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Hitting $81,000 per month with 12 sites: Jamie I.F. (#289)

• Brooks Conkle

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Link up with Jamie I.F. on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/Jamie_IF
Or via his website: https://increasing.com/
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Brooks:

and I've seen you mention some like really, big numbers on Twitter. Like what's the biggest revenue, month that you've had so far?

Jamie:

It was December, 2022 and that was I think$81,000

Brooks:

Woo. I just got done having a really great conversation with Jamie. I f we talked about his dozen websites, the fact that he's had the biggest month of close to$81,000 in revenue, and we also talk about an exciting new project that he's got that's starting very soon. Enjoy. All right, sweet. Jamie, we are live man. How you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing well. So it's Jamie, I f So my first question, I gotta know, man, on Twitter, so what is, what does if stand for?

Jamie:

So when I graduated from uni like three, three and a half years ago now I tried to start a social project to help feed people that were like living great or homeless and that had the initials I.F I ran outta money trying to do it. I was like, all right I gotta make it somewhere. So I got into SEO and that, but it's like a forced accountability thing of right, I'm not just gonna try and get rich and live like lavishly and forget about the original project. It's if I don't do it, then literally it's on my name and everyone can hold that against me. It's like it's a, it is a point of accountability.

Brooks:

I love it, man. I had no idea. I was wondering because I've been connected or following you on Twitter for a while and I'm like, I.F what is that? I'm like, when we connect live and record something, I was like, I'll ask you straight away. So, and then right before we recorded I was telling you, it's funny that there, there seems to be lots of involvement in the uk. So my goal this year is to make at least 25 new connections of people that are building in the online space and building websites. And I wanna record these conversations and for right. it's tied two to two of the, conversations I've recorded. It's America two, UK two. So I think that's pretty interesting how that works.

Jamie:

Yeah, I'm gonna back the Brits here to take over. I'll make sure that it's always the, Brits that reply to the, to all the invites and get on there and yeah, like in America, like they they pack the Supreme Court with their side. I'm gonna pack it full of Brits in the connections.

Brooks:

Exactly. Yeah, man, you gotta connect me to more Brits and we'll keep it, we'll keep it going, man. It'll be great. So, okay, so I, just noticed on like literally today, I saw on your Twitter feed it says retired S.E.O. Yeah. It is uh, complete, fun? Or, what is this?

Jamie:

Yeah, so I haven't sold up. There's no exit, but I'm still doing the new sites and now I'm still going through it. so about three months ago now, I was having a real big technical problem when I pushed my main site, like a new complete like design change, right. And one of the people who was, who volunteered, like completely for free to help diagnose the problem. Cause I'm not that good on the technical side of seo, to be honest. Was Andrew who runs lasso. And he was super helpful. I'm super grateful for him for that. And we just got talking after that and a few weeks later he messaged me like, oh, just outta interest, would you be interested in joining and heading up Marketing Lasso? And so we got talking at the beginning. I was like I thought it was just like the displays, which are beautiful, but it's just if it was just this place, I would've gone. Thank you. Happy to be a customer, but not right now. But we got talking and there's so much cool stuff. Coming and in the midst of being rolled down and it was just, it seemed like a super cool project to be part of. And so the retired SEO part is a bit of tongue in cheek for I'm now the helping with the marketing side of Lasso So rather than just being like a niche site seo,

Brooks:

That is nuts, man. Is that, so is this is that public knowledge? Have you already talked about that yet? Or, not really. It

Jamie:

will be tomorrow, I presume. That doesn't destroyed

Brooks:

Yeah, we're recording this now. It'll be a few weeks before we before we post this. Congrats man. That's awesome. That sounds really cool.

