hey it's Doug Pennington here from ditch
sight project you're here for the
webinar of the origin of the night
project I'm gonna talk about how I got
started online and hopefully we got a
couple people on we do welcome let me
know where you're from I see there's
Mary Jeremy
Keerthi Nick we got John Bernard Nate
Rick Dell Adam and his sous welcome
thanks for joining up and you have to
give a shout out to Sean who shared the
webinar link so Sean thanks a lot for
doing that I appreciate it
the this webinar I you know was doing
frequent webinars but I took a little
break after I launched and I guess
started started the enrollment period
for July for five figure niche sites so
I was kind of taking a break for a
little bit because I was working with
students a lot in the ramp-up period the
onboarding period and by the way let me
know in the chat I think probably you
would have let me know if you can't hear
me at all but let me know if you can
hear me say hello let me know where
you're from and the chat as well and
hopefully more people will be rolling on
here real soon so anyway I was finishing
Facebook just to say hello
and one of the groups and then I saw
someone was asking about my next webinar
and I thought hey I should schedule one
here's one I've been thinking about for
a little while I presented something
similar a while back but I just wanted
to talk about it again
so John from California what's up good -
good to have you on John and that that's
a good sign that means people could hear
me and
I'll just say from Rick from Florida and
Keerthi from oq3 you're dropping a link
in there that's uh that's a that's a low
competency trigger
I'm afraid why are you dropping your
link in the chat all right excellent
Adam what's up from the UK and excellent
John thanks for letting me know
so yeah today is the origin story for an
inch side project it's interesting and
I'll get into some of the background
stuff and I'm curious is is anyone here
on this webinar for the like the first
time and have you attended any of these
others Mary from Ireland awesome cool
and I'll mention I was I was doing a
podcast interview a little bit earlier
and it kept cutting off so it was my
friend Richard and he's in the UK kept
cutting off like every five minutes it
was terrible I don't know why and before
that I was talking to my friend Louis
talking about one of our sites and it
was fine the whole time so with any luck
I hope that this will will work it seems
like things are okay I don't have like
apps running and I did a speed test I
have like 70 up and 70 down so I think
we should be alright okay cool so Mary
from Ireland hello
thanks again Sean for sharing and in the
future by the way I'll do this for folks
so if you share specifically like on
Facebook that's a really good place to
share stuff if you share like the
webinars that I'm doing I'll give you a
shout out say hello to you in the
webinar so I threw together yesterday
and then I thought hey you know what I
need more people in these webinars so
okay Dell from Overland Park I worked in
Overland Park for a few weeks back in
the day did the Sprint campus I really
liked Overland Park by the way it was
like it reminded me like Alpharetta
Georgia where I worked except without as
many trees but there were a lot of parks
and stuff I ran around there was a big
mall I'm sure that was like ten years
ago so I'm sure it looks a little
different now but I like Overland Park
and Rick's on for the first time welcome
Rick thanks for joining and hey soos is
also on for the first time very cool so
we have like a small crowd today since I
sent it out sort of last minute and you
know sometimes there's not that many
people on these so it'll be an intimate
presentation here I will get into it
right now
how I started an insight project which
is my internet marketing blog and
basically I'm just going to tell you
tell you about it I reconfirm the sound
check which is a good thing as I
mentioned of Doug Huntington I the
founder of niche site project that's me
and my late dog there at the Beartooth
pass up in Wyoming or down in Wyoming
from here I'm actually going there with
my wife and a couple weeks we're gonna
stay down in the in the valley below and
on the way to yellowstone so that'll be
fun it's a very cool drive i've been the
featured recorded on a bunch of sites
some of which you probably recognize and
i think i go into it a little deeper
here on some of the places i've been
featured so i'm curious does anyone have
an internet marketing blog currently or
perhaps you're thinking on starting one
sometime in the future just let me know
in the chat so here's my internet
marketing timeline and it's really
around like niche types and about four
years ago a little over four years ago i
banned the smart passive income podcast
and sort of started my journey but
before that i had no idea about any kind
of you know online income or internet
marketing it sounded like a total scam i
didn't know anything about it after some
time i actually got some pretty good
success in just a few months really but
as you can see it's been a bit of a
rollercoaster there's been ups and downs
and you know I think that's how
entrepreneurship goes I'll mention that
the Q&A is at the end you can't ask
questions throughout but I'll try and
stick with my train of thoughts as I'm
speaking in try not to get too
distracted sometimes I can't help myself
though and I'll look at the chat and
answer right
but Q&A in general is at the end you can
mark the questions has questions in the
little chat box so feel free to do that
it definitely makes it easier to sort
through and next we'll get into it so
this is the origin story of a niche site
project and one of the one of the things
