Ep 258: 10x Your Content Website From $300 – $3,000 p/mth with James De Lacey

Jaryd Krause:

You may actually think that this is a crazy or stupid question, but how would you like to 10x your content website? Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses Podcast. And today, I'm speaking with James De Lacey, who is a professional strength and conditioning coach who has worked in professional and international rugby and rugby league.

Now he owns two online businesses that are content sites monetized through ads, display ads, affiliates, digital products and memberships. James also hosts multiple podcasts and has hosted other podcasts in the digital marketing space. He knows a lot about digital marketing.

We have a really cool story that we share at the start of this podcast episode on how we met through a friend, how he was working with a friend of mine and how they became friends and how he got into the space of basically digital marketing and making money online.

And yeah, we talk about his experience—not just how he got started, but what he's doing to grow his websites. We talk about what he tried and how it worked really, really well. We also talk about what he tried that didn't work so well.

We talked about his experience buying his first online business, what that looked like, why he bought that business based on the metrics that had, how he bought it, what he bought it for, and then how he's turned that around to grow it basically from a $200 to $400 per month range to a $3,000 to $4,000 per month range.

We also talk about how he took this as a content site and his other content site as well, and how he pivoted both of those away from just making money through ads and affiliates. We talk about his split in revenues. We also talk about email marketing.

And I share a couple of stories on the 80-20, focusing on one thing, how to grow a company and how to have omnipresence. We also talk about how to take a content site and turn it into a real business that people love and will pay you good money for.

So this is a very impactful and super valuable podcast in which we talk about so many things. And we covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. So I'm sure you're going to love it. Let's dive in and enjoy.

Do you have a website you might want to sell either now or in the future? We have a hungry list of cashed up and trained up buyers that want to buy your content website. If you have a site making over $300 per month and want to sell it, head to buyingonlinebusinesses.co/sellyourbusiness. Or email us at [email protected], because we will likely have a buyer. The details are in the description.

James is the host of too many podcasts. No, not at all. Not at all.

James de Lacey:

Dude, I host four. I host four podcasts. You know that?

Jaryd Krause:

You host four? Wow. Wow.

James de Lacey:

Did you change your opinion now?

Jaryd Krause:

No, it depends. It depends on how much is too much, depending on where you're at in your life.

James de Lacey:

Yeah, that's fair enough.

Jaryd Krause:

Welcome back to the pod. It's great to have—well, you haven't been on my pod yet, have you?

James de Lacey:

No.

Jaryd Krause:

No? Okay. Welcome to the pod. It's great to have you.

James de Lacey:

Yeah. No, thank you for having me on. It's good to chat; it's good to catch up. Obviously, I brought you on The Niche Website Builders podcast when that was going on. So we're going to bring you to the other pods.

Jaryd Krause:

Absolutely. Yeah. Which we're going to line up and do. So, guys, stay tuned. I'll post some links to them. So of those two, you've got the digital marketing one and then what's the other?

James de Lacey:

Yeah. So this week in digital marketing. If you search on Spotify, it's This Week in Digital Marketing. If you search on YouTube, it's Indexsy. And then there's Forte Growth. So I co-host the Indexsy one with Jacky Chou. And then, for the Forte Growth, I host myself. That's basically like The Niche Website Builders carried on, really. And then I host for my own two online content sites’ businesses. I host podcasts for both of those. It’s awesome. Pretty full on.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, dude, there's a lot going on and you've got your own sites going as well. And there's so much to dig into. This is going to be a fun episode. I guess let's have a bit of context on how we met.

Owen Walker. So Owen, I met Owen at the skate park many years ago, and I was trying to get better at surfing and improve my surfing at the skatepark. And I met him there and he was an online business owner. He sold his business on Flippa. I think I've talked to him about him a little bit on this podcast. We've been to a Flippa event together. He did a little talking there. So you used to work with Owen. So Owen hired you.

James de Lacey:

Well, I still write for science and sport.

Jaryd Krause:

He did actually tell me that you're still doing a bit.

James de Lacey:

It's been six years, I think.

Jaryd Krause:

Wow.

James de Lacey:

I've just been reviewing research each month for the site. One is that it keeps me relevant to what's happening in the research. Second, it's not too intensive. And three, it gives me a good kind of backlinks and kind of brand entity around my name to be associated with that. So why not just continue?

Jaryd Krause:

Absolutely. Yeah. It's very in your wheelhouse. So Owen and I are pretty close and really good friends now. We're actually going snowboarding. Well, by the time this comes out, Owen and I will be snowboarding in Japan. And so Owen's got a pretty cool story about how he sold his business and then sort of came back into the business after they didn't do too much and got some equity and it was a really, really cool story. I might have to get him on the pod to talk about that, actually.

