E178: Building and Monetizing Websites: Insights from a Website Flipper, Marc Andre

[00:00:00] Ronald Skelton: Oh, and welcome to the How2Exit podcast. Today I'm here with Mark Andre. Is it Andre? Did I get it right there? Cool.He's with Flip My Site. Uh, we're going to talk to about something that's really cool about buying, fixing up selling websites and doing that as far as, in the business acquisition world.

I appreciate having you here today. Uh, it's something you're doing something currently I've tried in the past and I kind of, I buy and hold these days, but I'm, I'm still intrigued by. So I, I wanted to put you on here. I wanted to pick your brain and then I thought it would be great to share that for other people who want to, there's two different avenues here, right?

There's people who could do this for, for money. Like they can buy websites and flip them for money. Or almost every business you buy probably should have a website. So a lot of stuff we can talk about or be things that you can do to improve something that has a website that goes with it to help make the web and the website more of than just a cost center.

It could be a profit center to the business. Let's start off with telling people who you are, kind of what you've done in the past and, get people on the board with why we're talking to, Marc Andre today. 

[00:01:01] Marc Andre: Sure. So, um, I got started my, with my first website back in 2007.

So at the time I was working full time, as an auditor for a finance company. And I had done, I'd created some small websites for friends and family, like just like old school, static HTML websites. Here and there, and I was looking to make a little bit of extra money. So I thought, you know, I'll set up a little portfolio site for myself and see if I can find some clients outside of my personal network.

And, I knew I wasn't going to get any traffic to a little portfolio website. I wasn't going to rank on Google for web design or anything like that. So I put a blog on the site and started publishing some articles related to web design and tried to get traffic that way. And at the same time, I was really, um studying a lot about social media and SEO, and I was new to everything and, just trying to learn what I could about getting traffic and growing an online business. 

So I had a good bit of success early on with social media. Especially, and,some of the stuff I was trying, I wound up getting a good bit of traffic. It did work with, getting some clients.

I did attract a few clients. I got more leads that, you know, that didn't wind up turning into clients, but, basically, it worked, but what I realized pretty quickly was that I enjoyed growing the site a lot more than I enjoyed in the client work. And so I decided to kind of shift my focus and I just, started to focus on trying to grow the blog.

And, I still took clients here and there as people contacted me, but I wasn't like pushing forward on the site. And I really, I put ads on the site and was monetizing the site with ads. And then later on, I added digital products for graphic designers, web designers stuff like Photoshop templates and that sort of thing. And, later on, then I also moved into affiliate marketing.

so I wound up being able to leave my full time job in 2008. So it was about a year and a half. I worked on the site part time. Um, left my job and focused on that full time. Did that for a few years. I sold the site in 2013. So I'd worked on it about six years at that point. And, I sold it for $500, 000, which for me as, just a person working on the site myself, I did have a few freelance writers here and there and freelance designers.

But it was a fairly, pretty significant amount of money for me. And so that really got me interested in, um, you know, just building online assets and selling. So after that, I've had, you know, sites in several different industries. I've had a few photography blogs. They were monetized with digital products for photographers.

I had a personal finance blog. Want to buying a few web and graphic design blogs and flipping them. My wife and I also did some Amazon FBA stuff for a while. We wound up selling that business after like two years. So all that's, all those, sites that I've mentioned, I've sold at this point.

I had two exits this year, um, personal finance blog and then the graphic design blogs. So it's, I've had about, I think I've had six different six figure exits. I've never had anything like million plus. But, uh, you know, I am just mostly a one person operation. I do hire freelancers, but I never had any employees or anything.

My goal is basically just working on small internet businesses and kind of stringing together a bunch of small wins and trying to get, you know, to where I want to be financially. 

[00:04:18] Ronald Skelton: So do you primarily do a build and sell? Or do you actually buy some of these and in the essence of like flipping houses, do you flip some of these sites?

[00:04:26] Marc Andre: Yeah, most of my experience is with building from scratch. But I have bought three sites. Um, one of them I still own is a small site and two I've sold. And of those ones that I've bought, they've all been within the last three or so years. So I did start, you know, kind of moving towards that.

I'm interested in buying something, if the right situation comes up, but I'm not like, you know, like some investors that buy everything. Like I also want to starting my own sites too.

[00:04:56] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. The concern I have, I'm in the same space you are. I actually own a little media holding company, that holds this podcast, a couple of newsletters and blogs.

And then, uh, we're acquiring newsletter blogs and usually accommodations. So a blog or a something that started to already has a subscriber base where they own the email addresses and they've got a weekly, quarterly or monthly or daily, contact with those guys through some type of email subscription.

I'm more interested in that just because I'm, the reason I hold brought the whole subject up, I'm a little concerned with all the Google updates and your traffic going up and down. When you buy one of these websites, you're typically, I think the going rate currently is about 30 X. So for those guys that are listening, most of our guys listening, they're in the world of buying small and medium companies.

And I say 30 X and they panic, because they're talking about 30 or three X you would, when we say 30 X it's trailing 12 months revenue. So most of these websites are or sold, bought and sold based off of their revenue over the average revenue over the last 12 months. Like I know right now that I can think of at least 3 people.

I know they're just really having a hard time with one of them in the last month or so, maybe 60 days now. It's one of the last Google updates. One of the guys lost 80 percent of his income. So his website got a hit. Hadn't been hit in years bragged all the time about he's never been hit by it. He's got good content lots of links. And he has a site that does a lot of how to articles. Everything's how to this, how to that. Google kind of went after those guys this last round and how to articles took a hit and now he's you know, his income down, I think he said in the worst week, it was 80, 80 percent that week.

