3 ms·

I sold my marketing company 2 years ago to start my own single person company. I create niche websites / communities. Comfortable living all from Adsense. Best

I sold my marketing company 2 years ago to start my own single person company. I create niche websites / communities. Comfortable living all from Adsense. Best decision I ever made was selling the company. I don’t miss it at all. Sometimes I do a consultancy job (online marketing) on the side, just because I enjoy doing that. Not doing it for the money makes me better at it, because this way I can be “blunt” and it makes me immune to office politics. I still work 40 hours a week effectively, but I can decide what to work on every day and take time off when I want to. My wife also has a fulltime job so I take the kids to school and pick them up every day. I love doing that.

dchuk 9y ago
Are you producing all the content for yourself on the niche sites? Or outsourcing that? Ever dabble with affiliate stuff? I'm interested in setting up a few niche/affiliate sites on the side as supplementary income, and have always liked the idea of building and running communities to do so.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  Content is mostly produced by the community, but sometimes, if I want a page to rank as high as possible in Google for example, I’ll write a page myself. I haven’t dabbled with affiliate stuff yet, but will do so next year.
  - dchuk 9y ago
    Nice, good strategy. How'd you solve the problem of cold starting the communities if you don't mind me asking?
    - spiderfarmer 9y ago
      I started my main community pre-facebook and pre-myspace. If I had to start over I would try to form a small offline community first, hear them out and develop it from there. When you have a great content and your website solves a real problem for people - try to get exposure in magazines and other media related to that niche. People will come.
devdad 9y ago
This is my dream (careerwise). Just quitting the consultancy doing my own products. How do you attract people that will eventually become the community?

dchuk 9y ago

Are you producing all the content for yourself on the niche sites? Or outsourcing that? Ever dabble with affiliate stuff? I'm interested in setting up a few niche/affiliate sites on the side as supplementary income, and have always liked the idea of building and running communities to do so.

spiderfarmer 9y ago
Content is mostly produced by the community, but sometimes, if I want a page to rank as high as possible in Google for example, I’ll write a page myself. I haven’t dabbled with affiliate stuff yet, but will do so next year.
- dchuk 9y ago
  Nice, good strategy. How'd you solve the problem of cold starting the communities if you don't mind me asking?
  - spiderfarmer 9y ago
    I started my main community pre-facebook and pre-myspace. If I had to start over I would try to form a small offline community first, hear them out and develop it from there. When you have a great content and your website solves a real problem for people - try to get exposure in magazines and other media related to that niche. People will come.

devdad 9y ago

This is my dream (careerwise). Just quitting the consultancy doing my own products. How do you attract people that will eventually become the community?