Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living Timothy?
I am a stock trader who’s learned that while trading is fun and profitable, it’s far more fulfilling and even more profitable to teach others to profit just the way I have for a decade now. So, in late 2007, I created a publishing company, BullShip Press, LLC to cut through all the BS in the trading world as 90% to 95% of traders lose money and the “gurus” don’t share their trades/track records because they’re mostly frauds. My goal is to get the number of losers down to 60-70%, but it’s a huge undertaking considering the amount of misinformation out there.
To get the goodness out there, I blog, have a have a real-time trade alerts newsletter and sell instructional trading DVDs that teach how I turned $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money into $2 million in 4 years, was the #1 ranked short selling hedge fund manager 2003-2006 (Barclays) and earned 200% last year making me the top ranked trader out of 20,000+ on Covestor.com, a website that verifies trades and investments.
As I detail in my book “An American Hedge Fund”, I closed my fund because due to the popularity of my TV show “Wall Street Warriors”, I was getting hundreds of emails/day from people who wanted to learn more about my strategy because they had dreams of turning their small accounts into millions just like I had.
Last December you posted that your blog earned $83,358, could you give us a break down on how you accomplished this?
Sure, as I wrote in my blog post detailing the income much of it was due to holiday DVD sales and lump sum affiliate payments, so here’s the breakdown:
$20,229 TIMalerts
$27,688 Instructional DVDs
$29,407 Advertising & Affiliates
$2,084 An American Hedge Fund
$3,950 Trading Profits
What advice would you give a new blogger trying to make money from their blog?
Prove that you’re expert advice/blog is valuable by creating solid word of mouth with free content at first and then showing off all the testimonials from happy readers to seduce even more readers into purchasing your premium product/s, whether they be in the form of a newsletter, DVDs, affiliate products, etc. DO NOT FOCUS SOLELY ON ADS!
I’m actually in the process of creating a how to make money form blogging instructional DVD with a ton of proven experts, contact me if you’re interested in staying updated!
You are now currently living the Internet Lifestyle, what does the Internet Lifestyle mean to you?
It means I’m gonna work my butt off to take advantage of the power of social networks and all sorts of cool new technologies to build a profitable, and more importantly, helpful business. Work hard play hard as having an internet-based business allows me to travel extensively, while also working so already in 2009, I’ve visited nearly half a dozen countries seeing amazing sites, meeting exciting people and having a great time!
I understand that at 18 years old you took $12,415 Bar Mitzvah Gift Money and turned it into $1.65 million using the stock market, what was the biggest lesson learnt from this?
There are times when you must be aggressive in trading, investing and business because the environment is ripe for massive gains….at all other times, be as frugal, cynical and conservative as possible.
Tell us about how you went from Young Stock market Prodigy to one of the highest paid bloggers?
I worked my butt off for a year proving that my investment strategy and my teachings were valuable….then I added in a ton of marketing to get the goodness out there because nobody else in business is going to help me as much as I can help myself.
The stock market niche is particularly easy to excel in since 90%+ of traders lose money, 70%+ of “professional” money managers fail to beat the S&P 500 each year and 99% of people selling investment wisdom don’t share their track record and trades/investments because a.) they’re not as good as they claim b.) they’re total frauds and c.) they’re cowards because industry regulations prevent them from sharing performance (it’s pathetic, imagine a baseball player unwilling to tell you his batting average!)
Seriously, brutal honesty is a revolutionary concept in finance, I wish more joke-of-an-industry-finance people will see the success its brought me and be inspired to do the same as i’m far from the best, just the first!
What would you say the benefits of having a blog over a traditional website or forum?
It’s interactive, real-time, data-minable…it’s not even a debate, you need to market your knowledge every day and better understand/stay in contact with your customers and blogs help you achieve both.
Static websites are soooo 2004 and older, forums are ugly and inefficient unless we’re talking about them being based off Twitter like StockTwits is (I’m an investor)
You are known as the authority blog in the Stock Market niche. What advice would you give a new webmasters to dominating their niche?
Nah, I’m just the authority on penny stocks, gimme a few years until I takeover the entire market….but my advice is to never sell out for the money and promote crap products/probable scams, sketchy-type stuff. Your readers’ trust is everything and you gotta have some self respect! Search out other quality people in your niche and related ones and figure out ways to partner and cross-market each other’s blogs/products.
What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?
Prepare to work harder than you ever imagined—this ain’t the 4- Hour Workweek, this world is constantly changing so you must learn about new technologies and trends, ignore most of them, not be afraid of making mistakes, try everything to gain greater exposure, more sales, more testimonials and definitely take on partners who you can trust.
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 would say reinvest more of the profits into marketing and accounting. For the first several months, I didn’t know if this was going to be a sustainable business so I was scared and selfish, but now I realize I gotta keep putting some $ back into the biz to help more organized and targeted.
What is the best advice you have ever been given?
Don’t invest in anyone who hasn’t been scarred at least once…losses and mistakes help you learn and grow infinitely more than gains just make you cockier and more susceptible to making mistakes.
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?
Stay tuned for more instructional DVDs, not just for penny stocks and short selling, but general stock market strategies, options trading, and as I already mentioned, blog marketing. The goal is to get as much good information out there in many different formats. And while that’s a nice goal, I’m also going to make sure all my DVDs and experts prove their expert status and regularly converse with our customers! So feel free to visit http://www.timothysykes.com/contact and ask me anything!