So, Niche Website Builders, what ended up happening there? Because they used to sponsor this podcast, actually.

James de Lacey:

Yeah. They sponsored a few.

Jaryd Krause:

We used to give them a bit of work. And then, I don't know, did they just scale too much too quickly? What happened?

James de Lacey:

Yeah. From what they said, it was AI. AI tools and AI content kind of just stripped their business away. So what was the statement? I think in 2023, they lost 73% of their revenue. Because I think most of their revenue is coming from content services, and obviously people were just switching to AI. And I think with the laws, at least in the UK, they had a huge number of staff and I think they couldn't get rid of them to obviously offset the lack of revenue. And then it eventually folded.

Jaryd Krause:

Wow. Yeah. It's a shame. I do like those guys. They're great. They're great people. Now it is unfortunate for them, but it's been an interesting blessing in disguise, sort of for us. We were referring to a bunch of people for content creation and links for them. And then, as time evolved, I thought, Let's help people with SEO. Let's make sure the content is really good. Let's show the backlinks are really good and a really good strategy. So we have our own SEO agency now in-house, and it’s been going really, really well.

James de Lacey:

That's the perfect plug.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, it is not intended—kind of sort of intended—but let's start with your journey. Typically, James, I don't do heroes’ journey stories, but you've had a pretty, pretty cool journey and you're still going through it. And we are always on our journey to make money online. But how did this start with you? How did you decide and why did you decide to do this whole making money online thing?

James de Lacey:

Yeah, I'll try to keep it brief. But I guess most of your audience is Australian?

Jaryd Krause:

No.

James de Lacey:

Kind of like the Oceania region? No? Okay.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. In the States where you are living at the moment, but mostly a large portion.

James de Lacey:

Okay, yeah. But I was a strength conditioning coach in professional rugby and rugby league for the Kiwi Ferns, Warriors, and MLR over here. And then with Romanian rugby, not the World Cup that just went, but the previous one, the 2019 World Cup. But they got disqualified after I signed the contract, etc., blah, blah, blah. But I ended up doing that.

And then when COVID hit, well, April 2020, I had no contract. And my wife and I are stuck in Romania from April 2020 to December 2020. And if anyone listening to this is from, I mean, I guess even Australia and New Zealand know how hard it was to get back into the country at that time. My god.

So, yeah, from April to December, we were stuck trying to get back. And so obviously, there is no contract. I was writing for Owen at the time, making a little bit of cash there. But then I don't even know how. I must've come across it on YouTube or something—some kind of blogging stuff.

I'd always been writing. I mean, I was already writing for Owen. I've written for many other sites. It's what you do as coaches to kind of share information and get your name out there, but I didn't know you could make money doing it. And then I kind of learned how you could make money. I took the Income School course back in the day. And then I kind of learned the general overview and then I kind of just started learning more about people on YouTube and stuff.

And that's kind of how I started into, I guess, moving everything from in-person dealing with—if people aren't familiar with the professional sporting world, it's literally the worst hours in terms of time of day.

And in terms of the number of hours worked, it's probably one of the worst paying jobs unless you're the head coach. So if you're in sports, one of the worst paying jobs, it is one of the hardest industries to get jobs in because there's only so many sports teams and it's so saturated.

And then, on top of that, you're just dealing with complete idiots most of the time and people who don't actually know how to coach. I mean, I've dealt with some that just killed my desire for coaching at that point. But I still love it. I still love physical training and strength conditioning. All my online businesses are in that space. So I can kind of marry the two together.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. It's really cool that you can grow them at the same time, directly and indirectly. So you got into trying to make money online because, literally, you were stuck in a certain location. You have to make money.

James de Lacey:

Yep. Pretty much. Well, I was always making, I guess, money online on the side, but I'd failed in probably a couple of businesses in the past. I always wanted—I don't know—to start random things, but there were small things and there were just things to kind of tie me over between jobs and things like that. It wasn't anything major. And I didn't know enough about actually building a business for it to really be viable.

But from that, just from going through that time when I didn't have anything else and I just got stuck and learned all the different things around SEO and digital marketing, yeah, that was a big change.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I was talking to somebody the other day. There's so much that you learn out of association from just being on the journey. I tell people that you can buy a business and you could build a business and grow it, but the real value you get is not just the asset in itself; it's the person that you have to become to own that type of asset. And that's where you get infinite ROI. And that's why all these life mentors and thought leaders say that the best ROI you can get is investing in yourself.

