The Yakezie has always been about organic growth through meritocracy. Anybody can choose to join the Yakezie Challenge and write 2-5 times a week on their own sites and build relationships within the community. If you succeed over the next six months in breaching 200,000 in Alexa and have developed 30 or so relationships with the community, you’re in. Everything you do is up to you. Freedom of choice is something we should never take for granted.
Success online doesn’t happen over night. The luckiest people are those who spend countless hours producing content, coming up with their own products, taking lots of risk, and tactfully marketing themselves until the cows come home. There were even some of us over the winter holidays who decided to write 5,000 words a week for seven weeks in a row. The idea was to push ourselves harder during a slow period to slingshot us higher into the new year. It’s crazy to see how much effort goes into creating luck don’t you think?
COMBINING ARTISTRY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
As creative types, we bloggers look up to those who produce things with their own hands. We visit sites that have individuality. Perhaps the blogger has incredible photography skills, or is a great story teller. Whatever the skill, they are the reason why we visit. On the flip side, we shy away from factory sites with multiple writers who provide little opinion. If we want bland, we might as well read major newspapers who provide much higher quality bland. Don’t ever forget the difference between a blog and a major media organization.
As online entrepreneurs, we look up to those who are able to make money, perhaps regardless of how it’s being done. The more passive such income and the greater such income, the more we admire. This is why there is such a huge following in the niche site arena, whose main purpose is to slap up content, set it and forget it, and repeat. Unfortunately, the ability to arbitrage the longtails online is getting harder because search engines have become smarter.
In the creative category, I’ve done well. In the online entrepreneur category, I’ve done quite poorly because my other income was more than enough. I was scared and am still scared to let money affect the way I write because I hate writing if it feels forced e.g. writing some credit card review when I’ve never used the card.
This post will discuss how we can leverage the act of buying your way to success to help the creative types of the world become more financially stable. Being a starving artist is admirable, but you’re still starving. Remember, there are two different measuring sticks for success for creative types and entrepreneurs. If we can find some common ground, perhaps we’ll be able to achieve the best of both.
HOW TO BUY YOUR WAY ONLINE
Since the beginning, I’ve been fighting for equality on Financial Samurai. Not everybody can be born into a rich and powerful family and grow up with rich and powerful friends. When you’ve got money, you can donate money to schools to secure your kid’s spot at a prestigious private school. When you’ve got power, you can fast track friends to higher places. Do not underestimate the power of wealth.
Mathematically speaking, most of us are just average. Therefore, if we are lucky enough to have a huge head start in life, I argue it’s our duty to give back and help level the playing field. Perhaps this is why the United States spends so much money on foreign aid. Just being born in the US puts us in the top 1% of global income earners.
What if you believe it’s every man and woman for themselves? If you have money and power, why bother slaving away from the bottom in hopes of becoming successful on your own? It’s much easier to leverage your resources to buy your way to the top. And only once you are at the top, will you consider giving back to the community. Plenty of folks think this way and this is what they’ve taught me.
Shortcut To Online Success
1) Buy websites in your niche. The first step is to identify “low hanging fruit” in your niche. Sites that have good rankings, but are either rarely updated are good targets. If you know the owner is either burnt out or in need of money, then approaching them with an offer is easy. Some may even sell for as low as one year’s worth of revenue. Buying cash flow positive business in this low interest rate environment is a win.
2) Redirect links to your site. Now that you’ve acquired your site, it’s time to look at the archive of posts to see where you can redirect links to posts or pages on your prime site. You can also create new relevant anchor text within your new acquisition to point back to your prime site. Just make sure you mix up your anchor text. As you know, links are the currency online and the more links you have, the better you will rank.
3) Employ staff writers. The writer can either be a new staff writer, a ghost writer, or the seller most preferably. It’s important there is at least one post a week on the acquired site to keep the content fresh in Google’s eyes. The last thing you want to do is buy a site and have its rankings drop. As a business person, you don’t care if your readers don’t hear your story in your writings. What you care about is profits.
SO EASY ANYBODY WITH MONEY CAN DO IT
All you have to do is repeat the three step process over and over again and your main site will surely climb up the search rankings without you having to network or write any original content yourself. If there is a short cut to being successful online, this is it. The search engines can’t control which sites you buy and edit. It’s a free market and there are marketplaces like Flippa to help facilitate the buying and selling process.
