You are listening to My Wife Quit Her Job podcast where I bring in successful, bootstrapped business owners, to teach us what strategies are working and what strategies are not. Now this isn’t one of these podcasts where we bring on famous entrepreneurs simply to celebrate their success. Instead I have them take us back to the beginning and delve deeply into the exact strategies they used early on to gain traction for their businesses. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave me a review on iTunes and enter my podcast contest where I’m giving away free one on one business consultations every single month.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites 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 Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have a good friend of mine on the show Bob Lotich. Now if you don’t know who Bob is, he blogs at ChristianPf.com, which is a very popular personal finance blog tagging towards Christians. And Bob probably doesn’t know about this, but one of the posts he wrote about making money blogging from like three or four years ago was actually one of the inspirations for me monetizing my blog in the first place. Anyways Bob’s site is really quite remarkable; he’s got a really large email list at over 50K. He’s gotten around 22 million visitors total since 2007 you know, and quite honestly his blog gets way more traffic than mine, and he’s also written several books, he offers free courses that helps others become financially secure. So without further ado welcome to the shoe Bob, how are you today man?

Bob: I’m doing great and I’m really excited to hear what you just said about reading that article, so that’s really exciting.

Steve: You know I actually went to look to look for it last night and I couldn’t find. It was just this monster post on how you made money online with AdSence a long time ago. I don’t know if you remember which one I’m talking about?

Bob: yeah, I mean I haven’t written much about blogging on the site, so I know exactly which one you’re talking about. Yeah, it’s ChristianPf4/blogging.

Steve: Okay, I’m going to find it. Okay, yeah because I know you’ve kind of organized your materials in lots of different categories for ease of finding but for some reason I couldn’t find that post last night.

Bob: Sorry.

Steve: Anyways, okay yeah seems like you know a lot of successful personal finance bloggers I know kind of started out heavily in debt before getting themselves together. Did you kind of come from a wealthy background or did you have financial hardships in the beginning prior to starting this online business of yours, and how did you kind of come up with the idea for starting ChristianPf in the first place?

Bob: All right, let’s tackle those one by one. So, first of no, not at all wealthy, had a lot of debt myself, and I found myself in a situation where I was like 20 years old, 20, 21, somewhere there, and I had moved out of town. I moved down to Florida just kind of just I don’t know– go hang out, do whatever and I ended up spending all my money wrecking up, basically maxed out my single credit card and I always laugh about how I was naive enough to think that I could only have one credit card.

So, that was my saving grace that I really believed I could only have one credit card. So I ended up max up my credit card. It just kind of brought me to this point where I realized I got to make a change, and so for me that was kind of the impetus behind the whole thing. And from that point I just started you know reading other personal finance blogs, reading magazines, reading books, everything I got my hands on just trying to figure out how to improve my own finances and my own financial life.

And so that was kind of my phase that I was going through and that kind of led into ultimately starting ChristianPf, because I was learning about all this, then I was also finding out all these things in the Bible said about money which I thought was fascinating that this old book had some relevant and timely information. And so then I just kind of combined the two into a ChristianPf where we just kind of focused on money management, but kind of geared and focused towards Christians, you know looking at some of the Biblical aspects of things and things like that.

Steve: So was your motivation for starting ChristianPf to make money in the beginning or was it to compile information, was it more for yourself?

Bob: You know I forget a little bit, it’s like I knew I remember I had read ProBlogger, Darren Rowse’s site and I knew that there were a couple of people out in the world who were making a full time living. I knew there were a few more who were making some money, so it was kind of in the back of my brain, but at the same time I knew it was a little bit long shot. But for me mostly I was just so fueled by this topic, and I was just excited about it and so I just saw it as an outlet, as a way to just kind of communicate with others and you know when they say that the best way to learn is by teaching, and so just by me talking about it and kind of writing about a lot of the things I was going through, it helped make it more sound in my own life. So, I think that was the main motivation, I think there was a little bit of man if I can make a few hundred dollars a month from this, it would be awesome, but that’s pretty much where I was.

Steve: So were you working full time when you started ChristianPf?

Bob: Yeah, I was working at– I worked in the banking industry for a while then I switched over to a brokerage firm and did that for I guess about five years I was there.

Steve: Okay, so you started it while you were working and then you eventually quit I would imagine?

Bob: Yeah, well I got laid off. So you know I had a plan, you know once the blog was up for a while, I had this kind of longer term goal. It’s like all right I want to be able to get this thing up to my– to surpass the income I’m making from my day job and I saw this is like probably three year goal, and I got laid off about a year into that phase.

Steve: Okay.

Bob: So anyway, so my wife and I talked about it, we prayed about it, we looked at our bank account, we looked how much money we had saved up, we looked at the severance package I was going to get and anyway I just– I went with it. I didn’t get a job after I get laid off and I focused full time on ChristianPf, and within about nine months, we were able to get it up to the point where it surpassed a day job.

Steve: Wow, that’s awesome. Okay so– but it was already making money before you got laid off kind of right?

Bob: Yeah, I was making a little bit but definitely not enough to pay the mortgage or anything, so it was no catch.

Steve: Okay, we will have to definitely talk about that growth. So, before we get into that you know how does ChristianPf make its money primarily?

Bob: We have about three main revenue streams, so AdSence being the cost per click is a big portion still, it’s always been a big percentage for us. And then we also run another CPM network and so we’ve been on ads and things like that generate some income. And we increasingly been doing more with affiliate marketing and finding great products that we like and talking about them on the side, so that’s become another big stream as well. And the books are increasingly as I write more and more becoming a bigger portion of the income as well.

Steve: Okay and so you mentioned– actually which affiliate networks for the banners do you actually use, just curious?

Bob: Well I don’t– just to be clear I don’t use, I generally don’t use any affiliate banners but my further CPM networks. The CPM network I’m working with right now is my bank tracker, but affiliate networks has a ton of them I mean CJ and Linkshare and I don’t know [Inaudible] [00:08:28] I guess there are a million of them that I use.

Steve: Okay, and so you mentioned that you grew your site to full time income essentially in nine months. So, this is back when your site was much younger. So how did you actually gain traffic to your site early on, basically when you weren’t getting that much traffic?

Bob: Yeah, for me a lot of it was guest posting. I mean so much and this is what I’m always recommending in a blogger’s, you know and [Inaudible] [00:08:53] came out a few months ago and said something about guest posting, it’s dead, it’s– you know and his point was, it’s become a spammy tactic and that’s absolutely true. I get emails every single day from all kinds of spammy companies wanting to guest post on my site and I turn them down.

But legitimate good guest post, which Mattes [phonetic] specifically says are fine really I think is a great way still to build an audience and build blogs and that was a really big part of my growing my traffic. And so I found any site I could write on. Some of them were blogs, some of them were article sites, I mean any place I could write and get an article in front of some eye balls, that’s what I was doing and that really helped– that really made a big difference in getting a lot of traffic, in helping grow my audience.

Steve: Okay, so you primarily attribute to guest posting and then of course the quality of the content. I still remember that blogging article, it was probably like 3000 words or something I remember but it was very well written.

Bob: 8000.

Steve: Was it 8000, shows how long it’s been since I’ve seen it but yeah that was one monster article that actually inspired me. So, in general for the guest posts have you been just making friends in the finance blogging industry in order to get those opportunities, or how have you actually gotten those guest post opportunities?

Bob: Yeah, that’s another thing that back then you know we’re talking 2008 there, it’s five six years ago. It was a lot easier you could pretty much email anybody and say ‘hey I’ll write you a good article’ and they be ‘all right, okay I’ll put it up.’ And now because it has become more spammy and so many people– so many companies trying to do it, it does really help to have a connection and to know the person who you are emailing. So anyway so yeah I mean I do think that’s a rule they help and now that’s pretty much all I do. It’s like if I send a premium article to a random blogger who I don’t know, they rarely get accepted, and so the best way to fix that is just to connect with that other blogger and get to know them and offer something and give something upfront. Be of benefit first and it just seems like things work a little bit better that way.

Steve: Yeah so just as an aside for the listener’s, Bob and I actually have gone back quite a ways in terms of just blogging, but we recently met in person the last couple of years at the financial blogging conference. And incidentally that is how Bob and I kind of got in touch with this podcast interview. He has a new book coming out, he just kind of reached out and of course since I’d met him a couple of times in the past, by all means I wanted to interview him and have him on the show, so just as an aside.

So you know Bob, hey you had a bunch of books that you’ve written, I’ve actually looked at your Amazon account and you’ve been quite prolific. And you’ve also created a bunch of these free courses for people in dead end– you write a lot of posts for the blog. What is kind of the master plan, I know that’s kind of a vague question here but I know you know there been a whole lot of people– blogging has become really popular and there’s more and more people entering the blogging space, making it kind of more and more saturated as time goes on. So are you still focusing all your energies on the blog or you are kind of branching out more to these posts, free courses, are you thinking about starting a podcast, you know what’s the long term strategy for ChristianPf as a business?

Bob: You know essentially what we’re trying to do is– I guess where my goal has been how to transition is I just want to help the readers in whatever I can do to help them reach their goals. And it took me a long time to realize that the blog by itself was not helping a lot of them reach their goals, and once I realized that, that’s when I started creating these courses and so we have like you mentioned a couple of free email courses that people would sign up for, and then it takes them through a series of articles, and it’s– they are just articles that were from the site but they are packaged together in a way that it seems to offer a lot more benefit than when they are just kind of randomly coming at you in the newsletter or you know via the blog every other day.

So that’s kind of the reason that we’ve shifted in what we are trying to do, I mean it’s the same with the books. So as far as the big master plan, I’m just going to keep doing whatever I can do to help the audience in whatever that’d going to help people learn best. You mentioned podcasts, it’s funny I started a podcast like five years ago and we did– I don’t know five or six episodes or something and we haven’t done anything with it since and now I see you and a whole bunch of other guys really getting into the podcast thing, so it’s kind of my wheel spinning away but anyway, kind of tent hitch. But yeah, as a far as the big master plan it’s just focused on the audience and whatever we can do to help them in whatever that’s going to be.

Steve: Okay, did you have a paid course or were these all just kind of free courses?

Bob: These are all free courses right now and part of how we off set the work and time invested in the whole thing is throughout the courses, there are different affiliate products that are mentioned and so they generate some revenue, and that just helps offset some of the costs of doing it.

Steve: Okay, so in terms of how ChristianPf actually makes money, which strategy is actually been the most effective. So we’ve talked about cost per click, we’ve talked about CPM banners and we’ve talked about kind of affiliate offers and selling eBooks. So, which one has worked out the best for you and which one is most lucrative?

Bob: I mean it’s kind of a dynamic thing you know it does shift year to year depending on what’s going on with Google and other things in the industry and things like that. But I mean we’ve always been heavily– our revenue is always been heavily weighted in Google AdSence, so that’s always been a really big portion of our income. Now, that said, I’ve always been fighting and working to diversify that as much as possible and minimize that.

Historically I’ve just had way too much dependence on Google. In general I’m really excited about Google because I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing, I would never have been able to do this if it weren’t for Google but still I want to diversify as much possible. So AdSence has always been a big, big chunk. Affiliate revenue has gradually increased over the last few years and so now at this point, the affiliate revenue is probably 50%, AdSence is may be 25% both since somewhere in the [Inaudible] [00:15:38].

Steve: And where do the books kind of fit into this revenue model?

Bob: I don’t know, we’re there probably 5-10% somewhere in there right now.

Steve: Okay, so this is– to the books is that something that you’re trying to grow in the future, or you’re trying to focus more on affiliate revenue?

Bob: It’s both, I mean I’m not trying to just completely focus on one or the other, I mean the blog’s going to continue with I think 2000 articles on the site now, and we’re trying to make the most out of the articles that we already have there, but we’re going to continue to publish and create helpful stuff. The books– I actually enjoy the process of creating the books and writing and publishing the books and it’s like I said, it’s just another way to get a lot of information out. There a lot of people who won’t read a blog but who will read a book and who want to be able to carry it with them or and so we need to serve those readers. And so honestly– and so the revenue, I mean we have been making a little bit from the books, but even if we weren’t I would still probably be doing it just because it helps the readers so much.

Steve: Okay and you find that you are able to drive some of the people who are reading your books back to your blog?

Bob: That’s a tricky thing to measure; I wish I had a better way of tracking that. I’m experimenting with some stuff, one of my– actually my last book I just launched last week we’re– I put a– I basically created a new URL that I’m going to be sending people from, so pretty much the only way people are going to be able to find that URL is via the book, so it’s going to give me a good idea of how much traffic we are generating from it.

Steve: Okay.

Bob: But that’s kind of my first attempt at trying to track this, so.

Steve: Okay, and so we’ve been talking a lot about traffic and I know you know Google is kind of been in a flax for the last two or three years I would say, and you’ve kind of mentioned that first a vacation, and at least with my blog I find that the majority of people clicking on AdSence ads are coming from search, so how have you kind of diversified your traffic sources?

