326: How To Make 7 Figures Affiliate Marketing With Deacon Hayes

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Quarter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today I have my friend Deacon Hayes on the show and in this episode, we’re going to talk about how super affiliates make seven figures with their blogs. But before we begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Now it’s safe to say that most of us have been doing more online shopping lately. And if you’re an e-commerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first-time customers. But once they’ve made that first purchase, how do you keep them coming back?

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Klaviyo can help you get growing faster. And it’s free to get started. So visit klaviyo.com slash my wife to create your free account. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript.io for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store.

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and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript.io, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price-well too, and with the holiday season rolling around, SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash steve and try it for free.

01:54
That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot IO slash div. Now on to the show. Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chu.

02:17
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have my friend Deacon Hayes on the show. And Deacon is someone who I met a while back at FinCon, or maybe it was Digital CoLab, I can’t remember exactly. But I’ve watched this guy go from making very little money to running a very successful blog within the span of just several years. Now what I like about Deacon is that he’s one of the nicest guys I know, always willing to help, and he’s got an interesting backstory as well. Once upon a time, he and his wife were drowning in debt.

02:45
and he ended up spending a lot of time learning how successful people handle their money. And 18 months later, he and his wife paid off over $50,000 in debt. And today he runs wellkeptwallet.com to help others make money and get out of debt as well. And this man also wraps children’s books for fun. What up Deacon, how are doing today, Good, How are you doing? Good. Are you still wrapping those children’s books? I don’t think I’ve seen one in a while. You know, I started in quarantine, but I’ve kind of paused it for now.

03:14
but I enjoy doing it. So Deacon, first off, sorry for taking so long to have you on the show. I mean, I’ve known you for many years. So in case the audience does not know who you are, give us a quick background on how you got the idea for Well Kit Wallet and how you got started. Sure. So when my wife and I first got married, I was selling wood floors. My wife was a new teacher, school teacher, and we had $52,000 debt. And like, oh my gosh, like we’re starting off in life and we’re in the negative. And on top of that, I had to

03:43
two different properties that were underwater, because it was the Great Recession, essentially. It’s more like, OK, we’ve got to figure out this money stuff. And so I started doing some research. I’ve watched Clark Howard in the past. And then I heard of Dave Ramsey. it’s kind of, what are people doing that are successful with money? Started applying some of those principles, one of those being the debt snowball by Dave Ramsey, where we paid off our debt smallest to largest and just tackled it. And after one was gone, we took the extra money, rolled into the next one.

04:09
And so I was like, man, this is really fun. Like this personal finance stuff is a lot more fun than selling wood floors. I, you know, I was kind like, how could I, how could I help other people with it? And so, you know, while we were paying off our debt, I created this site called wellkeptwallet.com and it was kind of, Hey, here’s how we bought a car for cash on Craigslist. And you know, here’s how we cut our grocery bills and how we use the envelope system, all this stuff. So we were able to pay off our debt, like you said, in 18 months. And it was just this great feeling. And I was like, man, I would love to figure out a way to do this for a living.

04:39
And so that’s kind of what started the journey of a block of wallet and figured out how do I turn this into a business? So was your blog your side hustle? I mean, did you have this blog before or after you got out of debt? Slightly before we got out of debt, started it. And it wasn’t a side hustle. No, it was literally just a blog, right? It was just my thoughts. Okay, so the blog didn’t help you get out of debt at all? It didn’t. No, I was delivering pizzas at night. I was selling stuff on eBay.

05:07
I was doing all sorts of stuff, but the blog at that point wasn’t making any money. So before we talk about your blog and actually how you make money with it, there’s actually a number of people listening to this podcast who are probably in a little bit of debt. And I often get email from these folks about wanting to start an online business. And the first thing I always tell them is you have to have a nest egg saved and be financially stable before you start a business. given that you are someone who got out of $52,000 in debt,

05:35
what is actually the best way to get out of it? And how did you do it? Like, what was your process? Really, what we started with was I had a forum that I called the financial game plan forum, where I put my budget and my network on one piece of paper. It was an Excel spreadsheet. And the reason why that was important to me was I wanted to be able to look at one sheet of paper and know where I am financially. And so it was really, what was really interesting about that was I had a car loan. And I’m looking at this one sheet of paper and I’m thinking,

06:04
wow, that car loans like 17 grand of the $52,000 of debt. Like how could I get out of that? And then I was like, oh, my wife, because I had the network statement on there, her car was worth $5,000. So I’m like, why don’t we sell my wife’s car for $5,000 and then buy two used cars with that money and then sell my car. And so it was really like putting everything on paper was the first step, right? And then looking at all the puzzle pieces and saying like, hey, what could I do to

06:33
get out of that faster, right? And so part of it was canceling our cable bill. Part of it was canceling my gym membership, because I never went to it. Now I wish I could go to a gym, or we’re in lockdown. So, but back then I wanted to cancel it. So we just went through line by line and said, hey, how can I make this smaller? So that was the next step. And then the third step was that debt snowball. So listing our debts smallest to largest and saying, hey, okay, I’ve got seven different debts to get rid of, let’s say.

