How to Start a Profitable Online Business for Under $100- Ian Pribyl Podcast [FIMP]

Mike Beatty 0:00
So Ian Welcome to make some online.

Ian Pribyl 0:03
Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Mike Beatty 0:05
It's an absolute pleasure. I was wondering if you could just let us know a little bit about your background kind of before you got into the whole internet marketing scene.

Ian Pribyl 0:17
Oh man, I was born in the internet marketing. See? It made me it moulded me know, I mean, I mean, when I got into internet marketing and affiliate marketing, SEO, etc. I mean, legitimately, I was just like a really pale, nerdy 16 year old kid. So there's not much written before I got into internet marketing. As far as a career, of course, kind of, you know, front facing, where I'm helping other people and kind of running my own community, etc. That's only been the past couple of years prior to that it was, you know, I've always had this mentality of, I always knew that I could release a product, I've always had the, you know, the knack for training and teaching and understanding, like, Hey, you have to go back and teach way down below. For someone that's, that's never done, what you've done, you have to think back to what it was like for you in the beginning, not what it's like for you now, and fill in, you know, build from the bottom up. And I always knew that there was the potential for that. But I also never wanted to be the guy in the internet marketing space, which seems like the vast majority of product publishers, not trying to bash anyone, there are certainly some very legitimate people out there that are awesome that I consider mentors and I look up to as well. But the vast majority of people in this space are just making their living selling their products. And, for me, that was hypocritical. That was an ethical line that I didn't want to personally cross. And I've never wanted to release a training product or community being a teaching position. Until I was in a, I had basically used all of my skills to get to a point financially, that that would not be the majority of my income. And so that was spent, you know, cutting my teeth for years. For basically the first decade on SEO, that I started diving a lot more into pay per click and e commerce, getting more into copywriting, email marketing, conversion, optimization, etc. So pretty much anything, there are a handful of exceptions. Such as I haven't done a whole lot of Kindle publishing. I do have a book out there now. But prior to that, you know, that's certainly not what I would consider one of my, my specialties fulfilled by Amazon never done that. But basically everything else under the like the internet marketing umbrella. At one stage or another I've done and I've typically done it until I cracked it. I was successful with it. And then, you know, took on the next endeavour.

Mike Beatty 2:58
Cool. So how did that's kind of lead on to the next question. How did you actually get started with this, then? Did you as a 16 year old kid, did you already kind of know that you wanted to get into this? Or was it just one thing kind of led to another?

Ian Pribyl 3:14
You know, I think it's it's one of the things that I see resonates with a lot of people that enter this industry. And for me, it just struck a chord from a really young age, I wanted full control of my life. I from a very young age realised and I think it may become baby because I came from a really broken home and a really crappy kind of home situation that I just knew that I didn't want as as anti authority as this is going to sound I knew I didn't want anyone else in charge of my life. And I ultimately always saw an employer as that someone who would tell me when I could be sick or not. And when I could take sick days or not. I distinctly remember thinking, I've always been a big dog person, my wife and I have three dogs with three miniature toxins. And because I'm just as masculine as they come, and

Mike Beatty 4:08
I think I have seen

Ian Pribyl 4:10
their little Wiener dogs. Yeah, the little miniature dachshund. So yeah, just the the epitome of of alpha. Though, I, I just one of the things I distinctly remember thinking it's like I don't as silly as it is, you know, when you're, you have pets, whether you're a cat person, or dog person or fish person or a hamster person, you know, whatever you are, when you're when that if if the the pet really integrates into your family, when they leave, it's a family member passing and, and it's it's a it's a really painful thing. And I remember distinctly thinking like, I don't want someone who thinks it's silly or can prevent me from taking a day off if my pet passes away, because I need to grieve, because that's something that a lot of employers would not understand. And somewhat granted, but mini wouldn't. And I didn't want someone having that level of control over my life. Because at that point, it doesn't feel like my life anymore. It feels like you know, I'm basically giving someone the vast majority of my time, so that I can have these little slivers of life. And I felt like putting myself in the driver's seat and getting your business up and running. Ideally, eventually, that could become passive. Something that of course, a lot of product publishers very misleading on in this industry. Certainly, there's some there's a lot more flexibility in that department. But it's far from Guinea, like a lot of them present it to be. But at that time, I didn't know that I thought, hey, pass in long term passive income, I can work for myself, bootstrap it easier to get up and running. And it just looked like the vehicle to give me control of my life in the way that I wanted to have control of my life. And ideally, never worked for other people or the periods of time where I had to work for other people would be very limited before I could get out on my own.

Mike Beatty 6:02
So did you did someone suggest this kind of thing to you? Or did you read about in a book? or How did you know that that was going to be a potential passive income way? for the future?

Ian Pribyl 6:17
Yeah, you know, I think I started down the path that a lot of people a lot of people start down and that was the kind of get rich quick. Oh, man talk about like, it's funny, I you know, I talked about it here. Like, it's, it's an actual industry, it's not, it's just like a bunch of smoke and mirrors here. But it's, you know, it's still out there to this day, probably more prominently than ever, as you know, its own umbrella, its own industry, there's just a, probably thousands of products that fall into that category get rich quick, and it just doesn't happen. It flat out does not happen. And I think just like everyone else, even though it's only 16, semi financial resources severely limited. You know, I to say the least, I was buying, you know, dollar ebooks on eBay and, you know, $10 little Warrior Forum products and just crappy little things like that. And I bought into the idea, I think a lot earlier than I bought into any of the execution or the the concept. So nobody ever turned me on to it, I guess as a as a stereotypical millennial, you know, I'm 31 years now 31 years old now, as we record this, but, you know, just hopped on Google and cut myself into a world of trouble. That fortunately, just ended up working out fairly well for me as I stuck with it, because I'm just really stubborn over time until I, I got on the right path.

Mike Beatty 7:46
And so what was that the right part? What was the first thing where you kind of realise you were on the right path? I know, you talked about a lot of different things that you have done online. But can you remember what was like your first one where you realised? Yeah, this is working?

Ian Pribyl 8:00
I do I do. I remember very distinctly. So it actually took me about three years, to get from the point of just buying stuff washing out getting tired, you know, to spinning my wheels, because so much of the stuff you buy, even if it was was effective at one point, it's not effective anymore. And you don't know that as a new, like an early stage consumer, you're just taking their word for it, you're expecting them to be able to fulfil their their sales promises, and you just spin your wheels for long enough and you end up giving up, you take a couple months off, you months off, hop back in with another product, again, and that's of course, the cycle. Unfortunately, very few people in this industry ultimately break. Because they it breaks them before they break it, it cracks. And before they crack it. And I do remember, I distinctly remember the exact product, I don't want to name it by name, because I don't want people going out there searching for it. And I also don't want to throw the product publisher onto the bus publicly, just for legal reasons that can get me into a bunch of different headaches. I've learned that the hard way multiple times over. But I distinctly remember the product, it was $177 product, and at the time, it was very well supported. And it was it was really helpful. And the product publisher actually had their phone number published on their website to to call them you know, if you had any questions, and which of course is totally unheard of in this industry to this day. And I got on the phone and express my concerns and they said yeah, no worries, you know, no money back guarantee, blah, blah, and, and I said, Okay, I got this person on the phone, I trust them hundred 77 bucks to me was a lot of money at the time. But I, it was so much money for me at the time that I had to split it up into their two monthly payments. And which, you know, I'm grateful for these beginnings because it again, makes my my journey allows me to relate to the people that are trying to get into this and try to get an honest start, say so much better than someone who was just able to come in and buy a $10,000 product and got scammed and oh, well, you know, a year later, I bought another thing that was a few thousand or a few hundred bucks. I mean, I had to split $177 payment into two payments. You know, those are humble beginnings. And, and so, you know, I, I started kind of digging into that product. And of course, that was a much simpler time. So what was that 12 years ago. So we're talking about 2007 ish. And so it was much easier to gain traction, you know, basic 3456 page websites were still fairly straightforward to get ranked. That's when I started cutting my teeth on SEO and started to make a full time income I made at that age, a full time income was only you know, like 2500 bucks a month. But I found out, you know, replicable strategy, especially in kind of the review side of things, which is where a lot of affiliate marketers I feel like end up cutting their teeth. And an overtime replicated that across multiple niches, multiple industries and just kind of started building that bankroll. Of course, the the internet marketing climate has evolved ridiculously since then it's so much more sophisticated, it's so much more intelligent. Unfortunately, I've been with it every step of the way to adapt and evolve to the point, you know, you just get such thick skin, when people are panicking and running around with their heads on fire, you just go well, I survived the other ones. You know, I just pay attention, I'll study my resources, and keep my head down, keep working. And me and my team and my sites are all going to be fine.

Mike Beatty 11:41
Yeah. And so that kind of leads on really nicely to the sort of things that you are doing now. Just Just quickly, I want to ask you a quick one, because it just popped into my head. I've heard it a couple of times recently, and I want to hear your take on this is that some people are saying, you know, SEO is dead now and you know, is is impossible to get ranked? And I just love to hear your thoughts on that. And you know, what, if you think that is accurate or not?

Ian Pribyl 12:09
Oh, so for the record, people have been playing Chicken Little with SEO, SEO is dead, the sky is falling for years now. I mean for years. And one of the things I would I would caution anyone hearing this, immediately when you see someone label something that way in such as sensationalised fashion, immediately put them under a microscope, immediately, because any real SEO authority will tell you what changes a lot. You have to adapt, you have to stay up to speed because it moves very rapidly. But on the whole, especially when it comes to things like links and link building. And you know, no, not necessarily the way it's done intentionally, but just like what is the foundation of what gets people ranked in SEO? Yes, you have to have on page factors, you have to think about those things, you have to be well versed in those things. But there have been all these fads that have come and gone. The things that have gained Google's algorithms have, you know, largely a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them have been swatted down. And But on the whole, SEO has stayed the same. And the the people that are saying things like SEO is dead links no longer matter, just some of the most ludicrous, those little sound bites of those little snippets and articles are just so ludicrous to me, because even Google, once every couple years, they come out with a statement, it says hey, yeah, we're still highly dependent on links, and we probably will be for several years to come. So you have you know, straight from the horse's mouth, you know, it's like, people make things up to sound like authorities, I guess that's my take home message here is when you hear things like SEO is, is dead. The reason I say throw those people under a microscope is because they have an agenda of some kind. their agenda is either trying to get you to purchase their product, where they're going to teach me something other than SEO, or their agenda is to get you to at the very least look at them, and start to see them in an authoritative light. This is something that I've seen happen a lot in this industry. And there's some big names doing it, especially over the last two or three years where they are sensationalising things, and they're actually publishing things that just flat out art aren't verifiable. They're not based on, on data on studies, that can be verified. And they're just claiming these things. And maybe they do one really loosely thrown together example, some kind of case study that is not if you're into science, or just like intelligence at all, you could debunk that pretty quickly. And see that's not statistically significant. That's a very poorly designed, study or case study. And what I find more and more is that people are saying these things, and they're just making things up to position themselves to prop themselves up as an authority. Because there certainly is a psychological phenomenon that if if I tell you something, and it gives you a real like, epiphany, a real aha moment, you attribute that time, my credibility, that is just, it's just going to happen. And up until the last couple of years, I hadn't ever seen anyone kind of use that as a Oh, I'll just make stuff up to make just to manufacture these aha moments that people will attribute to me. But the not a whole lot of big names are doing it. But there are certainly people out there there are big YouTubers in this industry, big personalities that I see doing exactly that and SEO as a lite version of what I'm talking about SEO is dead, I should say, someone coming out and saying SEO is dead playing Chicken Little, I think is it, you know, again, just throw them under a microscope because they have an agenda. Anybody who was really telling you the truth would say yes, maybe it's changed a little bit. But at the end of the day, these are easy to keep up with. And if you've been playing by the rules all along, nothing's fundamentally changing for you, your business isn't crashing, and the things you've been doing for years are still going to be effective. So yeah, my opinion is if you hear someone saying, SEO is dead, really question whether or not you want to give that person your trust?

Mike Beatty 16:48
Yeah, no, I think that, that really answers it so well, as well. Because, you know, I think, for people who are really interested in it, they might be might have been quite a long time, you know, trying to build up their SEO and things like that, and maybe not seeing the results that they necessarily want to see and will straightaway just jump on that one phrase and be like, Ah, this is why, whereas I've, personally, I do feel that the more people that can kind of put that message out there, no, it's not dead, it might be a lot a little bit harder, a little bit different to maybe what it has, has used to be, but as you say, I think, and Google says it themselves, obviously, like if you can get those good links, and people are actually showing Google know, this is a this is a good piece of work or whatever it is, then SEO is always going to be is is is kind of always going to be around as long as the internet is around. So I don't think it can ever be dead. But I think as you say is definitely has changed from what I understand. It used to be

Ian Pribyl 17:47
100%. Agree. Very cool.

Mike Beatty 17:51
So obviously, your whole thing that you've done, I've for those that don't know you and I want I found you through your book from nothing, and is literally a book about your whole life and things and how you started from nothing, basically. And and now you've created this kind of online Empire. I call it an empire. Hmm.

Ian Pribyl 18:14
Yeah, I mean, I would I tend to err on the side of caution.

Certainly that, you know, sometimes I have to say, take a step back and realise, like, what is what I'm jaded, you know, on about what I've achieved, certainly is in veal enviable to a lot of people and certainly would be enviable to me. Back when, you know, I was I was just getting started, you know. So I personally wouldn't refer to it as an empire because I think it's a tad bit absurd. But I'm very fortunate to have have built the skills over the years that have allowed me to build the business assets across multiple different areas that I have now. Yes,

Mike Beatty 18:54
definitely. I'll call it an empire. So your, your, your business empire Online Business Empire that you managed to create, and it is, I just think it's incredible, it's like, just not even $10 is it is such a cheap book that anyone can pick up. And basically, as you say, very early on, and as you continue to prove throughout the book, everything that you pretty much need to start an online business is within that book. So for those people that are kind of out there and saying, Oh yeah, but I don't have the money to get started, or whatever it is, whatever the reason is, I think your book alone pretty much shows everyone, this is how you can get started, could you just let us know how you decided to, or why you created the book, and, and kind of what your vision is for the future.