Call me naive, but I had no idea this type of stuff was happening until about the middle of 2012. I always thought that in order to succeed online we had to write consistent, meaty content, guest post on other sites, and build our brands. In other words, grow organicly. I thought buyers of sites wanted to focus on optimizing the acquired site’s advertising potential and interact more with the installed community. Buying sites to redirect links to your main site and neutering the voice is no different from large corporations who grow through acquisition and kill the acquired company’s culture. Cisco for example, acquired around 200 companies and made their shareholders incredibly wealthy!
Once you make a lot of money, it becomes easier to make even more money online because you have more money to buy other sites. Pretty soon, you might even use your outsized profits to get into new niches and dominate as well. Now you can see why there is such an uprising against the truly wealthy in every single society. If the gap between the haves and the have-nots gets too wide, bad things happen.
For those of us who are fortunate to have solid web properties, let’s do our best to be appreciative of what we have by helping others succeed as well. Survive long enough and inevitably something bad will happen to us. When it does, we’ll have a community of supportive people to help us out.
RECOMMENDATION FOR BUILDING WEALTH
Manage Your Finances In One Place: The best way to become financially independent and protect yourself is to get a handle on your finances by signing up with Personal Capital. They are a free online platform which aggregates all your financial accounts in one place so you can see where you can optimize. Before Personal Capital, I had to log into eight different systems to track 25+ difference accounts (brokerage, multiple banks, 401K, etc) to manage my finances. Now, I can just log into Personal Capital to see how my stock accounts are doing and how my net worth is progressing. I can also see how much I’m spending every month.
The best tool is their Portfolio Fee Analyzer which runs your investment portfolio through its software to see what you are paying. I found out I was paying $1,700 a year in portfolio fees I had no idea I was paying! There is no better financial tool online that has helped me more to achieve financial freedom. It’s 2015 and the bull market continues. Make a decision to be wealthy by taking control of your finances!
Regards,
Sam
Photo: Sheraton Infinity Pool in Waikiki, SD.
like most businesses, money drives / creates money. if you have a large base, investing becomes a lot more lucrative. if you have a large base (investment capital), starting up a business and succeeding becomes much quicker, and arguably easier. the power of collective resources and capital – the reason why a successful corporate career has so much going for it (ignoring the financial freedom working online hype)
The question I wonder though is… can bloggers or creative types ever fully respect those who buy their way to success?
why would you even question that to begin with? it’s a moot point. it is what it is. everyone has different goals for blogging – and we all take different routes to get there
Ah, but it’s not a moot point. Because creative types don’t respect those who buy their way in, they miss out on creating revenue if that’s what so many other people are doing. I never thought about buying my way to success online until I started hearing many other people do. It’s about conversation and thinking Sunil.
Indeed, writing content a 2/3 times a week is the key. Many say that one can write only once a week but I think a minimum of twice a week is important. Building relations with niche bloggers are important. I have not bought sites before, worth trying out. Thanks for this suggestion.
I think Cisco is an excellent example. Most of my tech friends largely consider the company a job because they haven’t done any real innovation in years. Instead they just buy innovation from others now. I think that we, as bloggers, face a similar problem. If we get too caught up in money, we run the risk in loosing our voice and becoming known as “that guy” who will do whatever it takes for a quick buck. I don’t see myself ever buying another person’s blog, because you can always tell when a blog changes ownership, and its never as good afterward.
It is sad to hear a blog lose its owner’s voice. It’s why we love visiting blogs. The writer’s individuality. So much content is getting neutered now for the sake of money.
If I ever get that way, please kick my nuts. Thanks.
To answer your question directly: it won’t even occur to me to buy my way to success on line. First, I am still very naive and old fashioned and believe that success means building a solid construction. Second, I like building new stuff – were i to do what you described I’ll get bored very quickly. And with blogging, like with other things, money is not my main motive – it comes because of the quality I strive to develop and in this sense is a by-product of my drive to contribute value.
I’m in your camp Maria. I never thought about buying my way to success. Doesn’t seem as fun. However, buying one’s way is exactly what I’ve noticed over the past several years online.
Yes, I have noticed as well. But I also noticed that the people who play superficial games are hit by changes of ‘presumed’ rules most. So, don’t know about you, but I’ll stick with building :).