07:03
you know, smallest debt goes on the top, biggest debt, which is student loans goes on bottom. And then we just tackled it, you know, first one, second one. And every time we paid off a debt, we just rolled the money that we’re paying on the first debt into the next step. So it seems a little counterintuitive. And I guess this gets into the psychological aspects. I don’t want to talk about Ramsey too much, but shouldn’t you pay off your highest interest debt first? you were robot, Steve, yes. And I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck is like, we’re not, we’re emotional beings. And because of that, that’s where the psychology kicks in and says,

07:33
Well, we need, we need success. We need wins that will motivate us and encourage us to keep going. If your, if your highest interest debt, you know, is a bigger debt, it’s going to take you a longer time and you’re going to feel like you’re getting nowhere and you’re not going be motivated to keep going. But if you can pay off a $200 debt, you’re like, wow, I just went from seven debts to six debts like that. Like, what could I do to pay off this next one? Right. You just start to get this motivation. so yeah, mathematically it makes sense to pay off the highest interest rate first, but

08:01
what I found from my personal experience and from the experience of other people that I’ve worked with, doing the best snowball is the most effective. Okay. And then when you started your blog, like how much you did it, you said when you were in debt, how much did it cost you to get that started? It was free, free 99. So I literally had whatever the, is it wordpress.com or whatever it was. was deaconhays.wordpress.com or something.

08:28
So it was completely free. didn’t have hosting. just started, you know, typing words essentially. Okay. And then when did you transition that over to well-kept wallet? Sometime I think in the first year. it was around, oh, it was 2010. So 2010, January 2010. Okay. So walk me through the chronology here. So 2010 is when you switch over. Was it making money at that point or no? No, no, I didn’t even know it. I didn’t even know it can make money. Once again, it was just a, this is something I’m interested in. Ah, okay.

08:57
All right, so it’s 2010, you switch over to Wellkip Wallet. Why did you actually move it over there in the first place? You had the plan at that point probably to make money, right? I didn’t. I think I was like, I don’t like using my name for brand stuff. And so it was more of like, how could I brand the website and start creating something that people would want to use versus like, who’s this Deacon Hayes guy, right?

09:26
So yeah, it was more of like, I should have a name for my blog and then, well then how do I do that to where I have a domain and all that kind of stuff. I think I did dabble in some other sites that I did want to make money with before WellCut Wallet. One was a layouts website for MySpace. It was called Layouts for Life. I don’t know if you remember MySpace, but. I do, but I don’t remember Layouts for Life or Layouts, yeah. Well, no, so you could customize your MySpace page.

09:52
And so you could get these layouts where you just copy and paste whatever the code was into your MySpace page. And it would, it would have that layout essentially, but it didn’t make any money. was a flop. But so I had some experience like making websites and dabbling in that stuff. And so I was just like, Hey, what can I do with this blog to make it better? Essentially. Interesting. Okay. So when did the money start coming in? Was that a long time later or. Yeah. So what’s interesting is, so I started getting some local news.

10:22
exposure about our story. And I want to say it’s like back in 2013, something like that. So it was a few years later and I had put AdSense on my site and AdSense doesn’t really make a lot of money. If you’re listening to this, it was one of those things where it’s like, you I might make pennies a month, you know, or maybe five bucks or something. But I got this, this, uh, it was like a local Fox station that syndicated it around the United States. And I made like,

10:50
a thousand dollars a day for like three days. And I was, I was just, I was floored. I was like, how is this possible? But it was because what happened, the news segment, the reporter said, Hey, do you mind if I film your budget on your website? And so they came up to my computer and they’re like filming it. And then they said that you could download it on my website. So all of a sudden, like all these people are going to my website to download my financial game plan form or whatever.

11:18
and I’m getting all this traffic and I’m making decent money. mean, a thousand bucks a day at that time, I was like, man, that’s probably more than I made in a month, you know, for those three days. So I was really excited about it. I’m like, oh, bastard’s potential here. How did you get that press mention?

11:35
That’s a really good question. think. Was it intentional or or was it just accidental? It was. So what happened was I had someone from the US News of World Report reach out to me and they had asked if I would share my story and I’m not really sure how they found it. But you know in the blogging community they could have been reading somebody else’s blog. I was sharing it on other sites or whatever. So anyways I shared it with them and then I just thought hey how could I get more exposure right? Like it’s great to get the national exposure is a way I do it locally.

12:05
So I think I just started contacting reporters and sharing our story and saying, hey, we’d love to kind of help more people. Would you be interested in, I think my phrase was newlyweds pay off $52,000 in debt in 18 months. And they were like, yes. Nice. And so is that the post or mention that kicked off your blog? And is that when you realized that you could actually make a living doing this? Yeah, well, that’s when I realized it was possible. here’s the challenge with press.

