, you just hand the site over to put the lights on and you forget about it.

It is such a rock and that's fantastic. Look, I can use these Zoe as a platform to show others how to optimize their website for so. So you talked about selling sites. You mentioned at the beginning that you've sold a couple of sites. You just mentioned it again, that you tend to sell sites before they get to, you know, X traffic number, AdThrive traffic number, we'll call it.

But what's your strategy with selling sites? Um, how do you determine when to sell a site? Why do you want to. My strategy is basically the website has to be on an upward trends. I've always said that I'd hate to sell a website. It was in a decline. I don't know how anybody I see them advertise all over the place.

And I think how is anybody going to buy that? The traffic is like that. So it would have to be on an upward trend. It doesn't have to be huge and it can even be on a platter. Um, but I tend to sell them when they're, uh, a figure that I think is quite affordable for a lot of people. I watch your podcast.

We've shot in you when. Same thing. And I want it to repeat what she said, because she says I love the cash. I like the lump sum of cash and it is so. Well, it's easier to sell a website for 30, 40, $50,000 within a matter of a week or so than it is to try and sell the website. There's a hundred or 200 or 300,000.

I have friends that try and sell currently websites range of anywhere from. Uh, 200,000 to a million and it's so long and such an arduous process to sell them at that figure, that ad you think flipping them at 40, $50,000 is so much easier. Um, it's a quick cash revenue. So, uh, that's why I like to do it at that kind of level.

I think it's just affordable to a lot more people. I'm guessing that's where you might also get some of the cash to fund a project. Like the one you're doing right now with your age domain. That sounds like the perfect use of some, uh, proceeds from a, from a site sale. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. The fish KP, the site.

And I have a novel in which I called my high ticket item. So, which is a website where it was all based around products that were. A thousand dollars or more. Uh, and that was doing really well. And I sold both of those sites and we were talking anywhere from, I won't give the figure where for some mobile, anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000, uh, and like you said, that's is a nice lump sum to start another project off.

And that's where I do get my father to, you know, grow and try all the new projects. So sometimes people see the projects and think, how can I put three or 400 articles a month on the website? And you're not going to be able to not the first year, not there, maybe the second year, you know, you have to have a successful side that you either flip or brings in such a substantial income that you can reinvest that.

And that is the key. It's just that reinvest in, not believing in the process and just snowball effect that gets. The, the, the level of, of level of science, you talked about your team. Um, and obviously to, to, to, to publish that many articles in a month, you'd have to have a team. When did you start transitioning into having a team of writers?

Did you initially write all the content yourself and you sound like the Monty Python content yourself back on your very first website, but when did you start transitioning to having. Uh, there are people right for your site and whatnot, and, and now you must have a decently sized team to be able to produce that kind of.

Yeah. So my team currently is, um, eight African they've got eight or nine writers host to get by eight or nine writers. I have, uh, two veers. Um, we'll so two editors wouldn't be there. So about eight writers and they produce the bulk of my content. I do still have to outsource some of them that they're not able to do that much content themselves.

So I do outsource a little. But I'm trying to keep it in-house as much as possible. Uh, then my editors go in, they format their articles are internal, external links, images, videos, uh, and then, uh, my VA will just proofread it, check it off, make sure it's fine. And then, um, and then he published, uh, and that happened, I'd say after the fish keep the science.

So in my entire journey about probably two years, I think when I started getting the process from income skill on a spreadsheet, I started looking at it, thinking, how am I going to write that one? And that one and that one and that one, the spreadsheet just got bigger and bigger. I just thought I'm never going to be able to do it.

And then it was just a case of, cause I was working full time. I was able to invest every penny that the website made vacuums content. So if it meant $500, I ordered $500 with the content. And at that time it was all outsourced and I didn't have a ricer. And then I think when the website gets around a thousand dollars.

So, okay. I'll just go onto Upwork or somewhere like that. And I'll just advertise for one Reiser. And I got one writer who was bizarrely. Um, she was on Upwork and she started writing me for about six months. And then she just said, can I ask you a question on what yes. Yeah. Do you live in York or you can't?

