Growing a Site from Scratch and Internet Marketing for 10 years - Morten Storgaard #Best Education Page #Online Earning

in this interview I talked to Morton

store guard and he has been doing

internet marketing for like over a

decade and we talked about one of his

biggest sites go downsize and talk about

the origin of that site kind of where

it's at now and where it's gonna be

going in the future

very interesting story overall and the

super cool part is Morna has launched a

new site and just making a little money

not a ton but he's built a content team

they've published something like 180 or

so articles which is very impressive the

site is less than a year old and we go

deep into the details mornings a very

smart dude he is launching his YouTube

channel he's been putting a lot of time

into it so you should definitely check

out his channel subscribe I'll put a

link to at least a couple videos that I

personally enjoy from warden and you

should check them out as well so without

further ado let's hear from Morton store

guard hey what's going on it's Doug

Huntington here and I'm with my new

friend

Morton store guard how are you doing

today hi I don't can find I'm good how

are you doing really well doing really

well it's it's a bright sunny day here

in Colorado so there's a lot of those

but it feels a little warm and a dig it

so and for the people that don't know

you at all Morton can you give us a

little intro who are you what do you

work on now and were you located yes

sure I'm in Denmark so so it's 8 p.m.

here so I got some some lights going on

here just so you can see my face yeah so

I've been doing online stuff quite a

while I started an e-commerce site in

2008 and I stopped doing that in 2011

and did a few other ecommerce projects

along the way but I started doing SEO

with my own little agency for seven

years the link building technical SEO

and just made a lot of sense to

sometimes link to my own stuff when I

when I got some good opportunity so so

started building out a portfolio of

sites like around 2012 I think so

gradually I switched out all the clients

to now do 100% my own stuff just my own

new sites or I thought

whatever people want to call these sites

yeah cool how many sites do you have

these days I just sold a whole bunch but

they were more like supporting sites so

I would say oh maybe I should say I'm

working on I'm actively building like

four or five sites right now that are

bigger sites and then I have maybe three

or four more passive sites that are

smaller

okay very good in the height like how

many how many sites did you have in your

portfolio yeah so so at one point since

I've been doing SEO for quite a while I

had my own sort of PPN kind of thing but

it was pretty small that it was maybe

around 20 or 25 sites that I also used

for my clients and and also to exchange

links and so on so yeah so right now I

think I'm sitting on maybe 15 20 sites

and I sold two big ones and just a lot

of smaller ones and that was basically

more to start focusing on in on bigger

websites okay and as far as I just want

to like re emphasize so you started kind

of doing some of this stuff in what year

I would say I just looked up some some

analytics numbers just to see when I

actually builded my first site and I I'd

say I started getting serious with my

own niche sites around 2012 okay cool so

you've seen some ups and downs and I

guess some big penalties we used to do

things differently and that's before my

time really so yeah I also had some

clients that I needed to clean up a bit

so yeah and like do you remember how you

first like got into like niche sites of

any variety yeah totally I had a good

friend working maybe you know the

company at Trustpilot it's one of the

bigger Danish companies they're doing

reviews for e-commerce sites so it's a

good friend of mine who started it and

so sorry I know some people in there and

so somebody in there my friend in there

was sitting next to this dude who was

doing back in an affiliate site and he

told me oh this the Stewart is doing

like three or four K a month so it's

just sounded super cool and then I look

up the side and I thought well I could

totally do this better you know it was a

very old site so I started to meet

building something similar and that that

was actually one of my first successes

so so that's how I got into it and then

I also stumbled over a pet flynn way

back and the smart passive income blog

when when you started popping up

everywhere okay cool and did you follow

his blog or the podcast first I think I

think I quickly went on to the podcast

yeah also because there was something I

can do on my bike and you know

everywhere in the car and so on so I

typically just loaded all the whole

bunch of stuff on my phone and then I

could go listen to it

cool yeah I I got my my start like

listening to the podcast and then found

the way to the blog and I think I

probably spent more time on the podcast

like you said you can do other things at

the same time so yeah as I was working

you know my corporate job or commuting

or whatever right listen to internet

marketing strategy yes very cool exactly

yeah

I know you have like sort of a bigger

site and there's even a YouTube channel

associated with it so can you tell us a

little about go downsize yeah so go

downsizes it's like one of our

definitely our biggest sites I run it

together with my wife I have a wife and

a kid and three year old and so my wife

got the idea about it because she was

studying architecture and she was

designing the interior on the boat and

of course there's a small cramped space

where you need a lot of functions there

so she got interested in the whole tiny

house movement on how to build super

tiny spaces very early on maybe 2012

Leben or something like that so she was

very interested in that and she started

YouTube channel and then it quickly

caught on and quickly got the first ten

twenty thirty thousand subscribers and

then I thought hmm maybe I should build

a site around this so I just started

building the block alongside

and I could send some traffic you know

to the block zone yeah so that is still

our main site and also what's the site

that I'm actively building a lot of