12:35
appearances is they’re very short lived, right? Yeah, that money that money dried up really fast, you know, so it’s like, it’s exciting in the moment, but then you’re like, gosh, I have to do this again. Like, how do I replicate what I just did? And so it wasn’t I didn’t really think, hey, I can make a full time living with it. But I’m like, hey, I know I can make money with it. But how can I make more consistent money? And so that kind of led a different pursuit. Okay, so it sounds like you were just kind of blogging leisurely just for the sake of documentation for three years.

13:02
this press mention hits, and then that’s when you realize that you can start taking this seriously. So how did you start generating that consistent traffic? Well, that’s when I discovered SEO, search engine optimization, and I realized that hey, Google, the biggest search engine, wants to send people to sites like WellCappedWallet, but they’ll only do it if the content on the site is quality content, and if it fits some certain guidelines.

13:28
Google has like, I don’t know, it’s a PDF that they have that they offer, you know, their 200 different metrics that are important to them. And I’m like, well, what are the top like 10 or 15? Cause I, I don’t really care about 200. I go crazy trying to figure that out, but I was like, okay, I’m just going to figure out what are the top 10 to 15 things that Google cares about and start writing my content that way. So then I started getting more consistent traffic, which made me think, oh my gosh, like this is something that I could quit my job over, right?

13:57
It was something that, if I could build this up, I can see that this could be a full-time living or maybe even better than what I was making in a nine to five job. I’ve seen the term quality thrown out a lot in terms of post content. What is considered a quality post? Without getting too technical, it’s an article that answers what the person is searching for. And so if you’re searching for something on Google, let’s say, and you’re like, I want to…

14:25
track my net worth, right? And you talk about, you know, celebrity net worth, well, that’s not really going to help them, right? They want to know like, no, how do I do it? And so you got to create a post that says, well, here are the steps. First, you need to list your assets. Second, you need to list your liabilities. Then you need to subtract your liabilities from your assets to get your net worth. Here’s the spreadsheet that I created, you know, so, and then here’s a, here’s a tool that if you don’t want to use a spreadsheet, that would do it automatically for you, you know? And so really just kind of being in depth.

14:55
and answering the user’s search query is kind of the basics of it. And then there’s a lot of technical sides of it, like what does the header say? What does the SEO title say? What’s the meta description say? All this kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s like, does your content really answer what the person’s searching for? So given that content doesn’t really have a barrier to entry, and I guess you’re going for certain search terms when you write one of your posts.

15:20
Oftentimes when you type in one of these search terms, you’ll see a number of posts on the front page that all say similar things. What is something that you do to make it stand out? Your posts. Yeah, so I’ll play around with the title. I’ll usually look at what the top 10 results are and I’ll just say, hey, like what are they missing or use power words, right? Like easy, amazing, surprising, know, things that kind of get people to click because that’s kind of, that’s a huge thing is the click through ratio for Google. Like how often are they going to click on yours versus other results?

15:50
And so that’s one of the things that I do as far as the search goes. Another thing that I started doing is FAQs. So Yoast has an FAQs box where you can actually show in the Google search results, those questions. so, and I just learned something new the other day that you can actually link in those FAQ boxes so that people can go and they won’t even go to the page that’s ranking. They can click on the link in the FAQ box. It’s fascinating because it’s like you can almost…

16:18
answer their query and then lead them to the page for their next thought, right? Like you’ve answered their question and now here’s the kind of leading you to, okay, now that I answered that, what’s the next step? That’s interesting. I didn’t know you, I have facts on all of my high ranking posts. I didn’t realize you could insert links in there. The last time I tried it, did not work. Cool. What’s the secret? there, is it just something I just haven’t tried in a while and they just added that or? You know, I’m not sure. Larry’s the one that told me about it. So, you know, he’s a real technical guy. Right.

16:48
So yeah, I don’t really know the technical side of it, but it’s possible. I’m just curious, have you seen good results from those? So I’ve been doing it without linking, and I guess you occupy more of the search results there, but the fact that they’re not linking, sometimes I just get the answer and not click on anything. Have you seen good results from using the FAQ? No, I haven’t. It’s more, I’m just adding value to the page. I’m like, hey, what would this user want to know that’s relevant to that search query?

17:16
to keep them on there for longer, for longer dwell time, and to just have a better user experience. So yeah, I haven’t really seen from a search standpoint, like someone looking for an FAQ and coming to the page. It’s more just adding value to the page itself. OK. So would you say search is how you get most of your traffic? Yeah, that’s how we get the bulk of our traffic. OK. What are some of the other ways that aren’t search that you get traffic? Or do you just primarily focus on search? We primarily focus on search.