Bob: Well for me it’s been a big– I just didn’t care about social media traffic at for really the whole time. I mean I was doing so well with Google and I was getting me so much traffic from them that I just didn’t pay attention to social media, and in about a year and a half ago or something, Google began to pull back a bit as far the traffic we were getting from them and it just kind of forced me to go out and figure out how to start getting some social media traffic. And anyway so we have been focusing a lot of energy in the last I don’t know nine months or so on Facebook and maybe the last three months or so on Pinterest and that yielded pretty good results so far.

Steve: Okay so yeah let’s talk about Facebook, I know you’ve had a lot of success in growing your fan base tremendously. So you know any tips on how to build up your Facebook fan base, and how did you manage to grow it so quickly? So I think you have like almost 40k funs at this point?

Bob: Yeah, October of last year, October of 2013, we had about 13,000 Facebook fans and that took us about five years to get those 13,000 fans and which I was like fired, I was happy to have 13,000 Facebook fans but I knew we could do better, I knew we could grow it, I knew there were other people out there who wanted to be fans and so we did put all our energy into it. And so one of the things– the big kind of revolutionary thing that I think made the most difference for us was we stopped only posting our articles. So for the longest time that’s all we did, was we just whatever article went up that day we would post it on Facebook and be done.

And you know I sat and thought about it and I was like this is just kind of selfish, it’s like all I’m doing is telling people here is what I just did, here’s what we just did, go look at it and I’m not giving this audience what they want. And we came to discover that our audience was interested in a lot of different things, and so e began sharing quotes– encouraging quotes and we’d share Bible verses that are specific to finances or whatever. We would ask engaging questions and try to get them there, we would share funny videos or whatever it was, and so some of the stuff was you know wildly off topic, but it was still stuff the people really enjoyed.

And so if the audience enjoyed it, even if it’s off topic, why not share with them. And that has made a really, really big difference for us. So we made that shift and began probably maybe one out of every seven, eight posts was about one of our articles and everything else was just stuff for the readers, just stuff for them to enjoy and that really helped us grow pretty quick.

Steve: Okay, so I would imagine though that you know this involves posting more frequently, so how do you kind of manage your time with respect to managing your different social media outlets like Facebook?

Bob: Buffer, buffer is all awesome, I absolutely love it.

Steve: So how many posts would you say that you buffer up, do you like buffer up a month’s worth, a week’s worth, a day’s worth, how do you kind of handle your social media?

Bob: It is always at least a week you know when I’m doing really well and have a big chunk of time to devote to it, and my wife helps me with this as well. She’s pretty heavily involved in our Facebook page and a Pinterest app. When I get a big chance, we’ll get out two or three weeks out ahead, but we’re always at least a week out.

Steve: So how do you decide what you are going to post there, so if you are not posting your own articles the majority of the time, what sort of topics do you focus on?

Bob: well, we just started experimenting, because I didn’t know it was going to work. I didn’t know if quote was going to do well, I didn’t know if something funny was going to do well, I didn’t know if a video would do well or you know what. So we just started trying different stuff and you know the Facebook kind of analytics is pretty good, you can see what’s working and you can see how many times it’s shared and liked and whatever else.
And so we just tried a bunch of stuff and just kind of evaluated that, and then started focusing more on the things that were working. And so for us it was a lot of quotes, it was a lot of Bible verses and you know funny stuff, and figuring all that out it takes a good amount of time and we had some mistakes and we had some things that were just complete flops that we thought were going to be success. But you just do it, do it and do and hone it and hone it and you get better and better at it.

Steve: Okay, so one thing also I was going to ask you, was in regards to Facebook when you are posting your posts, do you actually post from your old library or do you just post your new posts, how do you kind of work your own stuff in there?

Bob: Yeah, that’s a really good point. We do both actually because so much of our content is ever green, you know an article that was posted three years ago that’s just as relevant now, it’s like it’s a great opportunity to share something like that on Facebook. So, what we did is a lot of those posts don’t have good graphics, so we kind of recreated a new graphic for it just to make sure– did a look over to make sure it’s okay, it’s updated enough. You know we would post some of those older articles on Facebook as well as the newest stuff, and that really, really helped because a lot of those older articles that were really popular and really good, the Facebook audience may never them, so they should be shared. And a lot of those were some of our best traffic generators from Facebook.

Steve: Okay, and do you find that you are doing the same thing with twitter as well because it’s kind of a similar medium?

Bob: It is, twitter I– my kind of approach with this and a lot of aspects in my business is I try to find out one or two things that are working and focus all my energy on that. I mean twitter I focus no energy on.

Steve: Okay.

Bob: It’s on of the things that we– I don’t know we’ve seven or 8000 followers and we just get like next to no traffic from it and probably because I’ve never used it well and I never spend enough time to figure out how to do it well. I’m not very engaged, I’m not very active on it and the audience obviously knows that. So, we have a twitter account and so people who do follow us and want to see our latest article that’s for those in, that’s it.

Steve: Okay, so you don’t do the same thing, as you do with Facebook where you are constantly posting older twits and post older stuff and that sort of thing?

Bob: well, we are in a little bit and the only reason that we are is because of buffer and all I have to do is press an extra button and it goes to twitter as well. So we are doing some of that but the energy behind in creating and engage twitter audience is never been present.

Steve: Okay before we kind of got started with this interview, you also mentioned Pinterest, so how have you actually leveraged Pinterest for personal finance because traditionally we use it a lot for our online store because our products are just naturally suited to it you know but I wouldn’t necessarily think of personal finance being related to Pinterest if you understand what I’m asking.

Bob: No absolutely and it’s funny I mean I’ve had a ton of people tell me ‘oh you shouldn’t waste your time on Pinterest, you’re never going to get any traffic from them. It is when the girls just want to see clothes and cookies and whatever else’, and while there is some truth to that, there is a ton of– it’s just– I just had the stat the other day. The number of pins– the total number of pins that had been pinned on Pinterest I think has doubled like in the last six months, like something just astronomical like that where it’s exploding you know. It’s still on its exponential curve where it’s growing so fast and we have enough– I mean there’re definitely some articles that will never the light of day I mean wherever.

Some of the benefits have a self directed allay or something, it’s like I don’t ever expect to gain any pins on that, but there are enough articles that I think we can make work that clearly some people are pinning and we’re just trying to leverage those as best as we can. And so I know we’re not a fashion company or we’re not a food blogger or anything like that, so we probably won’t be able to get the amount of traffic that they get. But like we’ve talked about I’m just trying to diversify those traffic streams as best possible, and I want to milk it for all we can get out of it.

Steve: So, just curious which one of your finance posts have done the best on Pinterest?

Bob: Well, the interesting thing about Pinterest is when you get pinned by somebody who has a huge, huge following then it’ll get pinned by a whole bunch of other people, so it goes in its kind of viral waves, and so ironically– I mean it may be it isn’t that ironic I don’t know, anyway the best article that we’ve had so far with the most pins is an article about how to pay up your mortgage early you know which that makes a little bit of sense to me, I could see some people being interested in that, but what shocked me was that the graphic was just terrible.

I mean just terrible chissy stack photo and in tiny you know it’s like 100 pixels by 100 pixels or something, and that’s what somebody pinned and then hundreds of other people pinned it and so ultimately it’s led to I want to say it’s like well into the five figures of pins and– so anyway it’s sent us a lot of traffic. So that one has done the best, there’s another one about– that we wrote about some legit work from home jobs– it’s done pretty well. Any kind of idea Y thing like I mean that works pretty well as well.

Steve: So did you do anything to get these pins or were they just kind of random?

Bob: Well, what I’ve learned about Pinterest is there is a random aspect of it but what you and I and any other blogger or really anybody with a website can do to help facilitate it, is to create an engaging graphic for anything that we want to get pinned. And I’ve noticed that the more I’ve done that, I’ve gone back to a lot of older articles and just created better graphics for them, I’ve layered to text on them just so they– others stand alone kind of almost like a business card for that post, and in taking that approach and getting a lot more of– a lot better graphics for these posts, it just sets them up to succeed.

And so a lot of Pinterest users really only want to pin good looking stuff because it’ kind of– for them it’s almost like an accessory you know just like wearing a nice pair of jeans, it’s I want my boards to look nice, and I want there to be good looking pins on there. So, anything you do to help them really, really works and so– anyway that’s made a big difference for us. Now that said, as soon as you do that, that doesn’t mean anything is going to change because you still those people to come to your post to pin it, in which that aspect of it I mean seems a little bit random to me unless you yourself have a pretty big following that you can send stuff out, and anyway I don’t know. I’m not going to talk forever on this but…

Steve: yeah, yeah do you have a big following is basically what I was getting and how important was that in developing your Pinterest traffic?

Bob: well we don’t and that’s what’s really interesting to me, like we have 2500 fans on Pinterst right now, but our traffic– our traffic has gone up at least four times from Pinterest just over the last two months, and the main thing we did was just create better graphics for all these already popular articles. So, it didn’t come from us growing our Pinterest audience which really surprised me and we’re trying to that as well, but really even if you don’t have a Pinterest page for your blog or your website, even if you just create better graphics, you are going to get more Pinterest traffic.

Steve: Okay, you know one thing I actually forgot to ask you about Facebook was kind of how you’re leveraging that traffic for your blog as well. You mentioned that the majority of posts aren’t going to your blog, so what is your master plan with your Facebook account?

Bob: Well, that’s something– so my first goal was to grow the audience and then– and as I was growing it you know I was seeing a little bit of traffic increase but nothing that was making me excited, and then probably within the last month or two, I’ve been experimenting some more and we’ve really, really upped our traffic and interestingly and this works out really well, the same type of thing works really well. Just really good graphic and so we’ve been publishing our posts and using some kind of captivating graphics or something like that, and it’s really helped a lot.

And we’re you know not to get too technical but basically when we were posting the creating the post on Facebook to link back to our article, we post it as an image, and then we include the link in there, and then maybe I’ll say one line about it you know and or something like that. But the important thing that I’m seeing is that we’re posting the graphic as an image instead of as a post. So, by contrast if you just dump any URL on the Facebook you know what you’re writing about, what you’re talking about right now, it creates its own thing and it’s smaller and it doesn’t seem to get nearly as much engagement for us.

Steve: So, let’s get technical for a little bit because I’m actually curious about this. So I’ve seen different strategies, so some people post the graphic and then the link and the description. Some people post just the graphic and then they put the link in the comments because I think Facebook kind of downgrades any sort of post with a link in it. What have you found?

Bob: I honestly haven’t heard that, so what we’ve always done is the passing you mentioned where we post the graphic and then the link is in the description, but I’m definitely going to try that out yeah because I haven’t heard that and that would be awesome if that just come through.

Steve: I was just curious if you had tried some of those things because yeah I have noticed that my Facebook fan page– they basically downgraded the amount of reach that a post gets, at least for mine, I don’t know if you’ve experienced the same thing.

Bob: Oh yeah absolutely.

Steve: Okay and so has that kind of diminished your efforts at all on Facebook like I know when I saw that happening I was like okay why am I focusing my efforts on Facebook if it’s not returning.

Bob: Yeah, well it’s funny because for us right as we were going up Facebook was pulling down the reach, so they just like kind of crossed to where I didn’t see big drop, so I think it was like in December they made a big change and our Facebook– our fan base was growing a bit at that point and we were getting more traffic from it, so I didn’t see much change throughout the whole thing, but I guess had they not changed I would have– we would be getting a lot more traffic.

Steve: yeah, so let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about your latest creation Pro-Blogging secrets, so great book by the way. I just bought it and I left a review for you.

Bob: Thank you.

Steve: My main question regarding just blogging and I’m sure a lot of the listeners want to know this. It seems like the blogger sphere is kind of getting really saturated these days, do you– and we kind of touched upon this earlier in the interview, but do you think blogging alone is enough and kind of if you were to start your blog brand new today, what would you have to do to get it to the same point as where ChristianPf is now?

Bob: Okay first question, it is getting saturated I mean there are– I just read a stat the other day there are over 60 million WordPress blogs out there, and that’s just WordPress, I mean WordPress is the biggest I already slipped it. Yeah there is a lot of blogs, but I really don’t– I don’t see it as a zero some thing you know I don’t see it as a pie and we each have our own slice of the pie, it’s just kind of like– to me it’s like if you are sitting in a room, we’re not going to run out of oxygen, you know what I mean?

Steve: Yeah.

Bob: And I kind of feel that way about blogging, I think there’s plenty of room still for all of us. I think the most important thing is for people to find you know and here’s all time but find your own unique thing, your thing that sets you apart, your thing that you’re really good at, the thing you’re excited about, the thing you’re passionate about, and when your competitive advantage in all that. I mean what do you know that most people don’t know, and what kind of insight can you share about this that most people can’t.

I’m sure there will be some other people who can, but that’s okay but you know it’s okay to be similar to a few but you don’t want to be similar to 10,000, and that’s where I think some bloggers get themselves in trouble in when they are really just kind of adding to the noise when they are basically just doing exactly the same thing as 10,000 other blogs. So you got to find some way to set yourself apart and be able to be different.

Steve: You know we touched upon some of the different mediums as well. Do you think that blogging by itself is kind of enough if you have a unique voice and that sort of thing or do you feel like today since there are so many blogs like even if you pick anything, you probably will find you know hundreds of blogs in that same niche, and often times even if your content is really awesome it’s– you still have to get it out there. So what are some of the strategies early on if you’re just starting today, what would you focus on?