I was like, yeah. And she saw it. She was like, do you live in this village? And she set the name, the delicious said, yeah. She says, I live just down the street from you. Oh my gosh, come on. And I was like, what is the chances of that? Yeah. And she actually lives just in the village and she wrote for me for about six months, did some incredible work.

She, she took poorly and she stopped right in, unfortunately, but she was a fantastic writer and it was just incredible just that she was just down the road and she was at work, uh, poor. He could be working with anyone from anywhere. That's amazing. I didn't advertise, you know, I had to be UK rights or anything like that.

It just, I think she saw I've, uh, I think I might have just started doing YouTube and I think she's spotted something in the background and recognize the street. And I think that's how she put two and two together. She was. Yeah, the guy that I'm writing for, man, that's wild. That's a wild story. Where do you go now to scale at your team?

Are they, um, do you go to a certain spot to ticket writers? Do you have a process in place for that? I don't have a process. Usually people come to me due to YouTube now eats pretty easy people reach out to me and say, You know, um, like I said, I took two weeks off, two or three weeks off recently, and it's everybody is talking, the comments said, we'll help you out.

Do you need any help with content? Do you need any more editors? Do you want me to edit you some of your videos for you? So kind of gracious for people to do that. Um, and that's basically where it comes from. Usually I never asked for anything for free. I'll always say, listen, if you're willing to do it, And I'll just be honest, if you fit the profile of the team and my style of right.

Em, then I've always got work, you know, I've, you know, I can only expand my team so much. I have to make sure everybody gets a certain income each month. So I do feel a little bit committed to make sure they, they need to feed their families. So I do need to make sure they get certain amount of work each month.

But what I always do is I give them a spreadsheet. Each the beginning of every month, I give a keyword. They all get spreadsheet each and it's usually 25 articles in each spreadsheet. And if all eight or nine writers can do that entire spreadsheet in the month. Great. I don't put any more pressure on them.

I just said there's a spreadsheet. Do as much as you can. And usually they get it completed. If the don't, it just rolls over. And then the next spreadsheet that we'll just say, okay, they manage to do five articles cards. So the next spreadsheet only send me 20 on and we'll add them five to that. So the continuously got spreadsheet to work through.

That's great. That's great. I did notice when you were talking through one of your YouTube videos about your European. Um, you had talked about keyword research and the depth you go to for that and how you even do it as a service. What, um, can you enlighten us a little bit on some of the processes you go through with your keyword research without giving everything away, but, you know, tell us a little bit more about, I mean, I know for me, um, first just hearing you talk about producing, I think you said 450 articles in a couple of months.

My first thought is, oh my goodness. That's a lot of writers. My second. Wow. That's a lot of keyword research, right. So I'm curious to hear about your process for keyword research, given the volume of, of keywords. You're obviously able to find, I think, I think once you start a few narrow something down, so if you've got spreadsheets of 25 articles, uh, and that writes, uh, uh, it's going to stick to that topic, which you actually find kind of one keyword in that topic.

Let's say off the top of my head, you're talking about Darden, palms or backyard. Poems fish problems, which you get down that rabbit hole of folks in on that one, it's quite easy to fill the 25 for that. It's not like I'm doing 400 articles on garden palms or anything. So if you break it down, so what I'll do is I'll say, okay, y'all going to write on garbage palms and Walter feet.

This lady might be working on a garb and lawns and lawn care. So when I break it down into 25 is much, much easier to do kind of eight or nine spreadsheets of keywords. I could pretty much get one, a dead dog. So I'll do the first or last month, uh, sorry, the first or last week and every month down to keyword research.

And it only uses text me about a week. Produce in your content and keywords for them to do for the entire month. So the process is just manual, right? You've mentioned the service. I do have a service that I use that I offer to people and that's basically grown. They just crazily grown. And to the point where I literally turn the servers off, off on the websites, it's called keyword care.com.

I literally turn it off more than its form. Um, because it is just me doing this. And in the beginning it was a way to. The growth of my website. So I thought every time I sell a spreadsheet of keywords, it's enough money for an article or two, and that's how I did it. And then that became limited. So I'd say, okay, I'll do one a day.

