In this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Rusty Moore of FitnessBlackBook.com to discuss how Rusty has grown his fitness blog into a mid-six figure business today.
Back in 2007, Rusty was a total unknown and he didn’t have any relationships in the niche. What he did have was a passion for his topic, and the drive to see his vision through to reality. It didn’t happen overnight, however, through a very deliberate approach to positioning himself, he was able to achieve significant results in a relatively short period of time. Today, his blog get 3-4 million unique visitors per year and in this podcast, Rusty is going to share with you exactly how he did it.
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This podcast has a guest who has built an authority blog from nothing into a six figure business.
About Rusty
Rusty’s fitness blog started in 2007. He went from not knowing anyone in this niche, to having one of the top fitness blogs online, with a very impressive 3-4 million unique visitors per year. It became extremely popular because he focused on a sub niche of guys and girls who want the slim “Hollywood Look”.
According to Rusty, people who enjoy T-Nation and Bodybuilding.com HATE his blog and courses. He likes to tell people that too much muscle is cheesy…and instead, they should focus on attaining a look like men and women in James Bond flicks…NOT the bodybuilder look.
In March 2009 Rusty was able to walk away from his job due to commissions from affiliate sales from his blog – thought at the time, he didn’t have a product or list. Today, he says he was nuts to quit without having a list. What he did have was a very strong reason why he wanted to quite. He says that he “had a TERRIBLE job managing a men’s suit store for 6 years and was required to work every weekend except for vacation.”
Rusty says that he had a blast during his last 3 months at his job, because his blog was making more than his full-time job. “I felt like the guy in “Office Space”…all fear tactics that our upper management used didn’t work very well from that point going forward”
In This Episode, Rusty and I Discuss
How he uniquely positioned himself within a very competitive niche
One of the best parts of being in the fitness niche and how it generates massive profits via affiliate commissions
An optin form that converts 5x better than anything else he’s ever tested
The strategy that he used early on to get so much traffic so fast
What he did early in the blog’s life that now requires him to only write one new post a month
How he used Facebook to further accelerate traffic growth
Why only 1/3 of his content actually ends up on his blog, and how that helped him massively boost traffic
and so much more…
Links
Rusty’s Blog
Transcript
Click Here to Read the Transcript
Trent Dyrsmid: Hey everybody! What’s up? It’s Trent here with session no. 31 on the Online Income Lab podcast. On the show
with me today is a guy by the name of Rusty Moore who is having just a ton of success in the hyper competitive fitness niche.
And I learned about Rusty a number of months ago when I stumbled across his blog where he gives advice to people on how to
build an authority site which is something that he has done multiple times. And so I asked him to come on the show. He was
kind enough to do that. And in this episode we’re gonna talk about how we went from total obscurity to 10,000 visitors a day
to his blog. And ultimately a business that creates well into the 6 figures per year and gives Rusty just an absolutely
phenomenal lifestyle. Can travel anywhere he wants to and he’s got that lifestyle that we’re all looking for with the whole
how to make money online thing. So without further adieu let’s just jump right into the interview and welcome Rusty to the
show.
Hey Rusty! Welcome to the show. Thanks very much for making the time to come on with me.
Rusty Moore: Oh you bet Trent.
T: So we’re gonna talk about how to build an authority blog. Now that’s something that you have done in spades. And
we’re gonna talk about the results that you’ve achieved in a little while. But before we get to that I just wanna start with
back it up a little bit. How did you get started? What were you doing before you got online? And then how did you make the
transition?
R: It was funny. I came online kinda late. My friends got computers, you know one before I did. Well I went to college
and got a degree and graduated. I graduated first top of my class in highschool with decent grades and all that stuff but
didn’t really know what I wanted to do as far as a professional answer. So then after I graduated in college all throughout
the 90′s I did network marketing, multilevel marketing and it didn’t turn out that well for me. I was decent at recuiting
people and things like that but it was just more hussle than what it was worth. You know like in the early to mid 2000′s I
got a computer and in 2005 and what I did was try to do multilevel marketing using a computer. I didn’t know about affiliate
marketing or I never really thought of actually just making money by offering value and stuff and just by making sales. I was
still in the network marketing mind. So in 2005 I got involved with all sorts of weird little schemes and stuff online and I
don’t know, I mean there’s like high yield investment programs way back then.
T: Give us an example of one of the schemes that you got involved that didn’t work?
R: There’s all sorts. One was a high yield investment program and it was like you invest $200 and then you recruit 2
people who invest $200 and they recruit too. And it’s basically a promising scheme type of deal. Now that I’ve put it
together and anything like that I just, somebody emails me “Oh my god I can’t”. And then what we would do is like this called
safelist mailings and so everybody would be on this list and you can mail them your offers and they can mail you their offers
but it’s all setup with junk email accounts. Just real skeezy stuff. I didn’t really wanna work a job. I wanted to make money
but I was over the wrong mindset. I wasn’t really thinking about how can I help the end user or it’s more like how can I use
this computer to make money. And I meet a lot of people these days online that it’s not available because the feds and stuff
have shut down most of the schemes and stuff that are out there. But still the same thing people will say like I’ve been
trying to make money online and they say it the real general way and I haven’t been able to make it work.
T: Yeah.
R: And that’s kind of the wrong mindset. It’s what problem can you find that you can use the internet as a way to reach
people with that problem and how can you help them solve that problem or issue whether it’s an affiliate or product done. And
if you come at it from that mindset you’re gonna win in the long run. If you don’t you’re gonna flounder around like I did
back in 2005 2006.