17:45
I we get some traffic from Pinterest and Facebook, but kind of like press, feel like it’s very hit or miss, right? Like you have to have something, I don’t want to say go viral, but you have to have something take off for it to really be noticeable. And we had seasons, like there was one season where I had one pin on Pinterest would drive a hundred thousand visitors a month, you know? And now that’s totally gone. I had one season where Facebook, I didn’t get a thousand clicks in a day. And now I’m happy if I get like 50, you know?

18:14
It seems like their algorithms change and they don’t favor businesses unless you pay ads, ad money. And so I just don’t focus a lot of effort there. We do do some Google ads and those we find to be profitable and helpful, but it’s very cost intensive. And in my mind, I’d rather rank from an SEO standpoint than pay for ads. Right. Yeah. Cause once you rank that traffic is free.

18:38
Actually, what I’ve found over the years is that SEO traffic is probably the most consistent. As you mentioned before, social media, like it might last like three days and then fizzle out if you happen to get lucky and hit something. And then Pinterest over the years, I feel has been changing their algorithms dramatically, as has Google. But for some reason, Google still remains pretty consistent for me. Yeah, same for me. Google is the most consistent and the algorithms definitely make an impact. Still, the traffic is significant. So it hasn’t really impacted us that much.

19:06
So let’s talk about how you make money. So part of the equation was building traffic and you’re doing that through search by targeting certain keywords and writing really good posts that answer a query’s question. So once you have that traffic, what are some of the different ways that you’re making money through blogging? So the first way was display advertising. once I had enough traffic, I switched off the AdSense because it was very nominal what they pay you. So I switched to an ad network called Mediavine and they pay significantly more.

19:36
And so that was the first way is to display ads, which most people are probably familiar with. Can you give us an idea of what like the increase was? Like how much were you getting from Google? And then what was the boost when you went to an ad network? I want to say it was four to five times. Really that high? Okay. So yeah, let’s just say if I was making, you know, a hundred bucks, it’d be 400 to 500 bucks, you know, from, from ads. So I haven’t done that in a while, Steve. So it could be, it could be, say the one to five range, like.

20:05
two to five range, It was significant enough to be like, hey, this is something you need to do right away. Then the next thing is affiliate. Really, that’s the bulk of our revenue now is finding, hey, what are brands that kind of help our readers, right? We want to help people make money, save money, pay off debt. And so what are brands that help people make money? Airbnb and Postmates and DoorDash and Instacart and Lyft and all that kind of stuff. And so it was just figuring out, okay, how do we get partnerships with those brands? And then how do we bring content that will send them traffic, you know?

20:35
And so that’s the bulk of our revenue is affiliates. And at one point we did do sponsored posts, but we no longer do those. Okay. So when you’re targeting like an affiliate post, do you come up with the post idea first, get it to rank and then look for affiliates or do you find an affiliate first and then just purposely write a post for that offer? Well, our content strategy today is much different than it used to be. Okay. So when I started, I was like, Hey, what can I just rank for? Right? Like I,

21:04
I was like, Hey, what, are some keywords out there that are interesting to me and that I could rank for? then, you know, I’ll either monetize it through display ads or affiliates if it made sense. And so now it’s much more targeted. So I’ll just kind of look, I’m kind of trying to find gaps. So content gaps and fill those gaps and say, Hey, if we want to, you know, rank for more investing related terms, then we need to have certain pieces of investing content that we’re missing. And we can see by looking at who else is ranking, like what.

21:33
what their content looks like and say, hey, maybe we need to add a post about like, what is a 403B? Because we’ve never talked about that. Or is a 529 plan the best for saving for college? Whatever it might be, just kind of looking for what are we missing on the site that could add more value to that vertical, that investing vertical. And so we’ve been doing a lot of that. And we do have affiliates that are kind of in mind with that content that we write. So that implies then you’re just trying to get the traffic first then, right?

22:03
Right. Yeah, it’s good. I feel like it’s similar to like the startup model where you’re like, Hey, I just want to get users. And then once I have users, I kind of figure out how to monetize it. Okay. But now I think we’re a little bit, you know, the next step, it’s like, okay, yeah, we now have the relationships. And now how do we get more users to those relationships, you know, our more readers, you know, I see. And then where do you find most of your affiliates? Do you use the affiliate networks? Or do you actually go out and

22:31
search for specific affiliates that are applicable to the post that you’re writing. So we do both. So well, we have affiliates that were like, let’s write this content and have these affiliates do it. But then we might say, hey, you know what? There’s other brands that we’re mentioning in here that we should look to see if they have affiliate programs. And so we’ll just Google like, you know, brand name, affiliate program and see if they have it. Or I have a virtual assistant. She can look inside some of the networks that we’re already a part of.

23:00
like CJ or Impact Radius or FlexOffers and see if they have a program in there, we could just sign up for it through that platform and makes it a lot easier. So we gotta do both. I know when you just Google companies, it seems like a lot of companies are not a part of any affiliate networks. Does that mean like you have like a spreadsheet of all these different affiliate programs? And like sometimes, I know for me in the past, like I’ve had some individual affiliates that I’ve agreed to.