So I could do 30 a month. And then people are asking for more, more. A lot of people have had really successful websites from my service. It is not rocket science and I don't make out too. You know, I eat just a manual search. I will go to each topic. I will do Google alphabet search. I will use some tills.

And I would just that literally clicking links and deep dive in into that topic or that keyword and finding low competition. So two or three websites on page one that got a really low authority. All poorly written content or it's not much in the search and 10, and I just looked for all the factors and when I hit that little golden nugget, okay.

That ticks that box. Then that's the, the topic or the title to come up with a creative topical title for them that has the keyword in there. And then I add that to the spreadsheet and it is simple as that you just manual search. It just is so time consuming. That's why attempt to switch to serve yourself quite a bit.

That's why I work. So I was going to say Jeff, basically where you're going to have us all just kind of hitting refresh every couple of days here, trying to see when this opens back up again. As crazy as it seems only if there's anybody out there that knows how it grows service like that game. Certainly I, I, I tend to switch this service off on the beginning of the month.

So in November I switched it on, I think it was the 1st of November and I sold out in 30 minutes, which was embarrassing. So the list the website went live for 30 minutes and then soul out appeared and everything. Uh, yeah. And like sound able to do about at the moment. I could probably pump out 30 to 40.

Oh, it is a month. And I think I could probably get $200 if I left it switched on. So, um, but yeah, I will think he's people are buying it because they want my input. Uh, so I am trying to streamline it. I am trying to get. Um, a team that will help me at least, um, emails and actually send the oldest off once the doorman tied to the spreadsheets and things.

So I am trying to build a little bit more of a process and it's, it's it's I don't try and focus on it too much cause it's not where I want it to be, to go from a job where I have to answer to a boss to a certain. Whereas to answer a customer, but I feel so obliged that I know I can help people. So that's why I do it, but I just, I just have to limit it.

And, you know, my apologies for anybody who does try and order it, I, you know, the reason why I just try and limit it. So I basically, you know, I give you a good sense. And I don't, you know, and destroy my own life, my own business. Fair enough. Obviously, you're doing a great job if there's that much demand for it.

Um, Hey, I wanted to ask you about, uh, you had mentioned in a YouTube video that you have a conference that you are putting together. I, and do I have that right? You are organizing, uh, basically an entire conference for, for website owners and. Yeah. So the affiliate govern.com. Yeah. As that has grown to be quite a big event, actually.

So that all came about, I was talking to a neighbor, a fellow affiliate, Martin blogger. And as we were talking, we just try for hours. And his wife says, whenever you two get together, you just non-stop top work. It's all shop, shop, shop, shop. And she said, does this happen with everybody? Else's did. Yeah, it does.

Maybe there's a market for that. And I was like, what do you mean? She said, well, I run an organized conferences. That's what I do. I'm going to an events manager. And she runs some really big conferences here in the UK. And she's like, I wonder if there's anything like that in the UK? And I said, well, there is SEO conferences and there is kind of black hat conferences.

I said, I wouldn't want to run anything like that. You know? Um, but I do think there's a market for getting like-minded people together. Because, you know, you sell, it's such, it can be a lonely place. There's not many people get what we do. My, my children or my wife kind of get it now. But I, I, you know, if I say all this keywords ranked, oh, it was in position three and it's now position two.

They're just like, great, you know, you know, familiar, that's a buzz, you know, so. I thought about how it can pull everybody together. Um, we decided to have a gallery and a gathering of affiliates and that's all, it was going to be just a small gathering of people to talk shop. Um, it kind of grew and people got interested.

People started to want to, um, speak at the event. I mean, we've got a fantastic headlines speakers now. Uh, I mean, we've got Ricky from income skill. We've got John Dykstra. Um, we've got Alex Wood WP go, Sean Mars, Leon Angus garden. And we've got a ton. Ben Abla, lots of people coming to speak and we've sold hundreds of tickets.

So it's now quite a big event and he's here in New York next year. So it's Friday the 20th of May of 2022. And it's a lovely venue. It's in like a five-star location. It's a beautiful event. All the facilities you need. It's great for public transport and the links, and I'm really excited about it. It's grown to be a bit of a beast, which has caught me by surprise.