T: You know it’s funny that you say that coz just this morning I published a post and I say this morning while we’re
recording this on July 9th. I published the post called Lessons from Losing and in it I talked about all those stupid
mistakes that I made in my first 18 months. And you’ve described it perfectly. I built this business before with customers
and solving problems and so forth and so on but I early on I met this girl who was surfing, she had all these niche sites and
she was making a killing and I just thought “oh man, if I could just build all these little niche sites I wouldn’t have to do
anything to get all these money. And I can live easy and it seems like this magical little short cut. And so I violated some
really basic laws of business which is figure out who your target customer is. Figure out what problem are these people
having and how I can add value to them so that I can build a real business with customers and on going revenue and so forth.
So it’s just ironic that you mentioned that minutes after I hit the publish button on my post.
R: That’s the latest. What’s funny about that too is somebody’s gonna hear this and they’re still gonna think “right
well Rusty and Trent they don’t know about this new little *(inaudible word) next thing auto blog type of thing. They don’t
know this type of thing. If they knew about this maybe they would think differently.” That’s not the case. I’ve built over
1,200 auto blogs. I’m like the auto blog master. I know how to get traffic. I get my authority sites 10,000 visitors a day
and my auto blogs are getting more than that per day combined and they’re not making me anything. It’s just the hassle
really.
T: Yeah phenomenal. Now when you say, and I don’t want to divert off where were going with this interview but you raised
my curiousity, does the autoblogging, has that stopped since penguin or does everything that you were doing still works?
R: Most of it still works. Most of them gets as far as works I mean define works that most of them gets traffic.
T: Yeah but it’s not traffic that’s making you any money so really what’s the point.
R: Well no and the thing is I’m just starting just to get rid of all those things too coz it’s the more that I’m online
the more that I don’t wanna pollute the internet with just these generic types of sites and it’s tough coz I’m kind of a math
yeah I think of numbers a little bit. So I think that well if I had this many, well I’m sure a lot of people just do the
math, well if I can get 200 visitors and 2% of them buy and I only spend this much per visitor that used to work in 2003 and
2004 with a system called Google cash where people, you could advertise on adwords and directly link to the offer. That no
longer works and so people get frustrated coz they’re trying to live like “look I’ve got a thousand visitors to this
clickbank product or to this affiliate site and zero sales”. This street doesn’t work and that’s kind of an issue I see a
lot.
T: Alright so you got on and like a lot of us tried to figure out some kind of easy street for lack of a better term to
go on and make money online like all of us who eventually figured it out. You did as well. So what changed and then let’s get
talking about some of the results that you’re realizing now coz I know they’re pretty significant?
R: Yes what changed for me is I read a like a blog post from John Reese from a while back and he was saying that instead
of having tons of little sites the only way that you’re going to survive long term is to have one authority blog. And he’s
the one who’s really pushed that thing back in 2006. Coz the reasoning for it is there’s so many people out there that if you
have like 10 little, just little niche blogs, let’s say one of them is golf your golf blog is gonna get destroyed by the
people who just have golf authority sites. And there’s so many people online trying to make money but there’s gonna be
hundreds of people just focusing on the golf sites so that kills your golf niche site. So if you have a niche site with dog
collar somebody’s just gonna focus on that. In fact a lot of people are just gonna have authority site on that and you’re
gonna get screwed by them. So you can’t go shelling anymore. It’s better to have fewer sites that really dig deep into the
topic and really help people. And they’re interesting stuff. So mine more or less are basically my big thing is fitness so I
thought what if I just concentrate on one year just writing and coming up with the best fitness information that I’ve learned
for the past 20 years and just post about it without really thinking about money so much and just focus on the actual
content. And it worked well for me. And the way that the analogy I use is Google was first, it’s still free but it’s just a
free service before they even had adwords, before they even had paid ads, and so they built up this really cool service that
helps people and then later added the ads or the ads are kind of it’s not the main thing.The main thing is that it’s helping
people and if you thinking your blog’s like that you’ll win.
T: Yeah I couldn’t agree more. So you chose fitness because you had experience and it was a passion of yours and you
knew that it was a niche with high commercial value. Is that correct? And is there any other reasons why you chose it?
R: Yeah so that’s correct but above that, above and beyond that I was frustrated because my favorite part of fitness
there wasn’t good sites for it. So somebody is interested in golf or whatever, if you’re doing searches and can’t find the
type of site that you like. There is a need in the market. There’s other people like yourself. For me the fitness thing was
what I like, I didn’t wanna become a body builder. I didn’t. So most of the sites I’d go to have weird pictures of girls that
look like strippers and guys look like veins bulging out and they’ll say go big or go hot and there’s video that they’re
dropping weights. There’s doods frexing in their mom’s basement and stuffs. That didn’t really fly with me. Me and my friends
work out but then we’ll go out into nice restaurants and stuff or we’ll go to like we wanna wear dress codes and things like
that. So there wasn’t a site that catered to that so I thought heck I’m just gonna make that site. And so I feel a need in
the fitness niche. I didn’t just give generic fitness information.
T: Okay. And we’re gonna get into the details of that a lot more in just a few minutes here. But to the folks that are
listening to this there’s actually 2 things that I wanna do or 1 thing I wanna do. You used the term niche site and authority
site. And so that no one is confused I wanna clarify coz I use micro niche site and niche site and so there’s a little
ambiguity there. So I think when the Rusty is saying niche site what he means is what I describe as a micro niche site and
that’s the site with generally less than 10 pages of content. And the content is of relatively low value. You’ve probably
outsourced it, had someone write it in there and the articles are just not that good. Rusty then used the term authority site
for which I use the term niche site and it’s the same thing. It’s the site where the quality of the content is very very
high. There’s lots and lots of pages and you go really really deep. An example of that would be Rusty’s blog. Another example
of that would be my blog. And I just wanna say that so that no one gets confused as to what we’re talking about here because
every topic is a niche and that’s why I still use the phrase niche sites.