When you mentioned buying sites and redirecting links, I found it interesting that Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign was accused of doing that to boost his online search engine ranking.
You know I have 4 sites – but I write at each of them because they are each a little different. Hopefully with my annual income report you’ll see why the my newest site really made sense!
Interesting. Had no idea about Mitt. There are a lot of synergies to be had with having more than one site. It’s something I’m going to think more strategically about in 2013.
Congrats on your baby!
I am looking into buying a site as I type. I think it follows exactly what you laid out. It’s just a matter of doing the work. This article truly came at the right time. Thanks Sam
Sam, that’s a really interesting approach and honestly, I never really considered it. I have a desire to create something of my own however there is an urgent nagging requirement to diversify my income. Unfortunately, my situation is such that I may not be able to count on my current income.
Where can one go to find these sites for sale? Is there some sort of auction? How do you gauge what the price should be? 3x yearly earnings? Should I just be propositioning blog authors in my areas of interest?
Flippa is one site as mentioned in the post. The price is whatever someone is willing to sell you for. Check out The Financial Blogger for some insights.
I have done this in the past, but decided that it just wasn’t for me. I like to build my success over time and through hard work. That is how I was brought up. Yes, the chance of making good money is ok, but sometimes niche sites can get penalized in the search engines if you do it wrong.
I think organic growth is WAY MORE satisfying than buying through acquisition. There’s something to be said for creating something on your own.
Great post Sam! Nice recipe if money is your primary goal. I was getting sucked in with keeping up with the Joneses. But after awhile, I was losing my enjoyment for writing. It felt like a job. So rather than having a day job and a hobby I had two jobs. Who knows if this mindset is preventing me from more online success. We’ll see as the journey continues!
I look forward to your “quality over quantity” posts for 2013 Buck! Thanks for highlighting that video about Brian Lam. No matter how big you are, if you are working for someone, it just isn’t the same as working for yourself.
In case anyone is out there listening, I’d happily sell my site for a year’s worth of income!
Feel free to send me the details at listenmoneymatters at g mail
Oh no, what have I done!
Lol! I took a look and I’m not sure I can plug the huge whole that would be created if Kathleen were to leave. She has quite a community going on there. I’m not one to turn down possible opportunities without listening though :)
If Kathleen is selling for 1x revenue, she is selling herself short. But, to each their own!
I have been on the selling side of things a few times. When I lose steam on a project and someone offers me 3x yearly earnings or more I will usually sell so I can focus on other projects. I have never bought a website because you might be buying some traffic and links back to your main site, but you are not building any relationships during the process. Most of the success I have had with websites in the past is because of people I have met along the way who helped me out. You only have to impress one a-list blogger in your niche to really see your site take off.
Congrats for selling at 3X earnings. Where do you usually find such buyers, and what determines an “A-list blogger” in your eyes?
I don’t have any plans to buy a niche site any time soon. I find a lot of sites run by staff writers to be dry and boring. But I can see why people operate them from a business perspective.
I enjoy the personal element of blogs a lot in terms of reading and following along people’s journeys. You don’t really get that with niche sites, but they are good for search and making money that way.
Growth through acquisition isn’t for everyone. It may speed up the process, but deep down inside it’ll never trump the feeling of building something yourself from scratch through hard work.
Secondly, in my time blogging, those who buy blogs from others who either want to get out of the game or the low hanging fruit aren’t successful in terms of readership – maybe ads and a little more revenue. In the end, the reason why everyone comes to your blog or mine is due to our unique voice.
Would your blog be as successful with staff writers? Probably not. Unless of course you started as a team from the beginning. People, including readers, don’t like change, it’s been proven over and over.
Sam, Thought provoking topic. I resonate to Buck’s comment. As someone who works 2 other jobs (portfolio manager and university instructor), this is an interesting intellectual discussion. I have no extra time for additional web properties yet want to maximize my reach and income through blogging as well. I am confident that over time, strong content, assisting others in their initiatives, and product creation will pay off financially in addition to emotionally. I’m optimistic that in this competitive blogging landscape there is room for niche-1 site owners along with conglomerates. (I hope the Wal-Mart model does not prevail).
