On board the pod today is Matt Raad, from the eBusiness Institute, who is joining us once again, to discuss changes to the online real estate landscape, to discuss Matt and Liz’s business philosophies and to cover some of the Frequently Asked Questions about online businesses and websites that popped up in the recent webinar.
“Matt and Liz Raad are Website investors, Angel Investors and leading educators in digital marketing, website design and website monetisation. They are recognized as the Australian experts in Flipping Websites.”
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Introduction – Matt Raad
On board the pod today is Matt Raad, from the eBusiness Institute, who is joining us once again, to discuss changes to the online real estate landscape, to discuss Matt and Liz’s business philosophies and to cover some of the Frequently Asked Questions about online businesses and websites that popped up in the recent webinar. For some more context, you can go back and listen to Episode 11 – (Digital Entrepreneurs Matt and Liz Raad) as well as Episode 23 (Entrepreneurship with Liz Raad). The eBusiness Institute run a Digital Investors course as well as a higher level Champions course which I personally have just graduated from, so we go into a little bit of detail about what’s involved in these courses and how they can help to accelerate you towards financial freedom by boosting your digital skills to create successful online businesses.
I have learned a lot from Matt and Liz over the past few years and so I was excited to have Matt join us again to share his knowledge and experience with our listeners. So jump on board and have a listen to some of the common FAQs about websites and online business and the detailed answers Matt has been able to share with us!
Episode 37: Online business with Matt Raad
Show Notes
- Check out my Review of Making Money online
“The key to success and what we understood right from the beginning is when you look for a website to buy, you’re buying something that’s answering a question or solving a problem. And that’s the key to making money online, answer questions and solve problems.”
Matt and Liz Raad
Matt and Liz Raad’s Top financial tips
- Diversify – Whether it is your income sources or your investments, you need to diversify. Create multiple sources of income, and have a broadly diversified portfolio across a range of assets, and a range of sectors within those assets.
- Get Educated – Learn everything you can before making an investment – especially so in business and websites
- Growth mindset – You need to adopt a growth mindset and known your true worth.
- Start small – Make a small investment initially, and then scale that up as you gain experience
Matt and Liz Raad’s top Books and influences
- What they don’t teach you at Harvard business school
- Louise hay – you can heal your life.
- Unlimited power by Tony Robbins.
- Awaken the giant within by Tony Robbins.
- Zig Ziglar
- Tommy Hopkins
Transcript
Episode 37: Online business with Matt Raad
Captain Fi: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Welcome the Financial Independence Podcast.
Gday, and welcome to another episode of Captain Fire, the Financial Independence Podcast, where I open the cockpit to some of the best and brightest in personal finance, as well as those who have reached or are on their way to financial independence. Before we get started, remember nothing said here is financial advice and you should always do your own independent research before making any financial choices.
With that being said, I hope you enjoy the episode and learn something new.[00:01:00]
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On board. Today is Matt Raad.[00:02:00] From the e-Business Institute picking up from the last interview, which was way back in 2020, episode 11 of the Captain Fire Podcast. To discuss changes to the online real estate landscape, discuss Matt and Liz’s business philosophies and cover some of the awesome, frequently asked questions about websites and online businesses that popped up in the recent webinar.
So for those who haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend going back and having a listen to episode 11, which was Digital Entrepreneurs Matt and Liz Rad, as well as episode 23, which was Entrepreneurship with Liz Rad. For some more context for those tuning in Fresh, Matt and Liz were biologists who completely changed their lives after buying a bricks and mortar business and getting a bit of a rude shock when the business was a lot more challenging than expected and perhaps sold with some overly optimistic bookkeeping, but they knuckled down and [00:03:00] made it work.
Eventually they sold this first business and they end up buying. In the process developing their due diligence skills. This ultimately led them into a career in corporate mergers and acquisitions. So Matt and Liz worked in m and a for some really interesting projects, including increasingly more and more online businesses, websites.
These websites made money for their owners, investors and shareholders in many different ways, such as by selling online products, memberships, hosting paid directories, display advertising, and even affiliate marketing. After seeing these possibilities and literally the billions of dollars being thrown around in the online industry, Matt, Liz began building, launching, and buying many successful online businesses.
And this actually allowed them to reach financial independence as successful digital entrepreneurs over a decade ago. So these days they run a thriving training institution called the e-Business Institute, where they teach and mentor their [00:04:00] students on how to do exactly the same thing, create online business for passive income.
We recently did a live masterclass for the Captain Fire community, which really resonated. There were literally thousands of people attended and there were hundreds of questions submitted. We actually ran outta time, so we couldn’t go through them all. So today I’d love to go over some of the most common ones that were asked for the audience.
Welcome on board again, Matt. Hey, what’s new?
Matt: Thanks so much for having me on. Captain Fire is wonderful to be back and yeah, big thank you to you and to your community. It was a real eye opener to me to seal those questions as you and I were just chatting about.
Literally, I got hundreds come in before the masterclass and I grouped them into, commonly asked questions and there were definitely some common themes. So it’s fantastic to be here today and help maybe go over some of the more common questions that were answered.
Captain Fi: Yeah, it was just brilliant. I think I really got a lot out of your answers personally. And I thought also probably helped a lot of people who are, you know, [00:05:00] thinking about maybe going into an online side hustle or, , even those who have plenty of, ,websites or maybe a full on, online business themselves.
So yeah, I thought there was a heap of value that, uh, was put out there.
Matt: It’s an exciting world, particularly in the moment with being online and you are just asking, how’s life for Liz and I at the moment? Actually it’s really busy. Captain Fire meant to be semi-retired. And it’s so not that it’s too exciting.
I can’t see myself retiring at the moment. I have no desire to retire because there is so much opportunity. You see it. Cause you’re in our private community as well, and you see some of the people that we, interview and hang out with and we’re all going gangbusters. It truly is an amazing time in the world, and particularly in the online space.
Captain Fi: Yeah, I just sort of a new title for the episode. I think I’m gonna call it. No Desire to Retire
Matt: Yeah. I, see, I know you guys are in the fire movement, right? And I’m a lot older than all of you. I’m in my fifties and it’s funny guess it’s worth saying that at the [00:06:00] outset Liz and I have no desire to retire.
We never have done, our number one driver though. Is freedom. And so it’s time freedom and financial freedom. That’s what’s always driven. Liz and I, because of our background, we grew up on farms and also monetarily things were very tough for me as a kid and I never want to go back there.
And I think that’s imprinted on me. And so for me, my values are all around as his Liz’s is around freedom but the retiring bit I don’t care about. As long as I’m don’t have to work nine till five, I’m a happy bunny.
Captain Fi: So Matt, how do you and Liz manage your time as financially independent business owners? What do you actually do day to day?
Matt: It’s interesting that we go through phases in life. There’s times when we really step on accelerator and I’m happy to work long hours because I’m on projects, particularly, this sounds funny, but you’ll get this, We live in a very hot part of Australia, [00:07:00] so in Brisbane and in summer it gets super hot.
We’re very outdoors. You can’t go outside in the middle of the day to exercise and do the stuff that we do. We go out in the bush a lot, So that’s when I like to, Sounds weird, but I like to work. So firstly in a course of a year, there are times when we can goof off and do nothing and hang out, go away on holidays with the kids.
And we’ve got two young kids. Or Liz and I will take lots of weekdays off, and we go out riding mountain bikes. So that’s normally in the shoulder season in either AUT or spring. Cause the weather is perfect for mountain biking then. And we do a lot of that. But then when it’s in the middle of winter or middle of summer, that’s when we will, step on accelerator and we’ll work longer hours.
And that’s basically how , I guess our year flows out. But the main thing that we do here is we prioritize what we do based on our life goals. As you’re on our high level coaching, we teach this to our private students exactly how we do it. We plan out, we have what we call our master plan.
So we plan out our goals for the next [00:08:00] five years, and then we will just work backwards from that. And then whatever it takes to achieve those, that’s what we do on a week to week basis.
Captain Fi: So Matt, this question popped up a couple of times, and actually I’ve been asked it before, and I’ve even asked of you before, which is, why do you and Liz run the e-Business Institute if you are financially independent?