Ian Pribyl 19:45
Yeah, I mean, um,

how it ties back to again, man, I was just screwed over by so many product publishers, I was taken advantage of, by so many people, I had the best intentions, and they had the exact opposite, all they wanted was to get in and get my money get out, and they didn't care about me after the sale. Many of them made that very apparent, and I'm sure people, you know, hearing this have experienced something similar. And so I kind of had this idea over the years, as my knowledge continue to build even just on the SEO side that I would like to eventually someday make this make this industry a lot more approachable a lot more palatable. Just something that was much easier to break into where people wouldn't have to go and get ripped off for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, they could get a really high quality education in the time tested, you know, age old, medium for education. And that's books. And I couldn't believe I mean, even over all the years, I checked every once a while because I had this this concept, this idea, oh, at least six or seven years ago before publishing from nothing. And I would check occasionally and just be amazed that like stuffs just not coming out. Yeah, their their books on social media marketing their books on, you know, Google AdWords, they're, they're in some really good ones through their books on email marketing, etc. But there was nothing that would teach people how to go from absolutely nothing, virtually no budget, and take them from that, that starting point and carry them all of the way through to profit with just you know, a lot of elbow grease, a minimal investment minimal capital required. And, and so that's of course, but from nothing was written to be yes, there's, you know, a little bit in there about me and how I started again, you know, as someone who was buying 99, Cent $10, ebooks on eBay, etc, Warrior Forum. And the first product that I bought that was have any sizable investment, just 177 bucks, I had to split into two payments. But I wanted something that was super high quality and front to back so that people didn't have to, because that's another thing, this industry is so bad about it, oh, by this tool, and that tool, and this tool, and that tool on this premium theme, and all these different things you need. And once you're all in, you've spent a grand two grand if not more, that's not even including the training. And it's just like, it's considered acceptable practice. It's considered best practice as an affiliate marketer, if you're an affiliate marketer publishing a product, about affiliate marketing you, you damn well better be linking people to stuff that you know, every chance you get through your affiliate link. But I don't really think that's fair to the the customer, I don't think that's fair to the aspiring online business owner that's starting where so many of these people started, they've just instantly forgotten what it's like to have, or they never experienced, to have so few resources to invest not only in the training, but also in the tools they need to build that business. So I wanted something that someone for less than 100 bucks USD, you know, of course, the books less than 10 bucks USD, the digital version, but all in once you've you've got everything you need to build a profitable internet business with less than 100 bucks. That was the vision of the book. And, you know, I take issue I take issue just a tad when you like it pretty much has, because that book is very specifically designed to have absolutely everything you need. So

yeah, no, you're fine, you're fine everything? Well, because it's, you know, it's certainly there. And I make that clear in the introduction in the book, there are certainly other paths to successfully building an internet business that's profitable their infant, I feel like there's probably an infinite amount of ways to build, you know, to carve out a profitable internet business, and people are still discovering new ones every day, every week, every month every year. But as far as you know, the most capital friendly one, that's going to be like, hey, you have barely any startup investment. But if you can put in 10 hours a week, give it some time, be consistent, follow these steps closely, and you're going to have a profitable website, it's good to start off making, you know, a few bucks, and then a few hundred bucks. And if you stick with it, and you're in the right niche, and you follow the training, you know, it could get you to a few thousand bucks and be you know, a full time income replacement, which you can then use as a platform to start building out other properties and, and hiring team members etc, to help you kind of build your quote Empire ahead. And so, certainly there are other approaches, but I have never seen anything that is as comprehensive and as mindful of keeping startup investment low in this industry, because everyone's just in it for the money grab as far as I've seen. And that's all fine and dandy, but it was it was the impact I wanted to have whether or not that gets the right exposure. And if people end up finding it, who knows, because certainly people aren't people in this industry aren't incentivized to share it, because it's going to get that person the same level of education that people are charging two grand for, except if they recommend that product, they're going to get commissioned 1000 bucks, if they recommend from nothing, they're going to get commissioned like 7% on Amazon, you know. So that's been kind of the really disappointing part of this whole process is, is, you know, you push so hard to get something of incredible, immense value out there. And then it doesn't get the exposure that it deserves. Because it just says, you know, it's such a low price that there's, you know, nobody's going to promote that when their livelihood depends on continuing to make those $50 hundred dollar $500 thousand dollar commissions. So that's I found, I should have seen it coming because I've been in the industry long enough to know. And usually I'm pretty decent foresight after being you know, an entrepreneur for so many years. But this one just totally blindsided me. And, you know, the alternative was the people that are impacted by it, you know, sharing it enough getting the word out. But that didn't happen either. So you just end up with this product. And certainly, it's impacting lives. And I'm like, what I told myself from the beginning was if I put in, you know, these hundreds of hours to basically distil my 15 years of experience into something very affordable, and it only changed one life, it would totally be worth it, you know, if it gave one person complete control of their life, it would totally be worth it. And it's done that, I would say dozens if not hundreds of times over. Because what I've been amazed by now that it's been a couple years since I started some of these efforts, is I hear from people that I've never heard from before, and they've been successful now for over a year. And they say, Hey, I forgot to drop the lie, you know, but it was because of, you know, your, your help your assistance along the way.

And, and so, but even again, even they're not really throwing, throwing the, the getting the word out there. And so that's been the The tricky thing is, here I am, you know, as a person who's very committed to not make my full time endeavours and my full time, you know, the majority of my income from publishing products in this industry, but at the same time, you almost have to give it that much attention, to give it the, to get the exposure, it needs to compete with everyone else, because they are certainly making that their full time business. Even if you're handing you know, you're building a team and doing the best you can, you know, my main efforts personally are put in a startup that I run all of our marketing, digital advertising, getting ready to really expand heavily into our sales efforts, etc. And certainly, that's why I want most of my time ago, because I don't again, I don't want to be one of those publishers that just makes my living. In theory, teaching people the stuff that got me to where I am, I want to continue to be in the trenches and make the majority of a living there. So it's been an interesting journey. Certainly we're not, I'm not throwing in the towel by any means. But I should have seen it coming. And I didn't so work the wise for anyone that's trying to do something that's really affordable, and or free. You know, just because couple of things I've learned are just because you go way out of your way to help someone else does not mean they will go way out of their way to help you. That's one thing that it's been a really painful lesson for me to learn. Because I won't say by no means is my faith in humanity destroyed. But I would say it's certainly changed my perspective, a lot. And certainly reflected back a different world than I personally felt, I guess maybe I had on some some rose tinted glasses. But, you know, that's one thing. And the other thing is, I found no matter how high quality your stuff is, if you sell it at a price that things or you give it away for free, it gets associated with all those other things that are really low price, or that are free. And people just automatically assume like as low quality or even if they dive in and they start going through it, they don't take it very seriously. And they're still just super eager to give someone else hundreds or thousands of dollars, even though you just gave them the blueprint that they needed that they've been searching for. But because they only pay 10 bucks for it or because they got access to it on a website for free. They don't they don't see it as valuable. Which is an interesting psychological phenomenon as well.

Unknown Speaker 30:29
Yeah. Well,

Mike Beatty 30:30
I mean, I'm sure you already know so much about the psychology behind selling and things like that. But that is one of the one of the massive things, isn't it the the higher the price tag that you put on something, the higher perceived value it has to people. And so I mean, I can see exactly what you're saying how that can happen. But I think it doesn't get away from the fact like the whole mission and everything behind the whole, obviously, like the free internet model projects as well, which you have, which is kind of linked on from from the book. And it goes into a lot more detail and things like that. I think the whole point behind there, though, is so amazing. And it is so you know, it could be absolutely massive, if that got into the hands of the masses, you know, if everyone could access this information, which actually is I mentioned to you briefly before we start recording, that's the one of my big like, you know, future big goals sort of thing is, I'm currently a teacher, well, I'm actually just finishing teaching. So I was taking a year out, as some people may call it. And but my big vision is that, you know, there's so many things within education, where people are not necessarily getting the best support and things from just standard education. So I have some sort of impact on the education system, even if it is small scale it is even if it's just affecting a few people or whatever. But something along that lines where it does is not an affordable, it is available for two people if they want to access this kind of thing. But yeah, no, I just think that it is definitely not something that Well, I think it is definitely something that so many people would really like if they just understood the value behind it. So what what are some of the things like if I'm just thinking back to work before I ever started out on this whole online marketing stuff, if I was listening to this podcast, just to briefly summarise your book and like the whole project, and just, you know, it's basically pick a target niche as target as you possibly can write a lot of content around that sort of stuff and find SEO, and you go into a lot more detail about how to find the key words and things like that. But then how would you? If I was like, as if I was listening to this? How would you start monetizing it? I think some people would understand like the whole SEO concept and that if you write specific content, you can get people to search for it on Google, and then they find the content. And that kind of all makes sense. But then the question that I still get a lot today is, but how do you make money from that? And I was just wondering if you could explain that side of it a bit.

Ian Pribyl 33:33
Yeah, of course. So and you know, of course, the funny part is people start seeking that answer, often way too late, you know, they've built up but they've chosen a niche, they built an audience, or they're in the process of building an audience. They go, Okay, once I get there, or now that I'm there, how do I make money? How do I monetize this audience? And, you know, if you're asking that question at that stage, you're asking a question too late to, you know, there are a number of people out there certainly that will look out and be in a niche that doesn't meet the right criteria that can be monetized effectively, and very lucrative Lee, and you know, that's why originally, like in, in from nothing, and in the free internet marketing project, and in the video version of the training, the first time internet marketing profits, there's, there's literally three and a half video, or three and a half hours of niche selection training. Whereas usually like in a product, it's like it's a 20 minute video at most, or maybe it's like a 1500 word article. And it's because, you know, I'm backtracking and answering kind of a prerequisite to your question here. Because niche selection really plays a big impact on how effectively you can monetize a niche. And one of the key factors of the multiple I talked about in all of my niche selection training is, is it a buying audience? And a lot people have heard that before it, they're like, Okay, well, what that F does that mean? Like, that's, that's great. Like, it's like, when you hear, you know, people talking about searching for your, your why, what makes you what makes you tick, you know, you hear your why should make you cry. And it's like, well, that's fantastic, but how do I get them? So, you know, the criteria that you know that the simple test, I teach for that aspect of? are you dealing with a buying audience is the stuff they're searching for the questions, they're asking the the keywords, they're searching online, whatever it is, are they willing to make not only willing, even better? Are they seeking to make a purchase? to either answer their question, or solve their pain point. That's a buying audience. And so if you if you've chosen a niche with that criteria, that piece of criteria in mind that the the question of how do I make money from that niche is pretty straightforward. You solve their you answer their question, you solve their pain points, by referring them to the people's ethics very on this, but personally, I've always made sure that I direct them to something that I personally verified is really high quality. It's exactly what they're looking for, it's helpful to them. And, and I'm going to refer them through to that product, because it's going to answer that question or solve that pain point. And certainly, that's, that's what makes a lot of the Evergreen niches, you know, health, wealth, and relationships are kind of the top three, evergreen umbrellas, as far as niche selection goes, just for the sake of clarity for people listening, that is not a niche, none of those are niches those are industries. But and you know, there are hundreds, if not thousands of niches underneath each. But you know, the reason they fall so well on, quote, evergreen niche, evergreen industry umbrella, any niche that's chosen out of those, is because people are very often seeking to solve their pain points, or answer their questions by making a purchase. And every single one of those, the greater the pain point, the more likely they are to pay amount of money to solve it. And so, you know, there are a number of ways you can do that, you know, to get more direct to your to your answer, you can manufacture your own products, you can drop ship, someone else's products, you can white label someone else's products, all three of those are very different routes, even though in a lot of people's minds, they're very similar. You know, the more the most straightforward way is through some form of CPA marketing. And for anyone unfamiliar, CPA stands for cost per acquisition. Affiliate Marketing certainly falls under that category.

There are a number of ways to monetize traffic through CPA marketing, whether you know, the most traditional one is pay per sale, every time you make a sale of a product, you're going to get commissioned a certain percentage of that sale, whether it's a physical product or a digital product. But there are a tonne of a tonne of them that people don't know about as well, either. And that is, you know, pay per download pay per lead, if you're just sending companies leads, you know, credit card offers, for example, a lot of people don't realise that every time you know, you see nerd wallet, you see credit cards calm you see Credit Karma, all of these people are providing these services. But every time they refer you to a credit card, or they refer you to a mortgage lender, or just a home equity loan, or a car loan, they're probably getting commissions somewhere in the neighbourhood of 75. To north of 250 500 plus dollars. You know, there used to be back when it's been a long time since I looked at that niche. But I'd say a few years ago, when I look that referring people into as mortgage leads, you know, if you got someone to fill out a full mortgage application, which is a very involved thing, but they submitted it online, it paid north of a grand, you know, for for someone that was approved, because that's a very valuable thing for that business. So there are a number of ways to do it, you know, through. And of course, I covered this very early on and from nothing in free internet marketing project in first time, internet marketing profits. And all of them, it's it's an essential early lesson of, you know, I talked about the four business models that any online businesses going to fall into under one of these for business models. And then people finish that they go, Well, are you going to talk about affiliate marketing? And it's like, well, yeah, because you know, the concept of affiliate marketing falls under a much greater a much broader umbrella. And so people are, people just get so caught up in, in the tactics, they don't realise that the real value is in the concepts. And then the tactics are just, you know, test level, you know, things that you execute, and you just see what works best once you get there. But if all of the fundamentals and all the concepts leading up to that point are executed correctly, monetization is not going to be an issue, you're going to have multiple options, just get the traffic First, make sure it's in an audience, it's a buying audience and meets other, you know, criteria that qualify them as a really good niche. And monetization is, is, is going to be a walk in the park, it's going to be, you know, just a matter of throwing links on things and seeing what's working and iterate as time goes on. I think people are made very uneasy by that, because I understand psychologically, it's, you want to know from the very start that from the starting point, like how am I going to actually make money. But like, that's one of the things that I realised and why I talked a lot about mindset and stuff like that is, you know, people's expectations of this industry going in, or just shooting themselves that straight in the foot, you know, and they're just they're hacking off their legs at the knee at the starting line, because they don't think about things from the right perspective. And then of course, they hop it and they go, Oh, this is, you know, this isn't what I was, this isn't the box, I expected these, this training to fit in these, you know, these concepts to fit in, well change the box, then, you know, don't try and force this into the the narrow view you have as someone who's never made, you know, millions of dollars in this industry. Because I promise you the overarching concepts are what actually, the fundamentals are what actually going to make you wealthy or successful in this industry. And, you know, just getting so honed in on these things that don't really matter. Because your mindsets not quite right are going to harm you a lot along the way and make you a lot more susceptible to getting scammed.

Mike Beatty 41:55
Honestly, I think that is as possible, possibly the best way of ever heard anyone put it like as in rather than focusing on the exact nitty gritty, specific money making things is figuring out the concepts, figuring out the specific niche and thing that you're actually working on first, spending the time on those areas, and then monetizing it, you were like you say you don't want to start thinking about ways to monetize it too late, you want to already have an idea of your concepts and things to do that. But I do I really like the way that in the book as well, the way that you do break it down into the for business models, and rather than, you know, his affiliate marketing or his advertising, you know, he is I just like the way that you've put it in the book is possibly the best way I've actually, like seen it written down before, because it's just so much easier than to be like, okay, you know, I'm going to go after this business model, or this business model could work well, for me, and I've never actually thought of it like that before. And it's such a such a simple way to actually put it.