So the next thing Rusty is I wanna talk a little bit about your results coz people are gonna be listening to this and they’re
already going why should I keep on listening. I’ve gotta put an hour or whatever of my time into listening to this guy Rusty,
I don’t know who he is, why is he worth listening to. So can you share some of the results in terms of so your main blog I
think you mentioned it’s getting 10,000 visitors a day on average, is that accurate?
R: Yes Trent those are unique visitors coz the total visitors is more than that but yeah I think 10,000 uniques.
T: Okay. And so do you monetize that traffic with affiliate? What’s the URL for that blog coz I know people are gonna be
wanting to know what that is?
R: It’s fitnessblackbook.com.
T: Okay. So I should pull that up here while we’re talking coz I might be able to answer my questions while I’m doing
that. Now do you monetize the traffic that’s at that site with advertising or is it solely there for the purpose of capturing
leads for your paid products and that looks like it’s just there to capture leads for the paid products?
R: Yeah it’s right now it’s just there to capture leads for the paid products and I heard that beep so I’m testing out a
little pop up thing to that and it’s having people sign up for my free opt in list as well. I wish I could go back in time
and show you as the site before I was a product creator. It was still six figure affiliate with it but all it was was it was
more of a standard just in the upper right hand corner of the sidebar was just like an opt in form for free products. And
that’s how I recommend people to start off with. Just go for the lead, go for the name.
T: Absolutely. Just out of curiousity that little pop up box that came up on the lower right hand side, is that a
plugin?
R: Yeah that’s a covert messenger pro and I tested that. I tested pop up domination and the cool thing is I get enough
visitors so I get pretty good test after just giving this is few days.
T: Yeah no kidding.
R: But I was testing pop up domination hello bar, a bunch of different ones. This one’s giving me 5x the opt in rate to
the next closest thing and that blows pop up domination out of the way for me. So it doesn’t mean that it’ll be the same for
everybody.
T: Yeah wow. I see why because it looks like you’re chatting with me when I show up at it and I think that that’s gonna
be, that’s probably the reason why it does so well.
R: I think people know that it’s not chatting but it just has my face down there. It’s just a little bit different. I
don’t know I’m not sure exactly why it looks like it looks half the stuff that I think is gonna work well doesn’t and then I
run a test and then the things had a chunk like it’s gonna work that well and work like gangbusters. It’s just not urgent now
and I try on different things.
T: Yes absolutely. So let’s go back to what you said. You used to be an affiliate and you were a six figure affiliate
and then you decided to become a product creator. So for someone who’s listening to this who’s new what you’re basically
saying is there’s no reason in the world why just being an affiliate for other people suffers. Nothing wrong with that in the
beginning. There’s more profit to be made than doing that but you don’t have to be like “oh man, I gotta get all these
traffic and I’m gotta make my own product.” For new people that’s pretty overwhelming. That’s a lot of work.
R: Yeah I almost like to separate it. I always think it’s good to collect email addresses and like a while back I was
teaching people to not to worry too much about it. In the beginning I think that just try to build up the traffic first and
then have an email collection thing but maybe not have a free report at first coz that’s kind of an overwhelming rate if
you’re new to blogging and there’s a running curve there so someone just have a transcribe to my updates or whatever just to
start getting the email names and stuff. That’s a good way to start. So don’t think you have to be everything at once that’s
for sure. I never thought that I was gonna have a product to be honest.
T: That’s interesting. We’ll get to that. We’ll get to all those terrific details here as we work our way through. And
so the great thing about building a list right away is that even if it’s only collecting a few email addresses you have some
people that you can communicate with. You can say “hey how did you find my blog?” or “what do you like about my blog?” You
can get some feedback from some people so if you’re thinking “well I gotta make an ebook or something and I don’t know how to
do that and that’s why I’m not putting the little subscribe box on my blog or on my site yet.” Don’t do that. Don’t let that
get in your way. Go ahead and just if you’re using aweber just take one of their little basic templates and just get
something out there so that if somebody wants to give their email address they can do so.
Okay so you’re obviously getting significant results and I know from talking to you beforehand that you’ve got a very healthy
six figure business now that you’re a product creator. If we have time we’ll get into that but I wanna keep this at a more
basic level for the folks now that still aren’t even getting the 10,000 visitors a day. So when you started off you’ve
mentioned that you identified an area that you thought was underserved. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you
meant by that coz the fitness niche is obviously most populated. It’s pretty competitive.
R: Yeah and the fitness niche is competitive. So when you create a fitness site or diet site or health that sort of
thing there’s several tons of subject where there’s more that I can’t even think of. I mean there’s fitness for ladies who
just had a baby or they wanna lose their baby weight. There’s a lady who wants to get ready for a wedding for her to look
good in a wedding dress. There’s somebody who’s been yoyo dieting but then have a hard time keeping up. There’s so many
different sub niches so the health and fitness nche is pretty big so what you wanna do is focus on a really small sub set of
the fitness niche. So just the more specific the better. And you got to feel bad about disqualifying people who hate your
site. My site used to be a little more abrasive because of its kind of hand tight body building type of site. People will get
pissed on me and they definitely took exception to it. My whole thing was basically focusing on getting lean and fit and
still being able to look good on clothes when wearing it. For men and women who want to look feminine in their dress and not
have the big kind of bicep type of look. So I just focus on that one when I started out.