And so you've done a lot of that, James. And I've seen parts of you do different things. And you're doing your podcast hosting. You're learning so much about digital marketing. So you have two businesses now. You have your two sports businesses. What are those ones?

James de Lacey:

I should say I have two businesses and way too many other things on the side too. But yeah, there are two main businesses.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. And what are those two?

James de Lacey:

So one is in strength and conditioning for combat sports. So that's sweetscienceoffighting.com. And then the other one is what I acquired at the end of 2021. It's actually an old fitness site that was hugely popular back when you used to read blogs because you followed the person and you kind of liked their writing. So that was liftbigeatbig.com.

I acquired that in 2021. That site has just been hammered over and over and has been hacked. It is on Wix now. It had no email opt-in, no email list, no SEO, no nothing, but had branded traffic. Still have branded traffic 10+ years later, was still selling programs, had a massive Instagram account, a massive Facebook page, all that. So I ended up acquiring that and kind of just revamping it. So those are the two main ones.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. So you started your first one on strength and conditioning. And then you bought the next one. So let me ask why purchase instead of build again?

James de Lacey:

That was just an opportunity I couldn't pass up. The site has 10 years old links from bodybuilding.com, crossfit.com, and fucking all sorts of other massive sites that I wouldn't be able to get the links from anyway. So I already had the links. I had the age. I had all the assets that I needed. And I had so many low hanging fruits.

I mean, it was making, I think, 200 to 400 a month just from branded traffic. So now it makes, depending on the month, a little over three, maybe three to four grand. And it only took—I don't know how long it took; I’ll have to double check, but maybe like a year or so just to start ramping up on content.

And there's so much potential, obviously, in that space. Because my other sites are geared towards combat sports,. I mean, combat sports have grown massively. MMA, just all that kind of stuff, which is cool. But general strength training, gym equipment, home gym stuff, weightlifting, Strongman—all that is infinitely bigger. So there's a huge space in that rather than starting something from scratch, then having to get all the links, all the content, everything else.

Jaryd Krause:

Absolutely. So what did you learn through the process of purchasing it? Because a lot of people who're listening want to buy their first content site online. What did you learn that would be helpful for them to know?

James de Lacey:

It was more so from the fact that I'd already scaled one from scratch that I kind of knew what I was looking at on the other side. If I didn't have a site, I was going to buy that one; I wouldn't have a clue before my main site. I wouldn't have had a clue about what I could actually do to that site to make it better. I would've had it and I would've been like, okay. I can redesign it, but now what, Is the content any good, etc., etc.

So I was able to go in and just kind of see which pages had the links. I could keep those pages for the redesign to keep all that link juice flowing through. I could redirect whatever I needed to. All the other stuff, I can just leave. I don't need to worry about it. Making sure I have the main domain.

And I guess regarding the actual acquisition, it was kind of just looking at—I mean, this one was at least a little easier because it was such a public facing brand for so long. It's not like someone just trying to sell you—I don't know—a site they have had for three years that they built. It was kind of well-known already.

Whereas, I'll always go into the backlink profile and see what's going on. I’ll look at the trend of the traffic and keywords it's ranking for, etc. And if it's worth what it is, obviously you don't want to see massive traffic dips and all that kind of stuff.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. So you knew a lot about that from starting and scaling one. A lot of people in my community learn that through my course. Obviously, they get a lot of help in having their due diligence reviewed before they even make an offer, which is pretty important. So you know what you're looking for. You came across it. Were you actually hunting for a business to buy? Or did you just come across it out of association with being in the space?

James de Lacey:

Yeah, he just posted about it on Instagram. He's either going to shut it down or, if someone wants to take it over, they can. I hit him up initially. I can't remember why I wasn't going to buy it. I was just like, “Oh, yeah,” saying good luck for it. And then I eventually hit him up again a few weeks later, asking if he had sold it and that I was interested. And then, yeah, I ended up picking it up from there.

Jaryd Krause:

Cool. Cool. I'm sure you got a good deal on that.

James de Lacey:

Yeah, yeah. Shit, yeah. I mean, it was seven and a half grand. But just the domain alone was worth at least that, especially with coming in—

Jaryd Krause:

Was it making money per month as well?

James de Lacey:

Like 200 to 400, I think. But that's with no email list and no SEO. The shittiest website in the world.

Jaryd Krause:

Just really good links. Just really good links.

James de Lacey:

Just because it was so well-known, people were searching for the brand.