Jamie:

thank you very much. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Brooks:

So what does that mean for your projects? Are your pro, are you gonna, are you operating the same or how are you going to, how's that gonna change what you're doing with, I guess the light

Jamie:

shine? Sure. So I mean, generally I think in 2023, if you are running 12 sites and think that you can do that still, like it's 2017, 18, I think that's not the way to make the most money. And so even if I wasn't Now spending more time on lasso, I would be sliming down anyway, but it's further. Encouragement to just slim down to the main projects, get good systems use. I mean, I need to get more effective and I need to use my time better and build better systems, but I've been working to do that over the last few months to the level where I feel more comfortable only having a couple days a week to work on the sites because we've now got rights and know House A right to the SOPs, like a VA who can help format the stuff in WordPress and knows how to do the affiliate links in differently nuanced parts of the formatting process. I've trained someone who can do the briefing. All the keyword research is done for all the sites for the entirety 2023 up front. And so I've tried to just make it as like backdated as possible. We're doing it all up front so that it makes it easier to manage now with having less time.

Brooks:

Interesting, man. So you just answered so many, so much for me that I, wanted to just chat with you on so 12 sites. So you, have 12 like projects.

Jamie:

Yeah, but I only six actually make any like meaningful money.

Brooks:

Yeah. Are, six like making money at all? Do you have more than that? Monetized, but because I have a handful of sites too, but I only, I have two that are monetized, like for, my portfolio or whatever.

Jamie:

We have five that made more than a grand a month last month. That's no joke,

Brooks:

man. That's like awesome.

Jamie:

thank you. Yeah. And then a few of them at a couple hundred here, 70, 50, 200. Like stuff is still great to have as a side hustle, but like they're not being actively worked on and I'll move to get rid of them.

Brooks:

Got it. Okay. Okay. you'll, sell off some of those projects?

Jamie:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Brooks:

How how, old are you? I feel like you're in your twenties. I feel like I heard you say it before somewhere. Yeah. I've,

Jamie:

just turned 26, but I think in real life people think I'm like 21 or something. Cause I, just don't look like that old, I don't grow a beard or anything, so it

Brooks:

just looks you got the, baby face man. So you just turned 26. How long have you been doing this? How did you get, like, how did you get into this? Because no, like no one's studying this at school, right?

Jamie:

They should be teach and how.

Brooks:

Totally agree with

Jamie:

you. But no, I did not learn in school, unfortunately. I did a four year unique course, like usually it's three years. But like people third of the fourth year I presume it's the same in the US but you can do year in industry. And so I went and worked, in Paris for six months for this publisher that did stuff, sort of discovered what SEO was there because they were trying to use it, but weren't really using it effectively. They were also just like a really high brow, like French aristocracy. Create like founder who like thought anything like display ads or affiliate links. It's like pretty low brow. Like, he felt they cheapened into their brand offering, which is a dumb idea because obviously it doesn't actually, it's like how you make money. Yeah. So he wanted to do like direct add deals. And so I, I was curious about how you could then use the SEO that was learning there with some of these other tactics That I had no idea if they made any money or not. Cause I didn't really get to try them out or like really notice them. I didn't have reason to. So then I practiced it, start a site when I grad. I took it seriously when I graduated in mid 2019. I amaz use, what is I mean, it's probably not job replacement income in the us but it is in the uk. We've got lower salaries over here in, in March, 2020, the month covid hit, then it went way back down because the Amazon rates got cut that same month when I was first made job replacement income, got to it again. And then that's, the journey and how I learn and practice this. I've not had a job in SEO or mostly. I guess just learn through repetition and writing.