T: Okay. I think I heard you when we talked before I think you referred to that as the Hollywood body, is that correct?
R: Yeah that’s called the Hollywood look. That’s kind of the same studio where people cry.
T: Okay. So when you identified that that person was the persona that you were gonna go after, how did you, I mean this
was an idea that you’d have but how did you figure out that there would be other people who would wanna have that same thing?
I mean it’s one thing for you to say that me and my buddy wanna do this but how do you know there are a hundred thousand
people out there that has the same goal? Was there any specific strategies that you used to do that research?
R: Well it’s interesting. I went on forums and stuff like bodybuilding.com and teen nation in different places and so
before you start a site you wanna have a decent amount of research. Just dig around the forums. It’s a lot of great free
information and stuff just to see what people want. And what I was finding was when I went to bodybuilding.com for instance
and at that time I was thinking I wanna get a body like Brad Pitt and fight crib and the guy got excited and stuff a bunch
for people like another signs of it. Some people would say “hey I wanna look like the same shape as Ryan Reynolds or Hugh
Jackman or that sort of thing” and everytime people get excited but I saw that there was at least people out there asking for
that information and still not getting served. They would get criticized.
T: Really? Coz they worked hard before enough.
R: Yeah. So I just think after a few weeks I figured that there probably would be enough crying drain up. And the nice
thing to have a blog is you can test that. If I would do this for a few minutes and if you don’t have any visitors or any
feedback then I would probably know that that was an incorrect assumption.
T: Yeah absolutely. Okay so once you got it figured out that there was in fact demand for it, did you go so far as to
create what many people call a persona where you actually kind of define an avatar so that when you’re writing your blog post
or creating your content that you actually have got this avatar in mind or did you just kind of stop and think “hey there’s
enough people who are putting these questions in the forum that’s good enough for me.”?
R: Well I think that the persona thing is a great thing to do. I didn’t do that only because I kind of was a persona of
myself that this was, I built a site that I’m not even saying that this is the great strategy but it’s built a site that I
would wanna see if I was just starting to work out and the similar girls to have. I don’t know if that makes sense but
T: Yeah.
R: There was kind of “yeah I’m willing to create the avatar.”
T: Okay alright. And so all of this is happening before you’ve even launched the site or have you got a post or two or
ten posts up at this point where are you at at the development?
R: At this point I have done, I’ve written 15 to 20 articles and I’ve posted it in Ezine articles because before I had
my blog I was doing a little bit of affiliate marketing for fitness. And what I would do is that I’d post an article in Ezine
articles and that plant the link to clickbank products I think it was the truth about abs by Tom at the time. So I’ve done
some writing but I’ve haven’t started a blog yet and I was making a little bit of money with those Ezine article posts. Now
that strategy doesn’t work anymore since Google panda upgrade but
T: Yeah.
R: But that’s just as it was.
T: I was gonna say that. In case there’s anyone listening who’s brand new to this don’t go and do that coz it’s not
gonna work.
R: Don’t do it not unless you’re in a time machine.
T: Exactly. Okay so you started to create some content now one of the things that I teach people is when you identify
your target market of the real specific person that you’re gonna go after you have to think about what are the problems that
this specific persona has and then you create content that provides a solution to those problems. And you wanna again be
super super specific in the beginning. Again so my question for you is was that a strategy that you followed? Did you think
about it like that or were you just writing how did you choose what to write about?
R: Yeah that I would think about it like that. And the way I looked at my blog a little bit was it’s almost like in some
ways almost like writing a fitness blog but in just bite size chunks. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have to be lean here like a
bug so I think all of the sites are kind of like that even your site is like that. You could take all those posts and
probably compile it into a blog and then view it as incredible marketing research. But yeah exactly and so I’m thinking a lot
of people who wanna get lean and get that and get the Wayne Hart look alike. Like guys are particular at how a tough time
filling out their upper chest so do you like a post on how to increase the thickness of your upper chest button and write a
short post and put a video that sort of thing. I always had trouble losing that last little bit of body fats but I have a
specific diet post for that product right before I launch it even when I’m on vacation or something. Yeah I tell myself and
there was issues that people are having and I just do little posts that will take care of those.
T: Can you send me a link to the one where I can rid of that last little bit of my body fat? Okay so you’d figured out
at this point I just wanna summarize whatever you kinda figured out a sub sub niche of the fitness market and you started to
create content which addressed a very specific audience you weren’t trying to be everything to everyone.
R: Exactly.
T: But nobody really still knows about your blog I’m guessing. Like how many visitors a day were you getting back then?
R: I remember it was like 10 to 20 and after a month or two I think I had 100 visitors a day and I was just so jazzed. I
think that was incredible.
T: I remember those days as well people, I’d get 20 I think wow! 20 people actually read my blog today? Holy cow!
There’s a far cry from a 100 visitors to 10,000 a day so obviously this is the big question and I wanna spend the rest on the
podcast on it. What did you do to get from 100 to 500 and 500 to 1,000 and so forth? So let’s talk a bit about how you
promoted yourself or promoted the blog because it’s really important?
R: Yeah you bet. My number one philosophy and this will never change. It doesn’t matter what Google does for updates or
any weird panda things or anything like that is that only about a third of the content that I write would go on my blog and
maybe even less than that. And the rest of the content that I write goes off of my blog pointing to my blog. So like I would
do guest posts, tons of forum questions, submitting articles to article directories which isn’t really not the best idea
anymore. So if you think along the lines of only a small percentage of what you write is gonna end up on your blog and the
rest of it if you put a lot of stuff on it to get exposure to bring people back to your blog. Back then it was really
specific. You could do really generic sort of link building things. You can put article and have a little author resource
area.