Jaryd Krause:

So basically, you bought this thing as a shell. Basically, you just bought some authority in the space and then it sounds like you had to do a bunch of work to get it going. What are some of the things that you did that worked well in terms of growth, from taking that good backlink profile to growth? And then also break down what you tried that didn't work so well.

James de Lacey:

Oh, yeah. I've got a few for each. Good things. I took it from Wix into WordPress. Because Wix stinks for all that kind of stuff. So WordPress.

Jaryd Krause:

Hang on. Let's just break that down. Wix versus WordPress. I know why you did that in terms of SEO, but maybe just explain to everybody the difference between Wix and how hard it can be to rank for Wix.

James de Lacey:

Well, Wix is one; they charge you out of the ass for half their plans. It's generally slow. It's just hard to scale on Wix. On WordPress, everything's kind of native and it's built for blogging.

So I moved. So I obviously hosted it on WordPress. I went through all the backlink profiles, and I found all the articles that had the important links and I kind of put that into a spreadsheet. Because those are the articles I was either going to redirect to a similar article that I was going to write or a similar article that was there, or I was just going to have it on the site.

So I've still got old articles on the site that have links that have no real SEO potential, but because they're being linked to, they're just there so I can internally link out from there. So the number one thing I did was get those over and, obviously, just redesign the site so I could sell the programs and all that kind of stuff. So that was the main thing I got started with.

The things that didn't work, and I'm still figuring them out, were Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Big channels. Oh, YouTube, not huge, but five and a half K subscribers on YouTube, 94,000 Facebook page likes and 70,000 followers on Instagram. But the problem is that the business was kind of dormant. So those people haven't really had much contact with the brand.

Jaryd Krause:

They hadn't been nurtured. That audience hadn't been nurtured.

James de Lacey:

Exactly. It was almost like a cult audience. Because they'd all subscribed to or followed the previous owner. So that's why they were there. So then, to see a new face and to start posting new content with different styles of content, I still haven't cracked that. The only thing that goes on Facebook and Instagram is posting memes.

That's the only thing that gets engagement. And then on YouTube, I was like, okay, I'll go down the podcast route because it's kind of just easy content. That was doing okay. Now I've kind of switched over to Twitter and we can talk about that too.

YouTube, so then I changed again. I was like, Okay, well, why don't I just use YouTube then Because it's probably not going to grow that well because of the audience. Unsubscribing all the time probably hurts it. So I was like, I'll just do gear reviews. I'll use that as a way to do it essentially when I'm running the best barbell for XYZ.

I'll use that and I'll do my videos there. If it gets extra views on YouTube, cool, whatever. But that's not the main purpose. The main purpose is just to have the content there that I can just embed, at least in the written content.

So that's kind of as far as I've gone there in terms of those. But yeah, I mean, acquiring those channels is far more difficult to take over. You think you see a massive theme page, or, I guess, a brand page, but if it was almost a personal brand and a certain style of content, especially many years ago, it's pretty hard to get going again.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. We call that personal brand dependency. And typically, if I'm advising somebody who's wanting to sell their site, the first thing that I mention is removing key person dependency from the brand. There are two ways. One, as a personal brand. And number two, you need to do the specific work and those specific tasks.

Because it'd be hard for that to be rolled over. For example, if he was doing a lot of coaching, one-to-one coaching, and then you took over the business and decided to do the coaching,. People are mostly paying for him, yeah?

So with that, I like that strategy of you doing gear reviews and doing it with your own brand, but also posting it on there because that's really good for EEAT and authority and building authority in the space, your personal authority, but also authority for the business in itself. So what else have you done that's worked really well to grow this thing? So it was making $200 to $400 a month and now it's making what?

James de Lacey:

Yeah. Like three to four grand. Depending on the month,.

Jaryd Krause:

Amazing. Congrats. And how long did that take, roughly?

James de Lacey:

That didn't take too long. It was one to two years, somewhere in that range. But obviously, because it's old, it has everything on there. It was just about getting the car. I mean, I've still got so much work to do on that damn site. There are only 300 or so posts now.

I mean, that site can have thousands because you have every damn exercise, every damn muscle group, and every damn worker. It's just infinite. So there's still a lot to go on there. What was the original question again? It was around what else I've done, right?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. So what else did you do that helped you get to those three to four grand a month?

James de Lacey:

So both my sites are monetized exactly the same way. So it makes it a little easier. So I recently put display ads on both of them. Something I'm still like umming and ahhing about, but it just helps the bottom line anyway. So I got display ads on both and affiliates on both. And then I turned all my digital products into a membership. And I did that last Black Friday. Yes, exactly a year ago.