Ian Pribyl 43:07
Yeah, well, absolutely. And thank you, that's a very, very kind compliment coming from a teacher at that National Teacher. I mean, you know, that's one of the things is you also, people don't realise getting into this industry, that is if you see a lot of traction, for example, being an affiliate marketer, whether that's for a digital offer, or a physical product, if you're doing really well, the easiest lateral move for you, or vertical move for you, rather than somebody people try to move laterally, they go into a totally new niche, or they go into a totally different area they become they go, Oh, I have money, now I get to try all these other things, you know, the way you could probably double or triple your income is by creating some form of that digital product or physical product yourself. And now you're not affiliate marketing, you're you're either that, you know, publishing your digital products are your manufacturing and managing inventory for your own physical products. And you're building your own brand. And certainly, there's a threshold that you have to surpass before, like so many people try to put the cart before the horse. But if you get into something, you see a lot of traction, you resonate with your audience, you know, your message resonates. And your approach resonates very, very well with your audience, you know that the next move is, Hey, if you're so caught up on affiliate marketing, you're going to miss the whole ticket, you know, you could double triple your income, by now stepping into that ring yourself improving on everything that you currently see in the market based on the expertise you developed to get that platform and, you know, kind of put yourself on that stage, give yourself that megaphone with that audience. So make something better, and then release it now you can recruit your own affiliates. And you know, and and it we're talking about a whole other level, then and people just get so caught up on these tiny details that are just, I understand why it happens that it happens largely because that's the state of mind that product publishers put people into because it keeps them consuming. Because it makes it sound like there's a silver bullet for affiliate marketing, there's a silver bullet for trick shipping, there's a silver bullet for e commerce websites. But you know, again, if you learn the fundamentals, if you build the skills, you can, you know, kind of pick one up and and set the old one down and you know, pick something else up and put the other one down. And that's what really makes you a very successful, very well rounded internet marketer. And that's true for a lot of these product publishers, they're just not they're giving you a sliver of the pie instead of actually teaching you the stuff that actually matters. It makes you a really holistic, professional at the end of the day.

Mike Beatty 45:54
Yeah, hundred percent policy, and I could talk to you about this all day,

Unknown Speaker 45:59
I can see they've just got

Mike Beatty 46:00
so much knowledge in your brain. They need to someone needs to invent some sort of extraction device. But I, what I would love to kind of wrap it all start to wrap it up with a little bit is

Unknown Speaker 46:17
how has

Mike Beatty 46:19
this whole online adventure and stuff for you? How is it kind of changed your life realising? What are some of the best experiences you've had? Because of what you started doing? And what you've created?

Ian Pribyl 46:32
That's a good question.

If I forget, I'm going to answer your question, if I forget, remind me to tell you about the bad too, because I think that's where the bad da da the bad. Because I think that's where a lot of people, you know, certainly internet marketing and running, running digital businesses, internet businesses has allowed so much freedom. I mean, it was funny recently, my wife and I had our our pet sitter come to her house before we left for New Zealand for two weeks. Oh, yeah. And, and she, you know, she said, Oh, you guys travel a lot. And I said, Oh, you know, not as much as, as we used to, because I had this startup that's really, you know, taking off and trying to become a multi multi multi million dollar business. And, you know, I really can't duck out as often as I used to. So this year, we've only travelled two or three times will probably only travel once or twice more this year. And, and I realised what an ass I sounded like, it was coming out of my mouth, because people would kill the travel that much, you know, and it's not like, these are three day trips, these aren't weekend trips, usually, especially when we're taking an 18 hour flight to the other side of the world, we're going to stay for two weeks, you know, we're going to we're going to stay at least probably 710 14 days wherever we travel to. So to save that, we still get to do that four to six times a year, even though I'm, you know, quote pumping the brakes on my travel a little bit. It's kind of absurd. And so certainly it's it's afforded me that opportunity. One of the one of the reasons that I I started doing any of this in the first place was because I knew when the day came, I would want to be able to see my children grow up, I wouldn't want to be constantly at work, and constantly travelling for work, or constantly stressed about work, or what my boss was thinking, etc. which would cause me to miss a lot of those precious moments. And my wife and I haven't started a family yet. We just passed nine years of marriage on June 19. Wow. Thank you. But, uh, but we we still had been, you know, we, we've still got some travel we want to do, but we're getting to that point where it's like, okay, we're kind of starting to think maybe we, you know, we're going to start planning for this much too, the excitement of our families and

our parents. And so

Mike Beatty 49:05
do you have a mom? That's also saying if you go to be grandchildren or no way?

Ian Pribyl 49:10
Yeah, so certainly my mother in law, yeah. But she's, she's pretty good about it, she's, she's pretty good about it, it helps that my wife's brother recently had a baby. So it takes some of the bottle some time yet, but uh, but certainly everyone's still super excited for when that's going to happen for us. And, and I'm just very grateful that I will have the flexibility and be able to kind of call my own shots. And certainly, I'll still be working my butt off, you know, again, I'm 31 years old, I'm not at an age where I'm going to start, you know, just hopping in the backseat and enjoying the ride, like, I've still got a lot of energy, I'm in good health. And I still have plenty of time to set the stage for my family, and hopefully generations to come potentially. So you know, now's the time to work hard, especially while we still don't have kids. So certainly, I'm going to continue working hard, but to be able to place those hours where I want to be able to be totally location independent. Yeah, those things provide a tonne of advantages to be able to show my child the world from a very young age, something that very few of us, myself included, have the opportunity to do, you know, to give them that worldview from a very young age.

And, yeah, I think

I mean, it's, it's cool now to that the business has been at the point for the last few years that my wife was able to quit her job. So she actually helps a lot. She's a, she's a co author listed on from nothing on the book from nothing, because she's actually a former English teacher. And which I know is going to sound like an oxymoron since we're Americans but but right now, so she was a high school, high school English teacher and, and so I was able to, you know, she wasn't exactly a getting paid very well, or be enjoying it very much at a point. Not because the students just due to the, you know, the the administration, again, it's the bosses that make life hell yeah. And so, so being able to allow her to take a step back, and now you know, she's upstairs right now, as I'm downstairs shut in my office, my home office recording this and, and even that, is a very enviable position. And that's like our baseline now. So, you know, certainly being afforded the opportunity to travel to be completely location independent, to have full control over my life, and where my hours go. And if I take a day off, or if I don't, and to be around the people I love, whenever I want to be. Those are pretty hard things to put a price tag on,

Mike Beatty 51:51
ya know that that is awesome. And obviously, you said, Don't let me forget about mentioned Yes. And that's something that are not allowed people talk about? Yes, it's something that I do think, is starting to happen a bit more. But yeah, I'd love to know, like what, you know, some of the, just a couple of the bad bits, you know, the, that people don't always necessarily see or hear about.

Ian Pribyl 52:17
Yeah, and you know, the reason I think this is so important. And the reason I said don't let me forget, I want to answer your question. But don't let me forget, is because it gives people unrealistic expectations. And again, when you're talking about your success largely is going to be determined by your mindset. I'm not talking about a mindset of law of attraction or deep October, totally stuff that personally I do not follow, I do not subscribe to, you know, when you hear mindset so much, people write it off, and they go, Oh, it's just more of this whoo, whoo, crap. But know, your mindset, especially as a professional as an entrepreneur. I mean, how as a spouse, as a son, as a grandson, and you know, but specifically talking about as a digital entrepreneur is going to determine your success or failure. So if you're going in, and you're just expecting all of the glitz and glamour and the advantages, because that's all you've ever heard about. And it's certainly that's all the Guru's ever brag about when they're trying to sell you a product, you're going to be disappointed when you get in and you're you've especially if you have very little money to invest, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, I can just go in and start a $5 per day, pay per click ad budget, you know, ad campaign, and I'm going to strike it rich, know, if you don't have five or 10 grand to lose and pay per click, you have no business stepping into paid advertising, certainly, they're going to be people that crack it before then, but for probably every 10 people that spend 10 grand, and don't see any ROI, and still don't have anything to show for it, except for some skills, and some lessons learned along the way. For every 10 of those, there may be one that cracks it for under five or 10 grand. So you know, but again, that's something that people don't share, because they share that they don't sell products, their their their motivation is to sell you a product. in this industry, it's just the sad truth. And so, you know, my personal lows have

largely centred around.

feeling like I was spinning my wheels for years. And I mean, this was even true, I had faces this way. I mean, it doesn't help that I definitely struggle with depression. multiple people in my family struggle with depression, depression, plus entrepreneurial endeavours and desires are not a good combination. You know, it produces a pretty harsh feedback loop. And, and so that certainly, is has been a challenge that I had to overcome in and mindfulness practice in the form of just really secular meditation, and regular exercise have helped a tonne. For me, even though I still have my lows. They're just not as extreme as they used to be. And so of course, you know, in that vicious feedback loop, I would feel like I was distinctly the thought I had was, I'm going to grind my entire life and have nothing to show for it. I'm going to grind myself into dust. And, you know, is this ever really going to pay off? Is this ever going to be the type of business I got into this industry to build? And it's only been, I'd say, over the last three or four years, that I realised how much I was just missing the boat there. Because every one of those hard lessons, every one of those failures, every one of those struggles, every one of those algorithmic updates, one of which, you know, Google Penguin 2.0, crashed my business to the ground back in, I guess that was 2012. You know, and going through all of those things. They really they widdle you away, and especially if you're prone to depression. And now that I, especially now that I run the marketing and advertising, I'm the co founder of a startup, you know, I own close to a quarter of that company. And that company is on track to be worth a lot of money if we can keep doing what we're doing. Yeah, no, I'm pumped. So I realised now there every day, every week, I realised that all of those dips, all of those valleys, all of those really painful places that put me in a really dark headspace sometime for days or weeks on end, just feeling totally defeated, and like I would never make it. And like I wasn't ever making progress, every time I made progress, take a step forward, take two steps back. I realised now how valuable all that was. And I was developing skills, the entire, the entire journey. And every time I excuse me, every time I picked myself up, and I dusted myself off, I was better for it. And all of those lessons, all of that expertise, because that's what you're doing throughout that process is developing expertise, you're learning you're growing. That's what actually makes the beautiful things that everyone talks about possible. But certainly, if you're going into this, and you don't have any money really to invest, you're not going to be able to do paid advertising, which leaves you with organic traffic. And if you're doing content creation, even if you're doing it really well, and you're doing everything right, you know, I had someone posted my facebook group, like, last week, maybe just like four or five days ago, hey, you know, I've published 10 articles, I've been publishing content for a month, still not getting any traffic, you know, should I ditch this website. And it's like, you know, again, a yourself skipped over my early stage training, and nothing is more frustrating for me. It's like you're in my community. And you're you know, you're following all of these, and you skip this stuff, because you saw mindset, you felt like, this doesn't really apply, I'm going to go to this stuff, that's the the nitty gritty, you know, and it's like, you just built a found, you know, built a frame for a house in the dirt instead of on a foundation, and now you're experiencing the consequences.

And so

certainly, you're going to spend several weeks, several months, potentially just throwing stuff into this Dark Void, and just wondering if it's ever going to come back. And I would say that's true, probably for entrepreneurship, of any kind on the whole, is you're gonna you have to pay your dues, you know, there are very few people that are just going to come in, we're talking about a fractional one percentage, you know, a fraction of a fraction 1% of people are going to come in and just have the natural inclination. You know, we are born star athletes, there's a lot of practices involved, we are born entrepreneurs, a lot of us are born with the the kind of motivations to kind of authority complex, that that may, you know, kind of draw us to this. But certainly, very, very, very, very few of us are equipped to achieve it from the very beginning. Most of us earn it by paying our dues and learning some a lot of hard lessons along the way. And what I aim to do these days, in the work that I do in the digital marketing education space, is to make sure people learn as many of those lessons from me and learn how to grow from them, and the lessons from them without having to experience them and go through that journey for years themselves.

Mike Beatty 59:56
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree anymore. And I just think, kind of, like you said, as well about how sometimes it feels like, one step forward, and you go two steps back. And I really do think they're really the big currency of the future of people's skills. And it sounds kind of cliche and stuff. But I think the more that you do, and the more that you fail, and there's like, you know, obviously a lot of talk around at the minute about failing and how that is, you know, people almost go after failure. But I really do think that, particularly young people, like kids and stuff at school, I, I just think the more that they can understand that, you know, you might you don't always see that almost that delayed gratification, you're not always going to see instant results. And the more that people understand that the bigger chance they have of success in life. And I just think it's for all areas of life. It's not just entrepreneurship and stuff. Ya know, I think is this, such a valid point that you've just put there at the end, which is so big that I is really important to people here.

Ian Pribyl 1:01:02
Totally agreed. And I think that it's a difficult thing to implement in practice. I heard it, I heard it years before, this little kind of token that makes this somewhat tangible, and ties all this together. And I heard it years before I was able to implement implement it myself, but especially as the past few years gone on, and I could see how this took place over that journey. Without me realising it, the more you can focus on the skills you're building, and how you're developing personally, and make that your measure of success, versus the traffic coming to your website, or the dollars in your bank accounts or that are coming through and commissions etc, which will come with it. You know, they're they they're part of their their part and parcel, you know, they they will come together. But the more you just focus on your development and your knowledge and your experience, and seeing that as your success, rather than dollars or visitors to the website, the better equipped you are going to be to succeed, the the more impervious you are going to be the less susceptible you are going to be to those dips that caused the vast majority of people to wash out when in the pursuit of a digital business, digital marketing business or an internet business, whatever your form of monetization may be. You know, the more you can focus on how you're developing and the things you're learning the experience you're building. Because these days, that's what I take complete competence in, if you took away every profitable website I had, if my startup crashed tomorrow, I still have all of the knowledge and expertise across wait way broader set of internet marketing skills than most people do. There's not a college that teaches what I know is that the industry moves too quickly. And so you know, that's where the real value is, that's what's going to determine how much money I make. It doesn't matter whether it's through my own websites, or whether it's through a startup that I co founded. Or if it's just me going to be the the marketing director or Chief Marketing Officer for a startup or a corporation somewhere else. those skills are incredibly valuable. And as long as you have those in you, you will be successful, whether it's in your own endeavours, or just by applying them somewhere else. Worst case scenario?

Mike Beatty 1:03:37
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I actually remember saying a few years ago, before Donald Trump was president, if you if you put Donald Trump completely bankrupt, and I was at issues in that sort of stuff before, but if he was completely bankrupt, you put him in the most random city in the world, you could still guarantee within X number of years, he's going to build property Empire or whatever it is, he'll have built something again, you know, he has got those skills, whether people like him or not as a person is a whole other thing. But he has got a whole heap of skills that a lot of people don't, and he knows how to use them to get what you want. You know, it's kind of the same with a lot of successful entrepreneurs.

