Sugarrae Interview

I know you are busy flying around the world

When I see your name I usually expect to see
presentation notes

Or is that just my perception

I’ve done SES I think twice … it was a bit
too corporate for me, in all honesty

I’m doing SMX this week, but it is a Q&A
panel – I mentioned on my blog this past year that I will no longer be doing
formal presentations – only clinics and Q&A’s

that said, yeah, there was a time when I did
almost every single conference as far as flying out for the networking at
them

but I’m tired… on top of that, I’m doing
more "industry shows" for industries one of my companies owns a lot
of sites within, like the CTIA show coming up in April

so you’ll probably be seeing me at a few less
seo shows in the future than you have in the past

my first pubcon

it was Boston 2003

I had been an affiliate for quite a while
then

a good friend convinced me to go

I learned a lot of things at that conference
– one of which was that I was indeed fairly good at what I did

the second was that the affiliate marketing
world had very few women represented that year

and the third was I made not only contacts,
but also met people who now, five plus years later are some of my best
friends – both online and off

I came home with such fire too

that feeling is something that I think starts
to pale the more conferences you do

but am still meeting tons of great new people
via each one

or has to be face to face?

looking someone eye to eye has a lot to do
with it

take the mad hat …. I knew of him from
online and because he commented on my blog

but I finally met him for the first time at
this past pubcon

now he’s on my IM and someone I’d trust to
have a business conversation with

you need human interaction for that type of
trust to develop in a decent time frame

that said – I have a few "online
only" friends that I’ve been in touch online with for years and years
now

who have a trust level with me

but it took way longer to earn (and I’m sure
that was both ways)

is that some people are much different online
than off

someone told me at this past PubCon that I
was "exactly like my blog"

as if it were an unusual thing

I’m not sure if that was a compliment or not
though 😉

Did you make direct profit from all those
conferences?

In business deals or consulting?

Or was it more contacts

no

But have I made money off the relationships
I’ve built at conferences – yes, way more than the conferences have cost me
over the years

I don’t do much consulting

I’m very limited in that regard

as hokey as it sounds, I speak more to give
back to the community

if some of the old schoolers hadn’t been
willing to make posts on public and private forums in the early days and
throw me on their IM’s

I wouldn’t be where I am now

I’m very grateful for the free education I
received from the early goers… but at the same time, they also never gave
me a formula… they put the pieces on the table

and it was up to you to put the puzzle
together

I probably take on four audit clients per
year

outside of that, I build websites, give them
a POD, get them an audience and figure out how to monetize them

every site I have has some kind of hook to it

meaning "oh, yeah, widgetworld.com – you
guys are the ones who have the [insert something others in that niche aren’t
doing here]"

everything else is the core basics any site
in the niche needs

but with one, two, three or however many
POD’s we can find from the rest

oh, popcrunch – you guys are the ones with
the snarky show with sarah east, right?

it seperates him from every other celebrity
blog

I didn’t intend for that to be a POD – but
sugarrae is a personal site – so the POD was me and my style … with a
corporate or commercial site, you need to work a bit harder and usually with
a bit more thought into developing a POD

imho

the days of building thin aff sites is
nearing its end

but I’m choosing to focus on long term
survival

aka, the affiliate evolution

lol, armed and dangerous

I don’t care how much I like something, if
there is no money in it, I’m not building a site for it

vice versa – I won’t bore myself to death for
some money

I go where I see traffic, money and the
ability to create a POD

now, some may take that to mean I stay away
from competitive industries

which would be completely false

the large percentage of my sites fall into
competitive to heavily competitive categories

we just find a POD and do our best to exploit
it

Or did that come later?

I started because I had a child with serious
health issues

I got a computer to research his condition as
a gift from my dad

and built a webpage about my son

long story short – for the first few years, I
was running the first international support group on the condition my son had

totally volunteer

I marketed the hell out of that site – but
had no idea I was "marketing"

I was just trying to get the people who
needed us to find us

but after several years

I was hoping there was a way the site could
become a source of income due to all the time I was spending on it

I fell into affiliate marketing as a result

I decided I wasn’t comfortable monetizing the
support group site

but decided to give building some new
websites a try

the full story is here

they took me under their wing

and started showing me the ropes of
commercial marketing

again, always by teaching me to fish and
never by handing me a meal

I’d give you their names to put in bold, but
they’re both private guys

but I owe them the world

yeah, they were rocks in the early days

family referred to my new career as me
"playing on the computer all day" – even once the money started coming
in as a result of that "play"

I start over again every once in a while –
just to keep myself fresh

for instance

I just bought a brand new domain… I’ve
given myself a marketing budget of 1500 dollars out of pocket (meaning
earnings from the site can be reinvested – just no more than 1500 out of
pocket) and the rule NOT to pull links in from my other sites if I have
related ones…

I’ve set goals for it to reach within a year

friends think I’m nuts when I do things like
that

"why handicap yourself?"

well, I don’t for every site obviously – and
never for the sites owned by my publishing company – which has a partner –
but every once in a while

it’s good to get your ass back in the
trenches

and know you’ve still got it 😉

I guess also confirms your strategy

things change

a new site? not anywhere near as much

Are they middle of the night inspirations?