Jaryd Krause:

I love this. Let's talk about turning these products into a membership. First, though, you have a revenue split between membership, ad revenue and affiliate revenue. What's the percentage, roughly?

James de Lacey:

If it's over both sites, I think it's almost like 33 on each, but it depends on the site. I'm trying to bring the membership up. But on the combat sports site, it would be right now mainly membership and affiliate and then display ads.

And then on Lift Big Eat Big, it would probably display ads and affiliates, which, I think, are slightly higher than the membership on that one. That one's a little slower, but that's just because I think it's just newer.

So the reason I went from digital products to membership was the volatility in the digital products that I had previously. So I had a bunch of funnels in place, email opt-in, one-time offer, big discount for whatever product it was that was related to that opt-in, upsell to courses, etc. That was all working out well, but you get one month, 1K, another month, 3K, and another month, 2K and it was just all over the place, just waiting to see if you're going to make sales that month.

I was like, okay, let's do a membership. And put everything on just so I can get an idea and start getting some monthly recurring revenue through that. And it's been quite good. It is way harder than just selling digital products.

Jaryd Krause:

You get a one-time digital product.

James de Lacey:

Yes, exactly. A one-time digital product.

Jaryd Krause:

It can be a membership as well. So are you talking about one-time versus recurring?

James de Lacey:

Yes. One-time versus subscription, I should say then. Because obviously, when I'm selling the digital product one-time, they get cool hands off. With the membership style, there's a little more hands on. And you have to try to retain the members.

It's obviously another skill. I'm still learning that. But more so is the fact that my membership—the actual community side of it—is kind of an add-on optional thing. They don't have to be in there. That's not the main product of the membership.

So I made this huge mistake when I first launched it. I was like, okay, I'm going to do a membership community and they pay for the community and the programs are separate. So I still keep my one-off digital products. And I just have a community where people can come and ask questions, whatever else. And that flopped so hard launching that.

And I was like, sh*t, okay. Let's just put everything into that membership, then. All the programs, all the courses, they get the community, all of it. And that's when it actually took off, especially for the Black Friday promotion. I think I ended up picking up most of my members just from that. And yeah, that was a big thing there.

And then, I guess, alongside the membership as well. So I have a training app that I use for it. So a friend that I know developed a company basically for training programs. He sold it to someone else. And he put me in touch with him and got me on this, but they basically do an 80-20 rev share.

So you keep 80%; they take 20%. But it means you're not spending $100,000 to develop an app, plus you have a development team ongoing. You have to get up every time something goes wrong.

So it ends up being a pretty good deal, but they take care of everything on the backend. It's just all done through Stripe and stuff. And then all my programs are hosted on that thing. So no one can take it share it or whatever else.

Plus, the app is white labeled. So it's my brand. So it's my app essentially with that. So yeah, that's really good. And then that's kind of that. And the private community is just in Discord. And that's just optional. If they want to be in it, they can be in it. If not, all is well.

Jaryd Krause:

Cool. I like it. I love it. So I'm just thinking about the people who are listening. They're like, “All right, cool. I bought a content site. We're going to buy content sites, making money through display ads or affiliate revenue.” The product thing is a really, really good way to go.

But first, you need to know who your audience is, and you need to know their wants, needs, fears, and frustrations and desires, and then package up a product that they're going to be willing to spend money on. So you need a no-brainer offer.

How did you find out what those products were? So for people listening, they can go, “All right, cool. I maybe want to sell some one-time products on my site to make some income outside of just being reliant on ads and affiliates.”

James de Lacey:

Yeah. I think mine was relatively easy just because it's literally strength conditioning for combat sports. So it's strength conditioning programs for boxing, MMA, etc. So that's kind of a straightforward thing. So that was relatively easy.

I did do some courses that taught, I guess, the science behind strength training and how to put something like a program together, particularly yourself. Same thing with the conditioning. I brought a friend in to do a weight cutting course. I brought some more people in to actually do programs and stuff that I've shared with them. So the specialists, and whatever the sport,.

So I've got the Dutch judo Olympic strength condition coach. He did my judo programs and I just shared them with him on Lift Big, Eat Big. I've got my friend, who's a two-time World's Strongest Mancompetitor. He did the Strongman Program.

So I shared it with him and also helped host the podcast. And then my wife, who is a Commonwealth medalist, Olympic weightlifting athlete, and CrossFit Games athlete, does all the weightlifting stuff.