Matt: We get asked that a lot. That’s a really good question. It’s a passion project. And that’s what it started as.
So people kept asking us to teach ’em what do you guys do? And then we what Liz and I do is every year at the end of the year and flowing into the beginning of the new year, we sit down and we decide where do we want to go for the next 12 months.
And we set our goals and we look at each other and we go, All right, do we wanna do this again? This coaching thing and running the e-Business Institute. And for many years we’re on the edge with it. And then there was a particular group of students that we took through who was the first time we’d ever done it.
We just sounds funny now cuz Captain Fire, we do [00:09:00] this all the time, but we ask for feedback at the end of the course. And what they wrote just blew us away. We got essays, pages, and pages of what people got out of the course, and we had no idea that we were having that much of an impact on people’s lives.
And we tend to train older people, like people who are wanting to transition out of careers that they’re not happy with and work from home. And we give them not just the strategies of how to do that online, but we also give them as your finding and what some of these questions are gonna be about.
It’s not just about what we do online, it’s also about entrepreneurial thinking and how Matt and Liz run their day to day lives and what can we learn from that. And just the whole way of changing around people’s lives. Liz and I take it for granted cause that’s how we live our life and we had no idea we’re having that sort of an impact.
So I think , it just really impacted us and we found it very personally fulfilling. To realize we’re having that much of an impact on people’s lives. So we just went We’re going for it. And the other thing too, is a lot of people [00:10:00] who have this idea that, okay, when you make a lot of money, you’re gonna sit back and retire.
You gotta remember back then I was in my early forties, It’s too young to retire. I don’t think I could handle sitting around doing nothing. when I say retire, I’m not working 70 hour work weeks or anything like that. And we don’t have to work if we don’t want to.
That is the best feeling on the planet. So the reason we run the e-Business Institute is because we want to, , we’re passionate about, and of course we make good money. It’s a very successful business. But at the end of the day, we’re like any entrepreneur out there, we don’t wanna stop because it goes beyond being about the money, obviously.
It’s not about the money cuz you don’t need it. It’s about the satisfaction of building a business and changing people’s lives. And it’s interesting. As some of the people we hang around, they’re a lot older than me and they’re all in exactly the same boat.
They’re all self made, hugely successful individuals, entrepreneurs. And they definitely, they don’t have to work another day of their lives. And me and Liz have [00:11:00] coffee with these guys and we help them with their businesses and they help us with ideas about, Okay, Matt, in 10 years time, you’re gonna be our age.
Here’s how life can look. And all of them are still working. So I don’t know whether you find that surprising or not, these guys are worth tens of millions of dollars and they’re all still working and they’re not slowing up, and it keeps ’em young. Now, having said that, what you’ve gotta realize is when I say working, they’re not working 70 hour work weeks and stuff.
Okay? They’ve got life balance. What’s really interesting and is in my community of immediate entrepreneurs that I hang out with who could all easily invert commas retire, what we’re all about now is life balance. So making sure we’re spending time with our families whilst we’re building exciting businesses, it’s all about life balance.
Going away, lots of holidays, taking time out, riding mountain bikes, that’s huge for us personally. And having that freedom to do whatever we want in life. To me that is retirement. It’s not about sitting around on your but [00:12:00] all day watching Netflix. That would just get. Now just get way too boring.
And that’s the other thing. If I can throw it in there as well, that you wanna think about when we first hit that financial independence goal. You gotta remember, so Captain Fire, you know Liz, you know her very well. Can you imagine her sitting around doing nothing?
Captain Fi: Absolutely not.
Matt: There’s zero chance. So I was the one back then that was thinking vaguely, It’d be pretty cool to not have to do anything every single day. But like Liz said to me, you’ve gotta remember we started, when we hit financial independence, it was through websites and they’re passive, or when I say passive, they’re not, it’s not that you do nothing, but they’re very semi passive.
, you definitely don’t work nine to five. You only have to work on them sometimes once a week at the most. We very quickly became pretty bored because you get very insub, so you’ve gotta think about this. So you own a portfolio of 10 websites, and they’re semi passive.
You’re not really communicating a lot with people. They’re [00:13:00] not those active websites like eCommerce sites. So for us, we found ourselves in this, and I know everyone’s sitting there going, Wow, that’s my dream. But literally we found ourselves sitting at home. I remember when it happened, we looked at each other and went, This is cool.
We don’t have to work anymore. And we’re looking out our beautiful property. We’re on acreage up in the hinterlands of the Gold Coast, and and we’re just like, far out. This is the best. But then, What do you do? You don’t have to work anymore. You don’t have to turn up the, These sites were super passive, really.
And that’s when we just started hanging out in groups and because there’s no human interaction with them, or very little, except with our team, it’s not like this At eBusiness Institute, I get to talk to, people all day, every day. And that’s a buzz. I absolutely love it. I’m chatting away to people.
I’m networking. I’m working with clients. There’s always something happening. It’s really good fun. Sitting around with a passive site sounds great, but like I said, someone like Liz Uhuh, you know, and [00:14:00] even for myself, it’s funny it doesn’t suit her personality. She needed social interaction.
So honestly, that’s one of the other reasons why we jumped into this, to start teaching people what we do.
Captain Fi: It’s a really important point you bring up, and for a lot of people, I think we focus so much on the accumulation phase in the journey to fire. I mean, this whole thing is about retiring, so everyone thinks about retiring, but they don’t really think about what they’re retiring to.
So, I guess, that’s about, having that meaningful engagement, having that activity, that social engagement, and just really being part of a community. It’s kind of funny cuz I’m in a position now where, , similarly, I’m no longer flying for a job, but I’m really enjoying, , building and writing for these websites.
Particularly I love working with the Captain Fire community, like the fire community is. Awesome here in Australia. , I’ve got a couple other sites that, uh, my passion projects, so really loving the aviation site. Love the gardening site and, you know, it’s a lot of fun. So with the [00:15:00] aviation site, for example, I’m able to keep my finger in the pie, so to speak, with aviation.
, I get to talk about aviation, which really has been the passion of my life for, you know, nearly two decades. So it’s been quite a while. , it’s been quite a while that I’ve been totally obsessed with planes, I should say. , so I can still get my aeronautical fix. So yeah, it makes sense when you’re passionate about something that you want to continue doing it.
So I totally understand why, , Liz and yourself wanting to continue to run the e-Business Institute and, you know, , you’re changing lives. I mean, I’m super grateful, having gone through, you know, web dev. And digital investors and, you know, recently graduating, , champions. It’s been a huge help and a massive change, of life for me.
Which I guess leads me to my next question, which was you do get a lot of feedback and you change the courses, and then you update them. So does that mean now I’ve gotta go back to the start. Cause it’s been a couple of years since I graduated, , digital investors, so, , have there been [00:16:00] any major changes? since , I finished it in 2019,
Matt: Yeah. We’ve just completely overhauled the due diligence process. The essence of it hasn’t changed at all, but we’ve more updated it because as Liz and I are really passionate about content sites. So we’ve more geared it to specifically content sites, particularly in this day and age.
So in the past we used to buy a lot more informational style sites. So sites sold memberships or eBooks, but they’re a bit more complex. There’s more moving parts to those for beginners. So what we’ve done in the digital investor program, us personally now , like we just love content sites.
That’s the main way we’ve always made our money. And so yes, we have definitely updated the program and are still in the process of we’re gonna make some more changes later on this year because there is a boom and we can see what’s coming for the high valuations [00:17:00] or I won’t say high valuations as such, but I just.
Very . Strongly believe that content sites are the assets you want to own going into the future over the next five and 10 years. So we have changed the due diligence process to better reflect more buying of content sites. And also the whole course is more geared to building and renovating content sites. Now.
Captain Fi: Now that’s funny because I want to touch on mindset at the end cuz I’ve got a, , an awesome question that came through. But yeah, this is definitely something that I’m working on. And, you know, I gotta say, I, admit that I have struggled on, , the due diligence aspect and I think.
I was only really confident enough to buy my first website because I was actually buying it from an e-Business Institute Champions grad. So I had a lot of trust in them and the system, because I had been building the content sites, , myself, and I’d sort of held back. I was a bit scared to go out and actually.