T: Yap.
R: And now it’s changed up a little bit. It’s not the same strategy but it’s the same idea.
T: Okay. So I wanna dive a little deeper into that. First of all, let’s talk about how often did you post on the blog?
Once a week, twice, 3, 5?
R: I was posting like 3 to 4 times a week I think at first.
T: And these posts relatively short, 300 to 400 words?
R: Yeah they’re pretty short. They got longer over time but they started out pretty short like 400 to 500 words or
something.
T: And how about now? How many posts a week are you doing now?
R: Now I only do 1 post a month.
T: One post a month? Very nice. That helps with the passive part of the income.
R: Yeah well that’s at some point so I think I have 363 or something posts. At some point you already run out of topics
but it does take you a little bit longer to come up with something like a unique angle or something you’ve already written.
T: And so do you and I’m diverting a little bit but I’m just thinking of new questions as we go. Do you recycle surely
any of your post? So now that you’ve got 300 and some post do you ever go back and say hey this one was really awesome 6
months ago let me bump it up and republish it as the most current post?
R: I don’t do that but what I do do now a lot of times is when I’m writing a post I will refer back to them within the
post. And that’s kind of honest way of recycling. I will also send out on my facebook fan book fan page I’ll send people
little posts and then in my mailing list I occasionally do that.
T: Yeah I do that in my mailing list as well. Okay so relatively short posts 3 to 4 posts a week. Now you said 1/3 of
the content goes on the blog and then the other 2/3 are going else where. If you’re not worried about search engine traffic
so much why not let’s say that you’re gonna publish 4 posts or 3 posts in a week what’s the harm in having say 2 of those
posts also published verbatim on other sites? Is it because it’s not gonna get indexed coz it’s duplicate content or is there
another reason why you didn’t put some of the content on your blog?
R: Yeah for me I was a little bit paranoid about the duplicate content thing. And every people go back and forth and say
that it doesn’t really make a difference or anything like that but yeah I guess I was really cautious about not putting in
the same content on my actual site. Now you could probably recycle it by making a pdf and sending it to your list or
something but yeah I’ve never put on my main authority blog I’ve never put duplicate content that I’ve written or is
published anywhere else.
T: Okay. And what percentage of the traffic today comes from search engines versus direct type in and referral traffic?
R: I think I’m about last time I checked it was 75% range for Google search traffic.
T: Okay. So SEO is playing a really big role for you then.
R: Yeah it is and the rest of it is coming from you get some people typing and direct to that and the rest are coming
from facebook fan page is that correct. In most part it’s coming from email mailing out stuff but mainly SEO.
T: Okay. So for the person that’s listening today who’s got a blog with 10 posts on it and they wanna get to where
you’re at walk me through some of the steps coz obviously some things have changed, right from what you were doing a few
years ago to how the market is today and the algorithm and so forth, so what would be your best advice today on a promotional
strategy?
R: The best advice today that I’d give somebody is Google now is a lot more real time so what I would do is not just do
every post to being like an ever green type of post. Write some post that are a little bit more trendy and news worthy mixed
in. Review the post and put them on your blog. And the nice thing about that too is so in fitness for instance, the term 6
pack abs go blog and rank in for that. It’s been on forever. Now if you saw something like Ryan Quantum from true blood gets
his abs or something that would be easier. Even though I’m saying it’s more specific. For something that’s news worthy that’s
a term that’s kind of new to the internet where practically like you’re saying when is the 100 meter race at the olympics,
which has shirt off and has incredible abs or something that would be even easier to rank for. So you kind of got to cherry
pick some easy stuff along the harder terms that you’re trying to rank for as far of the post go. So that’d be the first
thing that I would tell somebody.
T: Okay.
R: Second thing would be to have a strong social signals given up so try to get facebook likes, retweets and even
experiment with doing inexpensive either free press releases or paid press releases. Coz that does Google news worthy content
and I’ve been coaching some guys in doing that and they’re doing really well as far as traffic has been with their blogs.
T: Really? So they’re writing something that’s topic relatively new and then publishing a press release and what’s
ranking the blog or the press releases with links to the blog?
R: It’s interesting they used to say press release but ranks after that on page one with whatever term they’re aiming
for and it’s new worthy. But then over time what happens is that the blog post gets a decent amount of traffic as a linking
from the press release to their blog post and then over time that blog post rises up pretty high in the search engines coz
people like yahoo news links and all sorts of interesting links from press releases that you don’t get from just more. And
Google’s kinda favoring that right now.
T: And not to mention the more people that do happen to come and read it and tweet it or share it, those are the social
signals that Google likes to see as well.
R: Yeah just make it really easy for people to do that. There’s plugins now.
T: Yeah let’s talk exactly about that. So let me bring up your most recent post here, the hybrid dieting cherry picking
the best diet strategies, and so which plugins are you using that makes it really really easy for you to get more tweets and
likes and shares?
R: I believe I have digg digg is the name of the plugin. For some reasons my internet has been kinda slow. And it’s
free. So if you were to go into the plugin section of the dash board area and it says install a new plugin and you’ve
searched for digg digg and that’s the one that scrolls along the side. I’ve tested one that there’s buttons on the bottom on
top of the post but this one has worked the best for me.
T: This is fantastic coz I was using share bar on mine which had exactly the same functionality. A week ago it stopped
working.
R: Right. That’s the new wordpress. It got exactly the same thing happened to me. I had to change to this in a little
while back.