Ian Pribyl 1:04:22
I would agree. I would agree. And, and, you know, again, political differences aside, you know, and opinions aside, you know, I think, whether you agree with his methods, whether you agree with his tactics, whether you agree how well they apply to a presidency or not. You know, you could say that about any, you know, put Elon Musk, you know, put someone less controversial, you know, I must now these days, which apparently controversial too, yeah, yeah, there you go. Exactly. Exactly. Richard Branson is, I think, a very good example as well. By the way, his his autobiography, losing my virginity is stellar. It's a big read. But yeah, for anyone. That's one of my favourites. Ashley Vance's biography on Ilan Musk is incredible as well. Yeah. And you're certainly do see that I mean, across, basically every, you're talking about a mega successful entrepreneur, they they all at some point, toe the line of bankruptcy or tilt, you know, into the line of filing for bankruptcy of, of having a startup that completely fails. And you're right, it's those skills that they developed along the way. You know, I've, I've read multiple instances of investment firms of venture capitalists, that if they invested in an entrepreneur, that had a startup that failed, if that entrepreneur was communicative and ethical, and kept them in the loop, and just gave it their best shot, they're actually very often one of the first people at the table when that entrepreneur has another idea, because they recognise that person developed a tonne of, of skills and experience and that failed startup that cost them money. That now Okay, they've got it there that much more poised to be successful. And I think that says a lot in and of itself, as well. So you're absolutely right, you know, you swap any, any true entrepreneur in and out of that kind of debate. And you're right, the people that develop the skills and kind of battle tested are going to come out on top one way or another.

Mike Beatty 1:06:31
Yeah. So that kind of leads on really nice, then to the final question. And this is the final question. If you could go back to your 16 year old self before you started any of this stuff, what would be three pieces of advice that you'd give to yourself?

Unknown Speaker 1:06:52
Hmm.

Mike Beatty 1:06:54
That's a good question. The tough question is Sorry, no, you're fine. Bye, that. No, no.

Ian Pribyl 1:07:03
I'm sure I'll kick myself for at least one of these answers was I'm going to sleep tonight, but I'll do my best on short notice. Certainly the first thing that comes to mind, and the reason I emphasise it so much to the people that whether they're following my free training, or they've invested in some kind of community that's paid with me, is a mindset, I, I don't think I've recognised even tuned into mindset potentially being a determining factor of my success until probably four or five years ago, and I didn't truly tune into it. Until, I'd say, probably a couple, two and a half, three years ago, that's when I really started to realise how valuable it was, how much my mindset, again, cut, we will crack just how much confidence I have in what I'm doing in the perspective habits, I go into things and the control I have over my emotions and the way I react, etc. So I would say, you know, I would go back and I'd say focus on your, your mindset before you dig into anything else, before you start stacking on tactics and strategies and all these other things. Make sure you have the right mindset going in the right expectations, the right measure the right metrics, the right measurement process, you know, to for determining your success, because certainly most of us go in with very skewed understanding of what success actually, especially in the early stages, looks like in this industry, or how quickly we get there. So that would be the first one. The second one would be self care. I found in this for me, it's been within the past couple of years for sure. I've always been a skinny guy. Actually, I weigh more now, not than I ever have. But because I've been in the gym, weightlifting, that's my preferred form of exercise. And now starting to get into crowd, my god forms of self defence, etc, just for the social aspect. And that's been great as well. And certainly a great way to relieve some some tension. But meditation and exercise have given me so much more control over myself and my own brain. And I didn't recognise the value of that when I was younger, not remotely, not. I mean, I was almost 30, before I even again begin

to tune into it. So

I think people roll their eyes at it, that's fine. I certainly did. I'm a very sceptical person. But I think meditation and mindfulness practice could help every single person on this planet. And I'm not talking about tying it into some form of spirituality or religion, if that's what you do, and that's what works for you cool. But even from a very secular mainstream perspective, check out the book like 10%, happier by Dan Harris, incredible introduction to meditation, audio book is incredible as well, and just start to tune into the fact that, hey, maybe meditation could could be at the end of the day, it's the practice of tuning into what your brain is doing more and getting more control over it. A lot of people explain it a lot of different ways. But as painstaking as it can be to learn as again, kind of a vicious feedback loop, a lot of people get in and they go all I can't really think I can't think about nothing. You know, I don't want to try to think about nothing. And Dan Harris says in one of his interviews I've seen, he says, if you're thinking about nothing, you're either enlightened or you're dead. You know, that's not the goal. You know, that's not what meditation aims to do. And most of us that practice metal. Particularly, you know, if you're not practising it from a spiritual or religious perspective, we're just practising to, to get better focus, to have more control over our emotions, to be more aware of what our brain is doing. Because our brain does so many things at a subconscious level, and we don't even realise it. And you don't even realise how out of control you are, how much your brain is running you, instead of you running your brain, until you really start to tune into mindfulness practice and meditation. And especially if you're someone who suffers with depression, suffers from depression, like I have, or attention deficit disorder, which I have, many people would probably be able to diagnose that pretty quickly based on this interview. So so those are certainly things that, again, self care, which I define that as some form of mindfulness meditation practice, and regular exercise, find what works for you. I wish someone had told me that from a very young age, we can, it has had a profound impact on my output as an entrepreneur. And just as a as a, you know, loved one, as a general human being, you know, as someone that interacts with other people, I am a much better person.

And

the third one, that takes us down to three

Unknown Speaker 1:12:24
inches be to die. No big ones.

Ian Pribyl 1:12:28
Yeah, I know that probably. I gave two with like six sub steps. You know, I definitely, I mean, certainly there is a third, I'm just trying to think about the things that I okay, the third would be establish a really independent mindset. And certainly, for people that would be listening to this interview, that's, that's something that people really need in this industry in particular, you know, learn to Google shit, sorry for the foul language, but that's just it comes down to it. You know, you're, I had a lady email me for like, the third or fourth time today, in the past two days, because she hasn't even made a decision on whether or not she wants to start studying the training, that, you know, the paid the free, the free training, not even the paid training, she's not even digging in, because she's trying to decide if 3030 days from now she's going to regret regretted investing that time. And it's like, Okay, well, I cannot help you, you are like, there's nothing I can do for you to make you successful. You have a totally, you know, just skewed mindset. And, and so, you know, there's a lot in this industry, that is good information. But, you know, certainly, even in the stuff that I put out there as as much as I aim for it to be step by step with no gaps in between, sometimes an interface is going to change on a plug in, and you can Google it and find their knowledge base much more easily, then you can send an email to somebody you can post in a Facebook group and wait around for an answer. You know, people, and it's an interesting phenomenon as well, it's almost as you help people more they start depending on you more. And that's the opposite of what everyone needs in this, in this industry. Don't be afraid to make, make mistakes, mistakes are how we learn, you're going to make a tonne of them, embrace that. And, and just keep forging ahead, testing new things, trying new things. And as long as you don't give up, as long as you keep, you know, seeking as long as you keep searching, and you keep trying, because you have that independent mindset, you're not just waiting for this golden ticket or this silver bullet that someone is going to give you that's going to make you fantastically rich for the rest of your life, then you are going to be successful. But it requires that independent mindset. And that commitment to just pressing forward getting up dusting yourself off and understanding. As long as I keep doing that I'm already successful. Whether or not I have the product of that success for most people, that's money in my hands or in my bank account yet. If you're just not giving up, and you continue to press forward and develop yourself every way you can you are bound, you are destined for success. Just keep going.

Mike Beatty 1:15:17
Yeah, I think if people just heard those three things that could be life changing, if they just took all of those three things, and did those three? I want and certainly going to make sure I keep coming back to those three, that sticking out my wall right now. And always the massive, so good, yeah, no, thanks so much. So if you last thing, if people do want to contact you, how what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Ian Pribyl 1:15:48
Yeah, I mean, the best thing to do would probably be to get plugged into one of my communities, whether you want to jump into free internet marketing project and start studying there and start digging in. Or if you just want to jump straight into the video version of that, where you kind of over the shoulder, and you're seeing everything step by step in real time in video form a lot more, you know, visual help, certainly, certainly a lot of advantages there and even more content to dig even deeper. And then on top of that a community where I'm really active myself, then that would be first time internet marketing profits. And if you're just kind of hesitant about either, and you just kind of want to go back and want to load up something on my Kindle. You know, I want to just kind of pull a book up and and take a look at it and learn from that then the the book from nothing on Amazon would be the good starting point. But, you know, I'm very swamped. But at the same time, I've always have a bleeding heart for people in this industry. And for anyone that's working hard to help themselves, I am willing to do whatever I can to help. So my email address personally is Ian at stopping scams. com. It's something that I have a lot of processes in place. And like I have an assistant that helps me out with but I catch up with that at least two to three times a week with the help of my assistant. And again, if you're working hard to help yourself, I'm going to do everything I can even though I'm working hard for myself and my family, I just have such a passion for people that are truly devoted to changing their lives and willing to do what it takes and willing to take instructions and listen and, you know, take action. So if that's you, you feel free to reach out to me anytime I can't help you overcome, you know, whether that, you know, you should make a decision on starting a product that's free like that, you know, don't email me about stuff like that. But if you're stuck on something, you know, feel free to drop me a line and and I'll do my best to to carve out some time to help out.

Mike Beatty 1:17:49
I think that is completely 100% evident from this interview. And I really do appreciate so much for your time and wisdom. And like I say I could literally talk all day every day. There's endless knowledge in that brain. So yeah, no, thank you so much.

Ian Pribyl 1:18:08
Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate the time, Mike and, and I hope you and your audience, find it helpful and maybe we'll do it again sometime.

Ian Pribyl 0:00
All my content writers used to be, they did all of the keyword research themselves. I trained them how to do it gave them really extensive training. So they did all the keyword research, they did all of the research on the article, they did all of the writing, they inserted a table of contents drafted up on WordPress, and started all of the images from royalty free image websites, and scheduled it for publishing in front to back. So it's not impossible to do that yourself. It's just you've got to put together a little bit more customization a little bit more training yourself. And that certainly is something that you're never gonna get, you know, out of the agency as front to back. Hey, guys, it's Mike from Make Time Online and today we're joined by Ian pribyl from the free internet marketing project.

Mike Beatty 0:52
So Ian has been on the podcast before and I just found it was such a good episode. I didn't actually really

realise how good it was until I listened back to it actually funny enough but he got in touch recently just because he had been wait base been making some ads from the content from that podcast. And he just kind of got in touch and I figured it'd be really good to get him back on the show and kind of dig in a bit more because in his first chat if you go back to if you just type in in private as P r IBYL. into the whatever platform you will listen to the podcast on you'll find his chat and just go back it would be one of the earlier ones. It is such a good chat about how anyone can kind of get started with a internet marketing business that pretty much gives you all the information and which is what his whole free internet marketing project also does. And you can get that completely for free. Online, just type in femp if you want to find out a bit more about that and his book from nothing, which again explains everything is just giving away so much value, what people will charge hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for in other courses and things like that. Anyway, the chat today is all about scaling, I figured it'd be really good. Like I said before in the podcast, I'd like to get people on the show that can kind of relate to where I am as well with the whole internet marketing, business and everything. The situation I'm currently at is where I'm getting traffic to my site, but I definitely know I need to scale and monetize things a bit better. So if you're interested in hiring writers, particularly if you're looking at the difference between hiring your own writer or using like a Content Agency, he's got some really good thoughts and opinions on that. And just so many little useful tips as well. It's a two part episode. So there will be a little bit next week because it ended up being a really long one. So I just ended up splitting it into two parts. This one is all about outsourcing. Scaling next week will be more About monetization strategies and conversions basically, if you just want to get the main bit summarise gets last few minutes or summarise it then but if not enjoy this one guys. So Ian, can you tell me we're just having a bit of a chat there? Can you just tell me a bit more about how a site started to die? Like once you stopped giving it momentum and stuff? Can you just give me an example of a time when that happened?

Ian Pribyl 3:33
Hmm, yes, absolutely. Uh, so the first time it happened, did sadly This shouldn't have happened multiple times. But the first time it happened was when I started my journey in this industry when I was 16 years old, and beat my head against the wall for about three years before I finally broke through, so to speak, and started being really profitable and I am As a 19 year old started, I had a site that was making between 20 $503,000 a month, which of course was especially not coming from money was quite a bit of money for me. And then I decided to go back to college. And I went back to college and of course, got wrapped up in coursework and got wrapped up in social life and went to a public university. So probably did a lot more drinking than I should have done. And, you know, it's just enjoying, you know, this incredible passive income I'd read so much about online. Yeah. And yeah, it doesn't work that way. For three years that I you know, between when I restarted college and when I graduated, slowly, but surely that website just went down and down just slowly died. I mean, it's the you could if you pulled up the Google Analytics on the site, you would be able to see over that a couple three year span, a very distinct pattern of that traffic slowly going down, down down. This was back in like 2010 or 2011, when Google was even less aggressive about these things, and less focused on how recent and updated content was. And so that's certainly one instance where it the first instance, I should say, what happened to me. And then even later in my career, I've had websites where I just build them up because they were interests of mine. They were really exciting to me at the time, and they started to get some traction, they're getting a couple hundred or 300 or 400 visitors a day. So they're really showing those signs wanting to be a very successful website. But for whatever reason, I was too busy, I was too occupied with other projects, I moved on to some other shiny object, because that was a huge weakness of mine for many years. And looking over those analytics, you'd see the same thing before you know over the course of a year, two years, three years without content Didn't we, you'll slowly see that traffic begin to die down. And I'll say I'm, I'm not at all completely immune to this because even with stopping scams calm, which is a current website of mine, I ended up parting ways with one of my writers on very amicable terms, but my main writer for the website at the time, and I was just so absorbed in my startup that it was so demanding, and I was working so much over there that I didn't have time to plug in another writer. I just didn't want to take my focus away even though I have all of the training set aside and all that stuff. I just didn't want to deal with it. And I would say we went probably somewhere around six to eight months without a writer and we've got another one in there now. But we are we are seeing that on our current Google Analytics for that website that the trend has started to you know, slowly, you can see the signs Have a site beginning to die off. And I'm not to panic by that, because I know now that we have a full time writer in place, we're putting out really high quality content there again, it will, it will reverse the trend. But that's the scary thing. Of course, once you begin to see that trend, you have to understand you've got a several month journey ahead. It's not like you start publishing content again. And boom, you're back. It takes just as long to reverse that trend as it took that trend to start. So I think long answer, but I hope that's

Mike Beatty 7:33
Yeah, no, this is a really good answer. I stayed given a few examples, which is amazing. But I think a lot of people would kind of hear that, you know, if if they're not at that stage yet where they're getting that, you know, to $2,000 a month plus income before they get into that stage and probably hearing that and thinking what's the point then if I'm gonna have to keep on going you know, it's supposed to be this like passive income, you know, and stuff that kind of just keeps coming in. Each month, so they're probably a bit worried a minute, well, is there any point in actually carrying on and that probably leads on really nicely onto a bit I want to talk a lot about in this podcast, actually, which is outsourcing. And you mentioned it there. It was one of your writers were your main writer that stopped writing on your website, and we're about six to eight months, and you're starting to see a reversal. So, obviously, you've got right back in now. But that is, that's quite a scary thing for a lot of people outsourcing their precious baby that they've worked so hard on to someone else, some random person to start doing. So. I want to dig in a lot more into like how we actually go about that process. And we were just chatting actually, before we hit record publisher to hit record earlier. But you were speaking about your process and stuff like that. So I was just wondering if you could share. First of all, what is the right stage to even think about outsourcing and