Buy one. So in that 90 day plan, I wanted to go [00:18:00] buy a site. , and also more recently I’ve been thinking about, , scaling back and selling a couple of my newer sites , to reduce my workload. So yeah, , that’s on my list of goals on my three month plan. So the next question I wanted to ask
what can you tell us about champions and how can it help people become financially independent?
Matt: It’s an awesome program. It is a training in entrepreneurship and what we do is we deep dive into our strategies. So it’s more for people that want the personal coaching. And the regular consistency. So if you’re ready to step up and you’re serious about this and you want to commit to it for a year, then you do champions.
In my opinion, because basically you’re getting personal mentoring every single week. It’s me who runs the webinars or Liz. And we do coaching calls, but we’ve also got awesome graduates of ours who you know, and they’re star coaches at this. They’re all doing this. But what we do is in the champions in great [00:19:00] detail, we do go into our three main strategies, which is buying.
Websites building your own, which is a huge thing now. And also if you need quick cash flow and you wanna quit your job quickly, we teach the strategy of how to build websites for local businesses. And we go into a lot of detail onto that because there’s a lot of skills there that you get out of that, that you can use to build your portfolio.
Now the overriding goal ultimately is to earn a full-time income off your website portfolio so you can quit your job and work from home. Cause that’s exactly what Liz and I do. We’ve always worked from home and we know most of the majority of our clients, that’s what they want as well. See digital investor program is a , self-directed.
Study at home. It’s set up like a part-time diploma. The champions is the next level where it’s just, okay, you ready to do this? You really wanna quit your job. You committed to it for a year, and you wanna learn. The ins and outs and absolutely everything about it, then that’s basically what champions is about.
And in champions of course too, [00:20:00] we go into a lot more around the mindset of success. Not just buying, selling websites, but just what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and particularly to hit your life goals.
Captain Fi: Yeah, I found it a lot more challenging. Definitely the personal accountability aspect. Like if I’m not there that week, I get a, Where were you, call? Or like an email. So it was really helpful to be chased up, And even like if I hadn’t completed that assignment, it’s good because you do have that accountability, I guess, both from yourself and Liz and the other instructors, but also from your peers on the course.
I mean, I’m no stranger to, you know, distance learning and I’d done my master’s degree online before doing champions, and , it did kind of feel like that kind of tempo and workload, maybe not quite as high of a workload, , in terms of, , deliverables with assignments. But certainly , for the, challenges like the, website build challenge, et cetera.
It wasn’t all just about say, the technical skills, but also, you know, the [00:21:00] networking, , some of the personal development, those, um, structured interactions. We did play a lot of those fun games and, , I walked away with a lot of lessons from ’em. But, I’ve.
Personally gained a lot from say, you know, this is how we do the seo. Like this is how we apply the SEO to the website. This is how we, you know, , upload an image. This is how we ensure it’s a, a correct file size. This is the file format. This is how we do all. Image, you know, this is how we write the meta, all that, all those kind of technical aspects.
they’re really useful. But I think for me it was that kind of higher level, taking a step back, learning how to run the business, learning how to outsource more of those at the coal face or frontline sort of tasks. , so that we are kind of doing more the strategic rather than the tactical decisions.
But yeah, overall , it’s been brilliant. So I’m really glad you said that.. Because that means now I can tell other people what you’ve just said.
Matt: It’s about keeping you on the path. And it’s also about the community as well as, we are very selective about who we let on.
It’s a limited [00:22:00] intake. We only take one intake a year for it. And so as a result, Liz and I can. Choose who we want on there. And I think you’ll agree. We always build an amazing community out of it. And you’ve met a lot of our graduates now too, haven’t you?
Captain Fi: Yeah, I was actually guarded myself. , I must admit I did have a bit of a closed, , mindset at the start. I think that’s been a part of my own. Personal sort of business journey?
Yeah, you know, I was pretty insular at the start. I was a bit skeptical. I didn’t really want to, show my face and I was a bit worried about networking and that kind of stuff. I didn’t wanna reach out and properly socialize with a lot of the other students. But yeah, I feel like I’ve definitely come outta my shell a bit.
You know, towards the end there, like you’ve made a few really good friends outta the program. And, , it’s been helpful because I guess I’ve transitioned from a sort of really highly regulated, really highly scrutinized, highly technical, shift work career, which was pretty stressful, , to now, and I’ve kind of stepped away from it.
And I’m just, looking after mom [00:23:00] and running my websites. Initially I felt like I was just kind of floating a bit and I didn’t really have direction. So doing the Champions program,, was actually quite good cuz it gave me , some good structure for my life. You know, , twice a week we have these webinars, plus we have these tasks to go through, , accountability, , website, Reno calls , it was good.
So, , I guess switching from that kind of P A Y G job into a community of like online entrepreneurs and website builders. It’s been awesome. Great to have the sounding board. Uh, you know, when I get stuck I can just SMS someone or I just , hit up someone in the Facebook group or email. It’s, certainly made my life a lot easier in the online space. .
Matt: That brings up a really good point, Captain Fy, and thanks for that feedback. What I think that Champions program does really well, and you’ve just made me realize this, is it helps people transition from fulltime.
Work to earning income online, which as you now know, is a very [00:24:00] unusual business model because it’s disconnected from time. You don’t do one unit of work equals one unit of output, or one unit of result. It’s, done once done forever type thing. You can get massive leverage and I think there’s a lot to it.
And so transitioning from like what you just described, a very structured, P a Y G job and everything to be an entrepreneur. For a lot of people we’ve observed over the years, they find it quite challenging. Whereas Liz and I are very natural at it. We live and breathe it. So to our kids our son’s been trading stuff for many years and for us we take it for granted.
So I think that’s one of the things I’m really proud about with the champions that it is a really good transition program and gets you thinking entrepreneurial. And that’s why I said at the beginning when you asked me what’s it about, it is about entrepreneurial thinking. And it’s cool to hear your feedback cuz mate, you have done so well.
You think how different your life is now, with being on that program, look at the success you’re hitting with your sites and also with [00:25:00] your mindset
Captain Fi: Oh yeah. , it’s been exponential. Like I remember way back at the start, I was saying to myself, Ah, you know, if I can figure out how to make at least a little bit of money off the websites, , then, you know, I can use that to pay for some actual training. , rather arrogantly thinking. I could figure it all out myself on YouTube and reading other people’s blogs.
, but, having done digital investors, , Implement. All of the training and actually, resulting in , some growing business monthly revenues. , I remember saying to myself, Ah, look, I’m starting to see money come in once I reach a certain amount, , then I’ll do champions, then I’ll invest in, a bit more, training, sort of that bootstrap mentality.
but honestly after. Being on champions and graduated, uh, it’s sort of just been like achieving on totally different levels. You know, we were chatting before about some of the revenues I brought in on one of my coaching calls. I had no idea this kind of stuff was possible, like to see a monthly business revenue, , in excess of [00:26:00] what I’d taken a whole year to earn, in a pa y g job.
So, yeah. Bloody glad, that I, invested in myself and invested in my business, and invested in my future, really. And, , it’s provided financial independence, just turbocharged
Matt: And that’s what we want you to get out of champions, what you’ve just experienced. It’s brilliant.
Captain Fi: Oh, absolutely. Life changing. And I do listen to your advice and I know you said I’m probably chomping off a bit more than I can manage at the moment with 20 sites. So what I’m gonna do is, you know, as you said, I’m just gonna really focus on the top performers. So I still do want to be creating new sites and reinvesting, , revenues into those new sites to build, diversification within the portfolio.
But at the same time, definit. Trying to focus on those MRIs, these, , the Matt Raad formula. Which I will ask you about in a second and leads me to my next question. And this did sort of come up in [00:27:00] the master class we did.
Matt: Some of the people have been put off by some of the aggressive marketing by the eBusiness Institute. Why do you guys do it that way? And is this the kind of thing we should be doing with our businesses?
Absolutely. People don’t ask enough. So people hide in their shells.