Bob: Wait, okay you asked me another question before that?

Steve: I’m just bombarding you with questions, I apologize. These are just all stream of consciousness by the way, I don’t have any of these written down so let’s actually go with that because what I’m trying to get at is if you’re going to start today how would you actually get the word out about your– let’s say your content is really awesome and that’s a given, how do you get it out there?

Bob: You know for me, okay so here– I’m just excited about the things that are working for me right now. So anyway Pinterest I’m absolutely thrilled about because we just watch our traffic month over month increase pretty dramatically by using really good images. Now obviously we have a platform that we’re jumping off of so it’s making it a lot easier to kind of get the momentum going. But if I were starting over again today I would start a blog, I would get five– probably five really good articles specific to my niche really, really helpful stuff.

And I would go out and try to connect with other people on the niche, other people in maybe somewhat related niches and find places where I can guest post, and just find any place I can go right and get a link back to the site and not even necessarily for SEO purposes, but to get that traffic like that’s what I think I would do right now if I was starting over. Beyond that I would– something else to say because I say this all the time because I– if there is anything I regret, it’s that I didn’t start building email lists at the beginning.

Steve: Okay, sure.

Bob: It took me years to get serious about building an email list and so anyway that’s the other thing I would start doing. Every single person who comes to my site, I want them to at least think about joining my email newsletter. I don’t want them to leave my site not knowing it was an option. So anyway those two things I would spend a lot of energy on and you know to be honest it’s– most blogs it’s a slow build, it’s the overnight successes I mean are just pretty stinking rare and if you’re getting into this you can’t count on that, you got assume it’s just going to be a long slow thing and be excited about having you know a hundred visits to your blog the first month. Then if you get 150 the next month, great we have some progress you know and just use that progress as momentum to keep you going, and as long as it’s going up month over month you’re doing great.

Steve: Okay and you know one thing I actually forgot to ask you about is you mentioned email marketing. How do you actually run your email list? Do you have a bunch of auto responder sequences, do you blast out every article to your audience, how do you kind of run it?

Bob: We have few different things going on, so we have a daily newsletter which is the biggest portion of our list total and then we have a weekly newsletter. The weekly one sends out once a week, then the daily one sends out every time we post. Beyond that we have the people– once people sign up for the courses they are automatically part of our weekly list, so they will get an article from us every week, and so just depends. So basically the people you’ve signed up for daily will get whatever we post sent out to them, the people who sign up for weekly will get that as far as all the email courses– those are all set up on overall responders, so it’s very automated and pretty simple ones that their niche or work is done setting it up.

Steve: Okay and in terms of the weekly guides, are all those on the auto responder or do you just kind of– how do you pick one article that goes out for the week as opposed to your daily guides?

Bob: Well, this is essentially in auto responder. It’s an all assessed driven thing, so it just sends whatever like a summary email with the three articles or four articles that were posted that week with a summary of each one of them.

Steve: Okay and then the daily one is just is each individual article in its entirety or?

Bob: Well it used to be and I’ve since changed, I mean created teasers out of them, so we send a graphic and then little teaser linking to the article itself. I used to have a whole article in there and I decided I’m going to try this and see what happens if I just put a teaser in. And we did that and instantly we are getting thousands more visits every time we sent out something out and I’m like why did I not do it sooner. And I was waiting for the response; I want to see if anybody was upset, I didn’t get a single email from anyone complaining about it so.

Steve: Okay and you know at least for me I find that whenever I said out a blast I tend to sometimes shed subscribers right and so for the daily guides I was just curious what your unsubscribe rate is versus the weekly guides.

Bob: I don’t know like the overall unsubscribe for it I mean all I know is that we were gaining more everyday than we were losing, so that’s all I’m excited about. I mean it’s considerably more, we are gaining a lot more. I want to say on the daily one, we probably lose around two, three, four, something like that each time we send out one and each day I think we’re picking up about 30 for that list so.

Steve: Okay cool and then so whenever you have like a book launch or what not you kind of just blast it out and let everyone know you have another Amazon book out right?

Bob: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Okay, cool well Bob so we’ve been talking for like around 40 minutes and I don’t want to take up too much of your time plus I have to get to work. But you know if– so let’s talk about your book and if you can provide email address or twitter account where people can reach you if they want to ask you questions, that’d be great.

Bob: Sure email address is bob@christianpf.com and the book you mentioned is ‘Pro-Blogging secrets’ that’s what it’s called. I just launched it about a week or two ago. Essentially it was a follow up just quick story, the article you read that I told you was a ChristianPf4/blogging that bigger that big article, the 8000 word article I got started on a whole book thing because I decide I’m going to turn this into a kindle book just to give another way for people to download it and– in any way I thought I could just list it on Amazon for free and it turned out Amazon said no you have to charge 99 cents bla bla bla.

So anyway so I headed up there and I still even at 99 cents they had to turn down people downloading it. So anyway so this book now is a follow up to that and so I go into a lot more kind of specific techniques and things that I’ve used over the years to grow our audience and to increase earnings, and I get really, really specific lots of how to step by step things. Really a lot of this stuff is just the secret source I feel like I’ve learned and just kind of want to share with people so.

Steve: Yeah just for the listeners we’ve only scratched the surface regarding what’s inside this book so I highly recommend that you guys all go and pick it up. So hey Bob thanks a lot for your time.

Bob: It was my pleasure

Steve: It’s a pleasure talking to you, you know normally we only see each other once a year, but Thinkon is coming up so hope to hang out with you there some more yeah. Okay man take care Bob.

Bob: All right, thanks Steve see you.

I’ve known Bob for quite a while now, and I really love his story. Basically he was stuck in a major rut financially, decided to take action and turned his life completely around. Now today his blog gets an insane amount of traffic and his brand new book is very well written and full of useful strategies on how to grow your readership, so I highly recommend that you go check it out in the show notes.

So for more information about this episode go to mywifequiteherjob.com/episode31 and if you enjoyed listening to this episode, please go to iTunes and leave me a review. When you write me a review, it not only make me feel proud but it helps keep this podcast up in the ranks so other people can use this information, find the show very easily, and get awesome business advice from my guests.

It’s also the best way to support the show and please tell your friends because the greatest complement that you can give me is to provide a referral to someone else either in person or to share it on the web. Now as an added incentive I’m also giving away free business consultations to one lucky winner every single month. For more information go to mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business be sure to sign up for my free six day mini-course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

Steve: You are listening to the Mywifequiteherjob podcast, where I bring in successful bootstrapped business owners to teach us what strategies are working and what strategies are not. Now, this isn’t one of those podcasts where I bring on famous Entrepreneurs simply to celebrate their success, instead I have them take us back to the beginning, and dwell deeply into the exact strategies they used earlier on to gain traction for their businesses.

Now before we begin, I just wanted to share a quote from Ken Schneider who was the winner of a free E-commerce consult. Here’s what Ken had to say: It is very apparent to me, that Steve has built a wealth of the E-commerce information in a way of offering ideas and needed insight that are very encouraging. After discussing an array of different ideas and possible options, he was able to provide me with the tools and information that would help me find my own niche online and for Steve’s help and information, I am most grateful. Now, if you would like a free E-commerce consult from myself, enter my free podcast contest, where I’m giving away free one on one business consultations every single month.

For more information about this consult go to www.mywifequiteherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six-day mini-course where I show you how my wife and I manage to make over 100K in profit in our first year of business; go to www.mywifequiteherjob.com for more information, now onto the show.
Welcome to the, mywifequiteherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites 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 Chou!

Steve: Welcome to the mywifequiteherjob podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have a friend of mine on the show, Viet Do. Now, I met Viet at Fincon and I know, I know I meet a lot of people at Fincon, which is why you should go. Anyways, you know Viet runs Dealzon.com which is a coupon sight for electronics and gadgets. Now, have you ever wondered how sites like TechBargains, FatWallet and other coupon based sites stay in business? Well, Viet does very well with Dealzon and hopefully today we’ll learn exactly how Dealzon works and how it makes its money. So, just a quick note about Viet; he’s probably one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet and his deal sight is a business model that we actually haven’t covered yet in this podcast. So, welcome to the show Viet, really glad to have you.

Viet: Hey Steve, yeah, thanks a lot for having me on the programme. I hope I can shed some light on – for those people that might be interested to the field or the kind of like how coupon sites work and maybe give them some insights on how the industry works.

Steve: Yes, so, give us a brief description of your specific coupon site and exactly which products you focus on, and how you make money online.

Viet: Yea sure! So, Dealzon.com is very much a deal site– a deal aggregate site for gamers and techies, and that’s our focus. We– you won’t find like you know, Wall mart deals in terms of like, you know, groceries and what not or like target deals on any of that kind of stuff here, so you’re not going to find shoes or clothing, that’s very rarely, when I start giving away free shoes then I guess we don’t have a choice, we had to like, let people know about this right? But we mostly focus on technologies and gaming. And we have a very core set of users that pretty much just care about these so, mostly the people that visit our sites are gamers and then –

Steve: Okay –

Viet: They rate our stuff. So, if they are a gamer, they want to buy games and maybe like a computer hardware that relates to the game right, to learn the game faster. So, how DealZon works is pretty simple as any other of those deal sites that you mentioned actually.

Steve: Just pretend that none of the listeners know anything about how anything works.

Viet: Okay.

Steve: So…

Viet: Okay, that might be a good way to go with them. So, I mean, if you come to DealZon, you’ll see a list of the best deals of the day right, and if you’re a gamer, you can see right around on the first page – oh, okay, well, this game is on sale today. So, the front page will basically show you what’s hot for the day. Now, if you want to drill it down a little more, there’ll be different categories and you can go to different categories with the type of products that you’re interested in. So, as mentioned, we’re mostly focused on gaming and technology so gaming and laptops is kind of what we focus on lately.

Steve: Okay and bottom line I when someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you get a cut of that transaction.

Viet: Yes.

Steve: Is that correct?

Viet: Exactly.

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So this a commission based model, it’s basically lichen – an affiliate lichen, so you know, we use very typical networks such as commission junction, link share and various other networks.

Steve: So, but is that for physical products primarily then?

Viet: it’s half-half actually. So, these days, in terms of gaming – and especially if you’re not into the norm of it and I know that different industries are like this; it’s actually a lot of digital products now, so you know, well, these days when you buy a game, it could just be a CD key of a game key that you receive, and you plug into your like a DRM platform – you know, a digital rights management platform – and you’re going to receive the game that way. And you know, since it’s a digital product, you know, is actually a very little hassle involved for everyone involved, where you pay the money and you get your keys and you get the game and that’s it, and you know, there’s no shipping time or whatever right, so –

Steve: Okay.

Viet: It’s actually a pretty good way to go to– about getting a game these days, and it’s expanding lately, yeah.

Steve: Are the pay outs higher for those type of deals as opposed to the physical products because –

Viet: Yeah, I don’t think so, it’s typically higher. It’s not necessary like 2X or whatever, or like 3X or whatever, just, but by virtue of the merchant not having to store anything beyond like a digital code right, that they can e-mail out right away through the system. They’re just more willing to- there’s just more margin and leeways there, in terms of a commission split.

Steve: So, can you give us an idea of what some of the commissions look like on a physical product verses you know, a code for example?

Viet: Yeah, sure! I’m going to be very general here, in the sense that you know, some of our stuff there’s you know, different rates, so for those that aren’t familiar with affiliate models, what you make them the bulk of your money, is how you negotiate these rates with merchants actually…

Steve: Okay.

Viet: And maybe we’ll talk more about it in a little bit, but– so let’s say for physical stuff, something you can buy at BestLife.com or Walmart.com in chance of the TV or a laptop or computer. The commission rate is actually pretty low; it’s like 1-2% –

Steve: Okay –

Viet: Maybe as high as 3% if you have like the right volume and the right, you know like the right partnership going– deal going on here so, but it’s usually about 2% – I want to say and lower. Surprisingly some other sites like let’s say, a pretty big retailer, Newegg. Newegg is based in California and they mostly sell computer electronics. They can get-they can start as low as 0.5% or 0.25%…

Steve: That is really low!

Viet: That is very low so you’re really not going to make that much money there unless you’re established, you have volume and you’ve been doing well with them for a long time, right-

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So, in that sense there’s a sum bared of entry you know, because once you get in there are-you list this deals great, someone bought like a 100$ thing, but you’re only getting like 0.5% all of that right, that’s like nothing –

Steve: Yeah, that’s like nothing.

Viet: Right, so that’s tough right. Conversely, so physical products want a cheaper set right, usually. For digital products, I want to say you know, maybe anywhere– actually it might be actually 2X now, so think about so 4-5 %, I want to say…

Steve: Okay.

Viet: And then maybe…

Steve: All right.

Viet: Maybe, for some very lucrative, high margin stuff, let’s say there’s something like, like a 100$ special, super limited edition game you know, so the margins might be a little bit higher where they’ll give you some as high as 8%.