T: Yeah so this is good. Now I’m gonna rip out share bar and I’m gonna put in digg digg and I can get my floating tweet
bar back. Alright now the other thing too that I discovered all through this in our, I’ve seen it on a couple of people’s
blogs called click to tweet I believe it’s what it is. And so what this person did was they just put a quote in the middle of
the article just like just like in bold like a one sentence little catchy kind of quote and it was obviously very relevant to
the article and then this little hyperlink that says click here to tweet this quote. And what it does is it pops up the
twitter window, it’s already all written and so basically all the person do is click the mouse twice. Once to click the tweet
to make it pop up and once to access and to tweet out. And so you can access that at click to tweet I believe it is
clicktotweet.com or you can just google click to tweet and you’ll find it. And it’s totally free, it’s not even a plug in.
You actually just go there and you just type in your little quote and then you hit the button and then it gives you a URL and
you can just hyperlink to that URL and it works. My post that I published today actually was the first time that I tried
that. I’ve seen that on a number of sites. I’ve seen it on social triggers I think was one of the most recent places where
I’ve seen it and I saw it on pat’s blogs as well. Have you started to do that within any of your posts?
R: No I meant to do that but it’s under my account and I’m using that automatically but yeah I feel excited about this.
But I have seen that.
T: Yeah. And have you heard of a plugin that provides that functionality or is it just the thing that I just described?
R: I think it’s just the one you described, the click to tweet thing I believe so.
T: Okay. Cool.
R: But that’s a good strategy for sure. Anything like that where it’s easy for people to share the stuff. Coz Google’s
looking at those social indicators especially when there’s traffic from the actual likes and things in themselves.
T: Yes okay. Now as I’m continuing to look at your post that we’re talking about at the bottom there’s little box just
faded in where you can put in an email address. Which plugin is that one?
R: That is opt in app. That’s a paid one.
T: Okay.
R: Now there’s all sorts of fancy things. They’re gonna do it right with coz it fades in right and it’s not just there
it’s just when you scroll down it shows up. That one does alright.
T: Okay. Opt in app. I’ll make sure that I put some links on the post so that people can get to this stuff in case
they’re listening to this in their car and you guys shouldn’t be kinda jot notes and drive at the same time.
R: Right.
T: Alright so strong social signal and let me dive cutting on what else can we get into I might wanna dive deeper into
that but let’s keep going through. So step 1 you said write some news worthy posts. And no. 2 make sure you have strong
social signals, likes, tweets and press releases. Is there a third category of promotional activities that you would
recommend someone be doing now?
R: Well I think that for every blog I think people should make a facebook fan page that corresponds with it.
T: Yeah.
R: It’s just a no brainer.
T: And that was where I was gonna go next. I thought well let’s dive deeper into facebook. So why don’t we do that.
Yours is gonna be I’m guessing facebook. Now question as we’re talking about this and I got this from Derek.
R: Derek?
T: Halpern of social triggers does not promote his social properties from his blog at all. If you go to
socialtriggers.com you’re not gonna see links to youtube or links to his facebook page. And the reason for that which he
wrote about in a post that I read a little while ago is the return on investment from having an email address is
substantially higher than any other form of communications. So he says why would you wanna divert your audience if they found
your blog the only thing you want them to do is give you the email address. You don’t want them to click away and go and just
like your facebook page because it’ll severely impair your ability to communicate with them. Do you follow let me just go
back, looks like I think you probably follow a siimilar solution. You’ve got your find us on facebook which is a great social
proof indicator coz it says 18,627 people like fitness blackbook for a first time visitor they’re gonna go “oh wow! This is a
popular blog.”
R: Right.
T: I don’t see any links in your sidebar to take people away like basically telling to do is buy one of your products or
looks like other than the opt in which is that covert messenger plugin that you’re using down for the box that’s on the
bottom right. So I’m assuming that’s the strategy that you’re advising, same as Derek?
R: Yeah I wouldn’t have so many like in mine does have the find this on facebook fan and people can click all the odd
stuff. But I wouldn’t necessarily have, I know a lot of people have a lot of focus on their youtube and things like that. I’m
not saying that’s bad. I have a facebook and twitter link at the top underneath the banner. But my stuff all leads to the
email address anyways even if they click on the facebook page. I mean I definitely I’m trying to get them on an email list
somehow now there’s a product down there anytime they buy a product they’re gonna be on my list.
T: Yeah absolutely.
R: It has changed a little bit. When I was affiliate things were a little bit different. I would be a little bit more
obnoxious with the email capturing thing in the right hand side bar. Rather than a visual of cardio that’s where I put my opt
in now.
T: Okay. And that makes perfect sense because when you’re an affiliate you obviously if there’s a one time visitor you
may never ever see that person again and so you need to capture their email address. Whereas if you’re product owner and
you’re promoting your own products where you’re just giving yourself a second opportunity to collect the email address.
R: Right precisely.
T: Alright. So let’s dive a little bit into and I actually just tomorrow I believe for the folks that are listening
there’s a podcast that will go live that will have gone already online actually by the time you’re listening to this so if
you haven’t already listened to this it’s with Amy Porterfield who is one of the co-creators of FB influence and she was kind
enough to go with me through quite a bit of detail on my own facebook wall or page I guess that’s the more appropriate term
and gave me some really great tips on how to increase the conversion and put more people on my list as a result.
So tell me a little bit Rusty about your strategy behind your facebook page and tell us a little bit about how well it’s
working for you.
R: Sure let’s get over to it. Okay so basically the only paid advertising that I do these days is to my facebook landing
page I’ve created. And it’s good. It’s a tab called start here. It’s a tab that’s called start here. If you click that so now
what I do is I do facebook paid ads. I pay about 35-40 cents a click and direct people to this tab and this is going directly
to, one tab and you get on my email address and then I give them free report called the abs blueprint. What abs blueprint is
is not only a free report I use optimized press to do a perpetual launch kind of. It’s an email where let’s say site or
videos get opened up that sort of time release depending on when the person opts in and the very end the last video promotes
my paid products.