And it was one of my big mistakes that I made when I was younger. My personal story because I share it in the Champions Bootcamp, private boot camps, but I was very shy and it cost me a lot of money and a lot of pain as a result. And one of the things I’ve had to train myself very clearly is to speak up for myself and change completely who I am in terms of asking what I want and what I’m worth.
And it’s the number one thing we teach. And we teach a lot of women and because, my other half is a woman, Liz, and she’s also the co-founder of E Business Institute, is something we’re really passionate about. Women don’t ask what they’re worth, but as you know, Captain Fay in champions are a lot of ex professional women as well in high paying jobs.
And [00:28:00] what’s the number one thing they all say to us? We work way too long hours because the boss tells us to. And these are high flying lawyers project managers, all sorts of things. But one of the key things we teach is mindset wise, you need to ask what you’re worth and you’ve gotta be bold about asking otherwise you’re not gonna get what you want.
And I know it is kind of a very American thing and that’s where I have been heavily influenced over the years, many years ago. So we used to listen to the greats like Zig Ziglar and Tommy Hopkins and Brian Tracy, but also people like Arnold Schwartzenegger have influenced me a lot. And, reading those things you realize, yeah, if you want something in life, you gotta go for it and get it.
And that then flows down into everything we do in business now, particularly when you’re online, when I said earlier, we own passive websites, right? Where we don’t speak to anyone. Okay, they’re just sitting there. These are our portfolio sites. But on those, if you went onto them, the thing we learned [00:29:00] very quickly was you have to ask for the sale or the call to action, the CTA call to action.
It’s really important. One of the things we teach in our course, and we teach it in all our courses, is you should be asking three times on a standard sales page, a call to action. And people are shocked at that. And it’s really cute when I personally coach people, yourself included, Captain Fire or some number one thing I pull everyone up on when we first start coaching you, selling on your page, you’re not selling enough.
Captain Fi: The CTAs. You above the fold.
Matt: Yeah, Above the fold. You’re hiding what you want me to do. Why? And even Google. Google themselves outright Tellus in their Google Web Master guidelines. Please make sure you are asking for an action. Don’t hide it. Don’t be cute. Don’t be shy. If you are selling something on a webpage, guess what?
You better put it there. When we build local business sites, it’s the number thing. We say, put the phone number three [00:30:00] times down the page at least three times because people’s attention spans are short. So this lesson flows through in everything we do and unashamedly. Yep. To Australians, we can look aggressive on our marketing, but it’s interesting.
We do obviously monitor absolutely everything we do and we definitely monitor all our emails that go in and out. We have to, and we can see if people are unsubscribing, we just throttle things back. And we don’t get a lot of unsubscribes, which is quite interesting. And I think also I will make one other comment.
Here’s a lesson for everyone as well who thought that in answer to your question, here’s another thing to think about. You remember, this is a technical game. So unfortunately , What we noticed was it was an unfortunate technical glitch too, with that live masterclass. Here’s a technical lesson for you all.
We have a saying in our business here. It happens. It happens and it rhymes with another word. But anyway, this is one of those [00:31:00] instances where, you know, Captain five, when you told me, Oh, you’ve had a few complaints and you sent me a couple of screenshots we looked at the names and we tracked back the people that were making comments about it and we could see what had happened.
It was a technical thing in that on the same day that they signed up for the live masterclass, Around then they actually signed up for our recorded masterclass, so they went into two email funnels, so they got twice the amount of emails. So definitely that would’ve looked spammy to them.
So sometimes you gotta realize when you run a website, you know, our website’s a complex beast. There’s a lot that goes on that’s automated. Okay. We automate everything, whilst I’ve written all those emails, or it’s me and Liz and our CMO Chan, we all write them together and we sit down and brainstorm them.
And basically, most of our emails are all about student success stories to inspire people, right? So we write them all, but we’re not individually sending them [00:32:00] out every day. They’re of course, programmed into a crm. So when there’s a glitch in that it’s not a glitch, but if someone signs up on two of our lists, they’re gonna get hit with the same emails twice, or similar emails twice.
And that’s just one of those, it happens moments as well. So there is that going on as well.
Captain Fi: so the takeaway that I’m getting from that is , if we’re in the business of selling a product or a service or an advertisement don’t be cute. Don’t hide it. Don’t just back yourself. Be confident and, be confident about the sale to make your business successful.
Matt: Absolutely. And it’s really interesting and I can share this, I’ve got 10 years coaching experience of individuals. So we coach high performers like yourself and even someone’s, the number one thing that I’ve had to work, I hope you don’t mind me saying, is publicly Captain five. Honestly, the number one thing I’ve had to help you with is, and I think you just vaguely alluded to it in the previous questions, is you had to come outta your shell a bit.
You know how you [00:33:00] were insular because of your training and everything. You have to be understandably very cautious about what you do, you think the conversations you and I have had on private coaching courses, I’m gently teaching you to come out. So remember before you even came on, champions, remember what I said to you about your website?
I said, you’re sitting on a seven figure business there straightaway, I can tell, but you’re just gonna need mindset to make it work.
Captain Fi: Yeah, I know. I didn’t, fully believe that. I think at the start it’s been, yeah, it’s been a bit of a learning process and accepting and knowing that value.
Matt: Yeah, see, knowing the value. And that’s a huge thing Liz is really passionate about this because we see it unfortunate with a lot of women, you know, they, don’t ask their value. And yeah. I just wanna reiterate, it is an interesting observation for Liz and I over the last 10 years.
What we say is that what we love about what we do is when we work with people on their websites are like an view into their personal lives. I can always tell what’s going on in someone’s life by [00:34:00] looking at their websites and it sounds funny, but once I start coaching with them, I can figure it out.
Because I can see they’re hiding. Why are you hiding your brilliance here? How many times have I said to people, You’re about Paige, like you’ve toned it down. I know how good you are. Let’s bring that out because we’ve gotta make it pop. We want to get people excited. Or on your page here, you’re not asking for the call to action.
Why isn’t it repeated three times? You’ve hidden it way down the bottom somewhere. Or if their site’s a big mess, I say where else in your life are things a bit messy?? and then we get to the real course of what’s going on. So it’s cute. This journey of earning money online.
So we are really good at teaching the, structural stuff. But at the end of the day, it always comes back to mindset.
Captain Fi: Do you have a side hustle? My side hustle is websites a form of digital real estate. If you wanna learn more about this lucrative side hustle, check out my review of the e-Business Institute and their online self-paced courses.
They cover everything from total beginners right through to advanced web [00:35:00] design and how to buy, renovate, and sell websites for profit. As a graduate of Matt and Liz’s courses, I can’t thank them enough for the valuable web skills they gave me. And now I enjoy growing my portfolio of websites for income Captain.
Fire listeners can register for free access to some of these courses by signing up. Using the link at www.captainfire.com/ebusiness-institute-review. Build your portfolio of digital real estate and start using websites to make money today.
So much about business ownership is about Yep. Just strategic decision making and organizational and mindset.
So yeah it’s actually really cool hearing is. You say it and put it that way, cuz I must say a few of my sites are probably a bit messy at the start. So it’s good to be able to tidy up the structure and make ’em a bit more clear.
Matt: Yep. And that impacts your life.
It’s a, it is a cute metaphor for what’s going on in your life because at first, I’ll tell you, now figure out this game of financial freedom is hard. Because the way we’re programmed [00:36:00] is particularly if you’ve come from a poor family like I have, or middle class, you’re programmed to work your butt out to earn X amount of dollars.
And man, that’s hard to overcome. And then you get into a, an environment like the online space where you can literally make millions of dollars in the space of a couple of years. You’re like a kid in a candy shop and you think it’s gonna be wonderful, but all the crap, all the baggage, the subconscious baggage that’s sitting in your head that tells you gotta work hard to earn money starts coming up.
And that’s why. You know, It’s an unusual space online and it’s becomes a metaphor for everything going in your life. Once you start working out that mindset stuff, we are good at giving you the skills how to do it. That bit’s easy. We can teach you that easy. It’s once you start freeing up all the other stuff, then the money starts flowing.