23:27
refer people to and then at some point, like no one was enforcing that they were gonna pay and sometimes if I didn’t ping them, I wasn’t getting paid. Do you have that problem also? Probably do, I just don’t, I don’t check. Okay, so your VA takes care of all that? So we have a spreadsheet that we have all of the contact information and the links and for all of our affiliates.

23:52
I bet you that would be a good exercise now that you say it to kind of go through and say, Hey, look for the ones that are out of network, like direct relationships, and then just make sure that we’re getting paid for them. I mean, I have had that in the past where there are certain brands that require an invoice. And I’m like, it’s, it’s, it seems so like 1999 because I’m like, okay, so you want me to log into your platform and get the numbers that you provide in your platform and create an invoice on my end and then send it to you.

24:22
I’m like, why don’t you just pay me what’s inside your platform, the numbers that are your platform? Because that’s what 95 % of affiliates do is they literally just deposit ACH money into our account. We don’t have to send an invoice, we don’t have to do anything. But some of them require an invoice, which is just, it’s a bunch of, it seems like bureaucracy where you’re like, okay, I just gotta do this to do it. And so we do have process for that where we have like a handful of affiliates where we have to send an invoice and kind of do that process.

24:52
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25:50
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26:01
Interesting. I’ve never encountered like if I had to send an invoice, I probably wouldn’t do it. Maybe that’s their strategy. Like it, you’re probably most people probably aren’t going to send an invoice in so they don’t have to pay out. Yeah. But what I mean, one of, one of them is like pays out five to seven grand a month. so you’re like, I’ll send out an invoice. Okay. Yeah. Maybe I would say it takes like 45 seconds or whatever, because you can just duplicate an old one and then like update the information and send, you know, it’s not hard. Right. Right. It’s just tedious, I guess. Right.

26:30
Okay, so when it comes to getting traffic, let’s talk about SEO for a little bit here. Is your strategy quality and quantity, or do you just kind of focus on putting out, like how frequently do you actually put out a post? Oh, see, this is tough. I’ve changed, like, I feel like schizophrenic sometimes, you know, because it’s like, at one point, I’m like, I’m gonna publish every day. So I was doing one a day, right? So I was doing 30 a month. That’s crazy. And now we’re doing like six, you know, so it’s drastically different.

26:58
But I think the reason is, there’s the information is, is constantly changing. And so it’s kind of like being able to adapt quickly to being like, Hey, Google at one point, it seemed like they like fresh quality content on a regular basis. And we were rewarded for that. And then it just seemed like, Hey, we’re pumping out content every day and Google’s not really breaking it. Like what’s going on here? So I kind of pulled the brakes and said, Hey, okay, let’s not just write content to write content. Let’s write content with purpose and let’s figure out.

27:28
where the gaps are and what the readers need and what we want to rank for, what affiliate relationships are important to us. And just kind of combine all that data and say, okay, we’re to write these posts because it’s going to serve the readers this way. And it’s going to help us grow our affiliate relationships and revenue, you know? So it’s just much more thought out now, but where before it was kind of the wild west where it’s like, oh, I can rate for this. Let’s just write it, you know? So it’s, yeah, it’s more pulled back, more about quality, less about quantity.

27:56
and just making sure that it really kind of fits all those parameters. Once you write a post, you do anything to promote it? So we have all the standard social media channels, so Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter. So it goes through all those channels. And then I have an email list. I’m not a big email guy. Yeah, let’s talk about that actually. So why aren’t you a big email guy?

28:19
I’m an inbox 10 guy. used to be inbox zero, but I feel like it’s unrealistic. I’ll send you like at zero and then someone sends you an email. So I like to like keep it clean and I only want to get emails from people. Like I only get from like actual personalities, like two emails. Like I just described to two different people. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits. I love his emails. Like I’ll read all of them every time he sends one. And then Jim Wang is another one from

28:49
wallet hacks. But because there’s two guys I respect and I think they’re really good at what they do. And so for me, like, email is I don’t want to try to spam or I don’t know, I that’s how I operate. And I I’m sure there’s a lot of opportunity there. See, we have like 20,000 people on our email list. But I stopped growing it. Actually, I took our email opt in off the site for interesting for the pop up. Because because what I thought was like, what? What is my route?

29:19
like for success and my route for success is right high quality traffic or high quality content that gets traffic from Google. And so it’s kind of like focusing on the one thing I was building this email list and then it cost me more to maintain and then I’m adding all this tracking. It cost me more to have administration. Um, I don’t have a course that I’m pushing, so I don’t have that, you know, side of it. Cause I know it works really well if you have courses that you’re trying to, you know, to sell. know, I know that that’s one of your things, right? Yeah.