I’m trying to find a balance of hiring staff writers and still writing on WSL to keep my “original voice.” If I had the opportunity, I think I’d buy sites to build up WSL and redirect links or simply link to my main site as often as possible. Saying that, I see WSL as my baby and I’m not sure if I’d be willing to take on running multiple sites. (I did think about it strongly a month or two ago, but my interest is waning).
Hey Sam. I recently reconnected with old Yakezie friends and the network after some family hospitalization. I’m glad to be able to focus again on my site. I’m interested in getting into the swing again… Where do I find the newbies where I can hopefully give them a hand this time and partner together?
Like others, I’ve resisted outsourcing… even during these difficult personal times. It’s really hurt my traffic, but I retained my voice. Now, it’s time to speak up with Yakezie’s help.
Cheers,
Hey Doctor Stock, I’m not quite in the network (and probably have a long way to go before I would be considered) but I would definitely be interested in working together with you. I hope you’ll find the posts on my site helpful. For example, a how to for budgeting with mint:
http://www.listenmoneymatters.com/preserving-wealth/budgeting-for-dummies-the-complete-guide/
There will always be people who take shortcuts, although it is definitely less rewarding. For me, it was never about the money! I aspire to much more than that. I view the earnings as compensation for the time or work. I think chasing the money becomes a less meaningful ride.
WHen I started my site I thought about buying an existing one, mainly for the recurring traffic, and add my voice to it. After seeing a few people selling their blog and readers fleeing because they hated the new voice I decided against it. I prefer to guest-staff write for now.
I spend a lot of time in the backend of people’s sites and in their hosting accounts. While I keep their info confidential, I will say that I’ve been shocked to learn how many bloggers own tons (and I mean TONS) of sites using the very formula you described. I’ve also been surprised to learn that a lot of bloggers buy fans, followers, RSS subscribers, etc. You can get on Fiverr and add 500 Twitter followers for five bucks. Personally, I’d rather do things the old-fashioned way, but it’s easy to see how some people achieve the numbers they do.
That is fascinating to know! Can one buy thousands of RSS followers as well? Who says money can’t buy everything!
Oh wow, I’ll have to check Fivr. That’s not bad for 5 bucks. This beat any giveaways.
Buying expired domains and redirecting when they are really really tightly related and it helps the person who clicks on the link that is now broken because there is no site in my books is acceptable…I know its a grey area.
I think the one thing no matter what the budget is that can’t be bought is the connections, there is no way to pay a VA to make real human connections with other bloggers! Sam I think that is the magic of Yakezie…I am impressed with what you have built!
Hi John,
Thanks.
I’m not talking about buying expired domains though. I’m talking about folks buying dozens of live blogs and redirecting. I’ve run into about several blogs in the past 12 months that have all been bought by the same organization.
Never heard of buying expired domains.
Sam
Definitely a very interesting and thought provoking blog post, Sam. I’m like you and was very naive at first as to what these large multi-author blogs were doing buying up other sites. I am definitely not a fan of the cookie-cutter, corporate voice they tend to have. You have to be in awe of the other guys though who seem to do well on their own the slow and steady way like you mentioned. But, now I may also look at them too with a questioning eye and wondering how they are doing it and if they are not secretly using the methods of the big guys too.
Hank, there’s a whole different world behind the curtain I had no idea about. It’s quite amazing. I hope to bring about a little bit of this world to make folks realize who/what they are competing with.
I was not familiar with this strategy until I read your article, Sam. As a creative person I tend to think that good, hard work will be rewarded with financial success, but clearly I’ve had my head buried in the sand to think that strategy is the quickest path to riches!
I was and still am the same way. I’ve talked to several folks who buy their way to online success and they are honest in that they feel “empty.” The simple reason is b/c they know they took the shortcut and didn’t create on their own, even though they have the money.
At some point, it’s really not about the money. It’s about feeling a tremendous sense of achievement and pride.
I’ve known this type of “buying success” goes on, but like others have said it’s just not for me. Getting my first adsense check or making my first affiliate sale was much more gratifying because I had built it from the ground up.
Like others have said, I enjoy blogs for the personal voice. Sites with a bunch of staff writers that feel corporate just don’t do it for me.
