[ Download MP3 | Transcript | iTunes | Soundcloud | Raw RSS ]
Apologies for the tiny bit of static that came through in the recording.
This is one great interview if you are looking for a step-by-step story of how a guy can manage a full-time job and develop a niche site income during his spare time. It’s also incredibly inspirational if you are new to this game of making money online.
Patrick didn’t do anything unusual. He simply built a website about addiction (which he personally had recovered from) and then filled it with incredibly valuable content from his own experiences and knowledge. It helps that he is a prolific writer, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he had to sit down and get the work done and find the time to do so around working a full-time job.
Make sure you listen to the interview where Patrick talks about the hardcore writing sessions he would commit to, producing as many as 400 articles in a month while on holiday from his job! He also explains how his AdSense income grew slowly at first and what he did to grow it from $100 a month to $200, then $300, $600, $1,000 and $2,000.
Patrick ends his story explaining how he stumbled across a buyer for his site and managed to secure his dream price – $200,000, enough money to invest and live off so he didn’t need a job again, while he moved on to new online projects.
And yes, of course, he did quit his job.
Tips From Patrick:
- Give yourself a “daily quota” – For example, write every day and you will become better at it and quicker too
- Know your subject well and keeping a quota is easy because you have lived it
- Do keyword research within your existing statistics to find good topics to focus on (where the traffic is)
- Ask for your dream money and someone may just say yes
Enjoy the interview,
Yaro
Relevant Links Mentioned in this Interview
[ Download MP3 | Transcript | iTunes | Soundcloud | Raw RSS ]
Patrick is the real deal. I’ve been following his blog for a couple weeks now and his content is always thorough and full of quality tips. Thanks for the interview Yaro. Always awesome to learn from past experiences.
@ Sean – Hey thanks Sean, that is nice of you to say!
Inspiring to say the least… I’m amazed that a personal blog with so much individuality can still be sold. Great story. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Dave T
Pretty awesome, inspirational for sure. Like Yaro has said, everyone starts off with zero traffic, it can be done!
Almost every time I hear a success story like this, there is a common personality denominator. It is something despite all the tips and tricks in the IM world that cannot be manufactured. Patrick, sooner or later was headed for success, and likely more of it.
Like Yaro, Patrick is an entrepreneur at heart. This is hard to learn, I really believe it is genetic, and magnetic.
Great questions, great answers… a smooth interview that was thoroughly enjoyable.
Very bad quality audio. Applying a filter for noise reduction just takes a few seconds!
Yeah I’m not sure what went wrong with this one Chris. I recorded it the same way as usual and it doesn’t sound bad during the editing. Something must be going wrong during the compression to MP3.
400 articles in a month is practically superhuman and I salute you for that! I wish I could write 4…
I guess that the difference is that when you have personal experience and are passionate about your subject then the words flow
Wow, you were posting around 25 articles a day. It is something dangerous to do right now. And like Yaro said, Google will give anyone who does that a penalty, lol. But, you encourage me to do a hard work, Patrick.
@ Dave – I was amazed myself that I could sell my “baby,” and I am grateful too. Cheers!
@ Ben – yup, it was a long journey, but worth it!
@ Ross – thanks for the compliment! I do believe I have the entrepreneur mindset, deep down…
@ Rich – Absolutely true….I could not write that much content about red toasters or widgets. These days I tend to write about 3,000 words per day or so of actual published content. Since I do it consistently, every day, this is still a very good pace that creates quite a bit of content in the long run. I highly recommend a daily quota….thanks for your comment!
Question to Patrick (or anyone reading who knows the answer.. thanks)..
So are you saying that posting 3,000 words per day in articles (roughly 3 to 4 articles) to your site will NOT cause any penalties with Google?
I’m having a hard time finding out the “magic number” as far as how much and how often to add articles AND keep the site moving up in the search engines, rather than being penalized somehow.
Thanks so much for the interview Patrick and Yaro, I learned so much!
Chris
That’s a great idea to keep your content writing skills up. I think I read somewhere that Stephen King writes 1500 words before breakfast!
Fantastic interview. Enjoyed every minute of it.