Steve: Okay, so the margins aren’t still as high as for something I might push on my say like web services where the pay-out is much higher.

Viet: Right. It very much is a volume game for deals and coupon site, where each have to make it up in terms of volume – you have to make your site, your usability, the information you present as easy as possible to convert these sales you get these commissions.

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So –

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So you can’t rely on like two or maybe a 10 or 20 sales per month right, we’re doing around about like thousands of transactions on a monthly basis or even on a daily basis, right, so-

Steve: Okay.

Viet: Yeah.

Steve: So when someone buys something through you, you don’t have to provide any sort of support or anything like that?

Viet: Right. I think that’s the beauty of most affiliate and [Indiscernible] [00:08:36] business, so I mean, obviously we have to give some kind of support if the transactions or the deals we listed fell through in the sense that – oh, we show a coupon like this and it doesn’t work, you know, so we need to tell them– oh, did the coupon expire or is there a new coupon, or is there a different better deal, you know so –

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So there’s some amount of support, but after they buy you know, the products, obviously everything else is on the merchant, right –

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So –

Steve: So, there’s a lot of these tech deal sites out there, how the heck do you differentiate yourself and compete with the rest of them?

Viet: Yeah, I mean that’s a good question, I mean, that’s something we constantly think about on a daily basis too actually [chuckles]. So, I hope to see like some comments where you guys can give us tips to – I’ll be honest – that’s pretty funny that I’m asking that, but [chuckles]. But, how we kind of differentiate ourselves is, what I imagine is, straight from the start, we focus on what we do good at – what we do well at, actually, which is gamers, right—we focus on it, we have a cool audience of gamers, we kind of know what they like, we get a pretty good feel of what they like in terms of products, so we serve that particular niche.

So, instead of doing like all these different types of coupons for everything under the sun, we focus on what we do well at, and we try to provide a better service in that sense of better updated deals, more timely updates, stuff that you might actually, not so– I’m pretty confident that some of the games that we list, maybe it’s only going to give us like 10 sales, and these are pennies on our dollars, but these aren’t stuff that other sites will focus on whatsoever like, you won’t find it there on these other deal sites. So, the comprehensiveness for a gamer, in the sense that, if I’m a gamer and I want to make sure I don’t miss the hot deals, then I can go to Dealzon and I can pretty be– rest assured that maybe I’ll catch like 90% of the deals.

Steve: I see so by focusing on something you actually will probably get the deals listed first because the other sites don’t care as much and then as a result gamers will learn this overtime and then come to you first.

Viet: Right, exactly, I mean that’s basically our hope and I think it’s been doing pretty well actually.

Steve: So okay yeah. So there’s a couple of questions I have now. So one; how do you actually get the deals on your site?

Viet: Yeah, so it’s actually very similar format all across the board. It’s a very chaotic thing in terms of the coupon space in the sense that you know there’s 1000s of merchants and there’s 1000s of deals right hunches of 1000s of deals even. Most of the merchants actually– you will be surprised a lot of that stuff deals is in virtual edition now, they plaster our email and no kidding. An email with the list of the top deals for up to the week. So it’s like a feed of emails– you open your inbox it’s like a hunches of emails coming in. Now obviously a lot of the better networks still have a API where they a certain theme where they’ll send out like you know the data, but a lot of them is unnecessary human because some– You can already exactly see the data and then copy and paste to your site basically. You need to able to manipulate this second data essentially.

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So there’s actually a lot of work involved in that, and I think there’s actually a few services that– so because the work looked so much because actually a few services that we don’t actually this but they make the transition easier. So they grab all the fin and all the different coupons for you and then they break it down in like a CSV file for you or what not, based on how you want to export and I think what’s this service called. Let me think, it’s not [Inaudible] [00:12:12]– I think coupon to me, so.

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So that’s one of the services, you know.

Steve: So let me just try to rearrange what you just said, so you’re saying some people email out the deals–

Viet: Yeah so, the merchants would– most merchants, the large merchants don’t have like an account manager of some sort, right and they’ll have like weekly deals right. So they’ll be like hey this is what we are trying to promote on our store– on our online stores this week. Take a look at the list of our deals. And it could be any kind of format it could be just plain text email format, it could be attach excel file, you know could be just a bunch of bullet points, could be a strayed out HTML files encoding of the deal in question right.

Steve: Okay and how do you get that on to your site is that then manual then?

Viet: Yeah, so there is quite a bit of manual work involved but we build our own tool. There’s actually– so I’m not in the coupon safe spacing internet buying. I’m pretty sure there are word press plug-ins that make your life a lot easier to get e-step in but at some point you’ll still need a manual, human editor involved to like either copy and paste or make sense of these data you know like here’s some because some bit of words that come in might not– might truncate a little bit, might not that you know just spread properly. So we build our own tool we have our own platform that grabs all these feeds, whether it’s email or data you know straight from the API or our feed or X amount feed from the merchant and it’s mostly XML feed actually.

Steve: Okay.

Viet: Yeah and you know we make sense of this data on our back editor, human editor kind of adviser and properly in all that great stuff.

Steve: So what you are saying you’ll receive list of these deals in all sorts of different formats depending on the person – depending on the business and then you have tools in the backend that kind of code in all these information?

Viet: Yup, exactly so in that sense yeah there’s definitely a lot of work and then that’s kind of why we focus on what we do while we’re out too because if you expand too much more retailers it just really becomes like a major headache right?

Steve: Yeah, by the way.

Viet: And then I think for those people that aren’t aware like you know Slickdeals which is one of the larger you know deal website right, they have a massive community forum you know they have the human resources and the human you know the mob power – the social power right there in terms of users pushing up– posting audio’s in different deals on their message board right?

Steve: Mm-huh.

Viet: But even – even having all those community they still have like analogue 10, 20, 30 editors, you know working on posting deals and that’s quite a bit, right? So…

Steve: Yeah, that’s crazy and that can be fun and it’s kind of manual, right?

Viet: Right, right yeah. I won’t necessarily call it fun, but you know it really depends on how you take a look at it you know our editors and myself included, we try to– maybe that’s so much these days but we try to be able make it a game out of there like say, who can post you know the best deal the fastest in that sense right.

Steve: Okay.

Viet: So you know if there’s got very hot game coming out and we know everyone wants this game, you know we would love to be the first to find this deal and post it everywhere you know, in terms of our own site…

Steve: Sure.

Viet: On our day Face book feed or you know our Tweeter feed or what not, right.

Steve: Aha.

Viet: So.

Steve: So on the flip side also there’s a bunch of deals that expire everyday too. So how do the heck do you know when to take these things off and that stuff?

Viet: Right, so that’s half– that’s so another [inaudible] [00:15:31] right in there too like a lot of this is actually manual, but most of these thankfully the merchants themselves will let you know the expiration day in advance, so–

Steve: Okay.

Viet: We just simply send them on our backend and it’ll automatically expire mostly, and if we don’t capture you know usually a user we’ll comment and let us know that hey this deal is expired, then we know we just go out– head out there and expire that deal.

Steve: Okay, so certain services like I use commission junction you mentioned that earlier…

Viet: Sure.

Steve: And they actually have an API where you can just grab everything kind of automatically into your platform with a little bit of programming.

Viet: Yeah.

Steve: Do you guys have a preference or do you just kind of go with where the deals are at?

Viet: We kind of go with where the deals are at actually, but we definitely do utilize that you know obviously you want to make the manual work load as low as possible. So if you have the resources you get a developer to you know work out your own– what does your own platform of grabbing these things in properly to fit your– to fulfill your needs, that’s way better right than doing it manual, but on other times the ones that already make money is actually stuff that’s happening in right traditionally in email actually you know where a manager– a store manager might have– and a fully account manager actually let me correct myself– will be very in tune with what we need or what those were with our audience and they gave us a head start hey this deal is happening next week if you have some details in the email right.

Steve: I see.

Viet: We just watch out for that deal you know and yeah we can of course we can always grab it automatically whenever you know from the API or from XML deal but that’s always depending on like you know whenever we set these automatic data grab to happen right, so we very well might miss that X– the actual hour where the deal goes live right.

Steve: Aha.

Viet: So a lot of the more exclusives or the deal that people actually deal one actually happens lot in email so.

Steve: Interesting email, wow that’s horrible.

Viet: Yeah that’s horrible actually. When you even think about it and you know there’s pros and cons in there you have the good communication channel with – and you work with these people and you do good large volume with them. So there is a need for the– an open communication channel but there’s– I won’t be surprised you know if there is a better service in the next few you know whenever actually to make the job easier and you know the space is right for some sort of disruption that’s for sure.

Steve: Okay, so what you – what I’m trying to gleam off you know is, you know essentially all the sites have access to the same coupons essentially right?

Viet: Yeah, I mean you’re not going to really get like all these unique stuff I’ll be honest. If you find like a deal site you like and you use allegory you know, hey more power to you keep using, you don’t really need to come to DealZon and that sounds so bad actually.

Steve: Yeah.

Viet: But I feel like you know a lot of times unless, unless all you care about is gaming. So yeah you should actually come to us.

Steve: So I mean so each, each text like kind of has its own focus right because you said it’s kind of manual. You kind of have to pick and choose what you want to focus on right?

Viet: Sure, sure that’s for me. So but you definitely want see some of those the same stuff on most sites but the difference is may be what they highlight isn’t what’s the hottest latest right now. A lot of these stuff especially front page is very much click carried and right by the editors, right.

Steve: Right.

Viet: And some of these actually might be paid place material too and which we can talk about in a little bit–

Steve: Yeah.

Viet: So and you know so you needed to juggle between like hey is this guy really –is this really a good deal or is it just something that’s pushing you to sell because it gets in the most commission right?

Steve: Right, right okay.

Viet: So, and so it’s mostly that I think and I think because of human automatic coration [phonetic], if you start you know agreeing with what the editor puts on and chances are that’s a great deal then yes you should be comfortable with that site in the sense that they are pushing stuff that they know people like and want and not just because what’s you know shows the bottom line or converts better or what not right.

Steve: Okay, okay so that kind of actually leads to my next my question is, which is you know how do you actually get people to come to your coupon site in the first place right?

Viet: Yeah so I mean obviously marketing is like such a broad and you know broad discipline right but how we did it initially and this is actually quite a while ago, I want to say like three years back, is we started like you know so for any kind of hot products and this is kind of go back to email once again. We just email blogs these new steps you know on like called latest products to like tracking gadget size like tracking gadget blog basically news blogs–

Steve: Like in gadget?

Viet: Yeah exactly, you know like hey you know may be the latest Mark book Pro just slashed the price by 100 bucks and that’s actually very rare for Apple products, right?

Steve: Right.

Viet: And you know stuff like that basically and then you slowly and surely you build some links you know you send some else – some good new steps and you build an audience that way. And another method that we kind of use is we partner with a few different sites and if they have the right community and then if the fit is good, we post regular deals on their site and if in terms of – in the format of a blog post or a news stead or and stuff like that and that’s how we kind of like funnel trafficking sometimes.

Steve: What do they get in return for the blog?

Viet: You know the page views you know they – sometimes we have very rarely do we have like revenue share agreements you know and then when we have that obviously we have to disclose it carefully. So that works out when it fits with in terms of the community and audience right. We do this with may be like with individual sites, where, maybe some guy runs a gaming blog, right, and he knows that people like these kind of deal posts, and it helps support the website, helps support the community, you know, so it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

Steve: I see. But let’s say, I run a really popular gaming site; why wouldn’t I just put my own coupon codes on there?

Viet: Yeah, I think you should, actually, but we go back to all those hassle, all those manual stuff you know, you really have to be on the know, in terms of like what’s going on this week and what’s going on next week, to properly do something like this, I feel. So, I think, if you run a gaming blog, you should definitely do this, or use DealZon, basically, and we will be happy to help you out, and work out an arrangement that makes sense. But yes, I think, if you run a gaming blog, and your only revenue source is like the very typical display ads and stuff like that, you should start considering an affiliated model; there’s certain ways you can do this balance without coming across as if trying to sell all these games to visitors, right?

Steve: Right.

Viet: Because this really is a value in the sense that, hey you know, ‘buy this game because it’s cheap– I mean, we’re not telling you to buy it, but we’re telling you what is cheap right now, whether you buy or not it’s up to you, right?

Steve: Uh-huh.

Viet: So there’s some actually a value in terms of that service.

Steve: Okay. The other thing I did notice, when I went to your site, was you actually do advertizing also. And when I saw that, I was somewhat conflicted because, shouldn’t the goal be to have someone click on your affiliate link and buy something?

Viet: Yeah, actually, you are correct about that; for a very long time, DealZon had zero display ads. You can make the argument that the entire site’s being advertised now, because every click will generate a commission sale for us, right?

Steve: Sure, sure.

Viet: But, yes, for a long time, we don’t have any display ads, but we actually test this, a little bit. It didn’t really hurt conversion one way or another, and it’s just basically more money in the revenue so that we can keep the servers up and what not, so…

Steve: I see. So you just add them on, just to see if it’s going to affect your affiliate revenue; it didn’t affect it, brought in more money, so you decided to keep it on.