content for with my my team of writers

cool so can you give us a little like

info on the traffic and like the growth

trajectory and like just a little more

details I think until November last year

so something like 14 months ago

I wrote everything myself and then some

of these articles were super super old

so I reached a point in December 13

months ago I just deleted a whole bunch

of content because it was just crap and

it was super short content I could see

in analytics it maybe got like five or

ten visits per day so per month I think

so so I started hiring some writers and

there was the first time I outsource

content so so that's where I really

started to to go harden on it and at

that time I made some major mistakes I

updated a ton of links and it got the

indexed and I just did some stuff and

the thing was that I was primarily

working on client stuff at the time so I

did a lot of changes and they look at it

then after column once it was sort of

out of the search results for a little

while so then I figured I should

probably give it some good attention and

so so yeah so long story short today

it's I just picked up the numbers it's

it's a little over 200,000 page views

per month and and it's primarily at

monetize with ads and also a bit of

affiliate okay and in the beginning it

was it was mostly like your your wife

was interested in the tiny house

movement and downsizing in general yeah

and then we just started writing about

you know furniture and everything

related to smaller spaces and see

whatever deals we could get and yeah

okay and is she sort of the the YouTube

expert and your content blog yeah yeah

she's definitely the face and the brain

behind the YouTube channel yeah cool I

also pop up from once in a while but but

I'm not the the main itthere okay gotcha

and I guess from that standpoint can you

tell us about how you selected like the

topics to write write on and then you

know maybe how your wife was choosing

YouTube video topics as well yeah so for

the YouTube channel I think she didn't

give much thought to anything so it says

keyword research stuff like that see I

think she stumbled upon a few pretty

cool tiny houses that we did some home

tours home tours on said we were going

on

and do like a 30-minute very long video

for us at the time video and and of

course those did very well because

people tend to binge these home tours

people like to see how you pop out

things of the wall and it's it's very

visual and so so one of those videos

popped to 100,000 page views and just

like or yeah using YouTube and it was

like wow this could be taken somewhere

you know and so we went to to the states

at a tiny house fair a tiny house

festival and just filmed like 20 tiny

houses just went door-to-door you know

before they opened and asked everybody

if we could film everything there so we

did that a couple of times so we would

have like Kent's into space out over a

couple months then it just really

started to take off from there holy cow

that's that's amazing so you went to

basically a conference or what did you

call it was like a festival or something

yeah I think they call it a tiny house

festival it was somewhere in Florida oh

yeah so there was just like a

concentration of like to do with the

camera I said we were in the area

visiting some friends and then we just I

think accidentally we we just saw this

festival it's like two hours drive north

and then we just went there and I we

could immediately see this was just

Mecca for us you know we just had to

turn on the camera and get there super

early and leave super late for the last

couple of days and yeah so we just

burned ourself out completely over 48

hours and shut everything we could

okay and I may have to I'll have to get

you to introduce me to your wife maybe I

need to talk to her to you but sure

absolutely the video and editing and

creating video that's interesting to

people it's really hard to do and to

keep them you know captured so like how

long had your wife and doing videos at

the point where you you went to that

festival maybe a year something like

that I think we have traveled a lot also

because we both work online so so

everywhere we go we don't always try to

find a few tiny spaces apartments or

tiny houses you know anything we can

film also to sort of yeah do the travel

on the camp

he sure feels yeah so so we did that a

couple of times and we had an idea that

this would be great so as soon as we saw

the festival we just yeah had proof to

go there okay yeah cool cuz I like I

said I know just the skill to you know

create the videos to film it to do all

this stuff eat both from like a

technical standpoint and for the actual

content to be interesting yeah and you

know just get it done it's it's very

difficult very difficult so yeah you

guys had a few at least a couple years

probably of just like filming doing

videos doing editing and all that stuff

right yeah and we had some friends show

us how to get like a good camera and

also get like a wide-angle lens because

when you're filming inside it's super

tiny space you know it's very hard not

to be upfront in everything you know you

need that bigger angle so getting these

things right and get a good boom mic

that because sometimes we would we would

shoot outside and to get it to the house

and talk outside it'd just be you know

sound like like a stormy weather and yes

but but she's I think she's very skilled

in in that department and I yeah

she she's doing a good job there I think

but she she's using an external editor

but actually she hasn't been uploading

any videos for almost a year because we

have a toddler now and it is just a

different game so she's mainly focusing

on him and I'm I'm running the business

side of things right now very cool so

from just your observations now I know

it was probably different as you were

going through it but from like the

strategy on the blog and YouTube do you

have any like interesting observations

where maybe a particular blog post and

super well and then the video didn't do

as good or just anything weird like that

I think if I had to do it all over I

would definitely marry the two closer

together it's it's almost like it's two