So yeah, I mean, I've kind of leveraged my real-life network to bring some of the stuff together, which was quite cool. But in terms of actually choosing the digital products, yeah, I mean, if you know your niche, you kind of know what most people's problems are. If you're in the dog niche, it's often dog training. That's a popular ClickBank product, I think, if anyone's into affiliate marketing.

Jaryd Krause:

There you go. And another way to think about it is, what is your number one best-selling affiliate product? And then how do you go about turning that into your own digital product? If it's a physical product, maybe you could sell it as a physical product.

James de Lacey:

That's something I started doing, too. That's what I'm telling you. I've got too much going on. I made my own supplements on top of it. So you can private label them. So it's kind of like drop shipping, but with your brand on them.

So I ranked for some terms in the supplement space, but the company that I'm using doesn't have the formulations that I want to sell or doesn't have the formulations I want to put my name on. If my name wasn't on the site, whatever, I'd sell anything, but my name and face are on the site. So I'm not going to sell that.

So I was like, okay, I'll just do creatine easy enough, blah, blah, blah. And now I've got a sh*t ton of creative articles being posted. I've ranked for some of the buyer intent keywords, just not number one yet. I'm just on the first page of a few of them.

So I'm just cranking out the content and I'm sort of seeing if I can do an SEO play. And I just have myself as number one, of course. And then, on top of that, I've partnered with some other sites where I'm going to do the same thing and promote my own products on other people's websites.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Well, I mean, not to turn this into a coaching call, but the 80-20 is super important to understand. Whereas 20% of what you're doing is getting 80% of the results. And there's a really good book from Gary Keller called The One Thing. In fact, this book is actually going around my circle of friends.

So I gave it to somebody and said, “You need this. You need to read this. When you finish it, give it to this person.” And that person, I've said, “When you finish that, give it to this person.” And it's just going around my group of friends.

Because one of my mentors, who used to make $60 million a year, threw the book at me. He just threw it at me and said, “Jaryd.” Because I was the same. I am all over. I was just doing so many things, and I was like, I can do so many things. And he was on stage one day, and I was sitting at the front of this seminar thing that we all paid for.

And he used me as an example a lot because of how well I did business. And I was moving into property investing. And he just made a show of it and threw this book out at me and was like, “This is important for even somebody that's already getting results.” I still use those principles of The One Thing, the 80-20. So it's a really good thing to reframe.

James de Lacey:

I think my wife has that book. I don’t know if she got the hard copy or the Kindle version. I'll have to find it. Yeah, I think we got it in the house somewhere.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, it's a good book. So the digital products. So let's talk about how you sell digital products. Because I know that you sort of mentioned it in passing, but I think it would be worth people knowing the process of them being visitors to the site and then buying the product. Because you mentioned the opt-in and then you mentioned selling off the back of that.

So just explain to somebody that comes to the site and they want, say, maybe strength conditioning for boxing, what happens? How do you get them to buy that product? What are the steps they take in the backend, the frontend, and all of that?

James de Lacey:

Yeah, I'll do all of it. We'll just use the one-off product as an example.

Jaryd Krause:

One-time product, yeah.

James de Lacey:

Yeah. It's kind of the same for the membership anyway. But essentially, they search for strength training for boxing; whatever it is, they come to the page, or it could be a related page, whatever it is. On that page, I'll hit them with an in-content opt-in and a pop-up, and it might be like, “Hey, here's the six secrets to increasing punching power,” whatever it is. And they opt in with their email.

If they don't opt in with the email, they end up reading the whole article at the bottom. I'll give them a call to action straight to the sales page of the program, which actually converted the same or more people than people opting in, which was weird. And so I think that's kind of the reason why they opted in, which is nice. So I now always have a call to action at the bottom of an article going to the sales page.

So there's that. But if they do opt in, they get taken to a thank-you page. And on that thank-you page, it's a one-time offer. So they go on that page; there's a countdown; you've got 15 minutes. It's like, “Thanks for subscribing. But before you go, blah, blah, blah, check out this deal,” whatever it is.

I've gone back and forth, whether that's just the sales page and then with the timers in it, with, I guess, the actual one-time offer or if it's kind of a smaller kind of product style page. But either way, you're basically on there and you're saying, “Hey, you can get this—” Basically, you're taking them from “I was trying to find out about student training for boxing. I've got this free thing that tells me a little bit about my issues and what to do.” Then it's like, “Oh, then I'm giving the solution to be able to do that thing.”

And then, on this page, is the solution. But it's not the solution for $50 shit. You can get it right now in the next 15 minutes for $17 or $27, but you've got to buy it now. And on the page, it's kind of like, “Hey, benefits, etc., etc. And then, I mean, they can click to buy that and that'll take them to the shopping cart, they buy that.