Brooks:

So that company in Paris where you were working, was someone teaching you some of these skills or were you just able to go out and, learn on their dime, find knowledge and kind of try to put some of it into practice at the company? Like how did

Jamie:

work? Yeah, so we were writing news and stuff and then, yeah, we learned what SEO was really on the job, and so I was teaching myself should I learn like how to rank this article on whatever it was. So I was, yeah, I don't, I wasn't really being taught, but then I, guess I just found it interesting. I, I pushed myself to I don't think they would've cared if, like nothing to do with SEO was going out in that particular company that particular time. But I guess I just, I like the idea of getting free traffic and it only costed my time cause I was broke then, so I had time and no money. So I was like, oh, what I have to do is write loads and I get traffic. This is a great deal. I tried to launch a, streetwear company. when I was like 17 and it failed. And we had a bunch of Instagram followers, like 16 K within a few months, but nothing sold. Cause it just didn't translate. And you you had to keep it up. The social media stuff was like expensive. And so I was like, oh, I like the idea of this thing if you're free. So it just matched all of like the failures that I'd had and like the idea of reifying that. So I think I was like super motivated if a free, ongoing rather than one off social media post type of thing. And I've loved this then.

Brooks:

That's cool. Okay. And then, the trajectory to get to this many sites and I know it's about to change, but like up to now where you are, what did that look like? Did you launch one and then another, and then just keep stacking on or like what was that flow like for you over the last number of years?

Jamie:

So I had just the one site until the end of 2020. Then I registered another domain name for an offshoot in like December, 2020. But very quickly, got the shiny objective syndrome and went from two to six and whatever really quickly, none of them really took off. And then towards the end of 2021 made the first like acquisition of a decent, like it was$28,000, which to me, and still now is, like a lot of money. And so that we still run that one. That's one of the ones that makes more than a thousand dollars a month now. And then a couple small acquisitions that didn't really pan out. And then the bloating that comes with that. So yeah, it was mostly isn't offshoot for one that's still the most successful. That sort of funded all the others to break even point. And they, the others only recently have sort of now become grown into their own, and now pay, more than what we invested in them. Like our second biggest site now, did$34,000 in November, and so it came into its own and I started making like enough money that it could then, invest and offset the cost of another set of sites, whatever. But obviously we don't wanna

Brooks:

do that now. Exactly. But that's crazy to hear though, man, that we're talking like a three year time period of really launching up quick. Basically. I mean, this isn't like a 10 year project for you. This is like less than five years of work to get to

Jamie:

where you are. Yeah. And the second site that we registered into ment 20 at the end, like the 24th month of his existence was the month. It did 34 grand in a month. So it was like a two year maturing to get to that point

Brooks:

and I've seen you mention some like really, big numbers on Twitter. Like what's the biggest revenue, month that you've had so far?

Jamie:

It was December, 2022, so a couple months ago. And that was I think$81,000

Brooks:

81 k. I mean, that's nuts, man. If you were to rewind back three years, like did you have that vision of of course. In three years I'll have a 81 k month. Or did you not have an idea that it could get there? I'm just kinda curious like, where your mindset was three years

Jamie:

ago? No, like I, it still, I still don't feel like it exists until it's like we're still getting paid some of it. Cuz like for example on Amazon, it's like a 60 day time if we actually get paid. So it's only I only begin to feel like it's a lot now. Got it. But no, like even when I found one. end of year write your feelings down as you go into the new year. Like books that I'd written in like 2020, and it was like I, was clearly not feeling confident in the site. Then I literally, you only reread this recently and, it says just get the site sold so you can focus on the I.F project. See if you can get five grand for it. Whatever. Just get it rid of it and I'm like I imagine I had done that now instead of stuck with it.

Brooks:

Oh man. Yeah, exactly. What's the breakdown of that revenue? Like what are you guys targeting? Are you targeting, affiliate marketing, programmatic ads? Sponsorships? What are you

Jamie:

doing? Yeah, it's about, 68% ads sorry, affiliates, 5% sponsorships directly. And then the rest, which is like 20 something percent is

Brooks:

ads. It's funny when you start a sentence with, it's about 68%. I'm like, I don't know, man. It sounds like your numbers

Jamie:

it sounds like it might be like 70, it might be 65. I don't remember.