Ian Pribyl 8:58
how do you even go about it? Hmm, very good question. So it really depends on your your budget, right? There are people I have worked with in the past who start outsourcing from the very beginning because they've got the budget for it, especially if they're outsourcing to another country like the Philippines, there are other other job markets as well where their cost of living there's a significant difference between their cost of living and a lot of us in the US, the UK, Australia, etc. And, and they'll just from the very beginning with the right vantage point and the right perspective, start outsourcing from day one, and just having someone kind of build that site for them. That's typically hard to do, especially if you don't know what you're doing yourself. And so I would say for most people, unless you have access to, you know, a bundle of someone else's training or something like that, what some of those people did, then you, you probably need to at least figure it out yourself, you need to do it long enough to get in a rhythm and know what needs done so that you can clearly train and manage someone else. And at that point, if you're working a full time job, and you're managing your budget well, and you say, Well, I have, you know, 600 or $700 a month so that I could really consistently and reliably hand this off to a writer in the Philippines, for example, that you could maybe take five to 10 hours a week max to manage, but then you have a full time writer on your site. And you say, Well, I'm, I'm busy working your career, and I'm making 75,000 or $100,000 a year, maybe more, maybe slightly less. And you say I could just continue focusing there so that I can I can, you know, do that and then I can come home and spend time with my family and know that my website is building in the background. For a lot of people that's worth six or $700 a month. You just wouldn't Want to make sure not to take your hand off the wheel too much, because we can talk about that later. But that's something I found too is I've gotten way too hands off in the past with my team. And now I make sure to have weekly meetings with new team members. And even for established team members that really know what they're doing. I still have at least a monthly meeting, to to make sure everything's staying on track, make sure they don't have any questions, etc. So the the for the vast majority of people that are hearing this, they're probably going to realistically start looking at this whenever they have enough income being generated from their blog or affiliate marketing website, or whatever online endeavour they're working on. And they're going to wait until they get enough revenue coming in that they can at least bring that person on and still be breakeven. They don't have a higher burn rate than they have revenue and And I would say that's certainly, in my opinion, the latest, you should think about doing that. Because As tempting as it is

to want to you go all this way and you push so hard and I know what you said earlier, you're absolutely right. There are going to be people that hear this and they go, Well, what the heck is the point then? What am I doing, you know, you push so hard and you start getting that income. And that what you what you really will want to do is just enjoy that income because it's cool. It is so cool to have an online business that's that's generating some form of income because you push so hard you dreamed about it for so long. And here you are. And here I am now telling you, okay, take all of that fun and just swallow it. just stuff it deep down and turn it into hatred so that you could you know, go and instead of spending it on yourself and add in maybe getting a new car or something with the $500 a month. You're your website's creating and really enjoying that money, you're now being told the best thing to do the most responsible thing to do if you want a long term career in this industry is to reinvest that into your first team member. And probably that team member for most people running blogs is going to be a content writer. Yeah. And, and you would, the reason I say to do that is because then you can continue focusing on the business and doing everything you're doing. You can continue writing articles, but more importantly, you can then shift your focus to things like monetization, looking at your analytics and finding out what your your highest traffic landing pages are, and find out what your highest value pages are and making sure those landing pages are funnelling over correctly. They're converting correctly, you know, from that landing page that maybe doesn't make you a whole lot of money, but it you know, making sure people are trickling over at a high percentage into the pages you want them to see on your website because they are Making money, you can shift your focus and your hours to things that are much higher leverage opportunities in your business and a much better use of your personal time, when rather than just continuing to write content that realistically you can get off of your plate for four or $5 an hour. And what that's going to enable you to do is grow dramatically faster. So instead of you know, spending that money on a car payment and needing to just keep writing yourself for a number of months, if not yours, you can get that off your plate. And now you've taken your website from the point of, hey, it's going to take you know, 12 months 24 months to double and triple your income, you might be able to hit that now in four months and eight months instead because you've you've really gotten time leverage on your business, which is something that most small business owners never achieve.

Mike Beatty 15:00
Yeah, I've got so many questions that are just what you said, there's a tonne of stuff, though to dig into. And But first of all, I just want to say that I read it work less, make more, I think it was the book. And he talks a lot about being efficient rather than productive. And exactly like what you were just saying there rather than spending your time being busy and productive, which is kind of like the content writer really when you think about it, because Sure, that's, that's the drive that you're going to need to do that start like you say, if this is your first go at doing this sort of stuff, just you can understand the process, you understand what content is actually ranking for you and like doing well for you and things like that. I think a lot of people kind of overlook that part. But then once you've got that coming in, then it's more a case of like you say, focusing on the monetization and I mean, this is the stage I'm at right now. I'm not gonna lie. I tell a lot of people this on the podcast when when oma chats is obviously too help a lot of people as well with the with the podcast, but it's kind of like free consultation for Mike. Yeah, it's a just like you were saying. So that's something that I'm definitely I know I need to improve on. And I want to dig into the monetization shortly. But before we get to that you just say in about how content writers should probably be the first person that you hire. Which Yes, you know, kind of makes sense it so it kind of is someone that's going to keep producing the content for you, which is going to always be the main part of your business, especially if it's like a blog or niche website on something like that is is so important, whether it's YouTube channel, everything podcast is content is the thing that's always going to be what keeps bringing people back. So you're always going to need content. But how do we go then from hiring one content writer? What would be like the next stage would you say what's the next thing that you should be? Looking for do hire to content writers? Or would you say it's more important to start thinking about SEO person? Or maybe you know someone that can write sales copy for you? Or would it even be something like a editor. And I've actually heard this before an editor is actually way harder to hire than a content writer,

Ian Pribyl 17:23
because the command of the English language or whatever language you're producing content in, needs to be so much higher, it needs to be so much higher.

Mike Beatty 17:31
So what would you say would be the next step to think for someone if they're growing their business?

Ian Pribyl 17:37
Hmm, that is such a good question.

Unknown Speaker 17:42
So

Mike Beatty 17:44
Oh, wow. We just while you're thinking of it as well, um, the next bit that I sort of want to get into as well as like that, building a team and you were saying before we started pressing record as well, about maintaining your team and things like that. So I'm guessing it kind of relates to that as well. But

Ian Pribyl 18:04
I would actually say no. So bring me back to retention down the road. Okay? Because it would actually, I don't think it would be super super tied to this, believe it or not, because the things I do for retention really don't have a whole lot to do with. They're not directly related to exactly how I, I mean, they're not directly related, when you initially think about it to how I scale, right? Certainly, you just apply logic to the situation, if you retain your best talent a lot better, you're going to scale more and scale more rapidly and scale more reliably, with a lot less stress and a lot less headaches. Because you're retaining the talent that you've taken the time to train, rather than just constantly having turnover and having to find new talent, source new talent and train new talent over and over and over again, which is the same concept that's really in corporate America and like that's one of the reasons Facebook and Google and all these tech companies now work so hard. To take care of their talent and pay so well and have all these perks and they have on site dinner and lunch, etc. It's not because it's you know, not exclusively because they they care about their employees, some could speculate that they don't care about their employees at all. It's just this cold arctic cold hearted corporate move because they they recognise, the more you give your employees, the more you take care of them, the more you you demonstrate that you care about their quality of life, and their work life balance, the more likely you are to retain them. And in that act of retention, even though you're paying more than you initially would have set out to where your competitor may have set out to you are actually saving money in the long run because of the reduced turnover by keeping those people on board. So it's the same the same principle applied to to outsourcing and building a virtual team. So let's definitely come back to that if we can, if we can bookmark that and dig into that some more. When it comes to it. One of the challenges to answering this question is there is or specific answering the question about what should your next hire be, is because it's going to, it's going to be very different for each not only each business model, but also, it's going to be different for every person depending on what they moved into and their own business because that's what interested them. And that's where they saw the most opportunity for growth. So, for example, if I didn't move into the data side and the conversion optimization optimization side of my business after I started hiring writers, then that absolutely would have been the side that I would have needed to, you know, kind of the little the little Dutch Boy that would have needed to go plug the hole in the dam there because that once you once you've kind of started to scale your business, that is a huge leverage point in any online business. I don't care what you're selling, whether it's digital, whether it's physical, whether it's yours, whether it's someone else's You know, if you're not paying attention to conversion optimization and what your traffic's doing on your site, you are losing a tonne of money if you're not getting really deep into that. So I feel like I just preached a little bit and passionate about people, because I see it all the time in this industry. And I've seen it many times over the years where I will be working on a website, and I will have you know, I'll be at a conference or something with a kind of a colleague or counterpart in the industry, oftentimes a friend and we'll be talking shop and their website will have five times the traffic of mine, but we're making the same amount of money or close to the same amount of money because I'm so much more focused on conversion optimization.

Mike Beatty 21:41
Yeah, I mean, so that is I'm gonna hold my hands up straight away. This is 100% It sounds like you're talking about me, because that's exactly how I feel right now. I'm starting to get pretty good traffic and two different websites. And I know I'm not making the money that I should be making and you know, like Make time online by itself is getting upwards of, you know, 50,000 session 50,000 sessions just from SEO. So, like, you know, it's that with that, with those kind of numbers and things that I've heard from other people, it should definitely be doing better than it is. But like I was saying to you before, as well, a big focus of make timeline is not necessarily always the monetization is also to help people as much as possible. And then is the other projects that I want to be putting my time into, to, to make the money and stuff so yeah, anyway, yes. sytraco.

Ian Pribyl 22:34
And, and, absolutely, and, you know, something that I would, you know, challenge you on there too, is, let's certainly have a private chat or something if we need to. But I would challenge you also to recognise that it I've learned this the hard way through all of the free online education I've done in this industry. You always Have to recognise that revenue is is lifeblood for your purpose and for your mission. And I feel like for too long in especially on the marketing side of the things I do the marketing education side, I have gone underpaid in my mind for the and in my mind under the guise of all altruism, not the guys publicly but the guys to myself, I've been able to tell myself, Well, I'm making less money, because I'm doing good work for other people. And those things should not be mutually exclusive. Certainly, if you're getting the traffic and the traffic is hungry for a solution. You should have no qualms or no guilt about directing them to a good solution where they're going to be well taken care of and getting compensated for making that connection as an affiliate or, you know, eventually in your own products. Because it's what's best for To them, and it's also what's best for you and your mission, and it will fuel the mission and allow you to scale and do more, if nothing else. So I'll get off that that's

Mike Beatty 24:12
how powerful was in that way. So this was a neat to hear as well. So thank you.

Ian Pribyl 24:17
Well, of course, you're you know, and and you do great work. And I mean, you extract so much value out of your interviews, I can tell you because, you know, I kind of wake up from the trance after we get off these calls, and I hear it back later. And I go, oh, holy crap. Wow, we really talked about some high value stuff. So certainly you should be getting compensated for the contribution you're making to the community. And so now that where it really gets it, you know, going back to the question, it really gets tricky is like, say you have an e commerce business. And your monetization method is not is not content at all. It's not it's not written content at all. Your monetization method is or excuse me, your traffic method I should say is Facebook ads? Well, if that's the case, you know, you're probably hiring first more than anything like a customer service person and someone to fulfil orders, etc. And then your next hire maybe is someone to help with your ads. So, I would say the best answer for this that's going to be universal is when anytime, anytime you're getting ready to take that next step in, whether it's your first team member or to second team member, or it's your fifth team member, you've got to take a step back at what you're and look at what your business is doing. Look at all of the angles. Look at all of the leverage opportunities you have in all the levers you have in your business, from content to data analysis to conversion optimization, and AB split testing, to possibly expanding into another form of traffic. Look at all of those and look at what is the thing that you can consistently and reliably outsource for the lowest cost. And that is the next thing you should tackle. That is going to universally answer that question. Unfortunately, it's not as specific as I'd like it to be. Because there are so many variables hear that there are probably dozens, if not hundreds of answers to that question. But if you can take some time to step back and reflect and even if you're just thinking about it from that perspective, and giving it your best guess that is always going to be ultimately your highest leverage opportunity in your business, no matter what your business model is, no matter what you're doing, what your monetization method is, whether you're selling your own products or someone else's products, that is always going to be the biggest opportunity in your business for bringing on another team member.

Mike Beatty 26:53
Yeah, and I think someone said to me, actually, as well before, before I hired my writer that I currently have, they they also said, Well, at the end of the day, you can always not, you can always like let them go sort of thing. It's not like it's a lifelong contract or whatever. And obviously you want it to be and you want to bring in the best person possible when you want to have a long term relationship and you know, really help them. But it's it doesn't have to be like this legally binding thing, which actually kind of leads on to the next question, which is, what kind of legal things do you need in place to hire someone contracts and things like that? And how long would you normally give them on the contract and things to kind of test the waters and everything like that?

Ian Pribyl 27:40
Very interesting question. I think this varies a lot culturally, because in the United States, the land of the free Wi Fi or anyone in a lot of states whenever we want without any obligation, you know, but I was I was just talking to my old college roommate in Germany, who is his fiance. is working for a firm. And she, you know, is in kind of a probationary period where, right now I think they only need to give each other each other two weeks notice if they're if they're going to terminate the employment contract. But once you cross a certain threshold, according to the government, they they're required to give each other I think three months notice. And I think that's stuff like that's more common outside of the United States. And so I'm not super well versed on what those employment relationships typically look like. Of course, I have to say before I talk anything legal that I'm not a legal professional and none of my none of nothing I say should be taken as legal advice. You should consult with an attorney, especially if for no other reason than the geographic differences. But I also know that a lot of my a lot of employment law that may apply to who I would hire in the United States doesn't necessarily Apply to outsourcing abroad. Yeah. And so that being said, that's the kind of legal perspective there. Something I will say that I do and I'm very diligent about with my with anyone who's doing any form of creative work, a lot of people don't realise and again, this is going to vary a lot region to region. But my understanding and interpretation in the United States is the, the copyright holder is whenever someone does some form of graphic design for you or they write something for you. Technically the person who wrote it is the copyright holder, even if you are paying them in an employer, employee employer relationship or a contractor relationship. Technically, you as the business owner, don't own that copyright unless you have something in place. That is a copyright Right assignment from that team member to you as the business owner, your business as an entity? Yeah, so that's a vulnerability that I don't think it's going to come up super often. I don't, you know, hopefully, your team members aren't going around filing DMCA takedown notices, because they feel like I own the content on your site after you no longer employed them. Yeah. But, but technically, that is a vulnerability that I think most website owners aren't at all aware of. And, and so anytime certainly anytime I've had something that I was going to go, you know, try to go really public with whether it's launching a bunch of ads or, or manufacturing something, I have made sure that I get those copyright disclosures, but you should really be making sure that you're doing it are the copyright assignments, I should say. You should really make sure you're doing that as a blogger or website owner of any kind as well. So now as far as like employment contracts for how long they're going to work for me with the pays going to be, etc. I very rarely, if ever, personally, I'm not saying this is the right choice, but I very rarely if ever have those in place myself. So I don't you know, with my team members, I don't have any minimum notice requirements. I don't have I'm not committed to keeping them on boards for X amount of months or X amount of years. We don't I don't have any any contracts in my business like that. I do have kind of an an unwritten

commitment. Where when I talk to I, when I bring you on a team member, there's a lot in my interview process that is designed to find out and identify whether this person is a high integrity individual, and whether they're honest, and of course I'm looking at their past work history for loyalty and tie spent at their previous employers, etc. Like any employer would, and I tell them, my writers, for example, if I'm going to be training you with all of these very high value skills, I would actually encourage you at some point to break out on your own and start your own business because you will have the skill set to do it. All I ask is that you work for me for a minimum of one year, because I'm going to put a lot of time and a lot of effort and frankly, a lot of financial resources as well into training you up. And I would like you to stay with me for at least a year so that my business can recoup the ROI that we invested into you. And I that's always part of my interview process, which is a little bit hardcore. But especially if you're not going to have any contracts in place. I think that's important. Frankly, I don't want anyone to continue working for me, just because they're under a contract. If someone is unhappy enough that they want to leave there. They're not going to do high quality work. For the remainder of their contract from the time they decide they no longer want to be there to the time they're free, and no get to go find another job. So personally, in that sense, I'm not sure how much I buy into contracts. Yeah. Because and also certainly there's, I guess, to a degree, there's, there's an ethical element there that's probably worth discussing, but would take us down a whole other rabbit hole of you know, kind of having another human signed into a, you know, an obligation for their, for their life that like I'm just not sure employers frankly should have that level of control over people. other human beings with you know, a life so not to knock anyone who does it by any means. This is just the style that I've come to over the years, and I just tried to make sure that I am supportive enough and and provide enough quality of life and enough perks etc. and just have a good enough relationship. With my team members that I retain talent without without any obligation to stay with me, because we have a piece of paper that, especially due to the differences in international law probably wouldn't even be valid. You know, and certainly if it's valid, I'm probably not going to take them to Filipino court or they're not going to show up to court in the United States, you know, oh, so at that point, it's, it's all just an illusion anyway. So yeah, I'll just stick to my style of keeping it to an upfront verbal commitment, making sure I'm hiring hiring people of high integrity.