Viet: Yeah, we kept it on. We can probably do with two more banners– I mean, two three banners, to be safe, but at some point, you’re it’s just you’re clouding your site with a bunch of banners, so we’re okay with just one. And here’s the thing about this– and this is a tip for anyone that runs anything– any similar or is interested in affiliate space; When you have inventory, in the sense of like banner ads, or whatever slots, when you create inventory, that gives you the ability to sell these slots to advertisers, when the right time comes along– you know that might be a seasonal thing. I mean, in holiday seasons, all the merchants have the right budgets to work with, like promotions, so if your site’s the right fit, they might throw you a bone, give you a little bit more money, just to put a banner on your site to your [indiscernible][00:23:55] and you know whatever the heck that you might be getting from, whatever display network you use, you know whether it’s something like adsense or whatever else, right. So, by the virtue of having a banner, it gives you the ability, in the future to sell that slot, does that kind of make sense? So…

Steve: Yeah so, sell it privately to an advertiser.

Viet: Right, exactly. You know if you never have that in the first place, it’ll be a hard pitch to tell people, ‘hey, I’ll put you here’, while you didn’t have that before, so…

Steve: Okay, so what percent– is the breakdown heavily skewed towards affiliate revenue, or what’s the breakdown, between advertizing…

Viet: Oh yeah, by far, by far. The advertizing is just there really, because it pays for the server bills I want to say, so it’s not– it’s not exactly like zero dollars, but it’s also not something that we really stress about or focus on a lot, so…

Steve: Okay, so in terms of getting traffic, you mentioned working with other bloggers; are there any other traffic sources that you use?

Viet: Yeah. So, eventually, you know, we still get plenty of Google traffic – we try to rely less on Google these days, in the sense that we don’t really bother with optimizing that much anymore, in terms of SEO. If we have Google traffic, great, it’s because we have the right information and the right value, if not, whatever, right?

Steve: So, by information sorry– is this your blog post, or are these the deal pages themselves?

Viet: Both, actually, but mostly the deal pages themselves. We try to provide as much information as we can on a deal post, especially on the hot stuff — on the stuff that’s trending. So if there’s like a super old laptop, you know, two years old, obviously you’re not going to find the latest information there, right, because at this point, no one is going to buy that kind of particular laptop anymore. But for the latest stuff, yeah, I think so, we might have like hey more information on a particular computer model, hey maybe you should buy X over this because of these features, so stuff like that, basically.

Steve: So do you guys have that sort of content on your site where you’re comparing different items, and that sort of thing, or…

Viet: It’s mostly in the edited notes; we have a lot of it back in the days, but, like I said, we try to rely less on Google in a sense, so we only provide those information that is useful to our users. I suppose you can make the argument that what’s good for the users is good for Google too, but that’s always a bonus in the sense that I mean, there’s a lot of sites that bounce just a lot of key words in content, and by the virtue of their domain authority, they will rank for it, right?

Steve: Sure.

Viet: The coupon space is kind of iffy that way in the sense that sometimes and I’m sure a lot of users will know this– they search for a particular coupon in the other site, and there’s really no coupon!

Steve: It happens to me all the time, it’s very annoying.

Viet: It’s very annoying! We try to stray away from that as much as possible. Yeah, it makes us a little bit less money, but I’m a little bit more happy about it – I sleep a little bit better at night, you know. Yeah some people can say that you’re throwing away money, but if the coupon doesn’t exist, we say so; it’s expired. You can still click through it if you want to, you know, if you want to check if there’s something new, but there’s no coupon, so that’s that.

Steve: Okay. And I would imagine you don’t do any paid advertising, because the price just doesn’t work out economically, right?

Viet: I think it does, actually, but we don’t do that. I’m not sure if I’m giving too much information in that sense, but [Inaudible] [00:27:03] pretty much all of our revenue in a sense, is very much organic, it’s very much the users on DealZon, and some portion of it for our partner blogs.

Steve: How would pay traffic work? I mean, you’re paying an amount that seems like it’s a lot higher than your affiliate products.

Viet: It’s tough, right? I mean we’ve dabbled in it, and I can see it can work, but I’m not a PPC expert in the sense that, I can’t juggle that on a daily basis, and it’s very much average where you have to make sure whatever you bid is obviously a lot less than the commission you get. And it actually does still work well; you’d be surprised like how some of these large retailers just don’t do a good job advertising their own products or their own stores. So, there’s still a lot of space for the middle man, in a sense, the whole system still works. Instead of having their own internal team, they just pay it out by the affiliate model that way. So it’s kind of funny, I think going to change in the future, especially– if I run any one of these– If I’m like the business guy, or the revenue guy at one of these larger companies, I will think strongly about having my own PPC team to do the– and they do have them, don’t get me wrong, but between them and the affiliates, it’s an interesting space where you’re just throwing a lot of money, to try to break even, or to try to make like, the actual dollar out of your 50 cents spent– ask them.

Steve: Sure, sure. Do you guys do a lot of email marketing?

Viet: Lightly. We have our email list that’s fairly large, in a sense that I’m planning to trim it down to the guys that don’t really open our emails anymore, to save our costs. We do email marketing, we send out daily emails, and we’re starting to do a better job segmenting these. Some people actually only want to see video game deals, some people only want to see computer deals, some people only want to see HD TV deals. We find that that helps conversion a little bit more. So if you can segment it and if you have the volume that justifies it, you should definitely do it. And, hopefully the whatever email service provider that you sign up for has the segment ability.

Steve: How do you get people to sign up for your email list?

Viet: I think it’s very similar to what a lot of sites employ, so you know, there will be a pop up overlay, telling you to sign up. We try to be less– we try to balance between being annoying about sign-up and trying to make sure we convert these sign-ups, because if you’re just having a side-bar box, I’ll be honest, a lot of people aren’t going to see this thing, right?

Steve: Right.

Viet: The conversion difference there is like astronomic– could be something like 0.1% versus 3%, so that’s a big difference.

Steve: So I see. I would imagine that your sign-up rate would be kind of high– everyone wants to get good deals on stuff, right? I would imagine it’s pretty attractive.

Viet: Yeah, I can make the argument that’s okay. I really don’t know what it looks like on the other sites, I try to take a look at what the industry averages, but it’s kind of hard to guess that right in terms of…

Steve: Sure. Yes.

Viet: But you know I think when you do an overlay like this, if you provide good value, you should– for a long time we actually were very hesitant in having an overlay pop-up for email grab. But after a while we– again, just like the banner ad, we did an epic test; it didn’t affect the sales, and it didn’t affect any other noticeable matrix, so we kept it on. And, to be honest, when we axed it out, we still ended up cooking we don’t bother you for quite a good amount of time too, so…

Steve: Yeah, I know from my site I mean the pop-up is what actually converts the best.

Viet: Okay yeah, exactly.

Steve: Okay so, towards the beginning of the interview, you mentioned that sometimes you can get exclusive deals from affiliates, and it’s all about negotiation. So how does all that work, exactly?

Viet: Yeah, so I mean this is very much about chicken and [indiscernible][00:30:59] right, in the sense that, an exclusive is great – you get like an exclusive that people can only come to your site to get it, right or it might leak out get it elsewhere, but mostly people will come to your site to get this exclusive deal. But if you don’t– in order to get the exclusive, you need to have the right volume, to start negotiating with these partners, right and to introduce these merchants. You can see the dilemma here, in the sense that if you don’t get the exclusives, you won’t have the volume, and if you don’t have the volume, you won’t get the exclusives.

Steve: Right.

Viet: So I would definitely start– for anyone that’s inc. like a region space– my recommendation is basically just ask outright. Ask them hey what kind of volume we need to get to get some kind of exclusive deal or something that might be– and to be fair some of these exclusives are not exclusive in a sense that they will not happen again but it will be fogging you for that time period basically. Does that kind of make sense?

Steve: Okay, yeah. So how does an exclusive deal work exactly? Is it the pair on hire or is it just by virtue of you being exclusive that’s good enough?

Viet: Oh no I think it depends on how what the — it’s very much merchant dependent so sometimes he has to pay as you higher sometimes they give you a better deal like a better percentage coupon, right.

Steve: I see.

Viet: So you know it converts even better because why use this other coupon this other site if this coupon gives you 25% versus 25% this other side right?

Steve: Right.

Viet: So there is a lot of that– and sometimes it makes them both, sometimes it’s just simply this deal is only offered through this site at during this time frame through this link.

Steve: So walk me through this; let’s say you gain an exclusive, what’s your first course of action. So you email your list, do you also still reach out to bloggers about your deals?

Viet: Yeah definitely. If we manage to snuck an exclusive we want to promote as much as possible simply because we are hoping that’s the best deal right?

Steve: Right.

Viet: So yeah the first course of action is actually you should get your own site, you blast out to the people that convert the best which is usually your email people and sometimes your social people. You know maybe for some people the measures are– it is that’s where your audience lives. And you actually basically mention the full cause of the action and then we blast it out to your partners and then finally you want to blast out to the rest of them. So I think anyone in any kind of space should always have an excel sheet or whatever of regular people to email blast things to and on top of like the new tips sites you know TipsAtWhatever.com right, in whatever industry and category you are in. So that whenever you have something interesting and note worthy you can always rely on the list to get at least a few mentions of whatever you know exclusives or promotions that you have at the time right.

Steve: So what are your top traffic sites right now?– sources of traffic.

Viet: I think I will be mum on that in a sense that…

Steve: Okay no that’s fine.

Viet: Okay yeah, but to be honest most of our traffic is still coming from DealZon actually. We have a very healthy amount of users on DealZon and in terms of revenue numbers a good chunk of it is still coming from DealZon too. So like I said we are doing a very decent job theses days of diversifying our traffic source and income source. Three years ago, I want to say, Google would bring about like 50% of our traffic right, and 70% of our revenue. That’s actually quite a big chunk right.

Steve: Wow.

Viet: Just because it converts better. These days we make way more than we did before and Google is like what, 20% of our traffic visit and, maybe exactly the same amount, 20% of our revenue too. So at some point you already want to move away from a Google mentality and I think you definitely mention this a lot of times you know whether in your podcast or in blog post right.

Steve: Yes.

Viet: Two thirds and you know and email list is one such great revenue source right. These are people that opt in the people that already want the information right. So if you can build a channel like where no one else can mess with, I want to say that’s a good comfortable spot to be at.

Steve: Okay, so if there is someone out there who wanted to start their own coupon site how would you suggest they start. So one thing I forgot to ask you about is that actually what platform you run your site on?

Viet: So we actually– we built our own site. It’s on rails, we’ve been on rails. We built our own platform essentially. We have our own backend and our own frontend. This is actually more household than it’s worth–. Well, okay I think it’s working for us for our own usage but this goes to your question if you are starting a coupon site today, you know to make your life easier you should really just get a word press blog and there are various amounts of coupon plug-ins. I haven’t been keeping up to date on them but I know there’s obviously two, three pretty decent coupon plug-ins and coupon site templates that you can use right. And then really you should just find a specific niche that you do very well at right, and that you are very familiar with, that you are an expert at instead of trying to cover everything under the sun, you know try to cover that one thing that you can do a good job at providing information at. So that’s kind of where I’ll start.

Steve: Okay and then in terms of — you guys have a blog too right. So what use has the blog been in terms of…?

Viet: So for us we’re actually doing not too good of a job in terms of a blog, when you have a blog you really should update it regularly in a sense of like you don’t have to write every day. I’m not a believer in that but you should write consistently like let’s say if you are going to do a post per week, you should do a post per week on x day right–

Steve: Okay.

Viet: And for a blog you already want to do it so you supplement information in terms of deals that you’re– So for the coupons site I feel like the best way to do that is that you do price comparison or price prediction stuff like that basically.

Steve: Okay and one thing I also forgot to ask you is what was the source of your inspiration for even deciding to do a coupon site as opposed to some of the other business models out there?

Viet: So I think there is a lot of different things but I don’t think was ever marrying into the idea of like starting a coupon site and actually I did not start this. There is a different partner that left since then actually but I decided to join DealZon because I thought it’s interesting and there’s all things I can bring to the table in terms of the categories that we are focused on at the time and that was my expertise and this goes back to what I mentioned about how if you have expertise in terms of a particular category you know, I’m a gamer I’m a computer user, I know my computers very well maybe I know less these days than before because I don’t have time to read about this stuff anymore but if you are more comfortable to talk about a particular product and you enjoy talking about that particular product, it’s just a lot easier to try and sell those products too right.

Steve: Yes.

Viet: So it’s mostly that I think and you know I think at a time, you know, it’s kind of like- this goes to what we had mentioned earlier- if you search for coupon you run to your site and it’s just bunch of links but there is no coupon to be found, that’s annoying right. We wanted to try a little bit better than that basically.

Steve: Okay and so you do this full time?

Viet: Yeah I do this full time.

Steve: So were there– what was your source of your inspiration? Was there any books that kind of gave you the inspiration to say,” Look I want to start my own site and run my own business”?

Viet: I will be frank, not really. I think I am one of those few that started their own site back in the 90s right, and they would just miss the bow in terms of like becoming like one of those dotcom millionaires so I– but then we learn a lot in the process and we enjoy working online building websites, interacting with users and readers. So I think it‘s essentially that really verses like any one book or any one particular thing.