that I did when I launched the site was
to network with people I realized that I
had had the opportunity to try to sort
of prepare for the launch and you know
one of the things that I did to actually
launch the site was to launch off
someone else's platform which is
probably I mean it seems like the best
way to do it
if you have the opportunity to which it
isn't always easy to create that
opportunity so just overall just
remember throughout even I mean I'm I
hope that it comes across but I'm
generally nice but I think that kind of
goes across the board it makes
everything go a little bit easier in
general in life in internet marketing
and if you're running a blog so and
these are a couple of the things I guess
the the highlights I'm sorry I didn't
prep this exactly with an additional
slide but a couple things to remember so
be nice and then do what you say you
will do so if you I mean again just in
life in general you can say you're gonna
do a lot of stuff and if you just do
those things you usually come out pretty
good and when you're running a blog if
you say hey I'm gonna publish something
once a week for six months if you just
do that you'll learn a lot along the way
and I'll tell you right now
there's probably gonna be some some
periods where you think you know I'm not
gonna have time or that wasn't my best
work or I shouldn't put it out today but
if you go through it and actually do
what you say you're gonna do whatever
commitment that is you'll usually come
out a little bit ahead you'll learn
stuff along the way even when you
publish that stuff that isn't it's great
you'll learn a lot from it now this is
the sort of thing that got me rolling
with internet marketing so two things
happened and it sort of happened for me
at the same time the smart passive
income podcast so I found it one morning
I was out walking Brady back in Dunwoody
Georgia where I used to live and I was
listening to a lot of beer-brewing blogs
at the time of my home brewer I'm going
to certified beer judge with the BJCP
and I was really listening to a lot of
beer podcast but I've been I got burned
out I mean at that point in time I was
listening to you know probably a couple
hours of podcast about beer brewing per
day and I had been for about six or
seven years before that so just think
about that for a second I've been
listening to so much stuff on beer
brewing and frankly I was just burned
out I was doing a lot it's like you're
judging at the time which is going down
a whole other you know obsession of mine
aside from internet marketing so I
simply was browsing different podcasts
to listen to I got over to the business
section and saw Pat Flynn's podcast art
and I was like I'll check that out
sounds interesting
and I'd go Ben I listened to probably I
don't know a few episodes a day I would
listen to it at one-and-a-half speed so
I would listen to them faster and I
would listen to a few a day so it was
pretty crazy how many I made it through
and at some point I think around episode
50 or 60
spencer hawes from niche pursuits was on
the podcast talking about niche sites
and specifically he was talking about
niche site project one which I'll
mention in a second but that sort of
like got me really interested in the
Amazon affiliate area of affiliate
marketing now around the same time Pat
Flynn was launching niche site duel - it
wasn't 2.0 it was just an interested
duel - I guess and that's one of the
reasons he had Spencer pond was to talk
about niche sites and you know launching
a new niche site now as I listened to
all the historical episodes of smart
passive income I know that niche site
duel 1 which was just called niche site
duel for Pat Flynn back in the day was
like a great thing for him to expand his
audience so I think that's why he was
doing this site duel - in fact he did
this a little different he opened it up
to you know the community so he launched
the site niche site duel 2.0 and you
know I created my site my first site
because you know other people were doing
in the community and I was also tracking
along with spencer hawes a niche site
project that he was running you know I
of course borrowed the name from him but
yeah he didn't necessarily make up that
name this the domain incidentally was
owned way back in the day by a chris
ducker so if you listen to smart passive
income you know chris ducker from a few
of the podcast episodes so anyway i was
a member in niche ty duel I formed like
a small mastermind group with people
there and I remember telling my wife
after the first session that the first
mastermind session I was like oh there's
this guy he's he's pretty advanced he's
making he's been doing this for a couple
years he's making about $3 a day from an
ad
site and I was blown away I thought that
was amazing and it was just it was real
like I talked to this guy who was
actually making about a hundred bucks a
month from an Adsense site and he was
you know gonna launch some more sites of
course at that point in time I you know
just launched one site it was terrible I
made about forty five cents the keyword
research was bad and it was just kind of
a wreck so as we go through here we see
niche pursuits lunch niche site project
one so and that was the best survival
knife guy back in the day of people by
the way does anyone remember this
project from niche pursuits or did
anyone follow this let just let me know
in the chat there it's good to have just
a little motion in the chat just to make
sure that you can hear me I once did a
webinar presentation for about 45
minutes and no one could hear me so that
was that was a lesson learned somewhere
he says yes you don't learn from spencer
in his Casey and just having like a
small mastermind group around me I
launched a site in July