Patrick – Congratulations on the sale. You read sometimes about some buyers getting lucky with things like this. Although you hadn’t planned to sell the site at such a price, I think lucky isn’t a fair word to use as you clearly worked your butt off for years to get to where you are. You’ve got a great mindset and fantastic work ethic so I’ve no doubt your next big project will be a huge success.
Patrick,
Truly inspirational! Great proof that the right attitude and work ethic can take you anywhere. Thanks for sharing!
Yaro,
Have you ever written a post on what kind of results you got when you first started, shown a graph of your actual traffic, mistakes you made, what you learned the most in the beginning? I have read some posts on how long it takes to actually start making money from a blog and it varies from topic to topic. Was there a time you thought about giving up, when you feel like you made it, etc…
Thanks,
Ben
Hi Ben,
There is no specific post, but if you go through the blogging category or pretty much all my archives and read the blog profits blueprint you will have a good idea.
The place were I went into real detail, including a look at my traffic during the first six months, was my Blog Mastermind course, but that is now closed unfortunately.
Great post Patrick
What really inspired you towards achieving all this? Because it sound impossible to create 400 articles in a single month but you did it. Well i wish i could imitate you though you’ve motivated me to try harder.. Please thanks for sharing.
@ Kevin – Thanks for the comment…..I know it was not ALL luck, and I did work pretty hard on it at times. But I was never real consistent. When I wrote though, I published fast and hard! I think that is the ticket. Volume helps.
@ Kate – Thanks Kate, and good luck to you!
@ Theodore – Yup that month I did 400 articles or whatever was just me, gritting my teeth, saying “I want OUT of my day job, I want OUT of my day job….” LOL
It is very great. You write 400 articles per month. While I can not like you, but I have to push to work harder. Your core message is hard work, consistent with a set quota of writing every day. And hard work will always create great results. Thank you for all your thoughts.
hey Yaro, i’m one of your oldest-lurking-behind-the-scenes fan… 🙂 Anyway it’s been a long time since you’ve done really awesome podcast as this… i have a question… so 200k for a treatment center is not really that expensive considering he may have saved a ton by cutting out middlemen considering those addiction keywords cost an arm and a leg these days … i just want to ask Patrick..:
What’s the current authority status of that site? Has it lost its rankings after the latest Panda shmanda madness? or gained? Do you think the ROI for the current owner paid off? Really dying to know… 🙂
Amazing story!
What I love about Patrick is his “learn along the way” approach. And this speaks about the value of actually doing something instead of just learning about it. He learned it as he was doing it.
Daily quota. Gotta do this.
Congrats, Patrick and thanks for doing the interview! Yaro, thanks for posting!
There is no replacement for hard work and he has shown that very well.
Patrick, thanks you so much for sharing your trajectory with us. It’s so helpful for somebody who’s at the beginning of this journey. I loved your advice about the importance of letting your site age. So many newcomers to online business are pushing it too hard with niche sites and blogs and the result is often spam and horrible quality.
Yaro- it does not get better than this. I want to thank you SO MUCH for sharing this podcast about Patrick. This is life changing for sure. This really proves that success like this takes baby steps and usually does not happen overnight.
It is real true people make money from blogging?
I dont mean from selling books.
This was an extra-good interview.
One of the takeaways – besides all the excellent points above – was patience. I’ve been working on and off with niche affiliate income for a while and it never ceases to amaze me how impatient I can be when it comes to getting results. His mentor said to wait one year. He focused and did just that on one site, where I’d try to get about 50 articles up per site on every site asap….
@ YaroFan – I don’t want to say too much but I will say that things are going very well after the Penguin update, and that a site like this is probably a good long term investment for a top tier treatment center to acquire. They only need a few conversions per year in order to make the investment worthwhile for them.
I just downloaded it and hoping to get the best out of this. I love to read successful stories like this as i am building mine too. BTW, c’grats to achieving what you want and $200k aint a small thing – make sure you don’t go live on the river side, water could drown your money! It’s time to work more smart!