I was going to say, now you're in the conference business. You're in the vintage business. Yeah, that's great. Um, how many days, how many days is a, is the gathering a, just a one day event? Um, Is so much smaller fringe events that some of these speakers are going to be holding. So people are income school.

It's a great chance for them to come over to the UK and meet some of their membership and people who have joined their calls. So they're going to do some, a fringe event on the evening before. Uh, I think Malton, uh, from passive income D I think he's going to do and a fringe event. So there are also smaller events at the end.

That will be the main conference on the Friday, a full day event. Um, it's also going to be live stream. So for anybody who can't attend him, We understand restrictions with COVID and we've got lots of precautions in place without, but we are going to do a live stream. So you can buy a live livestream ticket, which you get to watch the entire event.

Not only the event, you'll get to watch things like backstage workshops. You'll get to talk to people, ask them questions. You'll get to interact with them as well. So, and if you can't make an online ticket, a certainly a viable option, and I think it's going to be something quite unique. That's great. Yes.

Some of the speakers you rattled off, I know I've been guests here on the podcast, and so that'll be exciting to hear them hear them live and in person, or if you can't make it live and in person you can tune on my wool. Um, we'll make sure that we drop a note here in the, uh, in the, in the show notes with the, with the link that's uh, let's see, do I have that right.

Affiliate gathering.com. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Okay, good. Um, I've got just a couple wrapping up questions as we wrap up here for you. I'm just curious to hear from you. Um, what's next. And, uh, you know, you kind of touched on a bit about how I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're almost reshaping your focus.

You're, you're focusing. You said you in the last couple months, you've had this new focus on growing sites, bigger and larger. I think I have that. Right. But talk about what's next, what your goals are and how you're adapting your focuses as you've, you know, learn what you've learned, uh, based on what you've learned in there in your first year.

Yeah, certainly focusing on more the website portfolio. Um, I do believe if you're going to be on YouTube and you're gonna show some examples, you need to have some success. And he felt that I had not had some success, but the success I've had, I'm usually sold. So sometimes it does look like, oh, wait a minute.

He's only got a small portfolio. He's not making a hundred thousand a month, like some affiliates. So I do think I need to work on that as a basis. I have a cold. Portfolio websites that brings me in not only an income that I can then relax and try other things on YouTube. Um, but also it gives some good examples of, you know, success stories or failures, but it would be nice to have, uh, a portfolio that is growing to be, uh, showing some examples.

You know, people not much transparent as I can be, but you know, you do still get people who question you, you know, is that site really doing that? So I would love to have a really successful portfolio to, to show off really and said, this is possible. And this is exactly how long it took me to do that. So, yeah.

So the focus is on that YouTube wise, I, I want to produce more quality content. So again, I don't want to do tutorials, but I do want to. Not rush habits, 17 videos a month, just because I'm trying to please YouTube. And you know, I do want to try and give my audience what they want. I do want to try and broaden the YouTube channel a little bit.

You tend to get trapped a little bit in a niche and either YouTube doesn't like that or your audience doesn't like that, but I'm going to try and see if I can broaden that little bit, but yeah, less content on issue, more quality content. Do we have any more? Do we have any, um, maybe four hour tutorial videos in your future?

Like, uh, like the one you watched from Alex, it's definitely not going to happen. I don't know how, like text me all the time and do a 10 minute video. I don't know how we come in. If you do a four hour video. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, same as managing a team. I'm friends with a lady who has a portfolio of faulty old websites that she has 60 writers.

And he's like, how do you manage 60 writers? I just don't understand the, how you do that. Um, but that's why the affiliate governor, and that's why I'm looking forward to it. And that's one of the reason why to get it going, because I want to meet these people. I want to talk to them, say, how do you manage a team of 60 writers?

Or I want to say. How do you edit a four hour video? What's the process that goes into making something like that. So that's a great opportunity. And one of the reasons, maybe a selfish reason why I want it to actually do the event. Cause I wanna, I want to pick the brains of these people and find that. I spoke at an event very recently.