Brooks:

Yeah. I got you. Now, is that across the board for, all your projects? Is that kind of the breakdown or different sites. or like different ranges, or does it end up being somewhere in that ballpark for,

Jamie:

in fact, actually, let me just, correct myself because, we do some digital products as well and one smaller site that we bought recently Cool. That had an Etsy store in its own like e-commerce thing, does 85% off like email and like the e-com stuff the digital products. And so it is offset sites are all different, but from though the niche sites sort like the typical like blog content, it will fall into about two thirds affiliates, one third ad.

Brooks:

Gotcha. I gotcha. And something I was wondering so would you look to expand that to create a brand like into products like whether it's your own digital product or like own physical product or whatever. Do you see that being a potential for any of those brands? I think it's necessary.

Jamie:

I think that like influencers are gonna get rich and brandless, niche side, people are gonna evaporate over time. Like it's just inevitable with AI's gonna happen. And so if you wanna be one of the big winners or at least survive, you've gotta build like products. You've gotta be on camera as the face of your brand as the face that people, buy from people, right? So you've gotta do that. At the same time though, like there is still more meat on the bone. For, just like faceless affiliate marketing blog posts. There's still a lot left and some of the tools coming out. I'm not trying to promote lasso here necessarily, but there's a lot of No, go for it. Yeah, completely. I break down your revenue with some of the stuff that's coming out. It will show you for example, the exact revenue that each page drives so that you can quickly. S improve stuff that's working, fix stuff that isn't working. It'll give you like the click like the earnings per click for different affiliate programs or pages in one go that like even then you could just give to a VA that earns markedly less than you and is on like less valuable time than you and get them because it'll be so simple that you could then, like the, basically you want to say it's the value of a page view. It's gonna skyrocket over the next few years with the AI power tools that are coming out. So even though you're getting your traffic taken, there's still a lot. I predict that with less traffic, RPMs will go up for ads as well. And so if you can take advantage of that and survive with the value of page for you going up and being an influencer. it'll be okay. I think I've gone off topic there, but that's the plan to expand it. Basically

Brooks:

yeah, not off topic at all, man. Because that's something I'd want us to brainstorm on would be like AI and what your thoughts are. Obviously you can't have a chat without bringing that up, right? Without talking about what's, going on the status of the industry and all that. And no, I think he just brought in some really deep thought there with that saying that, yeah, obviously it's gonna, obviously it's disrupting traditional niche sites or whatever, but your thoughts, I guess to, to like recap that back to you, like your thoughts are like, yeah, page views may go down, but RPMs possibly will go up and, you're saying using AI tools to empower our media brands or our content sites

Jamie:

as well. AI will destroy the previous barriers to creating new SaaS tools that take advantage of data. So a lot of new generation stuff will exist that doesn't exist that we can't even think of now that will allow you to make more money. Yeah. Tools that don't use like ai, that don't use ai, that just use data like Lassos performance dashboard that gives you all the revenue is an instant thing. Again, that will then increase your value of pageviews because you can then go and optimize things based on data. Didn't previously have. And so yeah there's, gonna be at the same time, if traffic does go down, brands will still want to reach people and so they just have to pay more for it. So RPMs will increase cause they'll be more demand over the same, or reducing number of page views as Google answers more queries itself within their own doorway page. And. Influencers who now take over a bigger share of like people's eyeballs, cuz people won't be on pages as much will become more and more valuable. So those will all go up in the age of ai. As for AI taking stuff like Yeah, it will especially if it's basic and undifferentiated, the more like nuanced and like it requires more context, I think you'll be fine. More commercial stuff will survive better than informational. But for us we're, still using some AI in our tool sets now, like we use We use AI to try and come up with like, just like standard chat G.P.T stuff. We're using it to write pros and cons for stuff like feeding in the actual product description and being like, write pros and cons. Based on this description, we're using it to if you write. write me five unconventional FAQs. A person might have in buying this. It'll give you really creative responses cuz the word unconventional trains it to be like different and like most of'em are rubbish, right? But the other ones will be like, that's a really interesting, like coming from a different angle sort of thing. You can also get it to create tables out of the data you've already done. So you can add that into the buying guide to compare everything over one specific aspect. And so, It as a data collection tool for improving blog posts. It can really augment that already. And some people are using it to do entire briefs. I don't trust it. Is that it requires like a good eye and understanding of like the competition to know how to like the exact search and tenant and how you're gonna position yourself. But it can do a lot of things already that it's like service level to a good standard and save a lot of time.