separate things they're not too much

traffic going from the YouTube channel

to the website which is a big mistake

because we obviously make much more

money when we get them to the website so

if I knew then what I know now I would

definitely create more hooks you know

maybe do a PDF do something to take

people to the website at least sometimes

so one thing I did after a year I

started to do like a pretty big

watermark in the corner just putting go

downsize calm just so everybody who was

interested would go there and that that

just started a big spike of branded

searches in Google I could see in search

come in Google search console that a lot

of people started to just google what

does go down sighs and go down sighs can

go down sighs in different different

kind of ways so I'm sure that's your

Google that we were some sort of brand

and maybe they I'm sure they made the

connection because because we had the

link between the two okay but yeah but I

I think that that was the only thing we

did right yeah it's hard one in this I

mean I under my small understanding of

YouTube like you don't want to always

send people away from YouTube YouTube

wants people on the platform they want

em to binge videos so you have to it's a

delicate balance of like getting people

to your site and when you're growing you

know if you're if you want that like

unrestrained growth and and your videos

to be suggested and recommended all over

the place like if you're hooking people

in and then you keep them on the

platform they love it so yeah that's

definitely a balance yeah are there were

there any like surprises as far as like

hey this was like actually kind of

easier to do than we expected we thought

this was gonna be tough to do blog

content or something yeah so I think the

outsourcing part was way easier than I

thought

you know after writing hundreds of

articles yourself it's like you think

nobody can write as well as you can but

certainly that's definitely not true and

I just wish I I started doing that much

much earlier so so that was a big

eye-opener and from the YouTube

perspective of things I was just very

surprised by seeing which way their

videos would take off sometimes we did I

remember we filmed the school bus like

people was redirect decorating a school

bus and turning it into it like a hostel

on wheels

and then that totally took off and got

like a million views in in a year or

something like I think it's sitting on

2.5 right now so I figure okay so

there's a formula and then we went to

film three or four or the buses

way cooler and they did horrible you

know it was around the same length I

would say it was even better content so

it's like okay alright thank you

kidding do you have any theories like

what what the trigger is no not really I

mean maybe the the guys in the first

video was just super likable and and the

numbers was definitely better but from

my perspective the this the other videos

versus was like at least I was good but

yeah I don't know maybe there was one

thing that can totally came into play

was that there was more and more

competitors so you can say other people

doing the same stuff so I think in the

beginning it was not that we had it for

ourselves but I mean if you started

looking on YouTube for tiny houses tiny

spaces tiny apartment stuff like that we

would definitely show up like most of

the times now it's it's totally florid

and already back then I think that that

might have come into play okay that's

pretty pretty interesting just being an

early elective I don't know what you

call it you're first to market basically

her early to market gives you a big leg

up yeah alright it was way before all

the major TV stations was doing like

tiny house nations and you know now it's

all over the median everywhere back then

it was totally niche okay cool so let's

go back to the content stuff because I

know there's probably your viewers and

listeners out there they're like oh man

like you deleted a bunch of content you

got D index so can you tell us that

story like what happened like how much

how much content did you have how much

did you delete how long was it the index

like what what was going on yeah so at

the time I had around 100 articles on

the site and it was it was doing around

I think 30 to 40 thousand page views per

month and then I just decided to delete

half of it because it was it was so bad

and I figured well it's not doing

anything from us I totally and the least

you know if you think about link flow

and all these all these things maybe

that would be more authority to the

other articles so that was kind of my my

take on

and and I saw a lot of theories you know

so I'm saying do it somebody said don't

do it you know so so I decided to do it

and then immediately I started to throw

in a ton of content so I probably

doubled that content over a couple of

months so it's it's hard to say exactly

what what made everything turn much

faster because I did a lot of things at

the same time but the whole dat index

thing it was just yeah I was just a

horrible mistake on my part and and

luckily it got fixed pretty quickly so

so the thing I did was that I use a

plugin called pretty links for all my

affiliate links so you know so you do

these pretty URLs and and then I

inserted this little word in the

beginning of the slock for every

affiliate link to be able to go into

Google Analytics and take a good view of

all these links so I could sort of

distinguish my field links from all the

other ones and see how many people would

click those links and so on and as I did

that I just forgot to update the actual

links on the site it was yeah it was

just totally stupid yeah so what

happened was that all my field links got

broken I just had like like a ton of

Link's pointing like 404 okay

but it was not like my entire site was

out it was it was just it was just the

internal links that got totally screwed

up gotcha

okay how long did it take you to figure

it out yeah I think I figured it out

after a month I was typically looked at

my numbers 1 1 times per month at the

time so I was confused about why my

affiliate sales just you know totally

dropped when I went in and tried to