Steve: And are there any resources or services out there that you can’t live without with your site?

Viet: Yeah, so let me think about this of the top of my head. I think because we build our own platform a lot of the tools that we need, I have my developer build out the stuff but then there is definitely a few services obviously. We are hosting Heroku, so without Heroku obviously it’s– we used to have our own hosting services our own– and then the system that main portion is very much of a headache right–

Steve: Yes.

Viet: So that did obviously allocated to Heroku now, so that’s good. So we can’t live without Heroku. I guess you can argue that mailchimp is essential for us too in the sense that without mailchimp we don’t have an email list, I mean there is a lot of services out there but we are comfortable with mailchimp so we are sticking with them

Steve: Okay.

Viet: And I guess you know definitely that there are free other networks you know without them obviously that won’t work too right. You know without Commission Junction, without link share, you know, without these larger networks it gets a little bit tough right. So–

Steve: Okay, cool so Viet we’ve already been talking for quite awhile, where can people find you online if they have questions?

Viet: So if you head to dealzon.com there is contact form there but just email me at viet@dealzone.com and I’ll be honest, I mean I don’t mind giving up that, I think it’s a public email actually so yeah viet@dealzon.com and if you have random questions like this I will try to take some time out to try and answer them as best as I can.

Steve: Awesome well thanks a lot for coming on the show Viet.

Viet: Yeah, no problem I will talk to you later Steve.

Steve: All right talk to you later, have a good day.

Hope you found that podcast episode interesting. Now I for one have always wondered what it was like to run a coupon business online and at least at the back of my mind I always pictured a very hands off site that made money on auto pilot by automatically grabbing deals from a feed and displaying them online and as it turns out it’s not that simple and I probably should have known better. Now Viet shared some very useful tips on how to get traffic to a coupon website and I’m very thankful for his candor and revealing how his business works. For more information about this episode go to MyWifeQuitHerJob.com/episode 28 and if you enjoyed listening to this podcast please got to iTunes and leave me a review.

When you write me a review it not only makes me feel proud but also helps keeps this podcast up in the ranks so other people can use this information, find the show more easily and get awesome business advice from my guests. It’s also the best way to support the show and please tell your friends because the greatest compliment you can give me is to provide a referral to someone else either in person or to share it on the web. Now as an added incentive, I’m also giving away free business consultations to one lucky winner every single month. For more information about this please go to mywifequitherjob.com/contest and if you are interested in starting your own online business be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywife quitherjob.com for more information and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

Steve: You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where I bring in successful bootstrapped business owners to teach us what strategies are working, and what strategies are not. Now this isn’t one of those podcasts where we bring on famous entrepreneurs simply to celebrate their success. Instead, I have them take us back to the beginning and delve deeply into the exact strategies they used early on to gain traction for their businesses. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave me a review on iTunes, and enter my podcast contest where I’m giving away free one-on-one business consultations every single month. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you’re interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini-course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over a 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information. Now, on to the show.

Welcome to the my My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. We will 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 Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have a good friend of mine on the show Jeff Rose. Now if you don’t know who Jeff is, he blogs at GoodFinnancialCents.com, DollarsAndRoses.com. He’s got like three podcasts, his own financial planning practice and he actually makes a bunch of You Tube videos as well. And out of all the bloggers that I know, I would say that Jeff is probably one of the most charismatic personalities out there, and he’s actually built quite a brand for himself. Not to mention the fact that he also makes a good deal of money with his various businesses, and in fact he puts out all of his income online for everyone to see and I’ll go ahead and link that up with the show notes because it’s quite interesting where all the income sources come from.

Now Jeff is actually a hard man to track down. First of all you have to get past his virtual assistant, but fortunately I know all of his weak points, in and out burger, juicing and crossfits. So, step number one if you want to get a hold Jeff Rose, include in and out burger in the subject line of your email, and I may have also led him to believe that this podcast was about eating burgers. So sorry man no burgers here. Jeff is actually one of the reasons why I started this podcast in the first place. So welcome to the show Jeff. How are you doing man?

Jeff: You’re saying there is no in and out burger with this like– I’m sorry dude I got to go man.

Steve: I got you here, it’s too late, it’s too late we’re already recording.

Jeff : Cool man, thanks for having me on.

Steve : So you got a really interesting story, and I don’t know if a lot of people know about your back story. You kind of came from a poor upbringing. You joined the marines. What kind of made you decide to start your own business online?

Jeff : You know I mean my father struggled with that. I don’t want to make it sound like I was poor, poor but, let’s just say that both my parents they separated when I was a young age. My mom you know she has my step dad– he was pretty successful but, they just– both of them, mom stepdad and dad really did not know how to manage money at all. My dad filed for bankruptcy twice, my mom filed for bankruptcy once. At times, they had– my mom had five mortgages at one time.

Steve: Wow!

Jeff: And which like that’s what the [Inaudible] [00:03:37] but, they actually ended up losing like three of those like five properties because they just didn’t know what they were doing.

Steve: Was that during the craze with the real estate?

Jeff : No, no they– that was well before that. They actually– its funny you mention that because they finally like started doing better, sold their house in LA, moved to Las Vegas before the boom, and then they had cash left over that they actually were sitting pretty but, instead of sitting pretty, they invested it to a Vespa property in Las Vegas. Prior to that, they ended up losing two more houses to foreclosure. So yeah like that’s what I’ve been having to work through growing up, seeing some of those financial shortfalls along the way.

Steve : Man, okay. So you know what’s ironic about all of this, is that my parents, they kind of made their money through real estate, and you know at least that generation– they’ve always advised my brother and I to always buy real estate because that’s something that can never really go down. So it’s just interesting that your parents actually lost money during the boom with real estate so.

Jeff : Yeah, so like and you know my dad dropped out of college. You know when he was younger, he joined the army and after that he just kind of I don’t know he was like a car salesman, just kind of bounced around a lot of end jobs, and he always told me like you know he always wanted me to be– to do better than he is. So he really wanted me to go to college, you know do the whole degree thing, and I ended up dropping out my first semester of college, and started working a dead end job basically. And then I joined the army national guard, not the marines that you mentioned.

Steve: Oh my bad.

Jeff: It’s okay, it’s all good and you know joining the national guard for me was– that was my life savior I mean that, that’s what basically got my butt in gear, got me back on track just career wise and just getting focused again. And– but even still even getting my career back on track I still like knew nothing about investing or financial planning or really even how to manage money, and I end up becoming a finance major. Actually my dad suggested I be a Finance major, and you know I always listen to him so I went that path and ended up getting internship with a brokerage firm that ended up me becoming a financial planner and as they say the rest is history.

Steve: So.

Jeff: Go ahead.

Steve: You broke off from that to start your own practice eventually right?

Jeff: Yeah, so I did I was working for ‘the man’ for about five years building my book of business and probably one of the best things that happened was my old firm got bought out by a bigger firm and had that never happened I don’t know if I would have left, because I really enjoyed the company. That was the only coolade that I had drunk at that time and I liked the coolade I didn’t know any other, I didn’t want to try any other coolade, because I liked it. But, when they got bought out it forced me to kind of look at what other options existed and that’s when I ended up leaving with three others and co-founded our own investment firm, and we’re independent in our space is a common way of hearing that.

And when I went independent that allowed me to market myself a little bit more differently than others. I had a little bit more freedom and that’s really where the blog ended up. That’s where it all came from. With that ability to market myself and just looking for other unique ways to get myself out there and stumbled upon blogging and registered domain GoodFinnancialCents.com and it’s been a blast ever since then. That was back in July– I left December of 07, launched the blog in July of 2008.

Steve: So you actually started good financial cents to help promote your practice is that right or?

Jeff: Yeah, no that was that was basically the only reason. I mean I did have a passion for educating others, that was kind of the other underlying thing to it. But you know it was what it was. It was to market myself being an independent financial planner, and to hopefully get new clients. And along the way I learned more about blogging, about key words, and driving traffic and the fact that you can actually monetize the blog. First I started with Adsense, then eventually grew to using affiliates and other means. So it all– once I started blogging and networking with other bloggers, I just was opened up to an entirely new world that I was completely oblivious to at the time.

Steve: So let’s go in a little bit more depth. So how does JFC make money today?

Jeff: A combination, you know right now I still get the occasional new clients. Actually kind of a cool story I– this is three years in the making, I but I had a guy who I kind of knew here locally and he had seen some of my posts on Facebook where I share some of my blog comments or some of my blog articles and he emailed me. This was three years ago and said “Hey, I really appreciate your willingness to educate people on personal finance and investing. I have a friend that I want to introduce you to.” That was three years ago. Long story short that person just now finally got the money that they’d been waiting on to settle and brought in like 1.5 million dollars all because of my blogging efforts. But, that was like three years in the making, and at this point in time that is not the biggest client that I’ve got from my blog.

Steve: That’s awesome so I’ve been on your blog obviously many times. Is there– there doesn’t seem to be like a funnel that goes directly to your practice and at least as far as I could tell?

Jeff: Yeah, and that– its funny you mention that because we’re going to talk about a pivot here in a little bit, correct?

Steve: That’s correct at the very end. I said it out too early, didn’t I.

Jeff: You did that’s okay. You had an original question I forgot what that was?

Steve: How does it make money and yeah.

Jeff: Oh yeah. That is that is one way getting you know getting new clients that feed in to the practice. The the first way that I used to make money was using just using Google Adsense. Just because I really didn’t know any other way to make money. That was the easiest way, just slap some Adsense code on there, and let the money roll in. From there I started doing affiliates. My– probably my top revenue producers are like brokerage firms, Scottrade, TDAmeritrade, E-trade etcetera. I also do pretty good with the pure and pure lenders like lending club and Prosper and savings accounts like Capital One 360 and a few others. So affiliates are another revenue source and then banner advertising. I got a pretty good ad network where I get a fairly competitive CPM which you know is based on impressions. And those are basically the three ways I guess that bring in revenue.

Steve: So let me ask you this. So you said that you started Good Financial Cents to actually get more clients to you your practice, that was the initial intention. So doesn’t adding ads and you know Adsense and that sort of thing kind of– isn’t that kind of contrary to the kind of goal so to speak because you’re clicking on a banner that takes you off the site, so how does it all work together.

Jeff: That’s a great question. That’s something I had someone ask me the very beginning when I put ads on there, and what I– the logic that I went through to come to the conclusion why I left the ads on there was I cannot be a financial advisor for everybody. People are going to come to my site, they are going to– they’re maybe want to work with me maybe not, but if I can at least monetize that and get a few dollars from all the effort that I put into it, I’m okay with that. And the amount of clients I‘ve been able to get even with having advertising on there I think kind of speaks to that. So I feel like it’s just a nice secondary income that you know comes in and it’s a decent secondary income but…

Steve: Right, yeah, yeah, I’m definitely going to link up you’re your income reports in the show notes because it’s pretty impressive.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s just something that I wrestled with for a long time, but the final concluding factor or the thing I came to was Jeff you cannot be a financial advisor for everybody, and not everybody is going to want to hire you. The people who really want to hire you, they are going to look past the ads, they are going to contact you, ask a question. I get questions all the time, and I think that’s where, that’s where I guess that connection really builds. They contact me via email or contact form and really just share their entire financial history, and if I’m able to provide value you know that’s where there’s going to be– going to build that trust even having ads on the side.

Steve: So are all your clients kind of local to where you live or do you get people from all over the country?

Jeff: Actually majority are local, I do have a few that were not. I’ve got several that are out of state, but not huge. I think the furthest one I ever got which– this still amazes me was I have a client that is in the air force, and at the time of us starting our working relationship, she was stationed in Japan. And she found my blog for whatever reason, and like she wanted to work with me. And we– we’ve never met face-to-face, we’ve chatted on Skype a few times, and that’s it. She’s actually in the states now. I think she’s in Virginia, but she’ll be going to Japan I think in the next year. So that’s like my first international client per se, but I’ve got several on the west coast, and you know several scattered but I mean I’m not in every single state. I think maybe we have clients in about ten different states right now.

Steve: That’s actually really cool that you have clients that you’ve gotten from all over the country through your blog. Just curious, do they ever tell you why they decide to go with you?

Jeff: Yeah, you know there is one lady who recently, this is actually another lady. She is in my state, but she lives five hours from me and she called me, which happens every so often. And she told me she’s like her husband was in a situation where they were in their early 50s, and they were I guess something came up where they thought they needed a financial advisor, and the husband said to the wife “Hey do you know anyone that you feel that you trust.” And she is like, you know she’s like the only guy I know is this guy that I’ve been on his email list for about a year and he’s got a blog FinnancialCents.com, and she told me this when she called me.

She’s like I’ve been on your email list for a year and she’s like either you are super trustworthy or you have the biggest scam going but you know just the content you put out, I feel like that I know you. And I just thought that was funny that she was very candid about contacting me, because I love when people do contact me and want to work with me. I love just finding out how did you find me, and you know and just like with the lady in Japan like you know what was it about me that– because I told her, if I were you, I don’t know I could trust somebody to transfer all of my retirement assets even though I’ve never met that person face to face. I mean that is a huge leap of faith you know I would think, I couldn’t do it but I’ve had people do it.