While I own several sites in the PF niche, I have never considered redirects or any other way to “use” these sites as a crutch to grow my main site, Thriftability. I view all of my blogs as separate entities. While (especially over the past year) I have become burned out in this niche and contemplated selling Thriftability, I find that I just can’t do it. It’s a part of me. And it’s the site that makes the most money for me. Even though I have tried to complete the Yakezie Challenge twice now, and failed both times, I still enjoy knowing that I built the site, and am growing it the old fashioned way. When I get burned out writing for my site, I ask around for anyone (Yakezie members) who might like to guest post — and hope to do the same for them. Hard work pays off. Thanks for this post, Sam – it was a really good topic, and one that I imagine some bloggers are unaware of.
Hi Lisa,
No problemo. I hear you on burnout. Perhaps sell all your other sites EXCEPT for Thriftability instead?
S
[…] 2. How To Buy Your Way To Success Online @ Yakezie. […]
Hey Sam!
As a site buyer myself, I can tell you that there is some synergy between sites you buy and your existing site. For example, I’ve used The Dividend Guy Blog (I bought it in 2010) to build other niche site in the investing niche. Since DGB has already a good traffic, I was able to drive this traffic to other investing site.
However, I never seen a huge increase in SEO by using links from my network to boost other sites I own. The reason is simple; Google is not that dumb. It knows that you host all those sites linking to the same property on the same server (unless you deal with several servers which incur a lot of costs). Also, my guess is that if you keep linking to the same site, your links will lose power (as Google figures out that the two sites are “friends” helping each other).
you can definitely be successful by buying existing websites, but SEO is not the main benefit. I think that you can learn a lot from the site you buy (you get all the info from the previous owner such as marketing strategy, type of income earned, success and failures he tried, etc).
If you can find site that is in your main niche or interest of writing, it’s also easier to benefit by swapping readers from one site to another. For example, if tomorrow morning you announce that you bought Pro Blogger, chances are that most of your FS readers will take a look at your new site and vice-versa. You can then build a bigger bond with your readers and grow your readership base.
Cool. Let me put in a bid for Pro Blogger now :)
Does one really learn something new about existing websites though? I have a good idea of the various monetization opportunities and operations of a website. Can’t one just learn it through a book or on forums instead? Cheaper and easier, if there is not much SEO benefit. I think you’ll be surprised at how much buying for SEO purposes goes on. But, maybe not.
You will have to read a lot to find all the good tricks. When you see the back of a site, you know the traffic, conversion rate, tactics used. It’s pretty rare that you will find on a forum a detailed example of a monetization strategy including those metrics ;-).
since Google penalizes “link farm”, I’m not too sure about buy sites to all use them to link to another site. It sounds pretty risky.
Mike, thoughts on what a good click thru rate is e.g. causing an action after clicking an affiliate link?
Mike, thoughts on what a good click thru rate is e.g. causing an action after clicking an affiliate link?
I think you’ll be surprised to know how many of today’s biggest blogs have used the acquisition strategy to build links for SEO.
I came really close to making an attempt at buying my way to success. I was all set to start seriously looking into buying a few niche sites because my attempts at building them weren’t panning out like I had hoped. Lucky for me, the Google EMD update happened right about that time. If I had made the purchases, my sites likely would have been hit and I essentially would have lost my investment. Buying your way to success isn’t as easy as it sounds. It definitely comes with a lot of risk and you have to be careful and know what you are doing.
What about buying sites now post the Google EMD carnage? There must be a lot of devalued or zero value sites that can be picked up for cheap. Clean the sites up, and good new content, and eventually the rankings come back no?
Sam, I think that’s the idea. You don’t buy a site for traffic and drive it into the ground sending traffic to a different site. Doesn’t really make sense. You look at what is up for sale and look at the products deficiencies. If you think you can add value and improve on the existing product then you buy it. It’s not that you “buy success” because that in of itself is an oxymoron. You have money because you’ve found success and you continue to apply those skills that you are good at to find more and more success. Buying another site is not much different than the principles you preach (that I believe in). Use your money to make more money, the single easiest path to financial security.
[…] the CEO of Yahoo as your wife, chances are higher you will succeed.Even though I wrote about how to buy your way to online success, I’m pretty much against buying myself into anything. I only wrote the post to highlight the […]
[…] $10,000 a month in two years and a 30% chance of staying the same or declining. Someone who buys their way online offers you a tantalizing $100,000 for your site. Should you take it? Surprisingly, most of the […]