That’s our observation of what happens to people in this journey, because everyone says, Oh, Matt, my dream is to have a passive website like Captain Fire, Nathan Alexa in our community? Yes. [00:37:00] They have that website that makes, you’ve seen, it makes eight grand a month and they literally work on it one week a year.
And you know exactly what they do. All they do is just tell their staff what to do on the site.
Captain Fi: Yeah. They do the keyword research, little bit of seo, get the content plan out and push that to contractors. Absolutely.
Matt: So you imagine that Now everybody says that’s their dream. So why aren’t they doing it?
Why isn’t everyone doing it? Because there’ll be a lot of mindset because when it comes down to it, if you could earn the average wage in Australia for working one week a year, it’s gonna mess with your head if you’ve got blockages sitting there.
Captain Fi: Yeah it’s been a huge I wouldn’t say crisis for me, but , it’s been a definitely a pain point and a learning point for me to try and work out how do I actually structure my day?
Yes. Do I feel like I actually deserve, deserve it level of and you know, , I realize actually, and I know this is probably going a bit off topic here, but I’ve been seeing a therapist , I’ve got a lot of things going on in my life at the moment. Most people know I’m dealing with some family health emergencies and, some issues on my own.
And Transitioning [00:38:00] from, full time pa YG job into online business. It’s been, stressful and, I’m grieving a career to some extent. But working through some of those issues with a therapist has been really powerful for me. And I actually realized that when I got super obsessed with the, the financial independence, retire early movement and saving money and working out on how little I can live so that I can invest more.
Getting to really unhealthy, I know you and Liz call it the baked bean millionaire, living on the 90% savings, that’s and I was doing that. That was a crutch for a very unhealthy work environment. And I’d prioritized saving rather than, The other side of the equation, which was how much can you actually earn?
And so yeah, I’d indoctrinated myself in this dogma of, No, I can’t spend money. I must save, I must work really hard. I’ll do more overtime , and it became really unhealthy. So learning to run an online business has been, yeah, it’s been like a challenging process.
But it’s been life changing.
Matt: I think a [00:39:00] lot of our students go through that, and that’s what we are really good at, helping people with that transition journey. Because like you said, it is very challenging. And just so you know, and all your listeners know, You heard me allude.
Most people that we coach are 40 or 50 plus. And obviously a lot of our community as you know, CAP and find is why we also keep things very private within the community. Most of our community have been through lots of things, there’s a lot of people with serious health challenges or other stuff that’s happened by that age.
People have been around the block a few times and there’s a lot going on. And then to layer exactly what you just said and thank you for sharing that publicly, I think you’ll find Kaplan Fire. There’s a lot more people like yourself than you realize. It’s one of the things, Liz, I’ve noticed over the years, and you layer that on, is trying to learn this whole new skill of, Hey, I’m gonna get out of my secure, safe, daytime job where I earn a really good income and I’m gonna go into the total [00:40:00] unknown, something I’ve never done before.
And then there’s this mindset shift where, It’s not about how hard you work, it’s like just trying to learn how to do it. And once you get it right, you don’t actually have to turn up to work to make money off it. Man, that’s a unusual transition period in your life. And it’s hats off to you.
That’s exactly what you are going through now and all your community a hearing, the reality of it. This is really cool. You’re the perfect example of one of our, super successful students. You’ve just you’ve worked through.
Captain Fi: Ah, appreciate it, Matt. I was gonna keep this question to the last, but I think we’ve really nailed it here.
And I just wanna say that has, hands down, been probably one of the biggest things I’ve taken away from my training with you and Liz is just that mindset and, switching from a, a pretty extreme shift work career with, sometimes months away to. Running an online business and, dozens of staff, it has been challenging.
But I guess my biggest takeaways were adopting an abundance mindset. Knowing [00:41:00] my self worth and my value and also not trying to control everything and not trying to micromanage everything. And so that was a big part of my personality and my career was, as a pilot you need to be a high situation awareness and high level of control over the aircraft and the flight state.
And, not only the aircraft, but where it fits into the bigger picture in terms of, situational awareness. And that can be, quite anxiety inducing on the long term. Absolutely. And so being able to let go, and I know it sounds so silly, but checking Google Analytics used to be my, one of my crutches, and now I’ve said to myself, I’m aiming for once a month, but I know I do check it at least once a week.
So baby steps. Yeah. But I’m trying just to not control things. Empower the contractors and staff to do their job and, focus more on that higher strategic level entrepreneurship. Those were my main takeaways. And yeah I, I love hearing your take on mindset. I’ve loved hearing about yours and Liz and how it’s evolved during your time in business.
, and it’s awesome to see how you help students with mindset troubles. [00:42:00]
Matt: Yeah. Thank you. Something we enjoy greatly.
Captain Fi: And look, I know, we’ve already been talking for a while here, past WeChatting for a good half hour before we start, and I I know you’re a busy man.
And obviously you’re doing this recording cuz it’s your passion project, you love it. But I don’t wanna take too much of your time up, so I just love to finish with, there were six of the most popular questions that came up outta those hundreds of questions.
There were six really popular ones. I don’t know, maybe we could like just run through them in a bit of a Okay. A bit of a rapid,
Matt: I’ll answer them quickly. Yeah. Rapid fire.
Captain Fi: Let’s do it. Okay. So recently we had our, I think it was our quarterly or our biannually Google Core algorithm updates.
Yeah. A lot of people were winging, they’d had some of their websites smashed and some of their monetization had dropped. Other people were cheering because they saw some huge Boosts into their websites. Me personally, I didn’t see any smashes. I actually got the boosts, so I’m pretty happy with that.
Matt: Same here.
Captain Fi: So what should we be doing? Are there any reactions we need to make? Are there any changes we need to be doing?[00:43:00]
Matt: It’s part of the course. Get over it folks. You’re an online entrepreneur. It happens every year. So first thing is, I know I’m sounding blunt there, but seriously, don’t panic The main bit of advice is don’t buy into the emotion of the panic because , the dust always settles.
Google always does this and they go way overboard on the first one. And you gotta be careful. You gotta remember the naysayers are the ones you will pay attention. Like anything in life. This is why I keep saying seriously being online is like a metaphor for life. You look at any other thing, it’s always the naysayers that we pay attention to, and they’re the ones that will be most vociferous online.
And you better be very careful listening to people who aren’t experts because quietly behind the scenes, there’s other people who are not panicking at all and it’s business as usual, and the people that are getting the boost, you won’t hear from them. They don’t care.
So first and foremost, my advice is in these situations, don’t buy into it. And then it’s just using common sense. Chances are there’s a [00:44:00] problem with your site somewhere, and you just go through. As long as you’re doing high quality content, it always bounces back. Always Google’s out to hit the spammers.
So the algorithms are actually really good. Normally what happens is, They go overboard, and it’s stressful at first, but then six months down the track, you realize it was a blessing in disguise because you’ve fixed everything up. You can always fix it, but there’s always a way to fix a website,
always.
Captain Fi: Awesome. So be careful of the chicken little, the skies falling in, in crowd. We see that all the time when we’re talking about like share investing and property investing, there’s always the doom, the naysayers. And what is, if they say it long enough, eventually they’ll be right. Yes.
After a decade or so, . Yeah. Yeah. But so the algorithm updates are actually there to help you. We’re, yeah, we’re doing a, Yeah, they make us better cause we’re we are focusing on that white hat seo, that good quality content to help people make an informed purchase decision.
Matt: And it’s a guideline because where you wanna make the big wins or where I believe our [00:45:00] community can make the biggest wins in this industry You don’t think long term. And so where we make the biggest wins is by beating the spammers. So the spammers are out for the short term benefits and they will cut corners and they’ll do dodgy stuff to, rank their sites and things like that.
And they’ll try and take the easy way. If we just do things right, build quality sites long term you are sitting on way more valuable assets. You think these are like real estate, these websites, once they start working for you, they are literally like owning blocks of real estate. It’s just that, it’s virtual, so it’s worth getting it right and long term, the dollars compound like you would not believe.
So a little bit of a blip for six months, one year is a non-event. As long as you are consistent and building good assets.
Captain Fi: Okay, so this next question I may have snuck this one in. It was asked a couple of times though. Matt, what is the sweet spot when running a website side hustle or business?
