hey what's up Doug Pennington here from
niche site project in this interview I
talked to Jim and Ricky from income
school these guys are great I just met
them a couple weeks ago it turns out we
have a lot in common and how we build
niche sites how we view affiliate
marketing and stuff like that we don't
hold anything back in this interview Jim
and Ricky tell me how they approach
content and content planning including
how long their content is for most of
their sites we also talked about like
the timeline it takes to reach a
thousand dollars a month for like an
average niche site and this is sort of a
crazy thing right Jim and Ricky like
they just reveal their sites they just
tell you what their sites are so you can
go and like reverse-engineer what
they're doing take a look at how they're
doing it and that's amazing because I
personally don't do that because it
scares me quite a lot I've seen so many
public case studies like turn sour right
negative SEO copycats and a lot of other
issues like that so I was shocked when
these guys sort of throwing out names of
their sites and stuff but you know what
that's their thing and they tell us why
they actually release that stuff too so
you know what I'll shut up here let's go
to the interview and check it out I will
say some of our audio levels are a
little hot but hopefully you can work
past it and just focus on the content
apologize for any audio issues in there
so I want to thank Jim and Ricky a ton I
encourage everyone to go check out their
Channel go subscribe go to their site
sign up for their email list there's
tons of good information in there so I
encourage you to go check out income
hey what's up Doug Huntington here and
I'm excited to be sitting down with
these two guys Jim and Ricky welcome how
are you this morning
awesome good I am ready for some
internet marketing I know I'm I've been
drinking coffee for like over an hour
now so I should be pretty pumped and
then I'm gonna crash hard later so now
you and I well all of us we haven't met
before right so
this is just sort of an organic thing
that happened I had some viewers and
readers from my blog say hey I should
talk to these guys because they're
really similar they're nice I found out
we live in the same sort of region of
the country so that's why we're sitting
here now a lot of people probably don't
even know who you are so can you
introduce yourselves and I guess Ricki
go first yeah sure so um I'm Ricky
Kessler I've been working with Jim on
income school for a few years now I'm
not trying to know but kind of have a
strange background okay so been a little
bit of time working as an engineer of a
chemical engineer by training so I don't
know how that fits into internet
marketing very well but I ended up here
I also earned an MBA and so I have a bit
of a business background which also is
part of sort of what led me here and
what gives me a little bit of the
perspective that I have I got a family
got four kids now so that that keeps me
busy and it's also one of the huge
drivers behind what I do yeah and I I
was a lawyer and I started a blog about
photography while I was in law school
and it really took off and is now one of
the largest photography blogs on the way
on the Internet it's called improved
photography we have over a million
followers on social media so I've been
running that full-time for quite a few
years now and I also started working on
different niche sites and so I've
created a pontoon guide.com I bought
knife up calm Ricky and I together have
camper rapport calm Ricky's working
right now on cabin freedom calm for a
company and I'm working on dirtbike
planet.com for our company we are
teaching niche websites but also in our
business we are working at them
ourselves and they've just been
awesomely successful it's like the moat
the thing online that we're most excited
about right now is just very very
passive niche websites very cool so
there's so much to unpack there number
one like just the engineering and law
background like it's interesting at the
level that that we're working it's like
a lot of people have professional
backgrounds and it sounds like you know
we spend time and either corporate
settings or at least like a high level
of like
nationalism and I think that's key like
the people that seem to be able to pull
it off have like a strong background I
was gonna say work ethic but like I
guess we all know it takes a long time
to do anything so any thoughts on that
like have you seen other maybe students
of yours who have these strong
professional backgrounds our students
have been a pretty big base we've had a
lot with strong professional backgrounds
and pretty pretty varying backgrounds as
well we've seen several too that haven't
had much of a professional background
oh no I hadn't really thought about how
much that may or may not come into play
and it'll be interesting to kind of look
at going forward we do definitely try to
instill in our students the the patience
that it takes because that's I think the
biggest killer of their niche website is
they just give up early because they're
not seeing porn I quote success in their
early stages sure sure and I guess said
Jim for I guess time periods like let's
say you're gonna help someone launch a
new site let's say they just have like a
little bit of experience but they've
never had a successful site themselves
so how long for I guess just the
trajectory what is the first six months
look like that's a really important
question because most people either
don't realize it or don't internalize it
when they start a website a lot of
people start a website and they say okay
I mean a lot of people are saying like a
year before you start to get significant
traffic but I'm gonna do this or that or