Brooks:

I agree with you. Yeah. Our team's definitely using it as well, just to be I, would just say that to be more creative, right. Just allow you, to be more creative and just maybe kinda what you said, like so unconventional FAQs, right. Just to come up with generate unique and creative ideas that maybe you wouldn't have on your own or with doing whatever research that you would do on your own. What is your, what does your current team look like? Like how are you set up to run all those sites and I'm just curious how your operation runs.

Jamie:

Sure. So we have two virtual assistants that help, like the one's head of quality control that manages the other VA and then That's like formatting, sourcing, images, resizing, adding in some cases internal links. Adding affiliate links. Generally understanding the niche enough to be able to put together the images that are like really relevant and add value in the right places. Cuz some things better suit visual like accompaniments than others. We have six freelance, but yeah, in house they're freelance, but they're like, they're within the Slack group and they write for us like as much as they want to and stuff. For the main sites. I also, we have one. Person who works four, four days a week on one of my sites as like a so site operator on a, like you get like a standard getting paid by the hour deal, but also if revenue is above a certain percent, he gets 25% cut of that. And he now has he runs one of our newest sites, the one that puled the 90% of the revenue from digital products. He's like taking charge of the site operator for that, but that's a pure like equity deal to earn up to 50. Just like a motivator to that's, his business and his project to run and yeah. And crash.

Brooks:

Do you I'm assuming you doing the equity type stuff is probably something that's come on later in the game? Or, did you have anything like that early on?

Jamie:

No, I wasn't in the position to have many people in the team until like it made enough money to offset that. Yeah. And yeah it's also if, someone's come in, they're not a good seo and I train them up and then they get to level with it, like they're good enough that you could probably go and make more as a salary somewhere else then. All right I'll work out a deal with, if you are super motivated and you wanna crush it and you wanna build like some, like something for yourself, then we'll do a deal. Do you help make me money, I help you make you more money. And I think that's a good way to align the motivations.

Brooks:

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it just puts skin in the game for people too, right? Both people have yeah. To have skin in the game and then part of the upside. Those are definitely creative deals that I think it's smart. Site operators to look at, and it's definitely something that I will be looking at for myself in the future as well. I mean, like a hundred percent. What's a tool or some tools that you feel like you couldn't live without? In y'all's operation and what y'all do, is there anything that you're just like, oh my gosh man, like we have to have this,

Jamie:

we struggle with our ahf, but I know that's such a cliche answer, but it's just easy.

Brooks:

Yeah, fair enough. it's a good tool.

Jamie:

Cause it's a great tool, right? Yeah, Low AHF. We use Slack every day. Loom is the key tool because it is just asynchronous communication, like way easier to build SOPs and stuff than like, a document that's written and takes ages and it's boring. There's probably a few others, but I'll say those.

Brooks:

Those, yeah. So Slack is how y'all's team communicates. You use Slack for that? Yeah. Loom or video? Yeah, video in general. D for SOPs is so yeah, whether it's Loom or something else that people use. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Infinitely, better. And it's just easier to change something too, right? Just shoot if like a whole, if a whole process changes and your SAPs on a document, oh my gosh, what a nightmare, right? To go through that and try to change out things that have changed or is different or, whatever. How, do you find the industry? So you're like three years into this and you've grown something really big. My, biggest revenue month is only like 12 grand. I'm about three years as well into being serious. I'm a very nonchalant, easygoing kind of guy. So I'm curious, how do you find the, let's call it the industry or like people we're, like, we're. I guess we're competitors. Like people are competitors, but they're not. Do you find people to be more helpful or do you think it's cutthroat competition out there,