Sheyi
I have seen Patrick’s story written down before but it comes over even better in an audio interview and I found it a fascinating listen. It certainly gave me a bit of a zap to work harder, I’m not sure I’ll be thanking him anytime soon as it is 2am here and I’m about to plough into my sites instead of going to bed! 😛
very motivational and instructive. thanks for the information
A month ago, I read the post by Nick McIntosh, he showed to me and many others how he made his first online dollar with a niche site to earn money online with Google adsense. Nick’s story is very impressive to me, and now with this interview, I think I know where to go 🙂 Thanks
Interesting, but 2,000$ are not enough to build a sustainable and good business. Adsense is not always the answer to make money online. Most of the people I have read about suggest to use Affiliate Marketing and other strategies.
Wow… I hope i can sell my website too, this is will be my next target this years. Thank you for this best post.
@ Dean, Trung, Sheyi – Thanks guys, glad the story was motivating. I am excited about the future of Internet marketing, even though the path is not always clear.
@ Edoardo – I think $2,000/month is enough to build a good business so long as it is both passive and sustainable. If it meets those two requirements then $2,000 is more than enough. But the trick is in building something that is truly sustainable and will not be penalized in the future. You gotta put in some serious elbow grease for that! Good luck to you….
Thanks for your feedback @Patrick You’ve done very well 🙂
Patrick, how long did it take for you to see some good results and what kind of words of encouragement would you have for a site that seems to be taking longer than normal to produce?
Thanks!
@ Ben – I would say it took at least a few years, and starting out today, I would expect at least that much time to pass before really seeing good results. This is especially true if you are going to rely on search engine traffic primarily.
Words of encouragement would be to simply have a daily quota. If you produce enough good on-site content, you will eventually meet your income goal. The problem is that your content has to be fantastic quality. So really you need both–quantity and quality.
Having a daily quota is my best advice. Quality matters, but so does volume. Good luck.
Thanks Patrick, I will be posting a question about keyword optimization on articles, as you mentioned on makingmoneywithnowork.com.
Thanks,
In reference to the notion that Google penalizes for too much content published in a short time….
Well, I blog about news, tv, celebs, etc. Not all on the same blog of course…..
Anyway, some days require many posts to keep the masses happy. I’m only a one person show, but each blog needs updated daily or readership goes somewhere else. I do get a lot of organic long tail search engine traffic for older posts, etc. but new content still needs created. I’m not going to stop publishing frequently just because Google does not like it.
TMZ, Huffington and many other sites (especially Tech sites) that post in excess of 20 posts per day. There is a list somewhere on Technorati that shows the top blogs and they all are churning out massive content, but they don’t get penalized. Yes, they use multiple bloggers in many cases, but that should not matter if we are talking about Google penalizing for too much content.
You would think Google would want frequently updated content to keep feeding the internet monster.
Patrick,
I can’t believe it, I start listening to this podcast and hear your from Kalamazoo, MI, me too! Amazing story! Would be great to meet for lunch some time if your interested! Congratulations on all of your success!
@ Scott – absolutely, we need to do lunch. Hit me up via email, you can find it on my contact page on my site.
As for a penalty for too much content, I never really experienced that directly myself, even when I was hammering out 25 articles per day. If they did flag me it was only temporary, not worth worrying about in my opinion…..
That’s a great interview Yaro, you extracted all the great info from Patrick.
Patrick, that’s a great inspirational story which struck a chord, as I have just sold my baby for a little less than you sold yours. It was a model train blog I had built over the last 3 years. The difference is that I didn’t know the subject and learned as I went. It was great fun.
Well done on a superb job.
Cheers
Ian McConnell
Western Australia
Hi Ian, I’d love to interview you about this story if you are keen to tell it?
Hit me up via supportATblogmastermind.com if you are willing.
Patrick,
Let’s say I’m regularly adding content and writing articles around specific keywords. I write an article around a key phrase and it immediately ranks around 85 in Google.
Are you saying that over time if you continue to build back links and age your domain, that rank will go up? Is it possible to publish something right away and be ranked on the first page without any back links or tenure?
With this being a totally new experience for me, I’m wondering if ranking around 85 when it is first published is good or bad, or if that article can ever rank higher going forward without making any changes to the article itself?
I like the fact you mentioned that it took many years to build up that site, I think quality content will stand out in the end as it has for you.