I don't know what it is currently, cause he's, when those hits you, you start scrambling to get traffic from other locations and do other stuff. I don't know where he sits at the moment. What is your concern, do you not buy these because of that? Cause you're paying 30 X, you're paying 30 months worth of, you know, income.

And then on the next day, Google makes an algorithm change. What was 30 months income becomes 300 because, right? 

[00:07:02] Marc Andre: Yeah. I mean, that is definitely a concern for me. as far as, as buying goes and I, I do tend to be very conservative. And that's one of the reasons why I tend to build more than buy. So that, that is definitely a concern.

I think the Google updates, Google updates have always been around. But it seems like within the last two years, they've gotten more frequent and more significant. And there were definitely were some big ones. My first blog, um, got hit about a year before I sold it. I lost about 30 percent of the traffic.

And I was fortunate, um, and this kind of brings me to the next point is, I think one of the things around that is a lot of the, a lot of content based sites are monetized strictly with ads or affiliate programs. And with those revenue sources, your revenue is going to take a proportionate hit.

Probably if, you know, if you lose that traffic. I was fortunate with my site I had just started, selling some digital products. And so my, even though I lost 30 percent of the traffic, my revenue actually didn't take a hit, because I had an established email list. I had,a little bit more brand recognition at the time. And with selling digital products, I had more options, like if I needed to make money, I could run a sale.

I could, um, sell my products. I sold products at third party sites like deal sites and marketplaces and stuff. And so when you have those other revenue streams, there are ways to, to make up for a loss in traffic. But I think traditionally, like, especially over the last several years, most content based sites have been monetized with just ads and affiliate revenue, or one or the other.

And so I think, one of the best things that you can do to protect yourself is have those other types of revenue streams. And certainly like you mentioned, the newsletter is huge. Because you know, if you lose traffic, you can always reach your, your most loyal subscribers through the email list.

[00:08:51] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. That's what, when I look, I want to, like somebody asked me yesterday what my buying criteria is on websites. Cause I told him I, he asked me what I bought and I said, well, websites, newsletters. And I made it really general. And, uh, he said, well, what's the criteria, or is there anything that's a red flag inside a website?

I said, yeah. I personally think that any more than a third of their traffic coming through Google or organic searches is a red flag for me. So I want to see 33 percent of the traffic or less be based on Google search. And that protects, it's one of the things that protects, as you can see that they have a lot of traffic from backlinks, maybe traffic from newsletters and social media activity that they do.

But if you can see that it's not the primary source of traffic, then if Google went totally away, the biggest hit you can have is 33%, right? And, uh, not only, and that's hard to say, because most people don't pay enough attention to that. And they, you find very few websites that will be like that.

It'll be 33 percent or less traffic from there, but you can find some that that's, 40 or something you look at, okay, with the more social and they're not very active on social or whatever. So you can look at the formula. I can get this there pretty quick, right. What I'm concerned constantly about is where, sites that are 70, 80, 90 percent of the traffic's organic search. You know, they've got 300 or 200 links, you know, uh, backlinks.

They didn't take a look at that. They don't have an email list, right? And they're monetized only on ads. I just don't touch those. You can make a lot of money monetized on ads with a lot of traffic, but then you're at the whim of where the traffic comes up and down or goes or. 

I like what you're doing with the product because you need to increase, revenue. If you got a good product, you could start buying ads. Maybe you never bought ads before, but you can go, you can go, okay, cost customer acquisition cost is a dollar. I make the lifetime value of a customer.

They're going to buy two or three products from me because I do templates and they're going to come back for more. So my lifetime value of it, three, four times that, you know, you can buy customers all day long when you know both of those numbers. Which your customer acquisition cost is and what the lifetime value customer is.

[00:10:58] Marc Andre: Yeah. I think another thing too, with the search traffic is a lot of sites, like pretty much every site, if you have it long enough is going to get hurt, get hit by this Google search algorithm update. And right now with those updates just happening recently, we're looking at like the low point, right?

Like a lot of sites are going to recover eventually. I've had sites that, that lost traffic and then a year later and another update either, maybe not totally reversed it, but, um, traffic will come back in a lot of cases. Certainly not all, but, it's easy to look at things at the low point and see,the worst of it.

But chances are, you know, that some of that will probably come back at some point. 

[00:11:41] Ronald Skelton: So a lot of people, I asked somebody the other day, cause, he asked me, he's an investor with me. He's a private lender for real estate transactions. And he asked me why that is a sticking criteria for me. And I said, well, Google algorithm changes, you know, probably two or three times a month.

He's like, no, that's numbers too high. That's way, that's way too high. So I Googled it. I looked it up and seeing like, well, how many times has Google changed our algorithm? And I'm looking at it right now on my other monitors. In 2021, they made over 5, 000 changes. They average five to 600 changes per month to their algorithm.

Some of them are just minor, like,they don't hit us, but if you're doing that many changes on a regular basis, it's going to hit you. So it's not like,If it'll ever hit you, it's when. It's going to, you're going to, you're going to have to deal with it. It's something, it's a constant. So that's one reason I want to keep the, uh, organic,Google search traffic or any even being ready.

Like I want to keep search traffic at a general. I want it to be pretty even across the board with other traffic I'm getting. Right. Or at least know a roadmap that I can get it there. That said, I've never heard of anybody saying, Hey, that Google router, my traffic doubled since that Google algorithm. I don't know how they managed to, hurt a bunch of people, but I've never seen anybody boasting that their traffic doubled overnight because Google changed their algorithm.