Jamie:

I, would not have been as fortunate financially this year had I not been helped and given advice by so many people on Twitter and stuff like interesting like that. And so coming onto Twitter in June or whenever I made the account has been one of the most valuable things I could have done. and so I haven't, I mean, maybe people are like in the background, like gritting their teeth and try to compete, whatever, but I haven't felt that. I've felt support and everyone's, I think, been happy for me or at least pretended to be and, be the same. Like I would be, I would rather make half a million a month it, and everyone else in the game makes a million a month, then make 20 K a month and everyone else makes. 10k What other people? I don't feel like it's a competition. Everyone can uplift and elevate each other and everyone has like unique experiences to share and learn from and stuff like that. And so I've never understood the competitor's mindset. Like the most competitive and like advantageous thing you can do for yourself is to exchange skills that you say you can all win. It reminds me of England and France and the 1500s Like GDP growth was like North 0.1% a year. So like the only way to get rich was to go invade each other. And so Henry the fifth would go invade France or wherever. It's not the case anymore. There's a like a, everything is growing and there's another wealth now that you like. The benefit is collaborator. You don't like this person. Doing well isn't such a small game that the weather, there's one se that like means that I go down a place, everyone wins by sharing ideas and stuff. And so I've never felt it to be cutthroat or whatever. Maybe people are angry success, but I haven't felt that.

Brooks:

Yeah, no, that's an interesting answer and, I guess there are probably a lot of. Whatever creators, in the shadows that never say anything and that, that are out there trying to take you down or figure out what your content is and I don't know be, disruptive. I, guess that's fine. It is what it is. That's kinda like business in general anyway, right? Everyone's trying to, everyone's trying to grow a business and have a piece of the a piece of the pie, but I think the pie's pretty. I feel like the pie is pretty ginormous. I feel like it's pretty big, man. And, I don't know if that's just my perspective or my point of view on life and how I look at that. I think some people are scared that the pie's not big enough. But I look and I'm like, oh my gosh, man. I'm like, all this new stuff that comes out, all these new words invented and new. Things and tools I like. Like you're not just talking evergreen, right? You're talking like brand new cutting edge news and tools and things. And I mean, obviously depending on what someone's content or their media brand is about I'm just like, man, there's a lot of like forever content that just keeps coming and someone's gotta talk about it, right? Like someone has to create, someone has to create content for it, whether it's a website or a video or, whatever. Yeah, I don't know. That's the angle I take, man. So, no it's, good to hear you have a positive and I feel like, Twitter's kind of a for, me, is probably my favorite, I'm just gonna call it tool or information source. So probably the last 12 months I've had a Twitter account forever. I've never done anything with it, but man, The amount of information that I think is really quality on there personally, I think it's incredible. I think it's a great spot for people to go and hang out and, chat on, like SEO and all this stuff.

Jamie:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I've learned so much from like people publishing the experiments they've done or anything they've picked up. Like I could have to do like from scratch my research on what's changed every time a product review update happens. But then I've got people speculating with evidence-based stuff that like links in our Be A Factor or e-commerce things have gained more traction. So even if I'm still gonna check and see what's up but it informs and saves me time and allows me to form better at views and strategies instantly. Cause I can learn from other people and other people's mistakes rather than having to make them myself. And so it's been super valuable.

Brooks:

100 man, 100. If on a note, if people did wanna like just to connect with you or whatever is Twitter probably the best spot for people to find you? Yeah,

Jamie:

I'm a Jamie_IF on Twitter and I also have a newsletter that you can get to on increasing.com

Brooks:

very cool. Yeah. On in increasing. Gotcha. And you have that linked up from your, I think, your Twitter profile probably anyway. I think so, yeah. Cool. If, you were to rewind back, if you were to rewind, back three years when you were getting serious and getting started, would you do things differently? Would you build differently or do you think you would. Follow the exact same path that you have.