How many websites should we run? How [00:46:00] much effort should we put into them? And how often should we be posting?
Matt: It’s too big a question to ask because it depends on your goals. What are your goals? Do you wanna do this full time? Do you want to be working from home full time on this? Or is it as a side hustle?
Captain Fi: My understanding, I think most people are talking about this as a side hustle. So I’m guessing most these people are working there nine to five and they’re doing this in the background to try and build an income.
Matt: Yep. So I would suggest for that actually, and it’s the same for even if you’re full time, the sweet spot, honestly these days is 10 website.
And when you start out though, you need to phase it. You don’t start with 10 websites, you start out small and build up your skills. So in terms of time, studies have shown when you’re learning something the first time you learn it, it takes seven times as long to learn stuff. So the first part of your journey is dedicating yourself to learning it.
That’s why we set up our courses as we do. So the first part of your journey is learning the skill and then when you’re ready to move into, how many websites should you do [00:47:00] once you’ve got the skills? So in the old days it used to be, yeah, 20 to 50 to were in the hundreds, but I would never do that again.
That was dumb. It’s too much. Too much head space. And because even those sites are passive, you still gotta do some work on them. You gotta keep an eye on ’em and everything as you are finding. And as you found Captain Fire, even in your position, 20 is too many. I think the sweet spot is 10. And then, You can work on them.
How many hours should you work on em? Depends how much you wanna grow them. So you’ve got two options. You can either let them sit passively or you can turn them into compounding machines. Warren Buffet says, a compounding business is like the ultimate thing to own on the planet.
And that’s what I love about websites. If you wanna step on, accelerate and do a bit of work on them, if you wanna work a couple of hours a week on each of your sites, that’s gold. I think that’s a compounding machine.
Captain Fi: So it’s the crawl, walk, run kind of strategy. Yeah.
Matt: Perfect analogy. Brilliant. We’ll run with that.
Captain Fi: Yeah when I was di and I went from two sites to five on those three new ones, I [00:48:00] pumped out so much crap content just because I didn’t realize. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I spent a lot of time going back and I think there was like 40 articles on each site.
I had to like completely redo and I’d like paid to have it done. And I just didn’t know, little things with the SEO and like headers and old images better and, actual proper keyword research.
Matt: That’s why you wanna learn on one site first. And just like you said, and then crawl, walk, and then run Yeah.
When you’re ready to step on the accelerator.
Captain Fi: So with content I’m working on a yearly, like a 52 article a year content plan. So one a week. So generally one article a week is a pretty good number. Yep. Yeah. Awesome.
Matt: And depends how much you wanna grow it. Like on some sites we don’t even bother with that.
I’ve got a couple of sites, got about 50,000 visitors a month, and I only work on a once a year. And I’d be lucky to post five articles a year. Oh, wow. Yeah. So you should see some of the sites that are out there. And as someone like Yuran who we interviewed, he just sticks.
When articles [00:49:00] on,
Captain Fi: he batches him. Yeah, you said 20. And he just leaves him.
Matt: He just leaves him, but that’s only 20 articles a year. That’s it. Yeah. And then the ones at work. Yes. Then , you loop back and then you start working on them.
So What I love about this model is there’s so many ways you can do it, so don’t get locked into thinking. Need to be very careful here of suggesting that you need to do one article a week, because that’s not my experience across our entire community. Some of our students would be lucky to do one article a month, myself included.
All things being equal though. If you want to compound the results and grow these things quicker, then yes, you put in. More content and you outsource that. You don’t write this stuff yourself, see, what you gotta do too is be smart. There’s a lot to this depends on the sites that you’re building as well and the niches are in.
If you’re going into kind of micro niches where there’s not a lot of competition, 20 articles is heaps for the website as you’re seeing with you. And who has a multimillion dollar website portfolio, He only has 20 articles on the sites.
Captain Fi: Yeah. And I forget her name, but [00:50:00] there was a lady with the massage chair, so I think she only had 15 or 20 articles.
Yeah. And, making a couple of thousand dollars a month. Yep. On on massage cheer, affiliates. Like I was blown away. I was like, I thought you could have to be pumping out content.
Matt: You can definitely overcook it too. Yeah. You’ve gotta be careful. You can definitely overcook it.
So , this is why you need to learn first and see what works.
Captain Fi: All right. So we know that you’ve said it multiple times before, we should all be building new websites and all of the big players in the community, they’re all building new niche websites but also to see some quicker results and cash flow.
Buying websites is also a valid strategy. And so you’ve mentioned that we should really be look at doing both, and I personally am trying to get outta my shell and look at buying some websites. Good. And this comes up all the time, is what is the sweet spot? How much should I be spending on a website?
And , I’ll just preface that with your starter site which you are buying to mess around with break crash refix, that’s a starter site. Yeah. We’re now [00:51:00] talking about, now we’ve got some skills we wanna make some money. What size website do we wanna look at in terms of sort of traffic articles, monetization, and therefore cost? How much should we look at paying for one of these sites?
Matt: Okay, so the sweet spot, in my opinion, again, it depends on your long term strategy Here, I’m gonna suggest for most of your people listening, it’s probably very similar to our community. If you’re doing it as a side hustle and if you wanna stay safe, the sweet spot really is when you know what you’re doing in that 5,000 to $50,000 price range and preferably under 20 grand.
You know why? Because it’s One of the world’s top website brokers who only sells eight figure websites, right? He said to me, and I think it’s on our interview with him, Thomas Smail from FY International, as he said, Matt, with an eight figure website, it takes a lot to grow it much more with your clients buying websites under 20 grand.
He [00:52:00] goes, Wow, cuz I was telling him that, in my opinion, that’s a sweet spot. And he just reaffirmed that. It was really interesting. He said the same, if you can get a 20 grand website and you know what you’re doing, the upside is phenomenal. It’s absolutely through the roof. And I think you would’ve noticed Captain Fire, some of the people that we’ve interviewed have all said the same kind of thing.
Their biggest challenge is when they’re spending millions of dollars on buying these websites, they’ve realized it takes a lot of work to double them. Whereas our students are doubling and tripling. Little tiny sites because there’s just so much upside. There always is. So this is the cool thing where the little guys can get in and buy relatively small websites in that 5,000 to $50,000 range, and as you heard, ideally under 20 grand.
And then we build them up over a few years and sell them out for mega bucks to the big buyers. And because they’re not allowed to buy small sites, , they won’t do it because they’re just too small. But that’s the sweet spot, in [00:53:00] my opinion.
Captain Fi: Yeah. It always blows my mind when we talk about Al Borz.
Was it car expert which got sold out you from scratch? Phenomenal.
Matt: He built that absolutely from scratch and and it’s now worth what, 25 mil and the first one he sold for 60 mil. But answering your question. You’re saying what’s the sweet spot? I’m giving a really big inside tip there.
Because, it’s easy to jump onto any of these brokers and see these amazing sites that make, five grand a month and stuff, But you’re looking at more than a hundred grand to buy those. Now you gotta stop and think about it, Particularly if the world economy changes. There’s not a lot of Mar and Par buys out there that wanna spend a hundred K, but there’s always a marketplace for a $20,000 website.
And once you know what you’re doing, like I’m saying, you can’t really lose because if you double it, which is pretty easy to do on a $20,000 website, you’ve just doubled your money. So you aim 10 of them, you’re sitting pretty sweet with a pretty high cash flow.
Captain Fi: So how do we value a website?
How has this changed over the last few years and [00:54:00] do we expect to see valuations change going forward?
Matt: Okay. Really big question. And seriously, if you want a more detailed answer, go and watch our masterclass, which I’m sure captain file, point you in the right direction for that. But, and this is something we go into a lot of detail in our course cause there’s a lot to, how do you value a website that’s, 30 years of me being in business, just, being able to teach people how to do it.
But in essence, Websites have valued exactly the same way now as traditional businesses, which is a multiplier of the profit. So they’re generally valued in the current market on a two to three times the yearly profit. So if a website makes a hundred grand a year, it’s probably worth anywhere from, 200 grand to 300 grand.