[00:12:56] Marc Andre: Yeah, it's weird how that works. It feels like they're just constantly taking away traffic when you know, somebody's getting it, but 

[00:13:01] Ronald Skelton: It's got to go somewhere, right? Well, it's going to the big guys. From what I'm understanding, it's going to the, you know, the CNNs and the, the Fox news is in the big, big, big, you know, tier one sites of the world.

[00:13:13] Marc Andre: And Reddit just got a big bump, from the, I think it was a helpful content update two months ago or whatever it was. 

[00:13:19] Ronald Skelton: The same one that talk all the how to's and the informational stuff. Which is a lot of stuff on Reddit, right? First hand experience articles.

A lot of those, you know, a lot of people have that stuff on their websites took a hit and then all of a sudden Reddit, Reddit gets the traffic. It's like, you know. 

[00:13:35] Marc Andre: Yeah. I mean, before people were looking at, at keywords and if you would see a Reddit thread or a page on Quora or, you know, one of these other forums ranking on the first page, that's, that has traditionally been a sign that it's a relatively low competition keyword and that a vlog should be able to rank for it, and now it's kind of reversed.

You see those and you can't assume anymore that you're going to be able to outrank them. 

[00:13:57] Ronald Skelton: So what do you look for in either the, I'm going to build this or I'm going to buy it. What is your criteria to build or buy? 

[00:14:07] Marc Andre: For me, it starts with something that I know. I don't necessarily have to be like, an extreme expert on it, but it's something that I need to at least, you know, be familiar with and have an interest in learning more.

If I'm going to, to run the website. Like say, for example, I'm hiring freelance writers to create content. I don't necessarily need to be, the most knowledgeable person. But if I want to edit and evaluate that writer's content, I have to at least know somewhat what I'm talking about, because otherwise you wind up publishing stuff that just doesn't, you know, doesn't resonate with the target audience.

So for me, it's gotta be something that I'm interested in and that I'm somewhat familiar with. I don't just, go on Flippa and look for random websites on, whatever topic and, and buy them, starts with the topic. And it's gotta be something that, that I want to work on. I typically hold on to sites for a few years.

Most of the sites that I've built, I've had for four or five years. I'm not, some people take the approach of buying a site and looking to improve it quickly and turn around and flip it and sell it in like 6 months to a year. That's not the approach I have. So it's got to be something that I want to work on for a few years and something that I see myself spending a good bit of time on.

And since I do a lot of the work myself, I don't outsource everything like some people do. It does have to be something that I want to spend my day working on. But yeah, I I'd say that it really comes down to the topic is the most important thing for me. 

[00:15:34] Ronald Skelton: What is it usually, what's the cycle, the life cycle of a website?

So you buy a domain and you like, let's talk about build first and we'll talk about buy. You buy a domain and then, walk me through buying the domain all the way up to where it's making money. Like what's the life cycle look like? 

[00:15:52] Marc Andre: So like you said, the first thing is domain. So that, that's something that I personally struggle with is finding a domain that I like.

It's available that, I use a tool called lean domain search. Usually, um, you put in a keyword and it will show you all kinds of, basically adds words to the beginning or the end, and it helps you to find a domain. So thenset up hosting. I always use WordPress. So installing WordPress.

Most of my sites are content based. So even the ones like, say, for example, the photography sites where I sold digital products, I still, published a lot of blog posts and stuff, and that, that was one of the ways I got traffic to the site. So I always, you know, start with, with some content. 

I've had sites in the past that were monetized just with ads at first, and others with, with the products. So it really depends on the approach. Like if it's product based, like the photography sites, I created products immediately and had them to sell before I had any traffic. Which I know some people would say, you know, start with the content and then add products later.

I started with the products in those cases, cases and I wound up, selling them initially on other platforms. So I would find like third party sites that I partnered with and sold the products on their site. So I started to get some revenue right away and then,worked on building up my own audience at the same time.

So in that case, like with the photography sites, I started making money almost immediately. There really was no, no weight, but, um, for example, uh, my finance blog that I started in 2018 and sold, in 2023, I, it took a while to, to start making money. I, it was just content based. I was making, monetizing the site with affiliate programs and ads. I initially planned to do some digital products, but never really had anything that I wanted to do that I thought, I could, could do really well, um, that hadn't already been done. So I wound up just sticking with affiliates, affiliate programs and ads.

So that one really didn't make much of anything for the first year. It's just, constant cranking out content, trying to get some links, trying to get traffic, um, from, in that case, it was Google, Pinterest, email list, click through traffic from links. So, um, it really has been a slightly different approach with, with different sites, depending on how they're monetized.

[00:18:06] Ronald Skelton: So we put out right now, we put out about three to five articles a week. Not including some stuff we write for other, newsletters that I have an ownership interest in. So, uh, we do another three or five for those. Uh, usually it's reviews of podcasts and stuff like that, where we listen to it, download the transcript and then turn it into a written article and a review. So that people can, read something in 10 minutes.

They don't need necessarily need to watch for an hour and a half. That said, how do you get the initial 1st traffic to those or links to it? Like when you 1st put a, you just waiting for Google to show up and find it. Or is there a way that you use to, like right now we're, what we're doing is we're putting them out on Medium and some of the other locations.

We're not just putting our articles on our blog. We're giving it to locations where people already go look for articles. What are the methods you use to get some initial traffic to your site when you fire it up? 

[00:18:58] Marc Andre: Yeah. So, um, Social media can be a good option. I found Pinterest to be a decent option.

It's not as good as it used to be. Like when I was running the photography blogs from 2012, 13 to 2016, even a little bit later than that, it was really good for, for traffic. But they've, change the algorithm, and obviously more people are using it now than, than used to be. So there's a lot more competition for exposure, but Pinterest is still pretty good as far as social networks go.