And then I'll have a bump offer on there that might be $7 to $17 of something else, supplement handbook, nutrition handbook, whatever. And then it upsells to the course. And that kind of creates that little funnel.

But that was really good. I tend to make most of my sales through email, especially through Black Friday, like now. So various sales periods. And even, I guess, just having it in the emails when I'm sending out content or stuff like that. I'm pushing YouTube hard. I think YouTube is helping a lot, especially with the membership.

I'm pushing YouTube more than written content now, at least on the combat sports side, because I've kind of covered most of the things on there. I'm just trying to build a really loyal, sticky audience on video that will kind of want to be part of that.

Jaryd Krause:

Absolutely. This is so meta, but it's the same with this business, with BOB. People will listen to podcasts for a year. They want to build trust; make sure these Jaryd Krause guys are not scam artists or something. They just need to build up their trust enough to trust me and my products and services.

And sometimes people are not ready as well. Maybe in the strength and conditioning space they are like, “I wanna get into boxing,” and then they just get to this one month and it's like, “I'm going all in,” and they find your stuff and they just go for it.

So, yeah, that's really, really cool. Thanks for the explanation. What software do you use for the landing pages, the opt-ins and all that sort of stuff? Do you use software? Or are you trying to do all that through WordPress?

James de Lacey:

Yeah. It's all on WordPress, but I just run it through Thrive Themes. So Thrive Themes kind of has everything in one. So I think it's like 300 bucks a year, but you have the theme, you have a page builder, you have the opt-in email, and you have the opt-in stuff. You have the countdown timers. You actually have a course back in if you want to use it.

Jaryd Krause:

Wow, that's cheap. 300 bucks a year.

James de Lacey:

Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, it's a little bulky, so it can be a little slow. I mean, mine's been fine so far. It looks good. Drag and drop to build your page, which is really nice.

Jaryd Krause:

You can put the order bump stuff in there as well, you can put them in there?

James de Lacey:

So for the actual checkouts? No, for the checkouts, I use ThriveCart for that.

Jaryd Krause:

Thrive Themes, and then ThriveCart.

James de Lacey:

Two different companies.

Jaryd Krause:

Okay. I thought they might be the same.

James de Lacey:

ThriveCart was really good. That's something that I usually recommend if someone's going to sell products. Because it's a one-time deal, there’s no subscription.

Jaryd Krause:

Yep. And how much does your ThriveCart cost you?

James de Lacey:

I think it's 500 bucks. And that's it for life.

Jaryd Krause:

A year.

James de Lacey:

No, for life. Lifetime deal. No re-subscription.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Sick.

James de Lacey:

That's legit.

Jaryd Krause:

It's legit, isn't it? Yeah. Awesome, awesome. So what would you say are two of the best things you've learned, maybe in hindsight, when trying to grow your websites?

James de Lacey:

I think now, I mean, I'm lucky enough I get to talk to so many, I guess, successful people writing businesses, top SEO people, just with different podcasts I host. And I talk to my friend a lot, and I host his podcast at Forte Growth. And even just some of the guests I've talked to recently.

Now the biggest thing is not thinking you're just getting SEO traffic from Google and just being a content site. You need to now be on this multimedia site. My original plan is still kind of my plan. I wanted to build a mini network of sites under my main site and have my own, basically PBM, but legit sites. So for example, I have my main combat sports site, then I have a boxing site, a monetized site, etc., and they all kind of link up.

So I actually acquired a Jiu Jitsu site not too long ago that was just left for dead that someone was vested on. Still getting traffic and stuff. I got it super cheap. And I've just pumped it with content. The homepage is sponsored by my main combat sports site. So nice homepage, branded link going there.

And I wanted to build a home mini network on that. But now the problem is that you can't just rely on that Google traffic. And you need to have your brand basically everywhere you can, at least timewise. And video is becoming even more important on top of that. So that's just another thing you have to do.

So the biggest thing now for me is trying to expand. So I've got my two main channels for the combat sports site, YouTube and the main content on the website. And then obviously, with some of the YouTube, the short stuff can kind of just go on the other platforms. And then for the Lift Big Eat Big site, it's the website and it's Twitter.

I'm pushing Twitter hardcore on that one, trying to grow that big. So those are the two main ones on that one. So yeah, just trying to be more... I, guess the cliche word now is omnipresent. Omnipresent everywhere.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Think of your content site as a media business, putting media out on multiple different platforms in different mediums that can drive people, not just ads. Because that's where you start to become more of a real business than a content site. You've basically taken your sites as content sites to become product and service-based businesses, helping people on the journey.