Mike Beatty 34:33
Yeah, I mean, you've pretty much covered a lot of retention and stuff with what you just said, because it's the hiring process that you put so much effort into, which probably really helps the retention of good staff rather than having to sort of backtrack on bad staff. And also, you know, hopefully, like you say, with those things that you've got in the interview process of saying we're going to give you high quality service. In a minimum of a year would be great if you can stay on board. But yeah, all of that stuff kind of speaks for itself. And I know we're not going to be able to dig into it too much, because it would just probably be a whole podcast in itself. But I would love to know a little bit more about like your hiring process. I think you said before the chat, you've actually got a book that's coming out. All right,

Ian Pribyl 35:19
yes, I don't know when it'll come out. But we're in the we're in the we're still in the planning stages, we're still outlining everything that we want to put into it. So it'll probably at least be a few months. But yes, we are going to release a really, really, really high quality book on not only the outsourcing process and how to do that dependably especially abroad because that's where things begin to get a lot more complicated because then you're working in cultural differences and, and you really have to have things worked into your interview process to to catch things that you wouldn't catch. Otherwise, you know, you would catch me if you were interviewing a person in person, but you get a lot fewer data points. When you are interviewing someone abroad and remotely, and so, yes, we will end up ultimately putting that all together and releasing it. But like I said, right now, it's still a little bit in the planning and outlining stages. But I think it's, it's another way that we can throw our brand put something out there that's of immense value that will crush courses on outsourcing that are 1000 or $2,000. And it's just going to be there in a book, you know, for 1020 bucks. So, how seriously people take it is up to them. But, but yes, so I guess forgive me if I've lost track of the question somewhere in there. But uh,

Mike Beatty 36:47
yeah, I was just saying if you could give us a bit of an insight that obviously you've kind of touched hiring Yeah, the hiring process you obviously go for Philippines you kind of mention that quite a lot already. You know how Yeah, and it we spoke about it before as well. It just makes real sense. And, you know, typically is a bit of a stereotype I guess, but typically their English is very good. And the quiet this seems to be very, like honest and have high integrity like you kind of spoke about already. Well, but as that is a very big stereotype, and you know, it doesn't mean every everyone is or anything like that, but that's kind of how I've, what I've noticed I've actually been to the Philippines and they'll kind of notice that just from our trip, they're

Ian Pribyl 37:33
very interesting. So now I'm definitely going to put my foot in my mouth. So advanced notice to everyone listening, and I certainly don't want to present my experiences as my general experiences as the end all be all. But I have, of course over the years, outsourced a lot in the Philippines and my first couple of years. Much messier than the hiring experiences I have now due to the exact opposite. Oh really? So, and I find that the reason I have worked so much into my interview process, honesty, transparency, someone who will communicate with candour is because I have had so many experiences of the exact opposite of when hiring out of the Philippines and my understanding speaking to other people who have hired out of the Philippines, of course, certainly, there's an amount of just statistical likelihood that you're going to you know, go over there and, and have a really good run the first time. But if you really want to do it consistently in the long term, you want to put a lot in place in my experience to mitigate that during the the application and in interview process. So it begins for me all the way in my job description, where I talk about the number one thing I prioritise. And the number one thing I look for in my virtual talent is I want them to be honest, I want them to have integrity and have character and, you know, just not have a track record of lying to them, their employers. And to give examples of this, I have hired many people over the years who started in the position, and then suddenly they're having so many issues with their internet and when they're not having issues with their internet, they're sick and when they're not sick or having issues with their internet, someone close to them and their family has died. And they're only working about 50% of the time that they were hired for because they they are constantly having some sort of conflict that is being presented to me as preventing them from working. Certainly someone could could have a Lemony Snicket life and just really be very very very unfortunate and and not be able to do the work they were hard for I don't want to present this as though anytime I have a team member give me an excuse that they missed work that that I'm not going to believe them because certainly there have been instances with my team in the past two weeks with two individual two different team members where they told me this happened and I'm highly confident that they were telling the truth and I just adjust and and i don't give them hell. You know, I don't I don't harass him. I don't need a doctor's note anything like that. But that's because we've established that rapport and that trust. What hi i the telltale signs for me personally, of someone just making an excuse and not it not being a valid excuse, especially when working with the talent I've worked with out of the Philippines. Personally, again, personal experiences, anecdotal, take them for what they're worth

are consistently, the excuse will come after the absence. So whenever it's getting to the point that I may notice that their hours that they logged were lower than they were supposed to be. Their output is lower than it was supposed to be. Or I've been trying to get in touch with them for two or three days. And I have not heard from them because they've just ghosted me. And now I'm getting a Oh, I was sick, or Oh, my internet went out. Because what you'll find with your honest team members is they almost always have at least a cell phone connection where they can drop you a message on WhatsApp or shoot you a quick email to say, Hey, I'm going through this right now. I don't know when it's going to be resolved, but I'm working on it. And then you know, to anticipate that absence, there's a big difference between the two. So I'm significantly More likely if not guaranteed to believe the team member who gives me notice up front and lets me know as soon as there's a problem. And, versus someone who is saying after the fact. Yeah, Oh, I missed work because I was visiting my aunt of the hospital. Oh, I miss work because I was I was sick, I was admitted to the hospital myself. I've even had team members go far above and beyond what I actually need. Personally, I've had team members shoot me images of like the IV connected to their arm in the hospital bed. Because, you know, that's what that's the kind of thing their previous employer would have required. And I I've just, you know, this person has worked for me for two years. If they tell me they had to go to the hospital and I don't need picture evidence and photographic evidence that they're, they're actually in the hospital. Yeah. So. So, in my hiring process and my interview process, I definitely make very clear up front that I'm looking for Honesty above all else, I value honesty above all else. I even as I go through the interview process and I ask questions, I absolutely. In my email interviews as well as my video interviews, I look for those things as well. And I asked them difficult questions, especially when I have them on camera and I can see their reactions. I asked them things like, you know, have you ever been let go from a position because you missed work without notice, or because you just weren't doing the amount of work you were hired for? Because you missed work without telling anyone in advance, etc. Because the vast majority of people unfortunately, it's not foolproof, but if they're lying to you, they are it's probably going to be somewhat visually evident if you're observing in a video interview of someone's answering those questions. And then in addition to that, I've also started checking references as well. I get I get two personal references and two professional references from everyone before they begin working for me now because I think that that gives you a very strong track record as well and is evidence and proof from that from our for that candidate that is not coming directly from that candidate that you're not having to get from them as an individual you're kind of going outside of them to to other people, especially past managers are very very valuable for me when I'm checking References

Mike Beatty 44:35
So I do just get like an email from them get their email address.

Ian Pribyl 44:40
Yeah, actually, another little pro tip, man, I hope nobody I interview ends up listening to this madness. This recording is giving away some give it away some some insider tips here. I always ask for both email and phone number I asked for name, email and phone number of all references I have no intention of checking the phone number, I have no intention of calling someone in the Philippines if due to the time difference if nothing else, because for me, depending on the time of year, it's between 12 and 13 hours, so they're literally on the opposite side of the clock. So, I, but the reason I asked for that is because it's significantly less likely. And I'm just going to sound like a paranoid jerk now. But it's significantly less likely that a candidate is just going to go create a bunch of different free Gmail accounts, Gmail, Yahoo, etc, Hotmail, AOL, whatever the hell are now. And they're going to reply to those questions themselves a little bit paranoid, I fully admit that. But if you are having them give you phone numbers, you are at least giving the impression that this you know, they're gonna look at that and they're gonna go crap, I can't make up this referral. I can't make this a friend. This actually needs to be a legitimate business and the legitimate

Mike Beatty 45:59
reference Interesting. That's a good one. That's a good tip.

Ian Pribyl 46:02
I know it's kind of psychological war games that make me feel like a really crappy person. But at the same time, I also know that personally what I've arrived at there from an ethical perspective, is that the ends justify the means.

Mike Beatty 46:14
Yeah, I mean, I think that is the thing about the whole interviewing thing is that you do want it to be, I think, if you can put the most time into that process, and then you know, the training process and things like that, then hopefully, the rest of the employment should be much smoother Robin and having to like backtrack on someone that isn't isn't great. So it definitely makes sense to me anyway. But obviously, like this can all sound a bit time consuming and a bit overwhelming to someone that's doing this for the first time. So obviously, you've got a process and you've said about like your book that will be coming out, which would definitely help. But how do you then go about like, staying in contact with them and just liaising with You're with your team members. Do you use something like slack? And there's all these different programmes or do you have your own type of software to, to kind of deal with that stuff?

Ian Pribyl 47:10
Yeah, I'm actually remarkably unsophisticated and I, you know, just like anything else in my business, I will probably add or iterate to integrate a lot more solutions like that in the future. That is the most startup founder sentence I have ever said. iterate and integrate.

Mike Beatty 47:31
You can tell you're in the middle of doing some serious startup stuff in a moment.

Ian Pribyl 47:35
Yes, I know. I'll be dropping synergy colloquialisms and no time. Um, so I I'm really unsophisticated when it comes to that personally, right now, there is one team member where I can see integrating something like Asana or Monday into our workloads because and he's my SEO guy. Because our project is kind of so multifaceted, and long term and there are so many ins and outs, it's not like it's doing the same work over and over again. There's a lot going on there. So I could certainly see needing to do something like that. But other than that I have some form of messenger contact with each one of my team members, where I can send voice memos, because I'm a crazy busy person. Like most startup, or most not only most startup founders, but most business owners period. And I do not want to be stuck communicating, you know, with all of my eight or nine team members, virtual team members through email only, or text message only or Facebook Messenger only. Because sometimes they're going to ask a question and I'm going to want to answer it with a voice memo in four to five minutes rather than taking 30 to 45 minutes to type an email. Especially when you extrapolate that across a team of multiple individuals. So that's one thing I do, everyone always has access to me, I always make perfectly clear to all of my team members, if you need anything, contact me. I think that's a really important from a manager's perspective, because, in my personal opinion, in my personal view, my job as a manager, is to set all of my team members up for success. If I'm not setting them up for success, and they don't work out, it's probably just as much my fault as it is theirs if not more my fault than it is there. And that's a very important mindset shift to have, in my opinion, that really cripples a lot of business owners. Because anytime something goes wrong with a hire, they go, Oh, it was them. It was the employee it was the contractor. It was the virtual talent over and over and over again and they never learned to change their management style and change their management practices to grow and for example, retain that, that talent that certainly goes into retention as well. And then outside of that I have a video conference with each one of my team members, depending on the complexity of their work once a week, especially when they're new, I will set time to meet with them once a week. And that can be a little bit daunting. And especially when you have multiple team members, you start to look at your week and you go man, I'm losing eight hours a week, losing 10 hours a week to these meetings. But you really have to get again the correct perspective on that is if you're meeting an hour a week with eight different team members, you have now taken an hour of your time to get 35 to 40 hours of work out of that person that week and ensure it's as high quality and on track with the the vision for the project and the coordination with other team members as it possibly could be. You don't I saw a study recently I'm going to wildly misquote these numbers because I've only read them like once or twice. But it was a study that followed. It was by Harvard Business Journal, it followed CEOs around for I think, three months. And they logged in 15 minute intervals, what that CEO spent their time doing. And I want to say it was something like 71% of time was spent in meetings. Well, because when you have someone who their main focus really should be strategy above all else, coordinating team members above all else, mentoring and training and pouring into talent that they're developing as part of that organisation, it makes sense that the vast majority of their time would be spent in meetings. And so, so you know, just modelling a little scrap of that. If nothing else, you should recognise that a weekly meeting And once your team member is up and running, and they're doing really consistent work, if their work doesn't change constantly, you can probably shift that into a once every other week meeting and then into a monthly meeting, even potentially, which is where I, I will probably ultimately end up with most of my writers is a once a month meeting.