Cause a lot of, a lot of social networks don't really want to, they want to keep the traffic on their platform. They don't want to send clicks away. Pinterest is one that, that is, you know, is okay for using links. You don't get buried in the algorithm or anything. If you have links. I've always done a good bit of guest posting on other sites.

I think that's a good way to, to start to, to get something flowing. It doesn't, I guess, guest posts, you can't really count on getting floods of traffic from it. Like you're not going to put your link on some article on, whatever website and get thousands of people clicking on it. But it will get some clicks if you're doing it on,on, on highly relevant, like sites that are targeting the same audience can be good.

It's also really good for starting to get some links which will help the Google traffic, pick up. And it's also good for, it's, it's really good for networking and connecting with other people in your niche. One of the things I did early on with my finance blog that worked pretty well was, one of the first posts I, um, I linked out to a bunch of resources.

So in this case, the article was about, making money selling on Amazon. Which is something I had just done a year, two years earlier. And so I had an article that had a bunch of different resources for Amazon sellers and people who wanted to start a business. And then,when the article was published, I reached out to the people who I linked to, some of them were big companies.

I didn't reach out to them, but the ones that I thought I could get an email in the hands of somebody who had, you know, any kind of influence. I would email them and say, thanks for whatever resource. You offer, and you know, I mentioned it in this post and, a lot of those people wound up sharing it on Twitter or other social platforms, which helped me get some traffic to this site.

One guy wanted to putting it in his email newsletter. And I think I got like 300, 500, something like that clicks, from his email list. I also did some,like similar, similar type of thing where you're, you're notifying people that you're linking to or featuring in your content. I created a list of top finance blogs and then reached out to all those people and told them, that they were on the list.

Most of them shared it on social media and stuff so that, you know, those types of things where you're kind of like leveraging somebody else's audience, can work. You can also kind of do the same thing with interviews at times, like interview somebody who's got an audience. Publish it on your site and they will usually share it with their audience.

So all these things like they don't individually have a huge impact, but when you start to add them all up together, they start to help you build your own audience. 

[00:22:00] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. We've noticed that works on a lot of the things. So, uh, top 10 posts really do well on a lot of the social media. Like, uh, even if it's just, I've interviewed a ton of authors.

I didn't even realize how many authors I'd interviewed until, uh, we were doing a thing where we're doing a flashback Tuesdays where we feature, re reintroducing an old show to the current audience we have. Like, cause our show has grown quite a bit over the last couple of years. So every Tuesday we'll feature a show we did early on or whatever.

So I started with the author. I was like, I'll start with the authors, right. Cause people might have a connection with those. And, so I started looking at it and like, I dug up like 42 books that, 42 authors out of 170, 180 interviews, 42 of them have written books on that are on Amazon. Some of those books are awesome and some of them are good, but you know, then I thought here's the top 10 books that anybody listening to my show probably should read to move their game forward. So we did that one and it's got, five, six thousand impressions just on LinkedIn in the first week.

It's been shared 30 something times. It's like it took off. And I know some of the others only know two or three authors on that particular list, because there's a lot of the books are outside of buying, selling companies. It's like,financial intelligence or, uh, negotiations and that type of stuff.

The other thing you said on there that caught my attention is, the social media sites being okay with links that changes constantly. Like link six months ago, LinkedIn was fine. If you had a link in your thing, you get just as many impressions. Now it's dropped off where, uh, you have to, if you put it up in the in the, um, like when you do the initial post, you put a link in it, you don't get as many impressions.

And then for a while there, we're doing pretty good about posting it and making it the first comment. Like the links in the first comment that was okay and then now that doesn't work. So now the current algorithm or the current way to get around it is, follow me, like me, and we'll send you the link later. 

About an hour later, after you get a good flow, and that's kind of an hour, hour and a half, kind of, a lot of these social media sites, after about the first hour and a half, they've already did their algorithm to determine how much they're going to put it in front of people. So we go back and put a link, you know, link in there later, but it constantly changes.

TikTok used to be great about, it could be in the first comment. Now if they find a link anywhere, they're dead, they dead list your, your thing. You just don't quit showing up on anybody's feed. I think that's a, it's, it's to the point now where I actually have a job description out there for a head of social media or a head of what I call a, head of growth is what we called it.

But basically the social media manager, it takes somebody who wants to eat, live, sleep, that know what you, which each site, what algorithm works and what doesn't work on there. And then how to, how to utilize and perfect the, sharing of content on each one of those. 

[00:24:48] Marc Andre: Yeah. It's different, different, depending on whether you're really trying to build your audience or trying to get traffic from social media.

Like you can, like you said, publish stuff on LinkedIn, without a link and get a lot of exposure and helps you to make connections and all, but, it's a little bit of a different approach with trying to drive traffic to your site. 

[00:25:05] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. We want a combination, right? We want those connections because we want to build rapport and trust with those people over time.

And, I've only got about 11, 500 followers on there. So I want more followers. I want people looking for my content. So I want good content there constantly, but I do want them to go listen to the podcast. I want them to go, go read a blog post, right? We're not monetized on LinkedIn as much, you know, I don't have a product that we sell directly on the site.

So we, we get our money by them visiting the shows and driving our numbers up so sponsors want to pay more, right? It's got to the point where now I've got enough followers on Twitter and LinkedIn and stuff. Twice a week for my top two sponsors I actually post a recommendation to my social media. 