whatever and I'm gonna circle but the
growth curve and you can definitely do
that
I mean do I think I could start a
website tomorrow and earn 50 bucks get a
paycheck from it next month sure I could
with no traffic today of course I could
but until you're gonna get significant
income if you're gonna grow this totally
organically without any you know gray
hat black hat techniques you're not
gonna do any link spamming you're not
gonna do any social media you're just
gonna build this totally organic I'd say
a year until you're into the you know
over a thousand dollars of income just
from plain old Google traffic again
there are a lot of ways you can shortcut
that and make it much quicker but if
you're just gonna write articles let
Google do its thing and you're gonna get
income from it I'm gonna want to wait a
year before we
bet on a thousand but that seems so
painful until you realize you don't have
to be working every single day for a
year to do that what Ricky and I are
doing is we're sitting down writing 30
40 articles on a website over the course
of 45 60 days just everyday writing an
article and then we're just it's like
we're planting a seed we're just setting
it in the ground and letting Google do
its thing over time and then you just
wait and then you can be working on
another one and another one another one
collecting these sites and then you just
give google time and they will rank just
Google will not give you rankings next
month on a new website it just doesn't
work like that right right yep and I see
as far as the trajectory that you
mentioned it's always good to get like
confirmation that my observations are
the same as like yours so a lot of times
I'll see maybe like within six months
someone can hit like a hundred bucks a
month give or take right there's so many
variables and then it can ramp up so
fast up to a thousand bucks in a year so
yeah and yeah it could be five thousand
in a year
five thousand every month that you're
earning at that year mark just depends
on your niche and how well you did it
cetera but when you see that big bump
it's gonna be around a year yeah for
sure in for content you mentioned like
30 or 40 posts that you know you try and
like launch a site with now me
personally I advise people to do smaller
chunks of work so I have like the
project management background so I'm
telling people to do you know ten posts
go start promoting that I do a little
promotion whitehat promotion through
just networking and then my hope is like
people will get a little traffic a
little small win early so don't actually
keep working so I guess from the content
side there is a question here from the
content side you said like pretty good
amount of content so how long like how
do you figure out what to write about
and just content planning in general I
like long articles there's no question
on that I've you know now that we've
made so many successful sites and we've
seen so many different niche
sites you can look back at the
statistics of all the thousands of
articles that you have online and you
say okay which ones worked
like which ones brought in I have some
articles like one single article that
brings in fifty eighty thousand page
views in a month from what article you
know you see which ones are those big
hits really successful in which just
kind of died and never really ranked and
just consistently as we look at those
stats it's the long articles that do
well and often that's counterintuitive
to a new blogger because you say oh no I
don't want to waste people's time I
don't want to give them this big long
thing I just want to give them the short
little bite-sized pieces that sounds
nice but I'm telling you it just rarely
works there long pieces of content that
do well and then you asked what type of
content that is it just takes a long
time to get a feel for usually what I
see is newer bloggers have something
they want to get off their chest so if
they're writing a blog about dirt bikes
like I have a dirt bike planet.com is
one of my niche sites then they write
like I really don't like the motor cost
guys I like the off-road and so their
blog post is titled something like why I
hate the motocross guys you know and
it's like okay that's an interesting I
can see why you think it's interesting
this opinion piece but nobody's googling
what does Jim Harmar think of motocross
guys and so their articles never going
to rank because literally that's the
only Google search that could possibly
bring up that post so you have to think
instead from the users point of view you
have to say what are they googling what
did they need help
well it's winter and guys have dirt
bikes that you would need to winterize
their dirt bikes and so how about you
write a post on that that's what they're
searching for
so I'm gonna write the ultimate resource
for this guy and actually help them out
and then yeah it's gonna rank Google's
good at doing its job if you write an a
killer helpful post right and it's
answering their question you're gonna do
just fine nice and I'm may have missed
it the length of it so we're going
long-form like how long
I mean sometimes they're over fourth
thousand words I rarely would hit 5,000
but we rarely want to publish a post
under 2,000 words the average it would
backlinko did a study a while ago to see
the number one search result from I
think they just tested 10,000 different
searches and it was 1980 words long was
the number one search result so that's
almost a 2,000 word post 2025 or 2500
words is common if it's a big keyword
something like portrait photography tips
that's a huge keyword and so you know we
better put into the time and make a
three thousand four thousand word post
on that cool and as far as I guess while