Mike Beatty 52:17
Yeah, I was actually just panicking there thinking, Oh, man, maybe I should be doing that. But I do I have, I would say it's probably more like once a month now. It's a whereas Yeah, it was once a week. At the first week it was every day, you know, like and so it's kind of slowly slowly got a bit longer and stuff but I just realised it was kind of a waste of his time and a waste of my time and it was nice to have a chat and stuff but he's doing great work. So it's like why do I need to keep pestering him and he was happy with everything that was going head and the same with him. It's like got any problems let me know straight away and he does is upfront about it. Also, because

Ian Pribyl 53:00
Yeah, it's working. Perfect. I mean, you've hit the nail on the head there, even if that's not what you intended to do with what you just said, because what you just said is the exact symptom you will experience when you need to start to turn down your weekly meetings, you'll find that the meetings are wrapping up super, super quickly. You don't have a whole lot to talk about business wise. They don't have a whole lot of questions. You don't have any questions, and you're just kind of you know, it's not a productive meeting, frankly, at that point, not from a business perspective. So yeah, you You certainly when you start experiencing that is when you know, okay, I've got a I've got more time between our meetings, it's good to know. Anyway,

Mike Beatty 53:44
I know we've spoke for ages about outsourcing, but I do think it is, well for me anyway, I don't know if this is the right mentality to have. But I think to really grow and scale outsourcing needs to be probably the highest priority. Maybe I'm wrong,

Ian Pribyl 54:00
maybe I'm wrong. No, I would I personally I mean, you were one person, I don't care who you are listening to this right now you are one person and if you are not right the news, so are the psychologist or psychiatrist, you know you are, you are one person you had the exact same amount of time in the day as everyone else has. That is this is one of the universal truths of just being a human being, and being a professional of any kind on top of that. So, you are never going to be able to do everything in your business. If you really want to grow and scale. You will never be able to take on every endeavour and every opportunity for growth that is healthy for your business and point you in the right direction towards whatever your long term goals are. And with acknowledging that is universal and it's true for every single one of us the obvious logical answer His time leverage is the only solution. And the only way you get time leverage, there are two ways I should say. One is through software and automation, which of course, you can't do everything. You actually can't do a lot there software and automation yet, of course, artificial intelligence is reshaping that rapidly, but we'll see where we end up in a few years. And to is by getting really, really good at systemising your processes that is so essential somebody, somebody people just think like, Oh, I'm just gonna go hire talent, I'm gonna go recruit someone and outsource? No, the prerequisite is, you need to be able to tell that person what to do and and consistently and reliably break that down into a system that produces those results. Otherwise, you know, you, you're just gonna hire someone, they're gonna be confused all the time, you're going to be stressed all the time because they're never doing what you want them to do. And so you need to get really, really good at systemising you need to get really, really good in my opinion at recruiting. And just you know, interviewing that talent and finding the red flags when they pop up being able to identify them, and listening to your instincts, etc. And, you know, coming up with a really strong interview process that consistently produces the talent, that whatever your culture fit is in your business that they slot in, and they stay for a long period of time. And, and then, of course, retaining that talent, managing that talent, training that talent, even using the systems you've put in place. All of that is what adds up to time leverage. And ultimately, time leverage is what helps any business hit the hockey puck growth curve, otherwise, you're always going to be linear. And at some point, you're going to hit a ceiling even worse, you know, the linear is just going to hit the linear growth is just going to hit a ceiling where it levels off and you're never going to be able to do more as a single person. So yes, To absolutely confirm what you said, I agree completely that that is among, if not the absolute highest leverage point in any digital business owners prospective pursuits.

Mike Beatty 57:14
Yep. No, I think that's absolutely 100% spot on really. But yeah, anyway, I've we've covered outsourcing, I definitely want to just dive into a little bit I know is this has already been quite long. So I'm very aware of your time as well because

Ian Pribyl 57:31
I'll, you know, I'll hang out as much as long as we need to,

Mike Beatty 57:34
but I would, whatever really touching on the monetization and being like, more efficient rather than productive and things like that. But just very quickly, I just want to get your quick thoughts on content agencies, is it worth using any of those content agencies I know I've actually just joined a mastermind. We had a call two days ago. Everyone's really like highly driven and the four of us that will really good Good people in there and everything. And people are talking about content agencies and like someone I think it's mentioned an agency that does six cents per word is how they how they base their fees and things like that. So you know, they can get 10,000 words a month for $600 or something and they do the keyword research they do like the bass, the bass, they do everything which does sound quite impressive. And I was I was a bit I was like, that sounds interesting. I'll have to look into that but just wanted your thoughts on using an agency like that.

Ian Pribyl 58:36
Hmm. Very good question. I think it really comes down to if you can be really self aware and honest with yourself. And you look at it you go realistically I'm I am not going to be a person who is going to enjoy or be good at potentially systemising my business myself and Training Centre Someone else and recruiting that talent and managing that relationship. You look at all that and you go, there's just no way I'm going to be able to do that consistently. And I don't want to acquire that skill set. One thing I would challenge anyone kind of thinking that right now to recognise is we're talking right now about one aspect of your business that you will be able to hand off if you choose not to develop those skills somewhat reliably, but there's going to be more. So it's not like this is, you know, you're going to have to acquire these skills at some point. If you want to really grow your business and expand as a business owner owner and achieve the level of success that most digital business owners are striving to achieve. So I wouldn't, I would encourage anyone to not delude themselves into thinking like, you know, this is the ultimate solution because you're just, you're just delaying the inevitable. And my second part of that is you have to recognise if you're doing something like that You are absolutely paying margins as part of the the relationship, that that's just the nature of a middleman, middleman is always going to need to mark it up. So what you're dealing with is someone who has gotten really good at these things. On the other side, they've assembled a team. And they're probably making somewhere between 50 and 100% margins on everything that you buy from them. And on top of that, you're going to have significantly less control over the quality or the the feedback loop and the direction of the content, etc. Because who knows if you're even getting the same writer every time for example, and who knows how much you're going to be able to tweak and give, give constructive criticism and feedback and kind of manipulate that over time into into what's best for your business and what really consistently without you giving any additional feedback is exactly what you need. So there are certainly pros and cons. You're going to cut out Some of that front end systemization and training and you know, the daunting tasks of interviewing and everything like that, which really, once you get the hang of them aren't bad at all. And once you have the training in place, you can you know, let go of one team member or have one team member quit and plug another team member right into the exact same training you used to train that previous person.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:23
But

Ian Pribyl 1:01:25
I would say, can it be a solution? Yes. Would it be my solution? No, because I recognise a, I'm going to get the the lowest cost. If I if I do that myself, and that is what's best for my business long term. I'm going to need to have a no and utilise the skills for systemising and outsourcing myself for other work in the future. So I might as well break it down for our writing role in my business that at that point, if I'm that blogger, I'm probably intimidate. familiar with, so it's one of the best best opportunities for me to practice. And, and, and see if I can actually systemize something versus something that's newer to me. And, and I also, you know, if I'm going that route versus hiring the person myself, I'm going to have to recognise, of course, not only am I paying some form of margin between 50 to 100%, what I 100% more than I would have been paying if I had just sourced this talent myself. But in addition to that, I'm probably going to have dramatically less control over what the initial output looks like. And of course, that has a very large impact on how much work you have to do to that content as a business owner afterwards. And not to mention you could do things like if you were hiring the writer, yourself. Not only would they create the content, but you can also then teach them how to upload it to WordPress, how to insert images, how to insert internal links, how to insert a table of contents, etc, and just have it all done for you. Because certainly I've had content writers in the past that all my content writers used to be, they did all of the keyword research themselves, I trained them how to do it gave them really extensive training. So they did all the keyword research, they did all of the research on the article, they did all of the writing, they inserted a table of contents drafted up on WordPress, inserted all of the images from royalty free image websites and scheduled it for publishing in front to back, you know, so it's not impossible to do that yourself. It's just you've got to put together a little bit more customization a little bit more training yourself. And that certainly is something that you're never going to get, you know, out of the agency as front to back like he said, yes, there they may do the keyword research. How good is that keyword research and how much control do you have over that is one question as well, what you can control a lot more if you are managing that team member yourself, as you know, their only employer. Same thing with content, is it consistently coming back in the style and in the depth and how extensive is the research for that content versus what you might want in your own business? So, yes, there you know, it sounds like a somewhat viable shortcut, but as with any shortcut in this industry, you probably want to be really honest with yourself about some of the potential shortcomings of that relationship as well.

Mike Beatty 1:04:35
Yeah. Totally, totally agree as well actually. And just what you said there just re emphasise some of the things that I was thinking in my head. And ya know, it, I think is spot on, actually, and like you say is that is the skill of hiring and actually going through that process and interviewing and things like that, which you caught you you will just be bypassing and You're going to need that at some stage for other things anyway. So yeah, I totally think you may as well just bite the bullet and, and do it yourself. Sorry to cut you off there, I know you're kind of just getting into the chat. There's more coming next week. So definitely check out the podcast next week, which is all about conversions, and specifically monetizing your sites. So I'm sure a lot of people gonna be interested in that as well. But I just wanted to summarise some of the key takeaways that I took from this chat, just so it could maybe help you as well just absorb this a little bit better. So number one is the first person you should probably look to look to hire his content writer if your website is based on getting SEO, Search Engine Optimization, traffic from Google and things like that, especially if you're using that as your main method of traffic, then you 100% want a content writer as soon as possible and You know, he went into so much detail about how to actually do that, and different ways of doing it as well. Number two is that your next hire is going to be dependent on your business. Really, it depends on if you are creating your own products or services and things like that, or if you're really just kind of going down the affiliate marketing route. So it does kind of depend. But what he kind of said, is to try and work out what is going to be like the best bang for your buck. So rather than just hiring another writer, maybe that it could actually be something that's a little bit more important. You know, maybe it's someone that's designing pins for Pinterest or Pinterest marketing, or maybe there's like another side of things where you're starting to see that's making money, and that's where it's probably a good idea to try and hire someone into as well. Number three is he talks about a lot about content agencies compared to hiring your own Writer, we talked about hiring writers from the Philippines. Online jobs.ph, I think is the site that I use to hire my writer and I know end has used quite a lot.

The thing I thought was really interesting is that it is a solution for some people. And it may be a great way to kind of like boost your posts initially. But at some point, you are going to have to hire people, you're going to have to hire people to do different things, whether it's a virtual assistant, or someone who can check your emails and things like that. Whether it is a copywriter, whether it is another hire, hire another writer or someone is editing your work. There's so many different sort of hires that you are going to eventually have to do if you're planning on turning this into a full time online business sort of thing. So it's just something to Bear Bear in mind, but yeah, it is you do have to be careful with content agencies, they basically are going to charge a premium number four Is the that he always looks for hot people with high integrity and honesty, from his interview process more than anything else. Those are the two things that he's always looking for when he's hiring people. Someone that has can be honest up front. So you don't want people that are going to be sort of almost telling you lies and things in the interview process or people that kind of challenge you and unit or not challenge you that may or may not be the right word, but someone that already is not hitting some of those things that you're looking for. So, particularly having a good interview process really saves a lot of time. I found that myself I've been very lucky with my writer. But I did use a training to go through how to actually hire someone and I used the interview process was really really thorough and good and I narrowed it down from like 50 writers down to one so that is a huge thing that interview process. Make sure you spend time choosing Who is the right person to hire, and you might not even find them in your first go. That's okay. Number five is time leverage. He talks a lot about that, you know, soft, there's basically two types of ways to leverage your own time and that software and automation. And then there's outsourcing or systemising things. And we spoke a lot about outsourcing and systemising things, but there may well be at all a piece of software that can do something that you need to be done before you even have to think about hiring someone. So definitely do make sure that you are it is a necessary hire. You don't want to just be like hiring someone for a position that is maybe not even producing any income or actually be any use for your overall business. Anyway, guys, I'm gonna stop rambling. If you do want to get in contact with him, you can contact him on from nothing.com which is his book or in private, which is p r ibyl.com. And you can also even left His email address in the chat next week which has been at stopping scams.com Thanks for listening in to this episode of Make time online. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. And please take a moment to write a review for our podcast in the App Store. keep changing for the better guys. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ian Pribyl 0:00
So the headline and the body of text are completely different, both of them on each one of those banners, I would make sure those banners had the same design though, because the more variables you change at once the more you're compromising your test. So you want to isolate the things you actually want to test so once you know hey, this general type of messaging is performing much better than this other type of messaging with this audience, then maybe use split test the background of the banner. Hey guys, it's Mike from Make Time Online and today we're joined by improbable from free internet marketing project.

Mike Beatty 0:41
So this is the part two from the chat that we had started last week, but ends up being a really long one. And I think it was just gonna was almost two distinct parts. So part one last week was all about outsourcing scaling your business whether you want to hire someone, some tips and ideas for

doing that and kind of what order you should hire people in and who you should hire first. And then this part today is all about conversion optimization and really monetization. So if you're at a stage in your business where you are maybe getting traffic to your site, or you've kind of got a lot of leads coming in to your email list and things like that, then this chat today is such a good one because this could could just be one tip in here, which could end up making you 10s of thousands of dollars in the future that you just maybe haven't heard of before. So definitely send out to this because he actually even goes into some like nitty gritty things as well which I kind of wasn't expecting but he's given away so much value in this chat. Anyway, as always, you can jump to the last few minutes just to get the summary from me if you are in a rush, but if not enjoy this one.

So I would love to know, you know if you've got a niche website so just purely on a niche website because I find that's kind of easy to kind of talk about, let's use an example. Have you got any examples of nice websites you normally go for?

Ian Pribyl 3:07
I mean, something that I have that gets traffic and I'm neglecting right now is a virtual reality. Nice website. Oh, nice.

Mike Beatty 3:16
That sounds cool. Right? So let's say you're starting, you've started a virtual reality niche website. You're at a stage where you're getting consistent traffic every month. And you're you've maybe hired your first writer. So content is kind of dealing with itself. Now, what are some of your steps to increase that monetization and make it more efficient on your website?

Ian Pribyl 3:40
So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at Well, the first thing I'm going to look at is Google Search Console. And I'm going to start shifting my focus to things that I can see that Google is trying to rank me for that I may be with just a few tweaks to on page SEO, some internal links among my you know within my content On my website, I may be able to bump the extra spot or to, you know, the extra ranking position or to, to get a tonne more traffic to that piece of content. So I'm going to be looking at how I can squeeze every drop out of my existing content and SEO. Because although that a lot of people wouldn't traditionally think about that as conversion optimization, what you're doing is you're opening up the flow of traffic to your website, if you do that, which of course is going to ultimately produce significantly higher ROI from any conversion optimization efforts you endeavour to put in place so. So that would be the first thing I would do with my time. After that I would, I would dig into my Google Analytics. And I would begin looking at my top landing pages. And I would run an analysis even if all I did was did it manually. And I think every time I've done this, I've done it many Because frankly, I'm embarrassingly not good with Google Analytics, I just kind of hack together things I need to do. So I'll go through, and I will, I will manually put together a report of what are my top landing pages? Of course, I know what my top conversion pages are on my site, besides that the pages on my site that actually make me money, and I will analyse how much of my traffic from those landing pages is going through to those conversion pages. That's one convert page. You can do that with goals, can't you in Google Analytics.

Mike Beatty 5:40
I think there's a section called goals within Google Analytics. Sorry, what?

Ian Pribyl 5:51
What a section where's my internet broke up a little bit, I think no problem.

Mike Beatty 5:55
So yeah, no, it's just inside Google Analytics. I think there's you can do that within gold. You can go Yes. Go conversions to your main converting web pages.

Ian Pribyl 6:07
Yes, absolutely. I just set up a conversion event for basically, if they hit this page, then they count towards that that goal conversion. Absolutely.

Mike Beatty 6:18
Cool. So yeah, that would be so you can see what pages are your most of your traffic is actually landing into and then you see how much they are converting into your conversion focus pages. So would that be kind of like your? I guess it depends what it is like if you've if you're doing like, cost per acquisition. So if you're doing like affiliate marketing or whether you're doing selling your own products and things like that, I guess that kind of depends on what those pages would look like.