I have a rule

no buying domains after 2 am

usually, picking a niche isn’t too hard – as
I said, I tend to go after the more competitive areas

but finding smaller niches is usually a
result of one of three things

1. total dumb luck

2. experience in an area due to personal
reasons

3. the hundreds of business cards I get at
conferences

"what the hell is _____?"

I look it up, check the traffic, check the
money and/or affiliate opps floating around it

though, I have a rule of not poaching client
industries… but since I don’t take on many clients

and refuse clients where I’m a competitor of
theirs

that’s never much of a problem

I check traffic, number of advertisers,
competition backlinks, competition monetization

but nothing scientific

traffic advertisers

line them up largest to smallest and start
where the lines start connecting near the top )

Like many people will not do porn pills poker

out of distaste

and that question was asked

and I said I didn’t do gambling

and someone said "yeah, I don’t like the
idea of that industry either"

and I said, "oh, it has nothing to do
with morals – it’s because I can get better ROI in other industries due to
the competition and the industry being a little unsteady as far as
longevity"

that said, I obviously have some standards

like, I wouldn’t do beastiality (though you’d
be surprised the traffic that industry has)

but if it’s legal

doing it or not is merely a business decision

we like to have up to date and fresh content
(blogs) but also have timeless information and be an authoritative source as
well

picture several mini sites and a blog that
make up an authority site

we don’t "game the system"

if a site has a natural connection, we’d
connect it

so as an example

lets say our main topic is red widgets
(sorry, webmasterworld has me trained well ;))

we’d have a blog covering all things relating
or important or tied to red widgets

but then we’d also have a section reviewing
red widgets, and we’d also have a section discussing accessories for red
widgets and we’d also have a section where we’d answer reader questions about
red widgets and then another section about how to use red widgets

each section could stand as it’s own site and
contains a lot of great info

but we merge them all together under one
umbrella

and market it as once force

we eventually build widgetworld

and instead of covering red widgets on widget
world

we simply link to red widget

they are two totally distinct sites

massively different information

nothing is duplicated

and we only build redwidgetworld’s for sub
sections of a main niche that have the traffic and audience to deserve the
effort

when the sites have enough traffic where we
make sales of the banner space

we have some merchants that build us
customized stores

they also make sales based on
articles/research/reviews we publish about them

we have some sites where we won’t even run
cpm ads because the aff ads make enough that the cpm for the space would
"seem" insane to an interested advertiser

we’ll usually create a page tailored to that
merchant somehow

and link to that from within articles

we want to be transparent

we want to earn and retain trust

we’re going more for a fewer sales from a
larger audience type thing

our credibility is the most important thing

its why we earn the links to rank where we do

we also don’t not cover content based on ads

meaning – we cover whatever a consumer would
be interested in – whether it monetizes or not

any content that isn’t "highly"
montizeable (meaning past adsense) is still created – it helps to strengthen
the highly monetizeable pages

long term, long term

I don’t build any site without a long term
vision

these days, you need to deliver some
editorial value to truly be a resource and rank because you deserve to and
not because you’re chasing an algorithm

I can still rank buy-red-widgets-online.com
and have an insane conversion rate

but for how much longer?

and what is the exit strategy with a site
like that?

Does social media come into play?

With traffic and links?

but not for the reason so many social media
amateurs and detractors think

we don’t submit every article we do to digg
and go "yeah baby, one more backlink from digg!!"

I don’t care about the backlink from digg at
all

or any social media site

we use social media to put our brand in front
of the masses and build outside links

example… if we write a killer piece on
hacking your red widget to also act as a blue widget that is 3000 words,
complete with a video and picture

you think I care if I get a digg link?

that would be a complete failure if all I got
was a link from every social media site

what I am looking for is a big site with tens
of thousands of feed subscribers to pick up our link and go "hey
readers, check out this cool ass post"…

I’m looking for social media users to see it
and go "wow, cool site" and hit the subscribe button on our rss
feed

people like to complain affiliate marketers
game the social media system

we do and we don’t

we can push our story to the homepage of digg
– sure – but if it doesn’t belong there (and half the time, even if it does)
the diggers will bury it within seconds

the purpose of social media – to me – is
about putting us in front of thousands of people – a lot of which are members
of the linkerati

and hoping to god they like us enough to hit
subscribe or blog about whatever fantastic thing we’ve done

they think they do, but they don’t

thanks for your time, I appreciate it