But a lot of content sites get people from the start of their journey of learning, and they just make money and a little bit from affiliate revenue without actually taking them all the way and giving them a better service all the way through their journey. And when you do that, you make more money, which means you can put more money back into media and it's just a smarter route.

So with that, I want to ask you about Twitter. How are you taking people from Twitter? What's your content on Twitter to get them to your site? Or are you not getting them just for this content? Are you pushing them towards products or opt-ins? What's your Twitter strategy, I guess?

James de Lacey:

Yeah. Right now it's almost like building a separate entity to be able to get traffic. So I know a guy, I've known him for a while, it was part of his membership a while ago. But him and a couple of others, they specialize in Twitter growth now. So he has a 500,000 and something—what do you call it—follower accounts. And him and a bunch of other people all make their living off Twitter, which is crazy.

I was like, how are people making their living through high-ticket coaching offers, through selling whatever, membership stuff, all sorts of—I was like, holy sh*t. I couldn't believe it. Just off that one platform. So I ended up basically getting him, buying something from him, to essentially a Twitter growth service where he helps grow my Twitter. So when I post something, he helps engage with it, which helps blow that tweet up, which then gives me followers.

Right now I started almost a high-ticket coaching thing just to help build the revenue on that as it grows. Haven't gotten anyone yet, but it's just time ago. And the content being posted on there, a lot of stuff is just taking some of my articles and making it engaging and click baiting on there. It could be taking trending videos and posting it on and asking questions to get people to engage. It could be posting controversial stuff, memes and whatnot to try and get people to engage. It's a whole different game.

But if you grow a Twitter following big enough—and I mean, we moved our podcast from YouTube recently onto Twitter Spaces just to take advantage of something that's new there—you can record it and can still upload it to Spotify and stuff later. But just the idea that the platform is growing and there's still so much that can potentially happen on there, that if you have the followers now, I think you better take advantage.

You cannot tell me that Elon Musk isn't going to somehow find a way to monetize Spaces and to compete with TikTok and have a Twitter shop. I mean, he's talked about. He wants it to be the English WeChat. He wants to be able to send money, buy stuff, all that. So why not bank or at least gamble on that fact and at least try and create something there, that if that does happen, you have an audience already there to leverage.

Jaryd Krause:

Absolutely. I love that. That's really cool. James, this has been such a good chat. Thanks for coming on. Where can we send people to find out more about what you're up to?

James de Lacey:

Dude, I don't know. I mean, either of the sites that I mentioned, people can check those out. I bought jamesdelacey.com. That was actually because my friend that I host this podcast for, I swear this guy is ahead of the game in thinking about SEO stuff.

But he is like, “Man, if you just fill out your entity of your name, your personal brand, and that links to your sites because you're an author on there and then have all your socials as well and then have mentions on all these different sites with your name, etc., and it's all gonna come back anyway.” So that's why I sent you my name website for the link.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I'll have that in the show notes. So jamesdelacey.com. Then we've also got Twitter, your @mrjamesdelacey. And then also your Instagram. So I'll put links to that in the show notes as well. So I love that personal branding strategy. It's the way to go.

James de Lacey:

Yeah, exactly. Especially the way it is now. I mean, I've talked to someone, they got an authorship penalty from Google, a manual penalty for not having clear authors on the page, which is crazy. Because people will be like, “Is EEAT a thing? Does authorship matter?” Because you can have faceless sites, but they got literally a manual penalty for not having a clear author, which is crazy. It’s important.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, it is crazy. It's also good because I mean, it's really holding people accountable to not be hiding behind the laptop and having a faceless site. That's what we want. We want real trust and authenticity in the space on the internet.

James de Lacey:

Yeah. If only Google actually cared enough to change things. Because obviously, they're still ranking all the dog parasite pages for things they don't even write about. It's a different game. High-authority sites, they can do their own thing. Everyone else has to play by different rules.

Jaryd Krause:

Exactly.

James de Lacey:

It's just the way it is right now.

Jaryd Krause:

It's only a matter of time until that changes. And it's starting to.

James de Lacey:

We hope.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. James, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time.

James de Lacey:

Cheers, Jaryd. I appreciate it.

Jaryd Krause:

Hey, YouTube watchers, if you thought that video is good, you should check out this video here on 2 Best Types of Websites Beginners Should Buy. Or check out my playlist on How I Made My First $100k Buying Websites and how to do due diligence. Check it out. It's an awesome playlist. You'll enjoy it.