Thanks,
Second the first comment. Great interview, I have also been following Patrick’s blog. Lot’s of great info on there
@ Ben – How quickly you can rank a new article on your site has to do with lots of things, but mostly is a mixture of these two factors:
1) How much authority your website has in the eyes of the search engines (age, link juice, etc.)
2) How easy it is to rank for the terms in your article title, or how competitive it is.
Because of these two factors, I would encourage new websites to try to rank for long tail keyword phrases that are the least competitive. The traffic is less than more competitive terms, but you are not going to be able to rank for tougher terms right off the bat anyway. Build up your traffic slowly, by targeting the long tail, one article at a time.
That is what I did with my flagship site. It worked. But, I wrote a lot of articles (about 1,500+).
Interesting article. Listened to the podcast. I learned a lot and I am always interested in topics of people who accidentally made it.
Yaro,
Since Internet Marketing for small websites (non major brand websites) has been declared pointless and even almost dead by many people due to the Penguin update, it seems this Podcast is no longer relevant. Apparently writing quality content and even a lot of it is a waste of time.
Just “Google” Penguin update (how ironic I’m suggesting to use Google) or rather “Bing” about the Penguin update and there is nothing but gloom and doom and the fall of many good websites.
I’ve been extremely upset all night about this.
However, I have read that several internet marketers/bloggers (many who have been around for years) feel that the fact that they send Blog updates through Aweber has helped them retain a lot of their traffic, even if their search traffic has fallen.
In other words, they have a list who gets notified by email every time they have published a new post. Some people use Feedburner’s email update system, but I hear Aweber’s system is better. Apparently RSS is not necessarily the way people want blog updates. A lot of people still use email.
Yaro, Are your going to do a post on this newest Algorithm change (disaster)? Just curious.
This is a great story.
usually people say that a site should only be sold /bought for 10 times monthly earnings – sounds like he was able to go way beyond that. That is awesome.
is there a link to the site?
One more example of how working online gives freedom to people…
Patrick, thanks for good tips. One thing I realized is that to become successful needs a lot of work. 400 articles/month! WOW!
Wow! I must say that’s really a challenge to most bloggers, having to write 400 articles per month, but Patrick please i want to know the method you used, is it straight away writing, to write and edit later or what?
No time for editing, i just tend to edit as i compose, these days i do 3k words in about 90 minutes, and feel i keep the quality very high at that daily quota. Note that this is also a million words per year….
Please my big brother, can i know how your do this? the method that you use.
Wow, 400 in a month, I try to write 2/3 a day but they are spread amongst 4 sites, so they are filling up quite nicely
I’ve known Patrick for many years. I still have the email he wrote me saying he finally had his million dollar idea. Patrick is one in a million! I don’t think just anyone can spew out the kind of quality work he does, consistently, he’s a remarkable man, and what I like most about him is the fact that although he’s brilliant, he never makes you feel stupid! Now, if he’d just call his write his old buddy once in a while, he’d be perfect. LOL Patrick is THE MAN!!!!
Patrick, this was and has been one of the most informative interviews that I have heard in a while. I was amazed at the wealth of information that you provided and am trying to figure out how to integrate some of the link/keyword tactics that you used to grow your site.
Thanks for being so open and transparent! You can really tell you are passionate about this topic. Was it hard for you to sell it even for $200.000?
– Justin
I love going to the movie by myself.
Just re listened to this classic Yaro – as I bit of motivation for an Authority site I’m about to embark on.
Awesome interview and quite funny… You made a comment to him after he the “buyer” says I will buy it for $200,000. Patrick goes “I start stuttering like a fool”!
I love it.
Moral of the story; Know your subject matter and work hard consistently .
Great story! Very inspirational. I am curious what the date is on this story? It is a lot harder now to make money via Adsense. I know a lot of people killing it right now though with Amazon.
I am delighted you share this wonderful experience and breakthrough. For new bloggers like me who is still about to make my first $ 100 for two months now, am still very confused because I get around 150 organic traffic daily. But I hope to emulate your success someday.
Hey Patrick. What type of adsense ads did you use? Were they all related to addiction?