29:48
For me, it’s just one of those things that’s, it’s not my primary focus. And I’ve hired a girl and we did a survey of our email list and then we crafted emails with affiliate intent and we’re tracking it. And it works a little bit, but nothing is as quality conversion-wise and ROI-wise as Google traffic. Interesting. So pushing affiliate offers through email wasn’t working for you?

30:13
It isn’t. I think the challenge is think about like Google search. It’s so specific. Like they’re looking for an answer to a problem, essentially, right? They’re saying, hey, I want to learn how to budget or I want to learn how to get out of debt or whatever it might be. And then you’re providing them that data versus I have them on an email list and I’ve segmented them, but they’re not really, it’s like almost I have to warm them up, right? And kind of say, okay, well,

30:42
If you’re in debt, are you serious enough to get out of it? And if you’re serious enough, are you willing to pay for this service or refinance that and go through all the different steps? So it seems like a longer funnel and a harder funnel than Google traffic. Interesting. I think maybe it just has to do with the nature of our audiences too. Maybe for your audience, since they’re trying to get out of debt, is that the majority of your folks? Maybe they just don’t have the money to spend on stuff as much. Yeah, it used to be. think we definitely have

31:11
change because we have offers that are just for accredited investors and we convert those offers. So we definitely know we have wealthy people that decide as well. But I think, yeah, in large part, it’s people struggling with their finances and trying to get ahead. Okay. Yeah. So the audience probably plays a huge role in that. Yeah. And I think you write about, like, I follow your blog, you write a lot of about a lot of different topics. And so it seems like maybe you’re even with like the best segmentation.

31:36
It seems like your audience is interested in a wide variety of things, whereas like on my blog, everyone’s interested in one thing pretty much. Yeah, and that makes a huge difference, right? Because you can create kind of a community around that one thing. I’ve tried to create communities within like Facebook groups and stuff, but because it’s so broad, it’s hard for people to rally around, I have a debt pursuit one and that was really good, but then once people pay off debt, they’re kind of like not really active anymore. Right, yeah, that makes sense.

32:03
I had a financial independence one, that one did better. But yeah, so definitely the audience can make a difference when it comes to email. Deacon, how much time do you spend on your blog every week? So it’s different now. I’ve been down to like less than five hours a week. Oh, wow. Okay. How are you able to do that, by the way? Outsourcing. So basically finding quality people that can, you know, I create videos, tutorials that show them how to do certain things and then

32:32
I kind of automated the blog. In fact, I think there was a month where I didn’t work at all and we still made great revenue. So, what I found, what I found with that though, it’s fascinating is like, you find, you feel like you have a lack of purpose. You’re like, what, what do I do here? Like, why, why, you know, like if I get, if my site runs, like, what am I, what am I supposed to be doing with my life? You know, like, so it’s kind of depressing because you’re kind of like, Hey, I want to add value and I want to be part of the team, you know? And so.

33:01
I work a lot more now. I probably work like 25 to 35 hours a week on it now. Are you doing much of the writing now or? No, I don’t do any writing at all. Okay. But it’s more like technical stuff now. It’s kind of like, hey, how can I improve the table of contents? And hey, can I get a plugin for related posts? And, you know, how can I get one that doesn’t impact the page speed? And, you know, so it’s kind of more like

33:27
how to run the site, how to make it better, how to make user experience better and less about the actual content. So strategy as opposed to the nitty-gritty. Right. High level strategy. Where did you find your writers? Most of them came from the FinCon community. Okay. And so, you know, there’s a lot of financial bloggers that go there and they’re looking for, you know, revenue. And so that’s where I found most of them. Okay. So you don’t hire any writers from like overseas or anything like that.

33:53
I do so I own other sites which we haven’t really talked about but I do own other sites and I do have two writers from overseas for those sites They’re really good and they’ve written for big sites and so it’s actually so we use their name and everything It’s it’s not like we’re hiring someone to go straight from overseas We’ll hire them and they’ll have their tag their what’s it called byline or whatever So you don’t have to talk about the specific name of those other blogs But is the strategy the same or there’s more niche blogs? So those are just

34:21
Yeah, it’s very similar strategy, but it’s different niches for sure. So yeah, the idea is, I bought some older sites that were from the nineties that had significant domain authority and just said, hey, how could I recreate what I did with WellkeptoWallet with these other sites in different niches, hire writers. And it just happened to be that these overseas writers were the best options. Like we posted a job on ProBlogger and got hundreds of people.

34:48
And these two people like literally had written for huge sites and we read their content and we’re like, wow. So they just happened to be like, if I would have found people locally, I would have paid people locally, but they happened to be from overseas. So without giving the exact number, can you give a range of how much a writer costs in the U.S. versus your overseas writers? Okay, so when I say overseas, like one of them’s in the UK, right? it’s like okay, So not Asia, right? Yeah, so, but it is cheaper. So I would say like,

35:18
What would normally cost me to say $300 on WellCamp wallet will cost like a hundred bucks on these other sites. Oh, wow. Okay. So it is, it is less. This is another struggle for me. It’s like, you can hire writers that will, you know, write an article for 50 bucks, you know, but I’ve done it. And then you have to do so much editing and it’s just, it’s not worth it. And so to be able to have people that are kind of seasoned that know what the format should be like, what good content looks like.