So what's the, what are some of the aspects if somebody buys a company, it has an existing website and stuff, what are some of the aspects they can do to monetize and utilize a, I think most businesses miss out on this. I think there's a huge opportunity to take and monetize a website and make it be, not only just a cost center for something you probably should own and maintain to make it be a profit center. And i'm not talking about just you know, make the phone ring a little bit and get a few more customers. What are things people can do inside of a you know, inside of their site that will actually help them produce more traffic and produce, turn it into a profit center for the company?

[00:26:27] Marc Andre: So if you're talking about,something that's a business first, not just an online business, um, ad revenue is probably not going to be the option because,most businesses are not looking to have ads on their site and send people away from their site. I've always been, uh, big believer of digital products.

They work really well in a lot of niches, a lot of industries. And probably in more than, than you would think sometimes, you, you hear, a topic or something and you might think like, well, I don't know how I would possibly put a digital product into that. But there's usually options, especially with things like courses and workshops, printables are really big in, in some industries. 

Spreadsheet on, what you're doing, so there's a lot of options there, for digital products. But I think 1 of the biggest things that I would say is probably using the website to build an email list because a lot of more traditional businesses, probable haven't emphasized in email list when they have one

So I think that would probably be one of the places I would, would suggest starting with would be using your website to email us and try to grow your audience that way, because you can continue to connect with those people and communicate with them, get offers in front of them, whether it's for, your own services, for products you're selling, digital products, affiliate sponsorships, whatever.

[00:27:50] Ronald Skelton: You know, I just realized there's one, we don't do currently at all. And I probably should maybe, usually between Thanksgiving and, and the new year, I don't actually record these shows. Right now, uh, the show that you and I recorded and probably come out any time between now we've, I have enough shows recording that if I stopped today, there would be, we wouldn't miss an episode.

We released twice a week. We wouldn't miss an episode until January 12th. We've got content backed up. And the reason is, is it's really hard to get people on these shows, between Thanksgiving and New Year's. People are traveling and all that. That said, I use that time to plan out things.

One of the things I think I'm missing is I have a little pest control company in Oklahoma that I'm partners in, I own a piece of. And right now it's, it's just really small, but I think a lot of these businesses, we get so many calls by people who have a problem, but they don't have money to fix it.

Or they have a problem and they don't realize how expensive is certain, certain treatments are and the chemicals we use and stuff. So we can't do things much cheaper. We have the chemical expenses, got fuel expenses and trucks and spray equipment, all that.

We have to charge. I honestly think, uh, do you, and some of these, some of these cases, people could do themselves, right? Some things work. That said, I think we should actually have a bunch of do your, do it yourself type of articles and stuff on our site. Like when that way, when people call and they answer the phone, like, yeah, I'll have to call around, I don't think I can afford that.

Well, you can always do yourself check our website. we have a couple of ways that you can actually, you know. deal with some of this on your own. It's mice, how to trap right for mice. If it's cockroaches, safe things, you can do things you probably shouldn't be using chemicals that'll, just make it worse.

but there are some decent things you can do that are tried and true, that work over time. Yeah. 

[00:29:37] Marc Andre: You could also do like short video, tutorials. So when you were talking about. About that situation. It kind of reminded me of, back, let's see, it was about 10 years ago. my wife and I were, finishing our basement and I did a decent bit of the work myself.

I planned to do it all myself, but wound up running out of time. And, we had a baby on the way and I was trying to get done. So I wound up hiring somebody to do a lot, but I didn't know at all what I was doing, with some of the things. And one of those aspects was running, The ductwork for the heating and air.

And so I was, I Googled, how to connect into your existing ductwork and wound up on a website. of it was a contractor, a company that actually does this service and. And they sold for, I think it was like between 50 and a hundred dollars. They had a, like a video course and it was nothing like high tech, it was just a guy with a video camera taping one of his coworkers showing exactly, here's what you do.

they were in a couple of different houses. and it was exactly what I needed. It was perfect. and I gladly paid the money because like you said, I didn't want to spend the Thousands of dollars to hire somebody else to do it, but I was happy to pay 50 to a hundred dollars to, to get a video that taught me how to do it myself.

So I think those sorts of things, there are probably a lot of businesses, especially service related businesses like plumbers and electricians. Well, electrician, I don't know. You really want people who don't know what you're doing, touching electrical wires, but 

[00:31:03] Ronald Skelton: well, the liability of that one, right?

Like I get electrocuted and they were like, I watched your video and then I got shocked. Yeah, that's probably not a bad guy. Same way with the chemical thing. I don't think I would promote chemicals so much, but there's some really good, they're not fast. So there's a trick, right? When a pest control company comes in, we can get something done in one or two trips, right?

there are good alternatives that are natural that are not fast, but they are effective. a lot of the pest control companies will never tell you it's diatondaceous earth is a very effective for most bugs. the problem is you got to keep it dry. And it takes weeks basically that all those, all the critters you're trying to kill off are dying through dehydration.

Basically it gets in their exoskeleton. It keeps the, the moisture, they can't hold moisture anymore. So they basically die of dehydration, but if you've got cockroaches or even like maybe bed bugs and stuff like that, and you can tell where they're coming from and where they're storing and you can keep it dry.

Cause once it's wet, it doesn't work anymore. You lightly dust those areas and you can wait. weeks before the problem is under control, then it will, thin the herd. it's more, I've seen some studies that show on certain things like bed bugs and cockroaches where it's almost more effective than a single treatment.

a lot of times we have to go out two or three times to do things, right? But, and it's fairly safe. You could take diatomaceous earth, put on your finger and lick it. It's basically just silica. It's not going to hurt you. people eat it for something. I don't know why you would ever do that. It's basically microscopic pieces of glass.

but it's not harmful in small quantities. there's just things out there we probably could write articles on and say, look, you either want something done fast and it's going to be expensive, it's going to be costly or you want it, and you want it done, Or if you got a little time and you don't have very much money, you can get this stuff on Amazon, put it around and it'll take care of the problem. 