Um, one of the first times I've gotten back to speaking since, um, since COVID and the pandemic was great to be at a live event. First off, the energy was palpable and it wasn't even, you know, my industry, I was just a speaker there, but what really struck me is exactly what you mentioned, which is how, um, and the conference, it was talked a lot about, about.

Uh, this specific market had had an explosion of business during COVID because of the nature of what they did and, and whatnot. And there was this feeling around the room that they couldn't really talk about it with their friends and their colleagues, because they didn't know if their friend or colleague had lost their job or were in a totally different spot.

And so getting them together for a couple of days, Just such a dynamic environment, you could feel it. Um, and it speaks again to the power of having other people that understand what you do, going all the way back, full circle to what we started talking about with burnout, with motivation, with staying focused, with learning from other stuff.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. It's it's a good opportunity to learn, but also good opportunity to stay inspired and motivate. Yeah. I mean, especially when you talk to somebody who knows what you're going through, you cannot say figures and numbers without kind of scaring them or looking like you're being big headed or anything.

If I go back to my job to say, you know, how much did you earn last month? And I tell them they just, they just think either boasting or you're exaggerating. But when you talk to somebody who's got similar businesses or stuff and they go, yeah, yeah, that sounds stumble. That's achievable. And you know, when I listen to figures like John Dykstra doing, you know, 120,000 a month from ads, you know, if I told somebody that you can an $120,000 from ads, that the crazy, but when you you've actually talked to like money people, they go, yeah, that's doable and that's, and they understand kind of where you want to be or what you have to do to get there.

So I think that's why it's so important to be surrounded by kind of like-minded people. Whether that just started or whether there are both y'all's kind of level. I think it's important to talk to all levels of people. I still get a big throat from talking to people who just press publish on their first article.

You know, I, that, that thrills me is like, you know, what was it like, how long did it take you? How many words did you write? How do you find the topic? I love that, you know, like-minded, you know, when somebody says I've just published a hundred articles. Great. How did you do that? So, yeah, I get thrilled from listening to both sides and that's exactly why you want it to get the, everybody together in this industry.

So he's not going to be too deep. It's not going to be too technical. There will be something for everyone because I understand those people hitting publish on the first article and there's people making hundreds of thousands a month. So I want to cater for everybody really. Final question for you. It's a broad one.

What, what is your single biggest piece of advice for someone who is wanting to go full-time in this business for somebody who wants to eventually leave their nine to five job and build websites for a living? What's what, what is the biggest piece of advice you would have? So if it's false making a in full full-time diversify, just make sure you don't have another, if this is a British turbo, all your eggs in one basket, we've said over here too, that is, it just don't do that.

Oh, you know, the thought of saying summery, quit your job tomorrow. And they do, I know a case study and a YouTuber who did exactly that. And the next day there was an algorithm update and he lost literally 75% of his traffic. The next day he's fought back and built. I would never say anybody, quit your job.

And then that happens. So you make sure you've either got a buffer level of income. So something does happen. You've got either enough cash there to see you through, uh, maybe six months, nine months. So you can build it back up or you have enough of a portfolio to cover one or two sites gate here. So yeah, definitely diversify know a lot of people say that, but it is true if it's full time, that's what you want to do.

Make sure you cover that. Make sure you've got that before. Financially and asset wise. That's great advice. That's good. That's good. Well, congratulations on your success on going from it being nothing more, I guess, than an idea, four years ago to, um, leaving your full-time and leaving your full-time job.

Last year to now having a portfolio of sites and, uh, starting a conference, uh, and, and, and, you know, cheers to all that you have on your plate. I, I, I think you have a lot going on, so we'll have to check back in here, how you're managing all that, but, but no, congratulations did, and it's a great, um, it's a great case study for all of us watching, especially those who aspire to, um, uh, start from scratch and build something that they can then turn into a full-time, uh, full-time income.

So thanks for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed. E's been actually something I've wanted to do for a long time. So yeah, you've ticked the box on my bucket list. Thank you. Well, good to hear. I don't think I get, I don't get to hear that very often. So I'm going to take that with me as we go.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us and until next time, we'll talk soon. Thank you. See you later.

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