I want to send it over to Ricky first of
all so with the MBA background in
engineering like what unique combination
of like skills and interests do you
bring to the table because I I don't
have a business background so all this
marketing stuff is like all brand new to
me very interesting so can you tell me a
little bit about how all this fits
together for you yeah well so the
business stuff believe it or not in fact
the way I see it pretty much everything
from the MBA is fairly intuitive if
you've been involved in business at all
it just all makes sense so yeah you know
going to business school and having the
MBA background that maybe gave me a leg
up on marketing and just understanding
how to do marketing how to segment and
understand my potential customer base or
my viewers and then how to create
content for those specific segments that
seem to come to my websites some of the
things that helped me a little bit where
I guess negotiations just understanding
economics
I mean Business School is all about you
know how do people think in large groups
and how do they behave in large groups
and then how can we use that to provide
them with the resources or the the
products that they want the engineering
background though gives me a little bit
more of an analytical approach to things
and people right you know if they come
and watch our YouTube videos we're gonna
they're gonna see that we don't do a lot
of traditional keyword research using
the tools we do keyword research we like
analytics in fact we love numbers we
love statistics and using that and so
people maybe get the wrong impression
there but I definitely take a very very
analytical approach to the work that we
do and the content that I write I think
that's kind of how it all fits together
I mean it's it's kind of hard to sum up
and you know 30 seconds sure well I
think you probably internalize so much
of the business stuff because I I can
guarantee you a lot of people just don't
get it like I know what you were saying
like if you spend a little time you
figure it out
that's true like you get some intuition
but I bet you internalized a lot of like
the analytics and then all this stuff I
didn't even take any business classes so
sure it's all brand-new and I bet you
picked it up just over time sitting
through hours yeah no that's probably
true and there's probably a lot that we
do you know with Jim's law background in
my business background and engineering
background
there's probably a lot that we do that
we don't realize we're doing that
because of our background yeah
it's like you say we just kind of
internalize it and I would imagine also
you know with somebody with project
management background like you there's
probably a lot that you do you probably
take a more systematic approach to your
website work then most of your students
would naturally want to take just
because you have that background so
that's just how you do things
yep I noticed something very interesting
you guys mentioned the sites that you're
working on which scares me to death
right like I try and you know keep it
close to the chest just because of
copycats negative SEO and issues like
that so Kim you know each of you tell me
a little bit about like why you decided
to be public with the sites and the
concerns that you may have about it the
only way to be successful online is to
be authentic it's the only way we see it
all the time when people are even
creating tiny little niche sites about
archery tips you know simple we'll go in
there and just write best compound bow
best recurve bow best release best
archery target bestest and it's just
such spammy crap that there's no way
this website is ever gonna rank on
Google it's just never gonna happen
when people read it it doesn't feel real
and they know it isn't people
intuitively know when someone is not
being authentic with them and I believe
about opening the kimono and sharing the
business is a part of that as part of
that authenticity is there a potential
for something half
sure but you know what if you need a
niche site idea just go to income school
comm and search for a niche site ideas
we have a post there with 50 niche site
ideas ones that we like we would love to
take on and we just don't have time for
right now if you need that go to our
YouTube channel income school we have
like six different videos of just giving
different niche site ideas ideas are
cheap there are so many different niches
you could go into that would work just
fine the problem is just executing it I
mean it's not like I was the first
person to wha have this idea to make a
website about dirt bikes like Oh genius
you know about dirt bikes there are lots
of websites about cabins a lot of
websites about knives and boats etc that
we've all made these successful sites
and the ideas are cheap so just go out
there and make awesome content for
people we like to share our numbers we
show you our Google Analytics show whit
what posts are doing the best we share
it all on the income school YouTube
channel and it's part of just what we do
if we didn't do that if we weren't
authentic and open like that I don't
think I could feel like I could do this
business because it would just wouldn't
feel real to me I feel like I'm not
giving everybody my best I just have to
echo what Jim said I'm not really
worried about copycats for the same
reasons the Internet is such a huge
place that's what makes this work for
all of us it's it's huge there are tons
of different people out there and you
know if somebody's gonna copy my idea if
they're behind me if I've already got 20
articles up because I've been writing
every day most people aren't going to
keep up with that pace and if they are
and they really want a copy and they're