[00:32:46] Marc Andre: And in that case, you could use Amazon affiliate links and enter a commission from those referrals as well. 

[00:32:52] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. and then I think that there's probably.

The do your, do it yourself mode. one of the cool things about do it yourself mode on a lot of these blogs and stuff, even for you, like you're selling photography stuff. It's look, here's how you build this filter yourself, or here's how you do this manually in Photoshop. Or you can download this thing for, a dollar 99, 5 99 or 29 99, and it'll do it for you.

What you'll find is if you give somebody the step by step instructions and they look at that and go. Man, it's going to take six weeks to get rid of cockroaches by putting diet to nation's earth. They're going to be crawling on my food for six weeks. Yeah, I'll go ahead and pay this guy the 200 to send his crew out here.

it'll be 200 this week and three weeks later, there'll be 250 or something for them to come back and do the follow up. It's worth 350 bucks to have this problem gone, right? Where, some people go, I don't have it. I'll buy that 20 or 15 thing from Amazon and I'll wait the, six, eight weeks to, and keep wiping that down and putting dry, dry stuff out, they'll do the other route.

[00:33:49] Marc Andre: yeah. And those types of, you can use the same concepts for a lot of different types of businesses,showing people how to do things and offering an alternative if they don't want to do it.

[00:33:58] Ronald Skelton: It's like your construction guys, I guarantee there are people that look at that, they bought that 150 video and they looked at that and they're like, I'm not doing all that and then they call them back up and go, Hey, I did a bunch of video and I want you to come do it because I'm going to mess this up, right?

that's, that works, right? So there's that avenue for anybody that has a website that they could do. What's the What's some things you won't touch? are there areas where you're just like, you're not interested in either building, buying or being particularly participating in the, in the website space?

[00:34:29] Marc Andre: I mean, anything that typically that ad networks don't deal with,that web hosts don't deal with anything like illegal pornographic, anything like, like that, I'm not going to touch. definitely nothing that I, I don't want to be associated with. but you know, like I said before, like my criteria is pretty tight since I'm looking for something that I'm personally interested in.

so I don't want to do anything with, physical products and shipping products. I did Amazon for a while. She learned your lesson and of course was that was, that was different because, we were just getting the products from China and then they went straight to Amazon's warehouse.

We weren't fulfilling orders. but I don't have any desire to deal with that again. at least not anytime soon. 

[00:35:16] Ronald Skelton: I met a guy who does really likes to travel. He travels the world. He goes all over the place. And what he does is what he, the way he pays for his travel is he finds products and go, you know what?

they don't sell this in the us. This would do really well there. And he used to build like Amazon stores and all that and get license agreement. It was just a nightmare for him. And now what he does is he knows people here that are always looking for new products. He takes a piece of it and he, He negotiates the license agreement, but he holds a couple of points for himself and then he hooks them up and, they sell here in the United States. So there is, I'm not a person I always, I jokingly call them, SIB businesses and I'll be nice on the show here and call it stuff in a box.

So I don't play in the stuff in a box businesses either. And the main reason is because I live a digital nomad type of life. I have a tiny home. This is a mobile studio. And I don't want the ship back. So even if you're drop shipping, they get a lot of people know this, most drop shipping situations where, and they ship it back, they ship it back to something you own, right?

I don't have anywhere to warehouse, stuff in a box. so what was that? It's just not fun to deal with. And you don't know half the time when you're starting off with these guys, how many returns you're going to get. It looks great. everybody can take a great photo of anything.

I don't know how many restaurants I went to. Cause I looked online and man, that food looks great. And you go sit down and it tastes horrible. anybody can make a great photo. not anybody, a good photographer can make, a great photo out of something. It's not a great product.

Just because something looks good online doesn't mean it's actually high quality. So a lot of the drop ship stuff that, you would do that drop ship Amazon store stuff with, you're going to get a high return rate on. 

[00:36:52] Marc Andre: Yeah. I was surprised when we sold on Amazon, how many returns we got and we compared to the competitors and stuff.

I don't think ours were too bad, but I just didn't, I didn't. I don't personally return a lot of stuff from that I order on Amazon. I just didn't really think about it, but we did get a lot and they did get returned to the Amazon warehouse, but we would get notified every time. and then eventually you would have, we would have them shipped from Amazon back to us.

And of course, the packages are all destroyed and everything. So we'd have to try to see okay, which ones can we repackage and sell as new and which ones are, beyond use. so that, that was surprising. And one of the things that, so our category in Amazon, had free returns. So of course, Amazon's basically, Encouraging people just to buy stuff and try it and then return it if they don't like it.

So we would have reviews that people were. Complimenting the product and saying, I bought, five different products to the same one and I wound up keeping yours. And I'm thinking, that's glad you chose it. But I know there's other people out there who are doing the same thing and buying five and returning ours.

And so it's, it cuts into your profit margins for sure. I was, 

[00:37:57] Ronald Skelton: listen, yeah, I was listening to, I think it was a, my first million podcast. the guy on there was a multimillionaire, like he's a founder of a company and he got kicked off or he got, he got not kicked off, but he got his. Returns limited on Amazon, some other stuff.

Cause you realize that he had a, they had a 12 month return policy. So he'd buy his whole wardrobe on there. And every 12 months you would just ship it back to them. So if everything back, you keep, package it all up, shipped it back and then you would get new clothes every and it was basically abusing the policy, but I know there are people doing that, And,in probably my youth, I probably was guilty of a Walmart. You should take everything back. I,I probably was at least guilty once of, something would break and you go to Walmart and see if they have the exact same thing. Still, you buy that one and then you change in the broken one, right?