And the thing that’s changed over the years though, is when we first started online, we’re buying them on a one times multiple, Say, websites were really cheap because they just were unheard of. Like you, Captain Fire. No one could believe that these passive websites were making, 10 grand a [00:55:00] month.
So people just ignored them. So we literally used to pick them up for one time. So you can imagine how much money we made very quickly. But to me, Remember my background is buying and selling bricks and mortar businesses. To me, it’s just business as usual. It’s the normal valuations.
And it’s a really good question that you ask. Where do you see valuations going? I think they’ll still grow over the coming decade. Uh, Particularly on content sites. Good sites will always sell for a high multiple. And no matter what happens with the economy, you’ll remember these things are cash cows.
Okay? They keep pumping out cash. So there’s always a buyer for a cash generating business, whether it’s online or offline. So I’ve been through the jfc. And I was selling multimillion dollar businesses then. And I can tell you, even in the middle of GFC, there were still buyers queuing up to buy the good businesses.
And it’s exactly the same with online businesses, no matter what happens with the economy. So in terms of valuations, I think They’ll have parity, , they’re parody with bricks and mortar. Okay, if the economy [00:56:00] goes up, then the valuations go up even more. If the economy tanks, cause there’s a recession, yeah, some valuations will change, but there’s always a buyer out there for cash flow
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So with, Covid, we saw [00:57:00] with people not being able to travel some people in the travel niche their websites were hit. They weren’t being able to make money, just people weren’t able to travel.
But now that the borders have opened up, that’s a really hot niche at the moment always Yeah. It’s the best way. . You’d been telling everyone get into it now while there’s less competition. Yeah. And you’re setting yourself up. And so those people on the program that.
, the travel websites. They’re laughing now. But so this is like the most common question I get asked and I think was asked in the masterclass what are some hot niches for websites right now? So what’s the insight goss Matt. Where are you interested?
Matt: It’s interesting. Liz is building three big websites right now, and she got the ideas Captain Fire at one of our boot camps and also at our three day workshop she got me speaking’s, really funny. She heard me speaking, she’s listening. And then she started researching, doing exactly what I was saying to do. And she’s got this whole list of ideas and she’s just looked for trending [00:58:00] topics and she’s found, So we use Google Trends free tool, go and check it out and you just throw it in.
Don’t overthink the numbers. All you’re doing is looking at the shape of the graph. And here’s a really interesting one though, in terms of hot niches. And it’s been evergreen and it’s where we made money many years ago and it’s come back and that is pets. Any aspect of pets. And what you wanna do is go niche within it.
Cause pets is too broad. So one of the niches we’ve been suggesting for actually for many years, but now it’s super popular, is pet health. And you can even go down really verticals like get really granular with it. And I know that’s a toss sounding term, know, you could go down to pet anxiety or CBD oil pet.
Captain Fi: Yes. Yes. I was just gonna say , I saw the pet CBD stuff came up cause I’ve got a website in the pet niche and that’s been a huge one. So I think there’s about 12 articles I’ve got in the content plan about the use of CBD oil for cats and for dogs, horses and that kind of thing.
Matt: And one of [00:59:00] the things we suggest you look around is what changes are happening in society out there. And so travel’s coming back. But good luck getting into travel. it’s starting to boom. That’s gonna be really lucrative again. You know what, in terms of the hot niches, my opinion is it’s always the good old fashioned standard.
Evergreen niches that we’ve always been talking about. They’re just solid. So doing tech reviews anything where people are looking up answers or wanting information. And there’s a lot more people online now, particularly over the last two years. And so we speak to all the brokers and we always ask them, what are the hot niches?
And it’s always the same stuff, pets, sports hobbies tech finance or health related sites. But they’re very competitive, but very lucrative. So if you’re listening to this and you’re a beginner we’ve got a balanced strategy here.
We’ve gotta be smart about it. We don’t want you getting online and getting despondent cause you’re not making any money because you’ve gone into a super competitive niche. Like anything to do [01:00:00] with wealth or health. How to lose weight will make you mega bucks, but good luck trying to get into that as a beginner.
You need to go really niche within it. So you do need to be smart around your strategy about picking, I guess we call it low hanging fruit, just easy niches to go to and someone, em can be pretty obscure. What’s the guy I interviewed today? How’s this? He started with what’s that new game that they use with the paddle boards, in America?
It’s shuttle cock, but it’s painted in all the parks and everything.
Captain Fi: Oh. Not the frie golf,
Matt: It’s that I think, but it’s got a paddle
Captain Fi: Oh, okay. No, I have no idea
Matt: . It’s a new thing, but seven figure online business.
Captain Fi: Wow.
Matt: Seven figures And so there’s all these weird, wonderful niches that are out there.
So we see everything working because it depends on how you sub niche it.
Captain Fi: I saw a successful website. It was a Frisbee golf backpack review site. So it was all about, you put all your Frisbees in this backpack I’ve never actually played Frisbee golf, but there is a Frisbee golf course in Adelaide near where I live, but the other [01:01:00] thing that I’ve been seeing, so I go down the markets quite a bit and I’ve been seeing a lot of alcohol free spirits.
Yes. Like alcohol, free beer. And I know somebody in the champions C Champions was talking about this, and I was like, Oh. So that’s how my job for this afternoon is I’m gonna go and look into alcohol free spirits.
Matt: Yeah, I saw that as well. And as you said, someone in the champions community pointed out, Oh, there was actually.
Here in Australia, an affiliate program for alcohol free spirits. The alcohol industry’s always good. Depends on what you’re comfortable with as well. But hot niches is a really good one. I honestly, I just jump on the Google and start looking around and I use Google Trends.
You’d start paying attention to anything to do with the environment now is particularly interesting. And crypto is a no brainer. Again, that’s competitive though now. Certain times in society you’ll see the gold niche go really well. Anything to do with health, losing weight, cooking, [01:02:00] Paleo, Keto they’re really good niche is actually paleo and keto.
But even within those, now , because it’s so competitive and so lucrative, You do need to niche down a bit. And other niches are like anything to do with work from home. But also the classic is, raising kids, getting pregnant naturally or a lot of any natural type stuff. People are Googling it.
Think of your own, Google searches that you might have done in the last 10 days. What have you looked up for information. That’s, where you start looking around and look at the ads that you see on websites that consistently come up.
Captain Fi: Yeah. Not even joking. So I’ve been looking into arthritis for older dogs.
I was looking into, Heated beds, like electric blankets for dogs and heated beds. That’s good leash. And I’m getting so much targeted ads now for anything related. Good. So the Internet’s working. That’s good. Yeah, it’s doing its thing.
Okay, so last question, and I know I’ve had you for ages here, Matt, so thank you so much for your [01:03:00] patience. And I think I’m already gonna know the answer to this one, but it was, when it comes to running an online business, what are some of the maximum return activities? Now I know we use the M Raad formula, which is loosely based on your name.
Matt: Yeah, I know. What are you gotta ask yourself what are the chances I end up with that name? I wasn’t born with that name but yeah, maximum return activities. So every Monday when Liz and I have our planning meeting about what we’re doing, we look at each other and go, What are your MRIs for the weekend?
And we call it your maximum return activities. What can you work on? That’s basically the big rock stuff. It’s not the minutiae, , it’s not answering emails and all that sort of stuff. What are the big things that we can do to move the needle? Captain Fire, your specific question is what are the M MRIs when we own an online business of portfolio websites and is that what you’re asking?
Captain Fi: Yes. What are the maximum return activities for a portfolio website?
Matt: So great example is Liz. Right now, as you just heard, she’s [01:04:00] building,
so we’re building from scratch. Three sites actually is probably about half a dozen all up. So our MRIs. On those because it’s build phase, right? Building from scratch cuz it’s just a no brainer to do that these days. That main MRI’s keyword research without a doubt, and then getting the content created, That’s pretty much what it boils down to.
Sounds easy, rolls off the tongue really easily. Hey, walk in the park. As you know, Captain Fire. There’s more to it than meets the eye, but that’s essentially what it boils down to. So Liz is saying to me just this morning, one of the sites that she’s looking at building, she goes, Oh Matt, you should see all these cool keywords that I found.