T: Okay.
R: And I use a little social preview on the tab. On the top I put a little like button code there. And then so I do have
them in the opt in but I also if you read down the page there’s four links to my paid products too. So I make direct sales
from their sales and get opt ins from these. The direct sales are pretty much covered the advertising cost or come close to
it.
T: Terrific.
R: So it’s a nice place to be and I advertise a lot. If I’m launching and I need to focus on advertising more stuff but
it is kind of a nice thing. So I keep building this email list for free.
T: Yeah that’s phenomenal. I do wanna just jump in on that what you said about paid advertising. I know that especially
for the people who are listening who are new you’re thinking people think first and foremost about free traffic. And I was at
a conference recently, well not recently now, I guess maybe 3 or 4 months ago. It was a warrior forum conference out in
Raleigh, North Carolina. And one of the speakers was his whole topic was on paid advertising and he said the reason that he
goes that road is there’s nothing that scales in another words nothing that can grow as quickly as paid advertising once you
figure out how to get your money back within 30 days. And he said that huge thing that people do not understand and this was
a guy who was doing like 17,000 clicks a day so he was spending a lot of money. He said that the thing that people do not
understand is they’ll start out advertising and they’ll pay in your case say 35-40 cents a click and they’re driving to a
landing page that offers a product for sale. So we’ll call that a front end transaction. He says “I never make money on the
front end. That’s not the point. This is my whole sales funnel is set up so that when I get the front end sale they go into
my list and then there’s offer no. 2, 3, 4 and several different offers on the back end so that within 30 days I have a
positive ROI on my advertising spend.” And he says the reason that so many people give up as in they don’t get that they
think that they should be able to spend money on advertising and recroup that money and the profit on just the front end
sale. So what comment would you make on that Rusty?
R: Yeah that was the trap that I fell on to also and when I go out to the warrior forum I like to visit different forums
and stuff it’s just funny coz somebody will say “I spent $50 on facebook and it doesn’t work.” So this person thinks facebook
advertising doesn’t work coz they spent $50 on facebook advertising and probably didn’t create an immediate profit on it. But
like you said and the thing is for me so I get everybody to come on and so you advise break even or a little bit better than
they give in of the 30 days with my own products I recommend other people’s price map. It’s not as much as a lot of people do
but there’s 3 or 4 other fitness products that I like their offers, there is supplements and a lifetime that the person is on
my list. They may not even be 30 days but 90 days, 120 days I mean I’ll definitely quadruple the 35 cents click that I paid
for.
T: So yeah your ROI on a per customer basis is very very high just takes a little while.
R: Yeah and there’s a branding aspect and it takes doing it as well and facebook when I said two of those people can
just buy and they’ll be on my email list and when once people enter my email sequence to I bring people back to the facebook
fan page. Now here they’re on the fan page still just people just like it and not opt in and all that stuff but both things
are trying to promote the other things. So on my list is trying to promote facebook and my facebook thing is trying to get
people on the list. They’re kinda symbiotic. You need them both.
T: Yeah. And for what it’s worth again I’m not gonna go into a bunch of details coz that would be it’s off topic, well
it’s not off topic but it’s already covered in this podcast that’s coming out with Amy, it’ll be published on the 11th of
July so before this one. She goes with me and some detail onto her pay per click strategy and how some ads are just to get a
like and she pays for a little money for those and then other ads are only targeted to people who have already liked her
stuff and so she doesn’t pay, she pays even less for those. Like she’s doing some kinda advertising where she spends 8 cents
a click coz she’s only promoting to people who’ve already clicked like on her page but they’re not a customer yet. So she’s
got a whole bunch of really smart little nuggets in there. And please Rusty feel free to jump in as soon as I stop yapping
here with your own strategy but I just wanted to make sure that people who are listening will also go and check out that
other podcast with Amy Porterfield.
So do you have a particular strategy like similar to what I’ve just described?
R: No I definitely could learn from her podcast as well but yeah I have just started experimenting with advertising to
people who already liked your fan page. And you give it way cheaper clicks. It’s kind of a neat thing like the first couple
of hundred people or whatever it wouldn’t make that much of a difference but if you have a decent amount of likes you have a
pool of people you could advertise on the cheap side. I advertised an affiliate product recently and I was getting like 6
cent clicks or 7 cent clicks and that’s kinda nice. So it’s building up your facebook fan base it’s a long term strategy but
it’s a pool of people that have shown or raised their hand or interested in your topic enough to at least like it. It’s kinda
nice place to be but I definitely wanna listen to that podcast because I’m by no means and my idea I’ll be expert on any of
that.
T: Okay. Well it was very enjoyable to be on I will tell you and I made some good notes and I’m planning on taking all
of her advice myself. The other thing that I just wanted to bring to the listeners attention when I said it didn’t scale very
well. In case you’re not familiar with that term scalability it’s just the ability to make something grow with very little
friction. So let me give you an example. If you choose to go the affiliate road for example or let’s talk about 2 ways to get
traffic – SEO affiliate traffic and paid traffic. So SEO fair amount of friction takes a lot of time, gotta write a lot of
content, doesn’t happen overnight so we’ll call that friction. The affiliate traffic so if you’re a product creator and
you’re trying to recruit affiliates and then you’re gonna do a product launch it’s a lot of work. It’s like herding cats it’s
the expression that I hear people use. I mean you’ve gotta do a lot of networking, you go to a lot of conferences, you gotta
meet all these people, you gotta promote their stuff, they’re gotta promote their stuff, you gotta build a relationship. I
mean there’s a lot a lot a lot of moving parts and because of those the number of those moving parts we’ll call that friction
it doesn’t scale as well. Whereas paid advertising you don’t even have to talk to anybody. You simply test some stuff out,
figure out through testing how to make a sales funnel so that you get a positive ROI on your ads spend and if you can get and
correct me if I’m wrong in your experience Rusty but if you can get a positive ROI on a $30 a day ad spend is there any
reason why you can’t get a positive ROI on a $300 a day ad spend?