It's horrible to do, but you know, you don't, a lot of people, all of that we did, I remember doing it with a car radio. We bought a car radio. We had it probably, yeah. Yeah. 12 months or something. They just quit working. So I went back there. They still had that one. I bought a new one, installed that one, took the old one in the box, took it back and said, it doesn't work.

Cause it was past their return date. not fair. but that happens. That's why a lot of these stores, I don't buy anything from Best Buy out of principle because they have a 15 percent restock. really? Yeah. They have a restocking fee. It was high. And, with consumer electronics, sometimes they just, they do just break in the first, a few months.

Like, why should I pay you to take this back? It was defective to start with. I had, I got a really good brand. I won't say it here, but I got a really good brand router once and. From the start, it seems slow. within about a month, he just quit working. I take it back to them and they're like, Oh yeah, it's a 15 percent restocking fee on a 200 product.

And I'm like, yeah, why would I do that? Like you sold me something defective. but that's spawned from the stuff that you and I are talking about, people buy five things and, Keep the best of them and return the others. My problem is I'm lazy on the returns. I couldn't ever do that. I couldn't buy five things and return them all.

Cause they would just sit somewhere. And I was like, my wife would, I was like, Hey, where did they go? She go, I dropped it off at Goodwill. You weren't using it. Cause that, we live in a tiny home. We have a tiny stuff. it would not stay here. oh, I have, my, I didn't wait for Chris.

Here's a good example for Christmas bought my, son and Oculus. And, Wasn't sure which headset to get, headset to get him. So I got the one with the big, heavy battery on it. I thought, well, maybe that's gonna make it too heavy. So I got a regular, more comfortable head, the headband on it.

well, without the battery on it, he's never even taken the one without the battery out of the box. So now it's sitting in there and she's I'm going to sell this on Amazon and she can't get, well, even half of what it's. Cost, cause nobody wants that one without the battery. So you can always sell it on eBay or whatever it's been a self for pennies on the dollar.

So I wouldn't do that. And we waited too long to turn it, take it back, probably to ship it back to them. anyway, let's go back to the whole concept of how do you identify a, I mean, you choose a niche that you're interested in. Some people, if they did that, they would pick a niche that was really hard to.

to monetize and grow, right? You happen to be in a couple of different niches, personal finances, cause you've got your, if you're a finance background, And then, photography, there's a passionate, audience behind the photography niche that, that will buy stuff. Not all of those are passionate, profitable areas.

[00:41:11] Marc Andre: Yeah, I mean, photography is definitely an example, like, um, of where people are very willing to spend money. Like you said, not all of them are, you could have some other, um, you know, really random hobby that just doesn't monetize well. So, I mean, I don't do as much research on, on before I start, but partly that maybe it's because I tend to be a little bit more aware of them already because I'm not just choosing a random one.

But, yeah, I mean, it does help to, you can look at other sites. I think 1 of the best things to do is look at other sites. Popular sites targeting the same topics and look at how they're making money. Are they selling products? Are they, um, offering services? Are they, um, do they have some sort of community, like a membership type of thing?

And see what they're doing. Are they promoting affiliate pro, products pretty aggressively? And that will tend to give you an idea of like, you know, the best ways to monetize a site on that topic. And whether it's possible or not. If all you see is ads and there's not much else, that's something that I personally would not go after because, at that point, you're just in a traffic game. 

And like we talked about earlier, you could spend a lot of time building up your search traffic and getting a ton of traffic and then it could go away and you lose a lot of your income. So I tend, if, if I see something that really can only be monetized with ads, I tend to stay away from those.

[00:42:39] Ronald Skelton: I get that. So ads and even affiliate products means traffic that comes in has to go out. Right? So if you're counting on getting eyeballs on something you're created, you spent the time and energy to write the blog post, to create the graphic, to make the product. And your re, your revenue is dependent upon the eyeballs coming in, going back out. Then, it's kind of a self defeating machine a little bit, which you, you know, I think that's a great idea.

I love that you productize and put products on there because then you've got somebody who comes there. You're a destination and not just a route to what they're looking for, right? To where if you're writing blog posts and you're sending people to buy products and other stuff, you're pretty much just a, you're the map. 

You're the route for which the, what, you know, the end results are looking for. Most people aren't looking to, okay, I'm going to go read an article. They're trying to solve a problem. And sometimes your, your article might solve the problem, but, at least here in the United States, we're really geared towards, uh, you know, I've got a problem.

What can I buy? Almost, before we do anything else. 

[00:43:45] Marc Andre: And if you have products, especially digital products are really good for affiliate programs. So instead of,we were talking about if, if you're making money on your site through affiliate programs, you are sending traffic to someone else.

If you have a product, you can be that someone else and, set up your affiliate program, get other, other sites to, to promote your products and, and get traffic from them. And I did, I did that with my photography stuff. I didn't have a, a huge affiliate program, but I kind of recruited some, blog owners. And, um, you know, people who already had traffic, to the pages on the topic that I wanted to, to convert into sales of my products and it worked pretty well. 

Um, I definitely got a decent bit of, of traffic and affiliates made some money and I made some money. So that is another reason to have products and it also helps with traffic generation, like we were talking before, but what do you do if you're starting from scratch?

Having products and affiliate programs is another option to, to try to start to get some traffic. 