actually it was almost four years ago
exactly it was like July 14th is when I
let's see okay so it looks like some
people say they can't hear me
but some other people say that I'm back
now okay all right well hopefully we're
still good
okay cool Terry Rick Dell John thanks
for letting me know should be good now
okay so basically I was able to launch a
site in July by August I made 21 bucks
which was cool September 500 and you can
see it ramped up for December of what I
made like six thousand two hundred
eighty
dollars which blew my mind I I mean
that's you know full-time income
basically I mean that is great and I was
thinking having to quit my job but
unfortunately I got my site penalized at
the time and you'll remember from the
graph for the roller coaster that I
showed earlier I might say got penalized
shortly after that and unfortunately
like Spencer and Pat Flynn were all
advocating grey hat techniques at the
time so it was like wide stream I mean
you may be surprised if you're just
getting into internet marketing now like
knowing what Pat Flynn advocates now
versus like what he was doing before I
mean he was basically saying you know go
to fivers goodbye link wheels and link
pyramids and you know this is how I
ranked my site number one and so on and
so forth so it was a different time back
then it was four years ago when things
changed fast and internet marketing but
basically the seed was planted then and
I had like great ideas about you know
starting an internet marketing platform
myself I looked up to Pat and Spencer
and several other people quite a bit and
I thought hey they seem like you know
regular guys and it looks like it's
something that I can do I'm interested
in that and you know in this period
where I was making some money I thought
hey like that's honestly now that I have
more data I mean to make five hundred or
a thousand dollars a month on a
consistent basis that's I'm just making
up the stats but that's like the top one
percent I mean so many people think
about starting aside to think about
making money online creating some source
of you know slightly passive income
where you can set it up and just do
maintenance I mean not many people
actually take the steps to create a site
and then even fewer actually make money
and
was dealing and if I hate people would
want to hear what I have to say the seed
was planted of course why started blog
you know that's when I talked to my wife
a lot about all sorts of things but you
know I talked to her about the business
stuff even though she's not as
interested as other people maybe but but
she listens and she gives good advice
but like why start a blog so there's a
couple reasons
three Steph Elizabeth here share
knowledge of course you know I'm doing a
lot of that now these webinars just
consistently blogging the other part is
accountability right so not not only am
i saying I'm going to do something but
there's many people who aren't counting
on me to actually do it so if I say hey
I'm gonna do a webinar every week for
you know ten weeks out of the quarter
well then I need to show up I mean other
people are counting on me and there's
accountability attached to it with a
blog if you're running say a case study
or something like that there's a huge
amount of accountability especially if
you make some you know big big goals or
big claims associated with it for
example project go I have I mean that
was a that was a 12 part blog series
that people were you know very eager to
learn more about and not only that I
mean I had to actually like deliver so I
couldn't just I couldn't just like show
up I also had to deliver and then tell
people about what I've done
third is this sell something I mean if
you are thinking about a blog if you
look at any blog out there there's
usually some financial component to it I
mean there's very there are some blogs
which are purely a journal purely for
just sharing but most have some kind of
a financial component or some some sort
of you know it's a piece of the puzzle
for some larger business
so some blogs may have just tons of
information but they have a product that
they sell at the end of the day there
are a few exceptions but not many so
there are tons of blogs out there and
there are tons of internet marketing
blogs so I you know approached my wife
with the idea of like starting a blog
and you know hey do you think it's a
good idea like do you have any ideas
about like what what I can do do I mean
I thought hey I'll just document the
process I mean that's what Pat Flynn
says he does he just documents as he's
going along and shares the tools he uses
and you know when you look at his actual
I mean Pat Flynn launched off of niche
sites more or less he created a you know
basically a niche site around the the
LEED exam which he was an expert in so
there's you know that was a bit of a
passion project for him and a study tool
for himself and from there he launched
just internet marketing like niche types
basically so he did that a few times and
to my knowledge right those niche sites
weren't crazy huge successes but he
shared it in a very compelling manner
and super authentic people like him so
like at the time that was a
differentiator just to be like you know
full disclosure sharing what you're
doing and that sort of thing
now for me I struggled I wasn't sure
about like what my differentiator should
be or could be yeah I just saw him and
share it like people will care what I
have to say even though you know
ignoring the fact that I'm not a great
writer I was even worse back then but
you know like I'm an engineering degree
and basically I did like technical
business writing type stuff and you know
no actual writing and no really no story
background