R: You’re exactly right. There is no reason. That is a nice place to be for sure.
T: And you know with you mentioned truth about abs earlier on I listened to an interview with I think is it Mike Geary
that’s behind that, by the right name?
R: Yeah he’s the one.
T: I mean that was the big thing that he said. He just doesn’t wanna be have to be hassled with all that affiliate
management. He wanted to be able to just like a volume knob on a stereo just turn it up and literally flood himself with
traffic. And I think he probably knows business much much better than I do but I based upon that interview I’m assuming that
paid traffic plays a pretty significant role in his overall traffic strategy.
R: Yeah that’s definitely a super large part of it and he partners with Isabella De Los Rios I think it’s her name. Yeah
those guys do crazy crazy volume with paid traffic.
T: Yeah I mean for folks that aren’t familiar with that I think Mike’s doing gross sales of about a million dollars a
month and his product it’s just an ebook, isn’t it? Or does he have something more than an ebook now?
R: It’s just an ebook and it’s been around for a while and that’s the one thing that shows me that these people are
always like oh yeah but then people hang out it’ll get saturated. The numbers of people who are online, I don’t even think
that we can mentally comprehend just how big the markets are.
T: Yeah.
R: You know you think like oh gosh if I’m in this really targeted niche it’s gonna at some point you walk in it it’s
gonna be all by that one. The Truth about Abs has been out for a long time and he sells tons of those per month than any
still bones and I don’t think it’ll ever stop.
T: I agree with you. I don’t think he will lie there a million dollars a month of $37 ebooks is a lot of ebooks.
R: Yap.
T: Okay so we’re closing in on the hour so I just wanna summarize kinda what we’ve talked about. Very first thing Rusty
did was he picked what he felt was an underserved niche and did some research to verify that hey other people are absolutely
kinda looking for the same stuff that I’m looking for. So he got an idea of what I wanna see, other people said yeah I’d
kinda like to see the same thing and you can identify that through the questions that they’re asking in the forums. Then you
went on to develop a large amount over time of very high quality content posted frequently. Put a lot of content on your site
but put even more content on other places to get your initial traffic boost. Started to build a big social presence. Started
to use paid advertising to drive traffic to it. And then ultimately at some point which we didn’t talk about and I would love
to get you back on the podcast to talk about the whole concept of becoming a product creator because I know from my
experience and obviously from yours that’s how you really max out your instinct to create your own products so that you’re
not only getting half the revenue, you’re getting all the revenue. Is there anything that you would wanna add that I’ve
missed. Again for that someone who’s sitting there thinking I know I can do this but man it seems a little overwhelming I’m
not sure. Any last golden nuggets that you would want to put out there for them?
R: Yeah just again they don’t have to I don’t know if you’ll get intimidated and look at like somebody with finished
products like you and me I don’t think that they have to do that roughly out. I really didn’t think that I was ever gonna be
a product creator. I was even nervous writing my first free ebook. I was giving it away for free you know. So what happens is
it goes from stages. You gain confidence. At first you’ll feel weird just writing a post and publish.
T: Yap.
R: And I’ve been there and it’s not something that and we all go through this stuff. It’s really weird and then when you
first charge something that you write even if it’s like for $7 you get nervous doing that. I always tell people to feel like
they have to come out and just take it one step at a time and then the next phase will just kinda naturally happen. You’ll
become a really good affiliate. You’re making a $274 a day which is a 6 figure income. That’s a hundred grand a year. And at
that point you’ll have enough confidence to come out with your own product.
T: Yap absolutely. And the key is to just start and don’t be afraid to fail because that’s my whole post that I
published this morning was about all the myriad of stupid things that I did that obviously I wouldn’t do anymore and that’s
why I published it coz I didn’t want people to make the same mistakes. And I’m gonna guess Rusty that you have failed your
fair share of times on your journey towards the high level of success that you now enjoy?
R: Oh yeah I think 95% of what I tried online has been a failure.
T: Yeah. Is that amazing? 95% of what Rusty has tried didn’t work but that other 5% works so incredibly well that he’s
got a lifestyle that I’m sure many of us would envy and would want to have. And all the power to you my friend. I really want
to thank you very much for making some time to come on to the podcast. It’s been as always a treat, educational for me. I
learned a couple of good things from you here which I’m gonna put into action in my own business. And when I publish this
I’ll make sure that I get you so that you can answer if there’s any comment on the thread or what have you.
Okay so Rusty if someone wants to and I forgot to do this earlier in the recording and my bad, if someone wants to get to
learn more about you, more about your coaching program or one of your products where should they go to get that information?
R: They can go to fitnessblogtraining.com. It’s not just for fitness blogs but I basically just teach what I know and my
goal is to teach you to get a thousand visitors a day with your fitness blog. I’ve already helped dozens of people do it.
It’s free just come on over. You’ll see different page wherein you need to do to register and look for the same people over
there.
T: Okay very cool. Alright folks this wraps up another edition of the online income lab podcast. If yo