[00:44:44] Ronald Skelton: See, I knew having this conversation would spur some brilliant ideas. You know what a loss leader is? Inside of a retail store and stuff? I never even thought about this, but before our newsletter business, what, what would stop us from creating, not necessarily a loss leader as much as,a high value, high 75, 80 percent even, uh, affiliate program where like, look, we'll give you 80 percent of the first sale, on a product that is geared towards, somebody happens to sign up to our newsletter. Or site and at least go to our website, see our newsletter and stuff like that.

But they get, they get the revenue because then we get the permanent eyeballs. So for, for a digital educational product, you could do a good how to make it, worth a hundred dollars and give the 75 to anybody that does the sale, right? 

[00:45:30] Marc Andre: Yeah, and another thing that works good for that, that approach or for that purpose is selling low cost digital products because people are pretty quick to buy like a $7, $17 you know, $30 product. 

More so than buying like a, $300 producT. You know, when people buy those products, then, if they get added to your email list, you can continue to market to them and upsell them eventually on, on other products. I did that with my photography stuff. A lot of the products were lower price. And it's not that hard, especially, you know, in a passion niche to, to sell a $7 product.

And it works pretty well. Another option is, partnering with, with somebody else who has an email list. I did that a few times with my photography products. I would partner with somebody who had a similar audience, but didn't, we didn't sell the exact same type of product.

Products that they weren't directly competing and I would promote their products to my email list and they would promote my product to their email list. And what I found from doing that was promoting, the smaller, like, lower price products through somebody that had a pretty big, pretty active email list, I could make a lot of sales of a small product.

I didn't make a ton of money. They made some money as an affiliate. But then, um, what I found was as I released new products, like I released products, like maybe two months later, and I was seeing, a lot of these same people that were referred, we're now buying these other products.

And so, yeah, one. Once you get the, the people who tend to buy on your email list,it's a lot easier to make money. And so, you know, getting those products and offering an affiliate program is great for that. 

[00:47:13] Ronald Skelton: So that's a great idea. And, uh, stores use it all the time. They run sales ads and stuff like that.

And they're, they call them loss leaders, but a lot of times it's either breaking even or a slight loss just to get you to the front door. And then they put that item at the back of the store. We have to walk past all the cool stuff, right? You can do the same thing with a great affiliate program.

It's like the upsells, right? You can put the initial product there and then have, off offer an affiliate program on, you know, this educational piece or this filter or this tool, this digital product. And then, wait 7 to 10 days and turn around. It happens all the time in the real estate space when I used to own the RIA, but you wait 7 to 10 days to say, Hey, cool.

You got that. How you liking it? Oh, by the way, now that you have that, you probably need X, Y, and Z. Here, here's some other stuff we have that would help with that. 

[00:47:59] Marc Andre: And there's also, shopping carts and checkout platforms that are made to optimize conversions. Like one example is thrive cart. I use that for my photography products and they have, um, so like when someone clicks buy now, they go to the checkout page.

They have options where you can offer order bumps. So like I had, my main product was Lightroom presets, which is similar to like an Instagram filter where you're basically applying an effect to a photograph. And so say somebody, adds a set of Lightroom presets for landscape photos to their cart.

Then they see an offer for, a video course on, how to edit photos in Lightroom. And it's offered at a discounted price. And so they can check a box to add it to their order and save some money. And that was really effective for me at you know, increasing the average order rate, just, by offering a related product.

And in a lot of cases, it's a higher price product at a discounted rate. And you'd be surprised at how many people just once they're already in the mentality of buying a product, it's just something about the mentality of, okay, yeah, I'll just check this box and add something else to it. And I do the same thing when I'm buying stuff, digital products online all the time, I'll add it.

And then I see the additional offer and like, well, yeah, I really could use that too. So, um, Just go ahead and buy that. And so that's, you know, another way to increase those orders. 

[00:49:27] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. So, one of the reasons I don't go into some of these stuff because, I don't know how many times I went into a, even in like went to a seminar and bought another seminar. 

I went to, stop by to get that free book for 79, 7. 99 cents for shipping and handling. And the next thing you know, I've got a, you know, 400 worth of stuff in my basket, cause they had cooler stuff in the book. 

It's a good avenue. And I think it, just to translate this to all the guys out there listening that don't have digital products and stuff like that, you can create those and you can take this same ideas and apply it to other stuff. Like I was thinking for the guys at the pest control company, one of the things we have a license for is we can actually, fertilize yards and stuff.

We have the permits and license to do it. We'd have to swap out the chemicals in the tank or bring a second tank, but there's room in the truck for the second tank. So what about, maybe an upsell is, is, when spring rolls around before the grass goes off, we can, we could, kill off any weeds and seed and fertilize your lawn right after we, pre treat you for termites and ants.

So, I mean, there's upsells, cross sells and things like that, that are, that you can do in any industry. So you can take the same thing to another industry. And go, how do I apply this?

So how do people reach out to you? Are you actually actively looking right now to acquire sites or looking for, do you help people flip websites? Or is there anything that my audience, what would be the best way for our audience to help you out? 

[00:50:51] Marc Andre: I'm not actively looking to, to purchase any websites.

If I happen to come across something that is a good fit for me. I'd be open to buying it. My, my site is flip my site. com and there's a contact page in there. If people want to get in touch, I do some, some freelance work. I also do some consulting. So, you know, anything content related SEO, um, digital marketing. So if people want to get in touch, I could be reached that way.

[00:51:19] Ronald Skelton: Okay. Well, I appreciate having you here today. We actually are at the top of the hour. It went pretty quickly. So thank you for being here. We'll call that a show. 

[00:51:26] Marc Andre: All right. Thank you.

[00:51:27] Ronald Skelton: Hang out for just a second.