Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living Marc?
We (Daniel Turner my business partner and I) by running multiple online websites that either sell or provide a service to their demographic and also by teaching how to do the same. Also known as Niche marketing.
Aside from this we also run our SEO company in Australia, this is a recent addition to our company as we prefer to work on our own resources most of the time.
What’s your number one income stream from your website and why do you think its been so successful?
I would say over all the number 1 income stream from non membership based sites is definitely affiliate sales, adsense is a great place to start but as soon as you get your “feet wet” it’s a good idea to start moving towards promoting and selling other people’s products. Its very easy to drive targeted buying phrases or visitors once you understand the basics.
I understand you run a very successful membership website, what has been the biggest challenge with keeping people subscribed each month and how did you over come it?
We never really found it an issue in keeping people subscribed each month, membership drop off rate is just a given and we actually have one of the lower rates in comparison to friends etc, though the biggest thing is just providing great service and constantly evolving your product. Markets change so you need to be prepared to move with the tide and react as needed.
Too many people launch a product and then let it go stale as they move onto other products. We prefer to keep evolving and making it even better and better.
I understand that you earn around $1,800,000 a year from your online ventures, how have you been able to achieve this? Knowing what you know now, what would you of done differently to earn more?
Networking with others and Joint Venture partners was by far the best technique for the membership site. But for affiliate sites and other consumer sites SEO is our method of choice as its where our strengths and resources are. Though we are also looking into and going over Adwords for the affiliate style sites as just another viable traffic source.
For us learning how to drive “free” traffic was definitely a major plus and opened up many different business opportunities. Its not really free traffic because it still costs time and effort, but it can be leveraged time and effort.
What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?
Before you buy any course brainstorm on the many ways you could run a business online, then select the one that is most applicable to the lifestyle you envision yourself living. Then and only then start researching that industry, if you have the money available buy a course from the leader in that industry, you only need one good course to cut down A LOT of potential mistakes and save yourself a bunch of time.
The key is to keep it to only one course and implement everything you can within your market and dedicate yourself just to that stream. There are so many ways to build a business online that you really need to have a lot of self discipline to keep just focused on one thing.
Remember its not a race and it may take you only a few months, or it might take you a few years, but at the end of the day when a University Degree takes you 4 years to complete just so you can start at the bottom….. A few years to dedicate and learn something that can set you free for the rest of your life….
I think it’s a good trade off.
You are currently living the “Internet Lifestyle”, what does the internet lifestyle mean to you?
I lived the “internet lifestyle” for a good few years before deciding to get serious about the SEO company. So for me it means working my butt off every day to build a new company J. That was our choice to do though. I know many that live the lifestyle of just a few hours a day work and make a very respectable wage that is 6 figures a year, even a month in some cases.
It all comes back to the question before and knowing what you want to do and then going about achieving it.
If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?
I’d tell myself to always focus on your own sites and resources and to have a continuation plan in place for them at all times. We let our sites die for a period of a time and had to spend a lot to catch back up to where they should have been. Consistant action in the right area’s is what always matters.
That and to get into affiliate marketing much earlier rather than relying on the easy ride that Adsense used to be J
Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
One of our current goals is to expand and build on services to help people online build sites and more importantly promote them.
My lifetime goal is to get into the nano-technology arena to help develop and create tools in technology that aid and assist all of man kind. I believe this is the very next “age” to come and it brings with it many open doors.