Jamie:

I would've not expanded into so many sites because like with the way it's going now with requiring. a big brand, but there being so much potential spoilers of war, if can be the big brand in the space, any more effort I could have done in getting there, doing more of like the main sites to have the best shot at it, would, I would've done. I think about it like six months ago but I'm just gonna spend a few days writing these buyers guides for this tiny site that has no DR and less chance in ranking whatever. It's if I'd spent that same time on three, articles on the main site, but each could have made$200 a month. It's that's just such a bad choice and I wasn't being selfish enough and prioritizing my time. Right. And so doing more can mean that you actually get less results. And I would, so I would slim down focused more been more focused on one or two or three rather than half a dozen different projects.

Brooks:

Would you have known which projects those were to focus on without having all the projects? Or do you think you had to have all the projects in order to look back and say, man, I should have only focused on those few?

Jamie:

The first site I started is the biggest. The second site I started is the second biggest, and whatever else, it's what it feels like is if I just focused on the main ones, I think

Brooks:

I'd be rich. It now Interesting. That's good advice, man. It's so hard for people to not it's definitely hard for people not to create other brands, for sure. I, also on a personal level, I also see the benefit of diversifying as well. I've seen that in my own just, my own couple of brands. I'm like, oh, wow. When I've had a big change to site one, site two that I have just surpassed the first site I'm like, oh, wow. I wasn't expecting that. And so I feel like I can see people's, if there's an argument, if you will, I could see people's ar arguments on both sides. Hey, focus on one brand and then grow it greatly. Or just, hey, focus on multiple brands, but maybe not half dozen or what, whatever. Unless you have a, unless you have a giant team or something.

Jamie:

Yeah. The little thing's can make a lot of difference over time where it's just the better about US pager, like really nice looking team pager. It's difficult to do six times or like just better internal linking that has you just that bit more solid across the board. Higher editorial standards and stuff like, it just, it really shows and I can see in my projects, like if you saw some of my smaller sites, you think that was trash at SEO and it's fair, but it's just if you divide your attention enough, just the, standards drop and it's just

Brooks:

not a. I agree with you so much. Like when you launch a new site, I feel like it's oh, it's easy. I have a, design and I have keyword research, and I put it through my, content process and that's it. But then I feel like we forget about all those other things that you just we're mentioning like that When you get to like level, I don't know, whatever. Let's just break it into levels. You get to level one then, oh, there's these, Things you'll want to do. And then when you reach this level, oh, there's these other things you'll want to build upon, and all those take time. And so when you multiply that whatever, by half a dozen or a dozen sites, yeah. That becomes a lot of side worth. You're like, man, how am I gonna, how am I gonna get to these, items? All right. Is there something. That when you're on chatting with people I, like, I think I first saw you or, heard you maybe on maybe on niche pursuits. Have you been on that podcast? I have yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think that's where I heard of you, which is so cool. Cause that's how people in the industry they're, they listen to certain podcasts or whatever and then find people, connect with'em or whatever. Is there something that you wish that people would ask you that they don't, that you'd want to talk more about?

Jamie:

That's a good question. I hadn't thought about that. Let me have a think.

Brooks:

Something that kind of burns on you and you're just like, dad, go, I wish we would talk about this more.

Jamie:

People would focus on monetizing their traffic rather than just trying to get their traffic. I see all these fancy search console graphs and then I'll be like how much do you make? And it's like a fraction of what my sites. Three times lower in traffic. Maybe people just is van traffic is a vanity metric and it's like it's only correlative. And I wish the people would not go, oh, I can get a thousand page views from this year because we make nothing. You've wasted your time. It's not a monetizable keyword. Ads are not a high monetizable form. Like even me talking about affiliate marketing are focus, it's good, but it's not like as hot as products and stuff. And so anything you can get, like people are obsessed with getting 3 cents a page view. Go off it like try and make a dollar a page view. People just want to show that they've got half a million page views a month, rather than making half a million a month by doing it's a lot less.