no no understanding of what people would
actually want to read and I didn't read
much myself so it was kind of struggling
to come up with something and then it
hit me hey I'm a project manager there's
a ton of disorganization with you know
what is out there right now even though
you know Spencer was publishing a case
study a very detailed case study a lot
of the posts were thousands of words one
thing that was happening you know I'll
give a specific example she would do
something and he would publish the
information and then a few weeks later
he would figure out that oh that was
actually a bad move
here's how we correct it so there's a
flaw in publishing a case study as you
go you'll you'll notice if I give a
specific example that Spencer did and
then I'll tell you that when I published
the project a white hat a 12 part series
that I started publishing in December
did finished publishing about a month
ago so over six months I published you
know 12 posts on it
I didn't write and publish the first
post until I was like 60 to 70 days into
the project so I knew this worked
on there like I knew what I was doing
was working or not working and I had
already adjusted and solved the problem
if it wasn't working so everything was
delayed for the most part especially on
the early side so I knew what I was
writing and I knew the next two to three
parts before I published any given part
so I haven't mentioned that before but
if that's a good tip if you're
publishing a case study you probably
want to finish the case study and then
publish it or at least get pretty far
down the line so the example from
Spencer's and you know again I'm
mentioning the project management angle
like I was able to come in and organize
and I still believe there's like even if
you go to other courses
aside from my own it's still organized
poorly because they don't have a project
management background I won't mention
the course but a recent student in five
figure niche site was telling me that
they were in another course they paid
the money but it just seemed like a
there's tons of value there's tons of
information within that other course but
it's not organized so if you just show
up there's like you know 30 modules in
there 30 things you can do and you don't
know where to start there's no like
blueprint they say the whole thing is a
blueprint but you know if you just start
you can't do everything at once so the
example from Spencer's is this is Mitch
type project one from a while back so he
published a big table right a big table
that compared the different products he
placed in it like an image and an
affiliate link for each one of the items
and it was like I don't know I'm just
gonna guess it was like 30 30 different
items in the table so it was a good
piece of content informational e but you
can imagine what happens right so you
put in 30 products with a couple
affiliate links for each one of those in
this table all of a sudden you've added
a very high ratio of affiliate links
outbound
in that table versus the number of words
you've added so for Google they see this
is sort of just an affiliate site and
they have like a huge number of
affiliate links the rankings went down
on that page and it took a couple weeks
or at least a week for you know Spencer
to figure out what went wrong make
changes and improve the flaw though is
people were following along specifically
with the case study and doing the same
thing on their own site so they had the
same issue which is not a great thing
right so you published something that is
unproven and a bunch of other people do
it so that's why I waited on my case
studies and you know back
today I did the same thing trying to get
out content faster but it turns out you
can do a better job if you know the
story that's happening and then you can
publish it based on what you know and
what you've tested after you get results
it's slightly irresponsible to publish
these things live so anyway I went on a
bit of a tangent but basically I'm a PNP
right project management professional
there are a lot of PMPs out in the world
but there's that many internet marketing
and it's kind of it's a hard test
I think it's shoot I'm trying to
remember I think it's like 200 questions
multiple choice and you may be thinking
hey multiple choice isn't that hard but
these are the kind of questions where
it's like you know a through E and like
D and E answers are all of the above or
a and B but not C kind of answers so
they make it pretty hard it's over you
know the course of two hours and you
also have to have years of project
management experience where you submit
the fact these worked on projects
implemented projects and it can be
audited so if I recall you have to have
like 45 hundred hours of project
management experience the point is I've
spent some time working projects so like
I said I'm sort of combining the ideas
so I realized there was a gap there's
still a gap there's I mean project
managers get paid pretty well so most of
the time project managers are gonna
stick with their corporate jobs because
it's a safer route and you know most
people get paid well so they they're not
gonna leave even though they're
generally overworked
like a lot of other corporate jobs so
anyway I saw this gap and I thought hey
I'm gonna fill this space here in this
Venn diagram where I can you know I know
about niche sites and I'm a good project
manager and you know what I'm I didn't
even have to be great at either one of
them
although I think you know you develop
skills as you just spend more time
working on it so by the time I was
working on niche knives I was a very
competent project manager at the time I
had you know team of 15 project managers
and I was sort of I guess I was a