gonna steal every topic of every article
I write I'm gonna assume that I did it
first I did it better and I'm gonna do
more of it they're gonna be behind you
which means I'm probably gonna own those
keywords more quickly than they will now
that won't necessarily happen in every
case and somebody may come in and steal
all of my ideas on a website and I may
lose that one and I've lost some time
and if that and if that happens then you
know maybe I'll rethink how open I am
just about my new websites and maybe I
won't share them until I've got a good
20
thirty Cosette but I feel like we get a
lot more value out of that openness and
authenticity people need to see real
examples it's hard to do this hard to
start an internet business when you
don't really have this guarantee of
income nobody has really told you how
much their website earns or how much
traffic there gets or how long it takes
and then you're supposed to sit here and
dedicate a year of your life building
this website what know you you're gonna
have to see people's success you're
gonna have to see what's working and
what's not working and I will say we
have niche sites that flopped and we
share those too you need to see those if
you're going to learn I feel like that's
that kept me back years in my business
is the fact that nobody would share the
goods you know you have all these people
had to have their internet marketing
podcasts and everything you can tell
they're always couching they're always
holding a little bit back and that
helped me back for years cuz I didn't
know anybody else that did this and so I
just I had to learn every single thing
by trying it and failing and trying
something else and failing and would
love to help people circumvent that yeah
you you're making me I'm like oh I
should tell my site but come on dog it's
a it's too scary I don't know if I could
do it so especially around the holidays
here I'm gonna go back to earlier in the
conversation how do you guys know each
other how did you start working together
on income school we both grew up in
reading Idaho and just became friends in
high school you know one day that
switched and suddenly we became friends
because we realized we liked pretty much
all the same stuff including the girl
but but now I mean you know we both knew
got to college we both did completely
different things and Jim was doing
photography and I was working for a
chemical company and Jim started income
school and one day he calls me up and is
like you know
I think income school needs to succeed
this information needs to get out there
but I've got too much going on to run
this by myself would you be interested
in partnering with me and that was the
start of income school as this
partnership between the two of us
shortly after that actually I had the
opportunity moved back to Idaho I was in
Texas at the time so now we're both back
in Idaho living nearby and obviously you
see our YouTube videos where yeah you
know sit next to each other and record
these videos so it's been really fun cuz
you know it's a couple of old friends
getting back together and working on
this but prior to that I didn't really
have any experience with niche websites
I pretty much learned everything on the
fly once I started on income school and
since then I've built several sites and
had the opportunity to work with a lot
of different people on their websites
which is let's give it me my experience
very cool yeah that's that's neat it's
hard to find people while one like that
are interested in working on this stuff
just in general but then to have someone
like in your town yeah you know so yeah
that's really cool guys very interesting
so I want to totally switch gears again
to productivity so I'm productivity geek
I'm always interested in that kind of
stuff generally while I like tools and
like apps and all the fancy stuff I
usually just use like a notebook and
like a pad of paper it's like my typical
thing even though I'm a project manager
and all that so just curious like with
students or if someone just needed like
productivity help do you like how do you
guide them how do you set them up for
success
I'm not organized enough to give them
any productivity tips of everything
right down to you know the bank
accountant but you know as far as
productivity goes organization does help
a lot even if it is on paper I would say
that here's the number one thing is
anytime you have an idea whether it's an
idea for an article or maybe it's a new
to-do list item whatever it is as soon
as that comes into your mind it needs to
get written down somewhere you can write
out on a piece of paper on you know that
I use my Google Calendar my Outlook
calendar to set reminders for myself
like oh here's
maybe I haven't need to come back to
this but what happens I think the
biggest danger to productivity is when
you get a whole bunch of stuff that's
built up in your mind that starts
weighing on you and people get stressed
out and they don't even realize like in
an eight-hour workday I could accomplish
90% of what's weighing down on me that's
been bugging me for a week right and the
problem is that until they get that out
of their head and down on paper they
can't see the step by step items need to
get done so get it out of your head get
it on paper and then do it how you
organize your schedule your time you
know what you use or if you just use a
piece of paper that's okay but get it
out of your head and get it on paper so
that you can actually get to work that's
my number one productivity tip cool and
I think you know what I never read the
book like getting things done but is
that pretty similar to that that's where
that comes from
um he had he has a whole process for
what you do with them once you get them
on paper but for me just that step of