Steve: It probably has something to do with your dance in You Tube videos. So for everyone listening, Jeff has all these You Tube videos where he’s actually dancing and acting kind of silly on the videos, but it somehow ties that in with personal finance in a very– in a very well done way. I can’t I can’t really describe it, I’ll just have to link up one of these You tube videos in the show notes for you guys to see. So okay, so you’re getting these clients through your blog. How do you actually get traffic to your site?

Jeff: You know, initially it was all just key words, it was– so kind of like my journey of really understanding how a blog works. The first key word that I ever wanted to target was financial planner Illinois. Actually, no correction, the first keyword that I ever wanted to target was my name Jeff Rose because before I started the blog if you goggled Jeff Rose like you didn’t see me. You found Jeff Rose the actor, Jeff Rose the golf polo maker, and Jeff Rose the superintendant in Oregon and you know that was it. So I wanted to own my name you know people wanted to do research on Jeff Rose they would find me, and that wasn’t that hard. After setting up the blog, setting up my LinkedIn profile and all that good stuff. But then I realized you know what, if people needed a financial planner they know, they don’t know Jeff Rose, they are not going to Google Jeff Rose. So I thought okay I’m want to target financial planner Illinois. So I went on this like campaign of guest posting and linking back to a landing page I created you know focusing on those key words, and I was able to do it. And I think it was two or three short months for the most part. And it’s pretty good considering the fact that I live in Illinois which you know I’ve got Chicago which is a pretty big city you know competing with all the financial advisors up there, and I was able to get at the time three listings on the top ten for financial planner Illinois.

Steve: Nice.

Jeff: I think it’s only two but I think I’ve got like three in the top twelve. So for a guy that really knew nothing about blogging, I was pretty impressed with that fete. So when I got that– when I was able to rank for that, then the thought was okay how do I rank for search terms for people that might need my services? Like 401k rollover, how much life insurance do I need to buy, how to do a Roth IRA conversion you know. Just figured basic thinking of key words or relevant search terms that people would need my services. So that’s when I started to write articles that were trying to target those certain key words. And this was all pre panda, pre Google panda which if people don’t know what that was, that was an algorithm update that Google did that just basically wiped out a lot of sites searching new traffic. So I was doing really good pre panda, and then Google for whatever reason didn’t like me, and I promise I wasn’t doing anything that wasn’t legal in Google’s eyes, but I got spanked pretty hard, I lost 70% of my traffic.

Steve: Wow, I didn’t realize it was 70%.

Jeff: 70% over night. April 11 2011[laughter] I actually just thought I looked at the date and I’m like you know what, that was like three years ago.

Steve: 2nd anniversary.

Jeff: Yeah exactly. It was horrible man, I mean I spent two and a half, three years building up this blog that was getting at the time a 100, a 150 unique visitors per month and lost it poo over night. And I just cried and you know kind of looked at myself but… So that was how I initially got traffic and you know since panda you know I’ve done more You tube videos like you’ve mentioned. Just focused on doing You Tube videos good content you know, just really putting out better content and doing like guest posting. I started writing for other major sites just to get more back links back to Good Financial Cents, and here recently here it’s the podcast. Launched the Good Financial Cents podcast earlier this year I think or last year I forget exactly, but you know but just basically doing things outside the box to drive traffic back to the blog. I guess the other major thing I shouldn’t have probably forgot about was my book…

Steve: Oh, yes.

Jeff: That came out last fall soldier sort of finance I released that got published in fall so you know all these different things I was doing all to get people back to my main hub which was my blog.

Steve: So are you still trying to get back in the rankings or is this just kind of your way of driving outside traffic and kind of Google proofing your site?

Jeff: You know, honestly, now like I used to do a lot of keyword research. And occasionally like I’ll start doing keyword research again, and like then I realized I’m never going to write the article to rank that term anyway. So now it’s like I don’t even– I don’t care as much as I used to. Like I think for example a recent post that I did was six things– I forgot things like title you know ‘six ways that retirees screw up their retirement’. That’s actually the worst title ever but, there is nothing about it that was targeting SEO. You know it was just six tips that I just felt that I’ve seen people continually screw up, with a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with. I took that article, I made the six tips, I’ve turned it into a podcast, I had my new assistant create a prezi which is kind of like a really sexy– like PowerPoint 2.0 presentation. So we created a nice prezi which I uploaded to You Tube, and I did a– when I recorded the podcast I also did a presentation with it as well, and I’ve got a nice image that I’ve created for Pinterest, and I’ll pin it on Pinterest. So just what I really want to focus on especially like my really good midi content is just to make it available, and as may [Inaudible] [00:20:19] as possible.

Steve: So out of all your referring traffic sources outside of Google, which ones do the best for you?

Jeff: Right now it’s actually Pinterest that’s actually driving the most referral traffic other than Google.

Steve: Really?

Jeff: Yeah, it’s my wife– she’s helped me a lot with the Pinterest pics and just making me knowledgeable with Pinterest and actually if I could check, let’s see. I mean Pinterest and then I think Facebook would be the next as far as social media referral.

Steve: So I’ve actually never gotten anything really hot on Pinterest and I was just thinking it was because the topic that I write about isn’t really geared towards that audience. Are you trying– are you kind of adjusting your content to appeal more to the Pinterest audience in any way?

Jeff: You know it’s something I go back and forth with, but the I just rebranded Good Financial Cents you know I just came out of doing site design not too long ago, and I started focusing more on the younger investor which is actually totally different than the actual clientele I work with. Most of my clientele probably 85% are of baby boomer age. But I– my wife who also has a blog and she gets a lot of young families to her blog which is kind of her residence because you know we’re a young family, we’ve got three young boys, so it’s just natural that those people kind of are the readers of her blog. And you know she always mentions me in her blog, so I’ve got like carry over traffic. So I just have a lot of people that come over from her blog that are all you know that are all younger they are all you know young families getting started financially. So it just kind of made sense to start devoting more content to that. And that’s kind of what’s been in our focus.

Steve: So I’d be curious, do any of those Pinterest people– have any of them become your clients?

Jeff : I’ve had a few people that we started on that path, but its– I– to protect my time, I don’t have like a minimum of clients like I formally announce you know like on my practice, from my blog anywhere, but I have you know have a mental minimum that I just know like to make it worth my time you know I have to have a minimum as far as working with people especially virtually. So I actually just more enjoy if they contact me, I like to give them the information you know they need, and it’s just kind of like point them in the right direction.

Steve: Okay. So let’s talk about some of your other web properties. So you got Good Financial Cents, you got Dollars and Roses, and you have a secret niche site which we I guess won’t go into too much depth about. But how does everything come together? So what is Dollars and Roses about?

Jeff: So Dollars and Roses was one of my– one of my many brain childs I came up with, but when my wife quit her job back in the fall of 2008…

Steve: Hey that’s already taken man, you can’t use that URL.

Jeff: What’s that?

Steve: You just said my wife quit her job. That’s…

Jeff: Wow, that was like totally, I’m going to actually register mywifequitherjobHq.com. It’s funny I just said that. So when she did quit her job and started helping me with my blog you know her– she didn’t have more time to focus on her blog, and that’s when she became more passionate about it. And I just thought it’d be really cool if we started a blog together that showcased our blogging efforts. And the initial intention of that, I mean it was basically a mirrored kind of a pathlin {phonetic] model, you know smart passive income, but to be more like the couple version.

And in the time, I really had no desire to be another you know Pat Flynn [phonetic] or you know another male in the internet marketing world. But my big vision was I thought you know if Mandy could really become more of a voice of this blog because in her niche I mean in the mommy blogger or lifestyle or whatever you want to call it. There just aren’t many mom bloggers that are very open and transparent with how much traffic they get, how much money they make from their blogs, you know it’s just kind of more of a taboo thing. They all want to pretend like they make money but they are never really open to share what that really is.

So that’s where I kind of– that’s where it all came to be. It was something we could do together, kind of a fun project and from that we started the podcast. But you know we don’t spend a lot of time on it because we’ve got so much other stuff going on that it’s not our main revenue maker so you got to kind of spend the time where you make money. But the same token I think that blog has done– it’s been good for us as far as like social proof like with the online space. You know her and I actually– we got asked to be a– to do a key note talk in San Diego this summer at a conference that you know that wouldn’t have came about if it wasn’t for the Dollars and Rose’s blog.

Steve: Let’s see so the purpose of Dollars and Roses in a way then is to just kind of strengthen your online presence, not necessarily tied to your practice or anything like that?

Jeff: Yeah, I have like this secret I think obsession of– I love being seen as an entrepreneur and you know one day if I ever want to sell the practice and then focus more on the online space you know this is kind of like setting those kind of like those steps to get there. So that’s kind of what the intent is I think.

Steve: I see, that makes sense I mean, I started my blog at the time as my retirement plan as well. So you know even though I’m still working the blog actually makes more than my salary so I could in theory I guess quit at any time. So since were on that topic. I often get asked actually on my blog what the best business model is in terms of making money online. You’ve tried a bunch of things including niche sites, blogging, writing a book, podcasts, You Tube videos. What would you say is you know for someone just starting out at least what should they be focusing on?

Jeff: Yeah, I think when people that are just starting their online business, starting blogging for the first time and they see someone like myself or even like yourself you know that has like the course and all these sites and now a podcast, and it’s very overwhelming. It’s like where do you start, and I think maybe what they realize like for me– for me it was just a blog. I started the blog, I did that for my goodness, I want to say at least a year before I did anything major like with doing any You Tube videos. And I actually think it was longer, I think it was like two years. So I mean it was just like finding that groove and just figure out one if like they even like blogging.

A lot of people– they’ll read the income reports or they’ll see myself like a Pat Flynn and everyone else that is like killing it online, like I want to do that, I can do that, and they’ve never even written a blog post before. And you know it’s like you start that and you realize crap I don’t like to write. And I’ve kind of had that epiphany a few times myself, so probably I’ll do a few more videos. So I think it is just starting, I think it’s just putting it out there, and trying to launch the blog and just seeing if you’ve got the mental fortitude to persevere because there are so many little hang ups that can frustrate you. And you know for me, my hang up like I didn’t even like want to go to word press because I didn’t even know how to install word press, which is kind of funny now, reflecting back for me that was like a big thing for me like I just didn’t know how to do it.

So I didn’t, I was using Jumbo because I was too afraid to go to word press but– and I remember one time the first time I installed my own theme, you know my first thesis theme on word press like I didn’t install right, and didn’t know where to go, had no one to talk to, and it was just frustrating. I spent like a whole freaking weekend trying to figure out how to reinstall a theme, like I’m not exaggerating, like an entire weekend. My mom was actually visiting at the time and so she had our– we just had one son at the time, and I was seriously behind the computer for like 48 hours trying to figure that stupid thing out. And most people don’t do that, like that’s weird.

Steve: It’s not weird. It’s fair to say that you don’t have a technical background is that right, Jeff?

Jeff: Oh my goodness absolutely not. No, I still laugh to this day like how I even have an online business, like how I ever blog because there was like the red button that you press to blow my blog up, like I’m surprised I haven’t pressed it like two, three times.

Steve: But say you got. I’m sorry go on.

Jeff: No, it’s like I think that’s it, I think most people– they have all these big pictures, they get overwhelmed and it’s like just start from beginning, start a blog if that’s what you want to do, and just see if you like it you know try it out for 90 days, and if you realize man this isn’t my thing you know delete and move on.

Steve: What about, you know podcasting? What about You Tube videos? Have you actually monetized any of your podcasts yet?

Jeff: You know actually just– I got my first sponsor that was the route I went. I just tried it, it was just actually more of a test to see if I could actually get somebody to do it. And you know I got a sponsor that is paying 7000 dollars for like a 90 days spot. I don’t know if I’ll continue that route. I don’t know if I like the idea of having sponsors. I guess this was the right fit. This is– I actually approached I think it was three different potential sponsors. So these ones I felt comfortable partnering with. You know one of the said yes, so I may go to the other two and see if they are interested for the nest quarter, but I don’t know, like it wasn’t always about making money. I just wanted to see if I could do it and I did it so.

Steve: So the podcast is again just one of those things just getting your name out there right?

Jeff: Yeah, it is you know and so you know for me and I slightly mentioned this but like with my blog and I know you and I talk about this several times. Writing for me– that’s not my strong point. Yeah I’ve got a blog, got over a thousand articles. Yeah I wrote a book but, [Inaudible] [00:30:11].

Steve: Yeah, and I was just about to say you just wrote a book.

Jeff: It’s like writing still it takes the most like– writing takes more energy than doing a crossfit workout. Like it literally just takes– there are times that I enjoy it but like I have to be in that perfect Zen state, where I’m heavily caffeinated, and it’s like fresh in the morning, I don’t have any kids and I’m not tempted to watch walking dead. I mean I have to be in this perfect state to write. But, you put me in front of a camera or if you put a microphone in front of me like that– those are my unique abilities where I can just do it, and I get jazzed to do it. Like it doesn’t take– it doesn’t require as much brain juice from me.