Brooks:

Interesting. Yeah. What do you think that is? Do you think it's I guess to get some stuff going or, get the wheels turning. Maybe they're trying to rank for stuff that's easier to rank for maybe. And so traffic starts there. I'm just spitballing with you thinking out loud. They do that and then I guess you can of keep doing that, but maybe, just not planning. Planning it all out, or not really thinking about the full five years down the road or, whatever. What do you think it is? Like, why do you think people, are doing that? I think

Jamie:

it's a mixture of not appreciating the value of your time enough to know that you should be surgically precise in how you like decide what you are and aren't gonna do. Which by the way, I'm being a massive hypocrite for cause I don't do that nearly enough. But also not planning enough in advance, being like, I'll write that today and this today. It's okay, you might get traffic, but you haven't got a coordinate strategy together. Really thought through what the content will look like, where your best chance of selling. Is and how you'd best optimize that and even thinking about, oh, this lead magnet would really suit this so that you have a 6% conversion rate instead of a no 0.2 which leads you to exponentially bigger results down the line. And so it's just a deep thought and focus and planning could pay off like a hundred times ROI on the average value of someone's time on their site if really thought through like a cohesive strategy to monetize it properly. Yeah. Because if not, you just have ads and this is like, all right, cool. Now I just have to. 500 posts a month and I'll get to a hundred K a month in four years. It's that's impossible. And it's expensive and it'll decay over time, but you'll end up just like struggling to swim against the tide when you get destroyed in the next helpful content update, cuz none of your stuff is relevant anymore.

Brooks:

Oh, all a good point. All good points. For, me, that's been one of the I, feel like that's definitely a pretty high level thinking to be able to look at what you've got going on objectively and make really strategic decisions, kinda like what you're talking about, about like increasing clickthrough rates for a certain article can bring like to, really look at your brands. That way to me is, been really tough. I wonder if it helps to have an outside eye help you look at those things or ha, have you done that? Have you had anyone from the outside help you look at your stuff objectively? Or have you been able to look at what you're doing and make those decision?

Jamie:

Yeah, I've, had, I've taken really valuable consulting, like hour long or two hours. I've had Charles Floate look at one of the sites. I've had Luke Jordan look at one of the sites and it's been super helpful. Not necessarily on a conversion optimization thing, but more like an SEO thing. Like it was a couple. I didn't realize that like when we were doing like best buyers guides, for example, with 10 products, if we'd reviewed one of the project products, I wanted to show the review clearly. So I put a bullet point at the end of that with and then you can check out four review for example. They both picked up on that as bad seo. Cause it's a non contextual internal link that isn't like related to the previous paragraph to then feed off the semantic relevance of that. So it's like you learn from stuff like that. But I didn't know, as for more general stuff, I, one, I'm not that emotionally involved in the sites. I don't love this. Like it's a means to an end. I'm transactional with it. So that allows me to be more like objective of my own stuff and less biased. Cuz I like, I'm emotional about it. I, care about the if projects I'd struggle with that, but I don't really care about these sites in the same way. So I'm able to be more like brutally effective. But also I work with people such as the person who works with me, who is a site operator on a couple of sites and has able seen stuff who's able to then go, no, like you can be doing this more and this more and that ability to be open has allowed us to be more effective and sort of be more like I was blind and now I can see with our like weak.

Brooks:

That's good man. Yeah, that's super important. Alright, I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let the folks that are watching this on YouTube, I'm gonna let them watch this next video if you're listening. Cool. Sorry, you don't get that. And then I'm gonna recap, Jamie, stick around for a second, man. We'll, debrief real quick. I enjoyed hanging out with you

Jamie:

For sure, man. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.