getting it out of my head and getting it
on paper man that's killer it works and
then then again like I said what you do
with it from there is up to you how you
handle those tasks you know if I have a
hundred ideas of articles come into my
head I've never get them on paper I'm
never gonna it's just gonna bother me
until I write them and then when I go to
write him I won't remember them all so
get stuff down get it on paper yep
interesting interesting yeah I guess
that's probably not too far off from
what I do so I got someone the right
track some writing stuff down okay we're
coming towards the end but everyone
would get upset with me if I didn't ask
about link building so in our like pre
discussions you know the link building
never came up so what's the approach
with link building from an income school
perspective here there is no what we do
absolutely no link building none none
whatsoever and it has worked just fine
for us an example of it is camper report
calm we started this website almost
exactly a year ago and today and we
wrote so started a year ago we wrote 24
articles on it really not that much you
could do that in two weeks we wrote 24
articles on the website
and then nothing we just sat it there
did nothing no link-building no nothing
well today it's bringing in sixty six
thousand page views a month with no link
building whatsoever it works just fine
it's totally fine to never do link
building we get that links help your
website to rank but guess what if you're
making awesome content
it comes out organically improve
photography.com has been around for what
eight years now well it has nineteen
thousand backlinks and I didn't create
one of them if you create great content
the links will come naturally will they
come as fast no can you rank as fast no
is there value to it yes to link
building we totally get that but our
approach is content really is king so
just make good content and let Google do
its job it's gonna find you just fine
doing absolutely nothing and we've done
it over and over and over again with
different sites they have tons of
traffic and we're just not doing link
building and it really does work so we
get the value of link building but when
it comes right down to it my time is
better spent creating content and that's
exactly it that so if you're making
niche websites full time or if you have
a team of people that are you know
working with you you've got a social
media marketing manager and you've got a
a backlink guy then you know you're my
favorite
go ahead absolutely backlinks are like
Jim said we don't think they're a bad
thing but the thing is that the students
that we work with in almost every case
are people that have a full-time job
that are trying to build a side income
that will enable them to later quit
their job or retire better you know that
kind of situation and so they have an
hour a day that they can work on stuff
and I would rather they spent their hour
a day writing awesome content especially
because beginners I mean an article that
might take me an hour to write cuz I'm
used to this might take them three hours
so they're there three days in on that
article and so what I rather they spent
that those three hours you know reaching
out to people to try to get a backlink
on you know begging for backlinks or
and for backlinks I'd rather they spent
that time writing awesome content like I
said if you have more time available to
you then yeah sure go ahead and put in
that effort on backlinks they they'll
speed up the process of ranking in
Google and I know that's a that's a part
of what what you talk about what you
teach so I don't want to completely slam
on backlinks they're not a bad thing I
want to make that clear but we just feel
like our time if it's very limited like
it usually is it's better spent on
content for sure well and you mentioned
time Ricky and I I agree with you for
sure that it definitely just takes time
to do that where you could be making
content but also think about how many
thousands and millions of times it has
happened that a blogger creates a site
works on works and works for months to
create this thing does some backlinking
maybe goes a little too far and then
camera comes down from google and all of
that work is gone potentially years of
work are gone and we just have almost I
like when I hear Google has this big
update I usually don't even read the
article is gonna be fine I've weathered
a lot of Google updates and it's never
touched my traffic at all like I've
never seen a dip in traffic from any
kind of Google update and that's in you
know almost 10 years of blogging and so
it's just we're in it for the long game
we're not trying to build quick crash
and burn websites we're in it for the
long game and so I just don't want to
add any element of risk to the business
either and can you get traffic yeah
absolutely millions of page views with
no backlinking it's awesome because
people hate building backlinks like even
like even you know people in my
mastermind group like we just don't like
link building it's not like a fun thing
to do so it's it's refreshing to hear
you know you both be so blunt about it
and you know I agree to a large extent
not a hundred percent but a large extent
I think we understand the value so very
cool well we are wrapping it up here and
where can we find you guys
if people want to learn more where do
you should we send him everything we do
is income school comm on income school
comm you'll see niche site school but
mostly our YouTube channel is where
we're most active every single Monday we
have a new video for you that's it in
youtube.com slash user slash income
school alright and I'll put links so
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