Steve: I see, so do you still write articles on JSC or?

Jeff: Yeah, and like the strategy that I do now is I use– I have a– what do I call it transcription service that I pay for, its called mobile assistant and I pay its like 50 bucks a month. Where it’s on my cell phone so I can call, and I can talk for how long and right now, I’ve figured out that if I talk for about 12 minutes that’s about a thousand word post .

Steve: Wow, okay.

Jeff: So I’ve got it down to a t man. And actually an article I’ve just written if people want to check it out it’s– it’s kind of boring but it’s how to cash out an annuity. And I– it’s probably not relevant to this podcast, but why I’m so excited about this post is that I’ve got my new headset. Illinois just passed law and now we’re finally hands free if you’re driving finally after I don’t know how California has been like after they applied for it.

Steve: It’s been like that for a long time yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, you feel like it just passed like two months ago. So I’m on my headset driving to crossfit mind you, and I’m on the phone for 12 minutes to mobile assistant talking out this post. I get the email later on that evening, I forward it to my new office manager who has an English background and she edits the post for me, to make sure I’ve got no comma surprises and everything reads properly and I copy and paste what she’s done, and it was ready to go the next morning. And so I was able to write a 12 minute post or a one thousand word post in approximately about 15 minutes.

Steve: That’s awesome dude.

Jeff: And that was like the fastest turn around post I’ve ever been able to do, and so that’s how I’ve been able to now crank out content so much faster you know I– having an editor you know that’s something that I was trying to find somebody. I tested out a few other people but this one here was by far like amazing.

Steve: So this is a human on the other end right?

Jeff: This is a human yes, with mobile assistant it is. Yes so these are all real people, they are all US based so it’s a phenomenal service that I freaking, I recommend all the time because I use it a lot for client meetings too. I use it for client meetings, detailing client notes, sending letters to clients. I also use it for emails, like any time I want to email somebody, I’m in the car and I want to email somebody, I just call in an email so that when I get that I can just quickly do a scan over an email. One thing I hear– I’ve used lately, how many times have you had to do text interviews Steve?

Steve: I did a bunch of them but they just became too much work, so I started declining them.

Jeff: Yeah, because like they take a lot of time right?

Steve: It’s like writing a blog post.

Jeff: It is, and like then some so this is how I answer like I just had a 12 question text interview that I did via mobile assistant. Had It done in 12 minutes, got it to my assistant just to make sure, and actually lots of times I even tell him hey I used my mobile transcription service you might want to check it for edit, you know when you get a chance to look it over. And so that way I can knock out these interviews and get– because I’m getting links from all these sites and doing all these interviews. I hate to decline them but you know they are, it would take me three hours to answer this interview via text but I can do it now in less than 15 minutes.

Steve: So instantly I would like to let the audience know that Jeff has actually been one of the big proponents in kind of influencing me to start outsourcing some of my activities. Those of you guys who follow my blog know that I pretty much do everything in my business. It’s just recently that I started outsourcing stuff and it’s because of Jeff’s success in kind of outsourcing and making his activities much more efficient so.

Jeff: I tell you what man, if you get Chris Tucker on– if he was here on your show like I think I’m doing pretty good. I have interviewed Chris for my podcast and after talking to him like offline for like 12 minutes like I realized I wasn’t even close.

Steve: Is that right?

Jeff: Yeah I mean he just– he like just he opened my eyes just all these other little things that I’m still doing that I shouldn’t be doing. And it’s just kind of like wow, okay it just opened up the door like how much more I could be outsourcing. I mean I’m doing a pretty big a job, but it can always be improved.

Steve: Well, I’m just glad that you didn’t outsource this interview because if I got your VA, I would have been a little pissed off. All right, so let’s talk about this major pivot that we mentioned earlier on. So what is this major pivot that is going to take your business to the next level?

Jeff: Yeah so you know the funny thing so with me was like– I’ve talked a little bit about the growing a practice, and what not and I really became a little bit more disenchanted from growing the practice. I don’t know what happened I think I just got so infatuated with building this online persona and this online business, and you wind up become more– I didn’t want to be tied to the office. You know I love it when I can go work in a coffee shop, and just be out of the office. I just like I thrive more or even when I work at home, like I’m now actually in my down stairs studio which is basically an unfinished spare bedroom in our basement that is in our recording studio. But I really didn’t want to grow the practice as much so I mean I was growing it just because you know people were referring clients to me. But I think you alluded to it at the beginning of this call where I didn’t really have a clear call to action on how to work with me.

And when I first rebranded Good Financial Cents, like that was actually intentional. I didn’t want people like if people really want to work with me like I always going to make them work for it. So they would have to like figure out how they are going to contact me, or find my contact form or really just like seek me out, and which is kind of cool because those that did really did want to work with me. I was able to talk to another advisor that has grown his practice exponentially, I mean he’s killing it. It’s like ten times the size of my practice, which once again like that has never really been a goal of mine but was really– what I was really impressed with this guy was his practice is like 90% virtual.

You know he actually relocated from Michigan out to the southern California and most of his clients are all virtual, they work basically via Skype or email and that’s it. And he showed me the process he has done to do so, and it really just got me fired up because my– the traffic that I get on my blogs and my online properties dwarf what he’s been able– what he gets. But he’s been able to grow it substantially just because you know clear call to action, and he has a really good process to kind of to streamline it.

So I now have embraced the fact that Jeff I have this digital asset with the blog, I have the financial planning practice. I haven’t really done a good job of processing, building processes it’s something I’ve been wanting to work on, I just haven’t been focused on it because I wanted to build more of a process on the online business. But here recently I finally launched my own unique process for the financial planning practice which is called the financial success blueprint, and it’s just the six step process that people walk through if they want to work with me.

And so now if you go to the blog its fairly prominent, you’ll see they work with me you know and the top navigational bar, and I have other call to actions that I’ will be implementing here soon as soon as my developer can get those going. And just going to have more of a clear hey you want to work with me, here is what it is, here is the type of clients that I work with, you know if you’re the type of person that needs contact from me like needs to talk once a week, like we’re not a good fit. Yes I’m really doing a good job of actually showing people the exact kind I want to work with, and to keep myself honest and fair to myself like I’m going to hold true to that.

Steve: So are the clients that you bring in– is this whole thing kind of scalable? Like can you handle like thousands and thousands of clients?

Jeff: It is, I mean thousands and thousands actually not. Could I handle 5-10 new clients a month? That would be a lot of work for me. My– what I want to do is I want to perfect the process, if we’ve had a few people go through it, they’ve been kind of like our guinea pigs. So just to see what are some of the pinpoints on our end, like what are some of the things that could be– like the stuff that I was doing that my new office manager can be doing, or maybe some of the stuff that the client could be doing more on their end like more home work or filling out more of the spreadsheets and stuff. So we’ve had a few people going through where we’re just trying to streamline it even more. Big picture would be bringing on a junior advisor that could facilitate you know some of the dialogue between going through the process. So, absolutely I think it could be could be streamlined even more. I could bring on other people to kind of walk you through that process once we have it perfected.

Steve: So it could be in many respects kind of almost as scalable as your online income in a way?

Jeff: I firmly believe so, and the guy– and I have my the guy who’s done it already that shown me how he’s done it and like he doesn’t work for people now. He has his initial clients that he’s built up and anybody new that comes in they all get funneled to his team.

Steve: That’s really interesting.

Jeff: So that’s what I’m jazzed about. You know it’s basically, it’s something I’ve been running from for like the last almost two or three years, and now I’ve just finally embraced it. And I’m just kind of excited to see how it can grow.

Steve: Yeah, so let’s talk about this change. So, was it due to any books that you’ve read? Or how do you network? How do you meet these people?

Jeff: You know it’s funny because– so this guy that I’m mentioning I, he’s somebody that I’ve seen online. You know like that’s the beauty of like seeing people online and just kind like social stalk people, but he’s been mentioned in a few trade journals you know that I read, and then I actually got like a sales call for to join some internet marketing company or specific towards financial advisors and once again his name was mentioned. And I thought his name came up like three times over the course of like four weeks and I’m like okay I got to reach out to this guy and see what’s going on. You know Like so I just emailed him like kind of a cold email and he responded immediately, and was like hey its actually funny because I’ve actually kind of like been following you for the last like three or four years.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Jeff: So that’s kind of how that came to be but I think it’s just monitoring your space like my space is financial planning, so anything I– anytime I read anything about anybody that’s marketing online or blogging or using You tube, I mean that immediately catches my interest so I’m always going to read up on it and kind of stay up on it so. I love seeing what other advisors are doing on our space.

Steve: So your blog actually probably got your foot in the door with this guy in a way?

Jeff: Yeah it did, I mean I said that, I mean yeah, I mean he always calls me his blogging superstar you know like he always looks at me like– but you know like I might be the blogging superstar, but he’s been able to grow his practice you know more than I have because you know he’s been more focused on it.

Steve: So any books that have influenced you in any way?

Jeff: Oh, my goodness. You know I think, I mean the usual you know Tim Ferriss’s “4-Hour Work week” you know that’s actually what inspired me to hire my first virtual assistant. You know it’s like that book, no question. I think another book that I love is “built to sell”.

Steve: Built to sell is that John Warrillow?

Jeff: Yes, yes and if your into audio books, I say that is actually probably the worst audio book. Did you– are you– do you do audio books?

Steve: No you know I actually have a copy. He actually sent me a copy for free a while back when he was launching it. I don’t know why he reached out to me. So I kind of wrote a little thing for him to help him promote it.

Jeff: The guy I wish he would have self like read it but he hired another writer and this guy man it’s just, it’s horrible. I mean, but it was good content so I mean I got through it, but I just love that book because it really talks about streamlining your business and having that clear process. And a coaching program that I’m in, they really talk about having a unique process and I’ve never done it. I’ve always wanted to do it you know so for me the financial success blueprint is that and you know kind of like I know this is a big picture, but if I can actually streamline this business to where– I guess I’m never doing it anything with it, I’m just like following lead that’s a good thing, but you know ultimately one day this is an asset I would like to sell, and if I have a streamlined unique process that you know I’ll basically just hand it over to the next person. I mean that makes the practice that much more valuable. Now the multiple becomes much more. I kind of have like a secret, see I’m 36 now, I have like a secret four year exit strategy. So if I can actually build this thing and sell it by the time I’m 40. Not if I want to sell, but if I could sell it I want to see like what I can do over the next four years to build it to make it potentially sellable.

Steve: Yeah I was going to ask you about that because you know for Good Financial Cents at least, your personality is a big part of that blog and likewise with my blog my personality is a big part of it as well. So how do you kind of divorce that to make it sellable?

Jeff: Yeah, so I mean I think that building up the process to where you know eventually I want to– I don’t mind being the face, but I think it’s a matter at that point in time you know I guess having to bring on a co-face, in especially the practice. But if I’m not the main guy dealing with people, that it’s my team that’s working with people, then I don’t think it will be much of an issue with the practice. With the blog, that’s something that I’ve wrestled with, but you know I think if I sell the practice, I don’t know if I could ever sell the blog. It be easier– it be easier actually to sell the practice than the blog even though the practice brings in more revenue. But I don’t know, I just love the blog and I think there is always going to be potential to monetize the online persona. You know I mean there is so many different angles I could go if I really needed to monetize it.

Steve: Right, absolutely.

Jeff: So I think that’s something that would be hard for me to let it go.

Steve: Cool, well Jeff I don’t want to take up too much of your time. If anyone wants to contact you, or give you their money to manage, how can they reach you?

Jeff: Yeah, you know GoodFinnancialCents.com that’s my main hub. You can also track me down on twitter, twitter I go by jjeffrose. There is two j’s cause Jeff Rose in Canada took it. But I’m active twitter, Facebook but also the hub is Good Financial Cents.

Steve: Okay, incidentally, what does that extra J stand for Jeff?

Jeff: You had to bring that up didn’t you dude?

Steve: I can [Inaudible] [00:45:37] this out if you want but.

Jeff: All right if people really want to know, my middle name is Jeff and then for some reason my parents named me Jan. Jan is my legal name, so Jan Jeffery Rose is what I go by, but I never really told anybody, but now your whole podcast community knows.

Steve: Nice, nice maybe I’ll leave this out and use it against you later.

Jeff: How sweet.

Steve: All right man well thanks a lot for your time. This was a really good talk.

Jeff: Yeah man, I appreciate having me on.

Steve: All right man, take care.

You might not have been able to tell from the podcast but the reason why I admire Jeff, is because he always has an open mind. And he is basically willing to try anything. And it’s because of his open mind that he’s constantly finding new and innovative ways to increase his brand and grow his business. And like I mentioned in the interview, Jeff is one of the main reasons why I started this podcast in the first place and for that I’m thankful.

For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode25 and if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, please go to iTunes and leave me a review. When you write me a review it not only makes me feel proud, but it also helps keep this podcast up in the ranks so other people can use this information, and find the show more easily and get awesome business advice. It’s also the best way to support the show and please tell your friends because the greatest compliment you can give me is to provide a referral to someone else either in person or to share it on the web.

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Thanks for listening to the my wife quit her job podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com