click a link and no no actually it was

one of my affiliate one of the stores

that I had a good deal with he told me

that all of a sudden he was getting no

links so he thought maybe I I skipped

his program so I went and I looked there

and actually he figured it out for me so

it was kind of embarrassing that's

that's a bummer so ok quick

clarification so you're this whole site

wasn't like D indexed no search on its

own it was just feel all affiliate links

were broken so all revenue went down

yeah yeah and I didn't have

that's at the time you know so you can

imagine it's just went to zero okay and

the other for people that don't know the

pretty link plug-in I use it too and

basically it allows you to just change

the URL slug and have a redirect like

it's an easy way to manage your

redirects in a nice plug-in format

versus like hard coding it in say your

htaccess file for the technical nerds

out there you don't think you have to

have it but there you get some you know

tracking capabilities and it's a little

bit more sophisticated

it's called pretty links so yeah I also

like the way if you have one affiliate

link you know all over the website you

can just update it one place and then

all these places will update you know so

so sort of have this hop where you

update your links I I like that so I

don't have to go over hundreds and

hundreds of articles oh yeah totally

yep so it's a good plugin as long as you

use it right yeah all right cool any

other cool things that you want to

mention about go downsize or the YouTube

channel or anything like that

not really other than I I think I got

lucky with the domain name not that it's

anything genius but I'm glad that I

didn't call it like you know tiny house

geek.com or something like that so it

was pretty broad from the get-go which I

enjoy now because we're also writing

about living on a boat and living in RV

so we could we're taking the website in

many directions and that's something I

I'm doing with all my newer sites I try

to you to choose a very broad to my name

just so so I don't get cornered in one

tiny part of a niche so yeah so that

that enable us to go all over the place

you know because now it's it's many

years old and it can links all over the

place from the yeah from from huge sites

and new sites and so on so it's just

nice to be able to continue building it

and not run out of keywords awesome yeah

that is insightful I think I was just

chatting with someone earlier today

about that exact thing where you don't

put a keyword in your domain name

because unless it's extremely broad yeah

it's just painting you in a corner so

yeah I agree

you've launched a new site you've done a

lot of work on it and I want to get to

that in a second I'm gonna just tease

the audience just for a minute but you

talked about a lot of travel can you

just explain like the travel did you and

your family have done and just like how

it's been yeah sure so we've been

married for 13 years we've been together

for a long time and and now only a kid

is free or sold so for 10 years we were

together doing stuff mostly online so we

have been traveling in Asia Africa and

the States and Europe and and in many

places so we typically go for one to two

or three months at the time and we've

been trying different different styles

we've been are being a lot in Europe and

and when we go for the way I mean in

Asia in Thailand we typically could just

rent it something nice because it's much

cheaper and then the stage we have some

friends we could stay with so so we

tried many different things and I think

it's just it's just a great way to or

it's definitely one of the one of the

freedom freedom or the perks that comes

with this way of earning money that I

absolutely love and my my wife also has

like it YouTube Travel Channel and she

traveled a lot of before we met also and

she really wanted to travel so it's I

would say it's mostly her who's her

primary driver to getting us on the road

all the time and and I love that because

if I didn't have her I would probably

just be in my cave just blocking all day

you know our doing doing stuff on my own

so what what kind of challenges did you

run into traveling especially like in an

RV right with connectivity knowing that

you know potentially at the time maybe

you had some clients or obviously your

own yeah work that you need to do yeah I

started telling all my SEO clients that

I would not be working from their office

space like any any time and I also I so

I always told them this at the very

first meeting before we did any sort of

agreement on anything just so they knew

and then I I told them that I would love

to do like a monthly reporting and

we could definitely do that on skype but

but only if they if they need it at

somes so over time I think one thing

that went really well was that I had

fewer and fewer and bigger and bigger

clients so in the beginning of maybe 15

clients and in the end it's just like a

handful of bigger clients that I had

worked with and doing link building for

four years so there was a lot of trust I

would basically just send them a list of

links that I had acquired over the last

month so that got easier and easier as

we started travelling so and I think

yeah connectivity issues definitely in

Africa and also in many places you know

all over the place but but I was yeah I

was surprised to have super super fast

internet in Thailand it was just a

fantastic place to work as probably many

I know there's a ton of marketers there

I hear good things yeah you've traveled

like all over how many countries have

you guys been to yeah I think the last

time I counted it was around 30

something like that but it's it's easy

to take up a lot of countries when you

because I mean just if I Drive two hours

in each direction Denmark I'm in no way

Sweden Germany Holland you know it's

it's it's easy to count a lot of

countries in Europe yeah yeah I think

when we were doing like the

pre-interview I was telling you I drove

from Colorado to Alaska which is like

thousand miles you know yeah one way and

I was in two countries count the states

I think yeah yeah and and I am

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