35:47
like we just pay more now. So we pay like 10 to 15 cents a word typically for a well-kept wallet. And then the other one, I think it’s like five to eight cents a word or something like that. So it’s significantly cheaper for those other sites. So given that you’re paying for these posts, like the intention is that, well, actually what is your intention on it making money? Well, so the intention is it’s kind of like a win-win-win scenario. That’s the one thing I always wanted with business was how do you get something that doesn’t

36:16
But someone doesn’t feel like they’re getting taken advantage of. Right. And so in the affiliate model, the idea is, is we write this piece of content. It’s well researched. It’s well edited, factual. It ranks in Google. So when someone searches something, we’re answering their query and we have an affiliate in there that’s going to help them achieve their goal. Right. And so, so the affiliates happy because they get a good customer. The person searching is happy because they get an answer to their problem. And we’re happy because we’re making money. Right. So it’s win, win, win.

36:45
So that’s kind of the intention of it. It’s like, hey, how do we create this quality content in these different verticals to help solve people’s problem and make money at the same time? in terms of time frame, do you have some certain expectations that this post is going to start generating money? So within three to six months is typically where we want to see a break even. So meaning if I spend $300, I want to make my $300 within six months. That’s kind of my metric.

37:14
So I have a spreadsheet where I have a break even number and that’s kind of what we’re going for. Interesting. So that implies that that post starts ranking within three to six months for something. Correct. And so here’s the beauty of higher domain authority sites is they rank so much faster. We can rank something on the second page of Hugo within 48 hours. so it’s, and then at that point it’s like, oh, well how do I get it to the first page? Well, I need to add internal links. Maybe add it if I’m doing a

37:42
writing an article for another publication, like add a link to it there. So yeah, mean usually with higher domain authority sites, you can rank within 48 hours somewhere on Google. And then it’s just a matter of how do I get up the ladder. So with that strategy, like if you were starting from complete scratch from the very beginning, how would your strategy be different for a beginner? I don’t advise that. No, no, so I say that kind of flippantly.

38:11
It’s totally possible. Like I’ve seen sites that started from scratch in the past couple of years and have done really well. It’s just really a grind. So I will say here’s the, here’s the number one thing I’d say, get as much press as possible. I think that if you’re going to start something, uh, you gotta have a story that you can put out there to the press. So that’s, and at least that’s from my experience, right? Like we paid off 52 grand in 18 months. I use that story. I reach out to different outlets. It’s it, that’s.

38:40
that’s a valuable story to them. We get links back to the site that are valuable because they’re high domain authority sites. Like that’s the quickest and best way to get authority in the right stuff. Can we talk about that process actually? What is your process for getting press with a good story? We subscribe to Haro, help a reporter out and they’ll send emails three times a day. So morning, afternoon and evening. And they’re asked, these are reporters asking for someone to help them with the story.

39:10
So it’s perfect for pretty much anybody because they’ll ask for, Hey, we need an attorney to talk about this. We need a personal finance expert to talk about that. We need, uh, you know, uh, a consumer electronics expert to talk about this. Like, so any different vertical, they’ll have these reporters that are looking for someone to answer their questions essentially. So we use that as one of the ways. Now I have relationships here in, Arizona, where I am, where we can reach out like during different times and say,

39:39
You know, right at the beginning of the coronavirus, I started a thousand dollar savings challenge and I reached out to one of my contacts at, it’s like CBS5 here and said, hey, you know, we’re doing this challenge where we want to help people save a thousand dollars as quickly as possible. And they came to my office and filmed it. It was like, so, you know, once you have those relationships, create a spreadsheet and say, hey, here are all the people I talked to, here’s their contact, you know, email, here’s the last time I worked with them and then just reconnect with them on news story ideas.

40:08
What is your hit rate on Harrow? curious. Mine’s pretty low. It is pretty low. I think that’s changed over time too. I would say, gosh man. Is Harrow part of your regular strategy today or is it more something you did early on? We did it, over the past year we did a lot of it, but we’ve scaled back. So I would say, I don’t know, maybe one out of 20 pitches. Something like that. So it’s definitely a volume game and I have an assistant that does it.

40:37
So it’s not like I’m doing those pitches. So somebody else does it on my behalf and they have access to a lot of data and info of like, here’s what I believe in, why, and here’s I would say and why, that kind of stuff. Do you pay for the Haro membership? No, I use the free version. You use the free version, okay. I’m a frugal guy like you, man. So I actually pay someone to do my Haro for me and he has a premium subscription. And I think you get all the queries like an hour before or something like that. So your chances are much higher. Yeah.