Ian Pribyl 6:50
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, they're at least probably going to be some form of bridge page between your content and where you're referring them out to another, another offer of so Kind. And so that would definitely be my starting point is is understanding what my baseline is there. What what are my conversion metrics looking like there. And after that I would take some time to tweak the places I know beyond a shadow of a doubt from many tests I've run over the years are conversion opportunities that are missing on my website, for example, what a lot of people do on their websites, especially when they're newer to internet marketing is they think the more banners I add, and the more offers I add to my content, the more likely I am to make money and you are absolutely incorrect. If that's what you think, you know, you're doing the exact opposite. There have been many studies on this and all you have to do is reflect on a little bit of human experience to understand the what's at play here psychologically. So if you ever, ever if you've ever gone to a candy aisle in a supermarket, and you don't really know what you're wanting, you just know you want something sweet or if you're more of a savoury salty person and then the chip pile, what we call in the United States this chip. Sorry, that's not gonna be universal crisps, I guess. Yeah, that's what we say. So. So you know, one way or the other, you're, you know, you're, you're craving some kind of junk food, and you get there and you're just kind of like, man, I don't know what I want. And the more you look, the more you just almost don't want anything. Because they're just so many options, your brains overloaded, it's overwhelmed. I want to say it was in Malcolm Gladwell blink that they talked about this. And they talked about pasta sauces, and I think they have like 13 different pasta sauce choices, and ultimately, people just didn't make a decision because they got overwhelmed as opposed to just like being offered regular pasta sauce or chunky pasta sauce they made. They made a decision at a statistically significantly higher rate. So the same thing happens, the same principle applies. And you can you can pull up study after study on this on Google if you don't believe me, like my co founders and my startup seem to not believe me, because we have this conversation about once every quarter. You know, you, you, you have to you you have to limit your your calls to action on your website you want to have for each type of content. So for example, on stopping cms.com, we have paid survey content, we have blogging content, we have e commerce content, the call to action for all of those different different audiences is going to be very different. And there are our plugins in WordPress that will allow you to say, hey, based on this category, I want to show this right hand widget instead of this right hand widget so so you can kind of throttle some of those things, but for each audience type, I would not have more than one offer. one call to action. And, and I would be doing everything I could to make sure on the pages on my website, especially the highest traffic pages on my website, I would implement a number of things. These are this is just kind of my formula. Personally for websites that I I'm probably giving away way too much information here. But I always make sure that I have a right hand banner. And I do split testing to find out what right hand banner is going to work best. And I make sure it's sticky. I make sure as the person scrolls that right hand banner scrolls with them. There's a free plugin that does that. It's called something really weird like q2 w four sticky widget. There's also there's also something just called like sticky widgets, but I never got it to work for for my personal coding. Or it took personal like custom coding that I couldn't work on my own website because I'm an idiot, and so even after all these years, so So yes, I make sure there's a right side widget that scrolls with the user as they're reading, I make sure to run split test to make sure that widget is actually converting. I split test design and I also split test copy, you don't do both at the same time,

Mike Beatty 11:15
because otherwise, I'm going to split tests that use a plugin for that.

Ian Pribyl 11:21
No, typically, I'm running the split test manually. A lot of themes these days, like my favourite premium theme suite that I use, whether and I recommend whether people are buying through my affiliate link or not is thrive. thrive has just an incredible suite of tools for conversion optimization and testing for blog owners. And so they have a be split testing built in and a lot of areas like that with their their different plugins. I think they're like $228 a year and probably going up consistently though. So it's not like it's a cheap tool and it's not like it's an all required, you can do what I say Still often do. And that's just for one week, you have this banner up. And then the next week you have another banner up. And then you compare the numbers from the two. And you see, if you had statistical significance, verify that you had a high enough confidence interval. Typically, I'm aiming for at least 95%. Now we're getting into really overwhelming statistics class stuff, that's probably making people cry. But if you don't understand any of that, it's easy to Google and they're actually really, really straightforward concepts. And, and I'm just, you know, running those numbers and keeping track in a spreadsheet, manually, possibly, and, and just seeing what's working best. But you know, what's really important when you're running split tests, when we're as we're here talking about conversion optimization is you're not going to have remotely as valid of a test. Yeah, maybe during the early broad strokes when you don't know when you're just like testing messaging? Yes. Maybe you have headless headline that's totally different and tax Like body text in that banner that is, is fairly, there's a big variance between the two. So the headline and the body of text are completely different, both of them on each one of those banners, I would make sure those banners had the same design, though, because the more variables you change at once the more you're compromising your test. So you want to isolate the things you actually want to test. So once you know hey, this general type of messaging is performing much better than this other type of messaging with this audience, then maybe use split test the background of the banner. And and you don't change anything but the background when you're running that ad split test. And then you know, okay, I found the background with a colour that I really liked for this test and seems to be working the most I have statistical significance on the tests I've run. Now I'm going to change the headline and see if the headline converts better but you don't want to adjust the body copy because you're going to compromise your test. So you're isolating each time the element that you actually want to a be split test that is super, super, super critically important for any valid AB or form of multivariate testing when you're trying to improve conversion optimization, so I'm going to do stuff like that with my banner, I'm going to go through that whole process. We're talking several weeks here. And in crunching numbers, you know, watching them every day doesn't do you any good. But also, you want to be careful of running too many different tests across your website at once for the same reason. Because maybe they're compounding in some way. That's, you know, now that you change that other element that you were testing alongside the banner element, for example, the banner widget. Now, now your test isn't really reliable anymore, because you were running too many tests at once. So, so after you know I'm done. Running the banner test, maybe I start to test a link in my header navigation for free training or or start here, or how to start, you know, just trying different copy for that, that navigation link. pop ups, whether they're full screen pop ups, or they are, you know, little slip up ribbons that come up from the bottom with calls to action. Those are, that's another element I'm absolutely going to implement. And I'm going to test and see what's working the best. And then I'm also going to work in in content calls to action on at least my top three to five posts, my top highest traffic three to five landing pages. To make sure that throughout that post, there are buttons, typically on my sites that that have a clear call to action over to my conversion page. And typically, I try to make those buttons contextually relevant to whatever we're writing about at that point in the article. Certainly that makes it a little bit more laborious and a little bit more manual. But you're absolutely going to have better conversion overall, if it is contextually relevant to whatever you're discussing whenever you're inserting that call to action. So to bring us full circle here and just break down the entire formula

to improve conversion optimization, I'm going to look at my top traffic landing pages, I'm going to see how much of that traffic is going to my my main conversion page for that audience so that I have a baseline and I know where I'm starting. And then I'm going to across my website, implement tests for right side banner widget that is sticky and and scrolls with the user as they are reading the article because that makes it very hard to ignore. Just again, talking about just you know, evolutionary traits that are in all of us. Things like that are much easier to get noticed the same reason we noticed motion and, and things like that. So, right hand side, I'm going to be testing some banner widgets. I'm going to be testing some form of menu navigation option that takes them to my, my highest converting or my main conversion page. And I'm going to be testing buttons throughout the content that drive to that conversion page as well. And as time goes on, I will probably add some sort of footer element, not deep in the footer, but we're talking like, just below the content so that when someone's done reading, there's some form of call to action there. And if you play around with those conversion elements alone, you will be in the top 98 98th percentile, you know your you'll be better than 90% of other digital marketers, if not 95 to 98% you'll be among the somewhere between the top two to 10%. digital marketers when it comes to conversion optimization. If you just learn a little bit about split testing, and you play with those elements on your your highest traffic content on your website, you'll probably if you aren't doing any of that right now, and you go and you implement that on your sites, those different elements and you stick with the tests, and even when you get stuff that's really discouraging, you run another test and you run another test, you run another test until you finally get to where you want to be. You probably, if you're not doing any of that right now, have two to four times as much money sitting on the vine with your traffic, two to four times the revenue sitting on the vine with your traffic, then you are currently reaping

Mike Beatty 18:32
awesome. I'm on that same exact same topic. Would you say you obviously you send them to a conversion page. Would you try and collect their email address in between that step? So would you send them to like a email opt in or like what would you do with regards to collecting email addresses and things like that? Would you just

Ian Pribyl 18:56
collect, try and collect the email I always caution people with with Russell Brunson stuff, because he is an incredible marketer. But everything he does funnels into Click Funnels right now, obviously, and at the end of the day, everything he does is to get you to buy Click Funnels, which it can be a great tool for, for many things. I own Click Funnels myself, largely because I'm just too lazy to convert my landing pages that are in there out of there. So I'm kind of trapped into paying $97 a month in their ecosystem. And that's what happens to a lot of people there are much better, well, not much better, but equivalent tools out there now that are much less expensive. So with that said, there's a concept that he may not be the originator, but he's who I learned it from, which is the moment someone hits your website, no matter what your traffic sources, whether it's paid traffic, whether it's organic traffic, however, you're getting that traffic to your website, you do not own that traffic until you collect the email address. And now you have a way to get back in touch. With that person build a relationship with that person. And even if you don't make the conversion right now, you can certainly make a conversion. In the future when the timings a little bit better, they're more open to it, you've established more of a relationship etc. And so for that reason, I am almost always trying to collect the email address. There have been instances where I've run the tests, and it just ends up killing my conversions enough to try and collect the email in between largely due to the audience not being engaged enough, or the offer that I'm referring them to being fairly low ticket, you know, $2 or $4 per conversion. And when that's the case, I will cut out the the email conversion step, but obviously recognising that I may be sacrificing longer term revenue if I just built out a sequence for that person. So yes, the vast majority of the time I am collecting an email address on some sort of bridge page.

Mike Beatty 21:00
That is amazing in I can't wait to listen back to this. and implement all of this is so useful for me personally, but hopefully tonnes of other people as well. And yeah, I mean, I like the same as what I said last time, I could honestly just keep talking to you. But I'm so aware of your time and you said how busy you are this week. So yeah, no, thank you so much for your time again, I really appreciate it.

Ian Pribyl 21:24
Of course, I very much enjoyed it. And I hope your audience enjoys it as well. And yeah, and best of luck. I hope it helps anyone hearing this on your journey. That's, that's the reason we're here.

Mike Beatty 21:35
Thanks. And just one last thing before we go, what how can people like get in contact with you? Or I know you have a big launch coming up this week as well. So I didn't know if you wanted to explain a bit more about that as well.

Ian Pribyl 21:47
Yeah, I mean, the the biggest the biggest goings on for me that you you know, well, we'll always be able to keep up with what I'm doing and what value I'm giving away for free or incredibly low cost. is going to be at Ian pribyl.com I'm beginning to keep that much more up to date. And and so any books I published will be there any you know, links to websites where we're publishing really high quality training for free etc. Those will be on Ian pribyl.com. And, and remarkably dumb move that is very hard to spell. So that's AI n p as in Paul ri B as in boy, why l.com and, and yeah, that's where you could find anything. And there's the way to reach me via email, if you have anything that I can help with would be Ian at stopping scams.com you can always reach me there and either myself or my assistant will be able to help you with anything you send through that way.

Mike Beatty 22:51
Perfect.

Ian Pribyl 22:52
Thank you so much here. You're very welcome, Mike. Thank you.

Mike Beatty 23:03
I really enjoyed that chat so much. And I just think there's so much information and so much value in there that anyone can take away. Maybe you're not at a stage where you can start implementing this stuff, but I guarantee you will get there if you keep going. So it's gonna it's so helpful for me. And I've already started doing some of these things that he spoke about in him. But anyway, I'm going to just quickly summarise number one is to use Google Search Console. I have heard this before, but he made some really valid points in there that find out what Google is actually ranking your site for. So once you find those key words, that might actually be some surprise key words in there that you didn't even know that you or you weren't even trying to rank for. And they might actually really help you to make a conversion. So if you can see a key word that again, lots of impressions for but not many clicks, chances are your post has touched on it. And if you just made that a bit better, maybe you put it in your title. Don't change your URL, that's a big one. But if you can put in your title, put in a subheading, put in an image, you know, like the name for an image or just in the text itself, that could really help to boost your rankings for that. Number two is to use Google Analytics and find out what your top landing pages are. It's just a really great way to straightaway see, okay, these are my main traffic, generating posts and things like that. And that will give you a good idea of other content that you probably should be producing that is similar to that as well, which because obviously, people are liking it for your website or Google might be sending people to your website for that. No, your know your conversion percentages as well. So know your converting pages. So if you have a like sales page, it might even be for an affiliate marketing product. But it's really important to make sure you have the specific pages where you're trying to send people to it could be a roundup of Best of posts, you know best basketball shoes or something like that. Number three is to tweak your conversion opportunities. There's three things that I wrote down here, there should be only one place to click on important websites. So, you know, if you've got a sales page, there's basically one place that you're trying to send them to, if you're trying to send them to multiple different places, that's not going to convert as well. Limit your call to actions. So you shouldn't just be having a call to action here, here, here, here, there should be very clear, when you have your call to actions and you know, spread out through the content so that people can find them easily. And then use call to actions by category. So if for example, you're in the gardening niche, if you had a category on winter gardening, maybe you had a greenhouse, maybe you had gardening and allotments I'm not sure what categories you would have. They're bad examples, but you should probably have a call to action for each category. So maybe you have book that shows people how to use grow tomatoes in greenhouses, which would be perfect in the greenhouse category. But you also have, how to make sure that you're another book that is like how to make sure that your crops don't die in the winter. That's great for Gardening in the winter. And that's obviously going to help to really increase your conversions. Number four is to split test. only do one thing at a time that was really important, but I'm going to say, four places which Ian talks about in there, where you can actually split test things today. And he spoke as well about getting a programme that actually test this for you. So thrive I use thrive, I find it's so good like thrive, Thrive Leads, it's hard to it's hard to beat for the price really is there is so many things in there as well. I don't even use everything. But number one is the header menu banner. So right at the top, your, you know your menu at the top of the page. Split tests, try different things in there. And you can actually use Google Analytics in that analytics to even track as well, those sorts of things. But thrive can do that for you. Number two is pop ups. Number three is your in content buttons and call to actions. And then number four is a side, sidebar widget basically. So you can change all of those copy images, things like that, and split test, see what's working, try and make those improvements. And then lastly, number five, is, is something that he kind of was just hinting at throughout that whole chat. He says you've got to be willing to adapt. It's so easy to kind of get into our routines and what we actually doing and kind of just be set in our ways. Whereas just by doing these split tests, and adapting, making these little tweaks and things and tracking them, that's really important as well as to actually track these things.

You can make such a huge difference. Now what I would personally say what I would personally add to all of this is it's probably not worth doing these kind of split tests, until you have, you know, at least 100, maybe 200 people visiting your site every single day. It's just, it's almost pointless, you're not really going to be you're not getting enough traffic to actually test what is and isn't working, it's too You're not going to be able to have like an actual realistic sample size, if you know what I mean. So if you're not getting like 100 visits per day, then is probably this is probably a podcast which is good to come back to latest age when you are doing it but it's good to be aware of it upfront and aware of different places where you could be trying things out. Anyway, really hope that helped guys, you can check out the show notes with all these links and places. Everything that is kind of mentioned on the websites makes it online.com forward slash 72. Thanks for listening to this episode of Make time online. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. And please take a moment to write a review for our podcast in the App Store. keep changing for the better guys. Take care