manager I was a consulting manager so I
had several people working for me and
you know not only was I competent but I
was able to lead other people
successfully and then as far as niche
sites
I had like enough core information to
where I could implement it and tell
other people how to do it so I pitched
Spencer I'd niche pursuits who's asking
for success stories and I thought hey
well this is perfect I followed his lead
in niche site project one and I'm making
money and I'm doing it you know fairly
quickly you know within a few months so
he was like cool sounds like a good
story and you know I had a project
management angle that I was you know
pitching because it is unique so I was I
was featured twice once in November in
2013 and I was present there I you know
like I said I'd the project management
techniques was sort of the hook and I
spent a lot of time on this this you
know Q&A section for the success story
and then I talked to Spencer again in I
guess like a late December or early
January and we hooked up a podcast which
essentially like both of these things
launched my site so as I mentioned I
launched off someone else's site and I
mean I think if you're gonna I mean it
wasn't easy right so I spent hours on
this post here and then I had to
actually have awesome results for the
podcast I mean both were huge and
was you know fantastic to be on his site
and platform in general but if you're
looking to go this route is definitely
not the I mean it's a long-term
commitment at that point I'd almost been
looking at niche sites for a year and
I'm super into it so it's it's it's a
repeatable process and it's it's
something anyone can do but you
definitely have to have you know the
stuff I mentioned before you have to be
nice you have to do what you say you're
gonna do so you know when I went to talk
to Spencer about you know being featured
I had to send him what he needed I tried
to give as many screenshots and like
good information as I could to make the
success story post valuable and I think
if you look back yeah actually
at least in this I'll stop moving the
mouse so you can actually see it but the
first post had 87 comments and then the
next one right the podcast had 137 now I
think I'm a hundred percent sure like if
that means does were comments or if it
was shared also but either the bottom
line is people were into the idea so at
that point I knew that you know things
were pretty good now one of the great
parts of like being featured here was I
now had the ability to network with
other people in the niche right so is I
was featured on this much larger site I
mean my site was nothing at the time and
Spencer site was huge and you know it's
still huge but what I had was like the
ability to network and you know I don't
feel like I'm a strong networker in this
sense of like going to a cocktail party
and networking really well trying to get
better at that but you know I never
considered myself a networker but you
sound like a real group in a corporates
you know going to like a happy hour
didn't sound like a whole lot of fun I
learned how to do it better but it
didn't say like a lot of fun now what I
could do was just be nice and present
some sort of interesting compelling
pitch for these folks this was before I
knew much about you know pension so
basically I knew that Spencer had
several other success stories on his
side there were about ten others so I
went out and I introduced myself said I
was going to be featured soon that I was
launching my own blog and that I wanted
them to guest post if they were
interested they could generally cover
whatever they wanted and I really just
needed content to launch my site because
I wanted to you know have some content
but I I knew that I couldn't you know
write enough or you know enough good
stuff so I launched with about three of
my own post plus a few other guest posts
from under people so you know sometimes
they didn't actually want to guest post
on my site so for example John Hay verda
thority inside authority website income
he said you know hey it's great to meet
you but you know what like I'm super
busy I'm only blogging on my own site
don't really do the guest posting thing
so that was cool but it turned out that
he's a good contact to have I was
talking to him earlier this week so we
still have a good relationship
eventually I guess posted on his site
like a year later Matt Allen had done
passive income a friend of mine by the
way I've never met either one of them in
person but you know I know each of them
and consider them friends but Matt Allen
had done passive income he took my offer
up and he he guest posted on my site and
wrote about keyword research and it
worked well for him you know it got the
word out a little bit it just you know
helped him
get more traffic on his side even though
I didn't have much I was starting to
pull in more from just launching my site
and being on Spencer's podcast as far as
like other you know other networking
areas I did just normal staff of you
know blog commenting and guest posting
which if you've been to these before you
know that that's kind of what I do for
niche sites is what I do for an inter
site project turns out is all the same
set of skills and I tried my best to
write good content stuff that people
were interested in and I tried to write
it well now I will say that when I look
back at some of my early post I do see
that you know I was probably trying to
use like words that were a little too
big it didn't really sound like I was it
didn't sound like me so it was probably
a really derivative of like other
writers and more like corporate oriented
because I could actually write like good
emails in a corporate setting but it was
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