41:07
Yeah, I believe it. But once again, like, and that’s the thing, like, I did that grind for so long, I’m like, I’m 10 years into it now, where I’m like, I don’t wanna do that again. But if we see one that like really shouts like, oh, this is something that I should answer or I should be a part of, then we’ll do it. Let’s talk a little bit about ads. I know you don’t spend a lot of money on ads, but you do run them. So what is your strategy with ads? And how do you know that you’re ROI positive on them? Yeah, so.

41:35
There’s a lot of parts, moving parts to it. So we look for keywords that we’re going to get a good ROI on. use a couple of tools. We use a tool called the Click Meter, which tells us where the conversion comes from. And then I use Google Data Studio where I can pull in the Click Meter data and the AdWords data into one page spreadsheet essentially, it’s on my, it’s not a spreadsheet, whatever. It’s on the website on Google Data Studio.

42:01
where I can see, here’s how much we spent on the ad and here’s how much revenue came from the ad. And so that’s kind of the nuts and of it. And then Clickmeter, is that supported by most affiliates? You have to be able to do a post-back link. And I would say 80 % of our affiliates have post-back capabilities. Okay, because they’re in the finance area. Is that why? I mean, that’s probably part of it just because that, I mean, a lot of these have figured out like, hey, if we want to be successful, we need to offer this capability.

42:31
I’m sure other niches have it as well because CJ has more than just personal finance, know, flex offers, impact radius. Yeah. So it’s really the main networks, you know, like if you, if you sign up for them, they have that capability. Okay. And then Deacon, for anyone who’s who wants to get started doing what you’ve been doing for the past decade, it sounds like what’s the best advice you would give them for someone starting out? I think that the best thing would be, it has to be something that you’re interested in.

43:00
and something that you can kind of see through. think, like I had a buddy that had like a mattress website and he did okay, but it just wasn’t like something he was interested in. I think more times than not people give up if they’re not really interested in the topic. If you’re like, I’m just doing this to make money. I think for me that’s like, hey, paying off debt and getting out of debt was really interesting to me. It was a fun process. And so therefore, even though I didn’t make money with it at first, I just kept writing and I kept going.

43:29
And I’m glad I did because I was able to quit my job and make more money than I ever did in the corporate world. And so it’s really one of those things like, so that’s the first thing. And then the other thing is craft the story around that, right? Like even if you don’t, if you didn’t pay off 52 grand in 18 months, it could be like, Hey, my name is Steve and I graduated from an Ivy league school and I didn’t want to go the traditional route. I wanted to go the entrepreneurial route. And so instead of, you know, being an engineer,

43:58
I created a business, you know, and so how I kind of buck the trend of conventional America to start my own seven figure business or whatever. know, like figuring out whatever that story is. So Deacon, if you were to start over from scratch now, knowing what you know, what would you think your timeframe would be to make six figures in revenue?

44:21
Realistically, I’d say two to three years. Okay. I’d say, and not expect anything for the first six months to a year. So that’s why, to your point earlier, we didn’t want to talk about building up a nest egg before you do the switch is huge, right? So I think we had like six months to a year in living expenses saved up for me to quit my job and start working on my blog. So really it’s kind of like, Hey, that you’re going to live off of that potentially while you’re building up, whether it’s an e-commerce business or a blog.

44:50
and just kind of say, I’ve got this money set aside for the specific fact that I gotta pay my bills while I’m building up this business. Yeah, it took me three years to hit six figures, I remember, and then it kind of hockey-sticked after that. But I remember those first couple years were a grind, like you said. I would actually advise anyone who’s listening to this to start their business while they still have a full-time job, and that way there’s no stress involved and…

45:18
there’s no outside influences to make rash decisions just to make money sooner rather than later. Yeah, absolutely. So that’s the same thing here is I started my blog, I was wood flooring and I actually became a financial planner because I was like, oh, that’s the next best step. So I did that for about three years, I think, before I actually quit. So it’s like, start the blog, work in the traditional world, build up a nest egg for six months to a year and then I…

45:45
Deacon, where can people find your blog and get ahold of you if they have any questions about getting out of debt or starting a blog? Yeah, best place is wellkeptoallet.com. I’m also on Twitter, at Deacon Hayes is the symbol. Cool, and you go into any events, anytime in the near future? Man, I’d love to go to FinCon if it’s gonna happen. It’s just so, you know, with COVID and everything, it’s tough to figure out. So if that happens, I’ll be going to that, otherwise.

46:13
I’m just gonna do virtual events for now. Yeah. Cool, Deacon. Well, hey, thanks a lot for coming on the show, man. It was a long time coming. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, take care.

46:26
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now Deakin is a master of SEO, outsourcing, and extracting out every last dollar from his blog posts. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 326. And once again, I want to thank Postscript.io, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

46:54
That’s P-O-S-T-S-C-R-I-P-T.I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, open back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store,

47:23
head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.