Actually, you said it too just before this, You know, when we were chatting before the interview, you said exactly the same thing. Oh, Matt found some really cool, low hanging fruit keywords. Once you learn this stuff, it’s pretty exciting. All us geeks can hang out and say, Man, I found some really cool keywords.
You wouldn’t have thought a year ago you’d be having those conversations, wouldn’t you?
Captain Fi: No. It’s like the data or like the information is, [01:05:00] That’s it. It’s gold. It’s like virtual gold. Yep.
Matt: And then you can’t sleep at night cause you’ve come up with some gold and Liz was pretty excited this morning.
So she’s found a topic. And then she’s gone down the rabbit hole in it, just sits there at the laptop, at the kitchen table while I’m working away in here. She’s just out there, quiet time. And so MRA maximum return activity that she can do before we start the build of this website. So we’ve told our techie, here’s the domain name, we want you to install the website on it.
We’re gonna be posting content on there soon. So Liz is just sitting there with quiet time. Deciding what are the main keywords that we want to go for? What can we reasonably achieve over the next year or two? So a little bit like you. And we’re gonna post 20 articles on there initially to get a foundation.
And that’s pretty much the MRIs deciding what are the best keywords to put onto here. We’ll put that into content and then we’ll get that posted. Then we’re gonna sit back and see what happens with it. And we’re just rinse and repeat. Rinse and [01:06:00] repeat. Rinse and repeat.
Captain Fi: I love the song from Di
I’m not gonna sing it cause I’m got terrible voice, but She sings it all the time. Yeah. Keyword, keywords, content and links. Yeah, that’s it. It’s
Matt: nots. Anyone thinks keywords, contents, and links. And then the mr actually that’s a really good point. Kafi keywords and content. See how I just focus on that?
Cause that’s in the website. Build. The mra, if you’ve bought a website, as you know, is to do an initial tidy up of the site, fix it up, and then it just boils down to exactly the same thing, keywords and contents. And then once the sites are established, it’s that last bit. We work on links, just getting people to link to the site.
Captain Fi: Yeah, it’s been exciting. Actually. That’s been the focus of the last sessions in the Champions program has been looking at internal links and external links. And I’m super excited for the guest posting I’m, I have a red hot crack.
Matt: You are going to love that Captain Fire you watch
Captain Fi: Oh, I’ve got many sites.
Matt: You don’t realize that. Yeah. You’ve got [01:07:00] many. You don’t even realize that you’ve got the skills now. You’ve got this, you’ve been with us now for a year. You’re gonna nail it. You are.
Captain Fi: Honestly, it’s been so cool to see the domain authority. And so for people that aren’t familiar the domain authority is one metric about a website’s back backlink profile.
And it’s been really cool to see my domain authority , start out at one. They all start out at one. Yeah. And see them go out. And I think my highest one is pushing 30 now, which is really cool. . Yeah. So I mean it’s, it’s taken a few years, but cause you, it’s a lag rhythmic scale, so Yeah.
Matt: 30 on a site that you’ve built is really good. That’s impressive.
Captain Fi: Yeah. So I feel like it’s definitely had that lighthouse moment that you talk about. And now you go
so Captain Fi. We have taught you ,
I’m using all the lingo
Matt: you’ve hit a domain authority of 30 on sites that you’ve built that’s impress.
Captain Fi: Now, Matt, I’m not gonna finish this interview. I’d like a do with everyone else cuz I normally go, , what would you tell your younger self? What’s your favorite book? Now? I already know yours cuz you’ve already Yeah, you already, already told us back in 2020.
So I just wanted to give you a massive shout out and say [01:08:00] thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Really appreciate you and Liz and all of the work from the team to get the masterclass up. It was awesome. , it was three and a bit hours. It was so much information and value out of there, so thank you. I set,
Matt: A Matt’s personal record. That’s the longest I’ve ever done a q and a because I wanted to get through all the questions that all your community asked and everyone stayed on and was just asking all these questions. Anyway, it was really good.
Captain Fi: It was cool. I picked up a few new points, which is awesome, lifelong learning.
But also thanks again for coming on the pod again today. It was great to hear from you a bit of an update about how you and Liz are going. It was awesome to talk about the mindset aspect. And just to talk about, business and your day to day life post financial independence.
As always, I’ll just put it out there. Is there anything else you wanna have a chat about today before we finish up?
Matt: I think if you, if you’ve come this far in this interview, obviously you’re interested in this. So start your learning, Get on our masterclass.
I’m gonna ask for it here. Call to action. But seriously, you owe it to yourself [01:09:00] and your family to at least learn. How this all works and how the strategy works. So start educating yourself on how you can do this as well. And my number one bit of advice if you’re interested in this sort of stuff, is build assets you definitely want to be owning.
And now again, I’m not, obviously I’m not giving financial advice, I’m just giving personal advice that what I’ve seen observing across our community owning website assets is a hugely smart thing to do for the future. I definitely urge you to check it out because these things are always worth. Really good money.
It’s literally like money in the bank and they’re really good cash and they don’t even have to be that big. You can have a portfolio of little tiny websites that don’t look that exciting, but it’s funny how they compound over time. So I would definitely urge you to get out there and just even build websites for yourself.
Just play with it as you heard off. Captain Fire Fire’s pretty good fun. Once you get into it’s really, it’s very addictive. [01:10:00] It’s really good fun, and they’re like little tiny cash cows. So get out there and have fun with.
Captain Fi: It is a lot of fun. I, pinch myself. I can’t wait to jump on the computer and get through the keyword research.
It’s, we’ve got like a little obsession, so if people wanna get in touch with Matt or Liz Rad I’ve got some links in the show notes. You can just head over to their website, just the e-business institute.com au. They’re both really active on YouTube. They post a lot of awesome interviews.
As Matts mentioned, they’ve got some really cool interviews with high profile entrepreneurs. Yu what is one of ’em? Another one Al Borz who we briefly touched on with Cars Guide. He did a massive sellout to, I think it was Channel nine, Know. Channel nine, Yeah. Channel nine in the 60 something million.
Amazing. He’s a personal
Matt: friend. He speaks at all our events and yeah.
Captain Fi: Yeah, I’ve seen him rock up in his Lamborghini. It’s pretty impressive. Yeah. So check ’em out on YouTube.
Matt: YouTube and and our blog is probably the best spot.
Yeah, because what I, what our mission is to inspire people to do this. And so we love sharing stories with successful [01:11:00] people and our students and people like yourself. Captain Fire. I would encourage anyone that’s interesting is to go and listen to those stories. You just gotta see that it can be done.
Then you can get out there and make it happen yourself.
Captain Fi: It’s good stuff. So yeah don’t be afraid. Jump on watch some of the videos. It’s pretty inspirational stuff. I’ve got a breakdown of my experience with the Business Institute courses and as so that’s on captain fire.com.
But also don’t be afraid to check out the other interviews that I’ve done with Matt episode 11 and I think the one with Liz was episode 23. So again, thanks so much Matt for time today. It’s been great. I look forward to logging in tomorrow afternoon for the next lesson.
Matt: looking forward to seeing you there, Captain Fire and your awesome comments that you always are very participated, which is great. It helps inspire everyone. No, that’s cool and thanks so much for having me and it’s definitely a pleasure being on here again.
My pleasure mate. Catch you next time. No worries.
See ya.
Thanks for listening to another [01:12:00] episode of the Captain Fire Financial Independence Podcast. To read the transcript or check out the show notes, head over to www.captainfire.com for all the details. If you have a question for the captain, make sure to get in touch. You might even make it on the airwaves.
You can reach me online through the Captain Fire contact form or get in touch through the socials. I’m active on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a number of online finance and investing forums. And finally, remember the information presented on the show and the links provided are for general information purposes only.They should not be taken as constituting professional financial advice. You should always do your own research when making any financial decisions and make sure it’s appropriate for your personal circumstance.[01:13:00]
Conclusion
Captain FI is a Retired Pilot who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. He is passionate about Financial Independence and writes about Personal Finance and his journey to reach FI at 29, allowing him to retire at 30.
