The Interview

1. Where do you live?

I live in the Czech Republic. I grew up here, but I also think it’s a great country to live in. The way of life is very western, but the prices are much more friendly compared to the US, UK, etc.

2. When did you start creating content?

My journey was a bit more complicated, but I would say about 2018.

3. Are you a full-time Creator?

Yes. I’m doing this full-time for about two years.

4. What was the “Click” that made you decide you can make full-time money online.

When I earned my first $ from Amazon Affiliate, then I knew the sky was the limit. I realized I could do this full-time when I made more money in a month on my sites than people make in a year at their jobs.

It may seem like an afterthought, but I’m a very risk-averse person, so I couldn’t imagine working only for myself for quite a while.

5. How many niche sites have you created?

I don’t remember exactly, but about 30 sites.

6. How many are you still running now?

Actively 5. I have a bunch of others that are just sitting and aging, waiting for their time.

7. Have you sold any sites or online businesses? And what was the ROI like?

Yes, just at the beginning of this year, I sold my first site. I invested about $10k into the site and got back $340k. So the gross ROI was like 3,300%. Not too shabby if you ask me, haha.

8. How many sites or online businesses have failed or not gotten going?

I only have one site that is a complete failure. The rest are basically just waiting for me to (and if) I start working on them.

9. How much are you earning each month?

• $10,001 – $50,000

10. What are your current streams of revenue?

• Affiliate Sales
• Display Ads

11. What are your Top 3 on-page SEO strategies?

Honestly, I keep things very simple in terms of on-page. I try to have keywords in all relevant places. Use headings, images, tables, lists… Anything that makes sense and makes the content great for the reader.

That’s my #1 goal, publish content that is helpful for the reader. I don’t care that much about on-page SEO. Then I do stuff like breadcrumbs, table of contents, interlinking, etc. But I would say that’s very basic and nothing special, I don’t have any secret on-page SEO strategy.

12. What’s the biggest issue(s) that you’re facing today?

How much I should scale my business. I have more topics than I can ever cover, and I’m constantly thinking about how much I want to scale my business.

I have a positive ROI, a strategy that works, so I should make the most of it, but as I mentioned, I’m a very risk-averse person, and I like simple, lean things. That’s the way I try to keep my business. Lean.

I do this because it is the ultimate lifestyle business. It gives me great flexibility and freedom. And I kind of feel like once you start scaling things up, that’s when this kind of goes wrong. And you lose some of your freedom. And I don’t want to turn this into a “classic” job.

And then there is Google, of course, haha. Their updates and especially featured snippet sitewide bans.

13. What tool(s) do you rely on the most?

• Google SERP
• Whatsmyserp
• Ahrefs
• Google Sheets
• Google Docs

14. What has been the biggest mistake you made?

I wouldn’t say I made any big mistakes… I could have started doing this full-time sooner. And then probably also an earlier move away from affiliate to display ads. But that’s about all I can think of.

15. What has been the best decision you’ve made?

Focusing solely on publishing info articles on low competition keywords monetized with display ads.

16. What’s one thing that you felt accelerated your journey the most?

Getting a mentor.

17. What’s your 12 month goal?

I don’t have any super specific 12-month goal. I have five sites now, and I’m going to add new content to them every day. And I’ll see where they are in a year. That’s it, haha.

If there’s an interesting opportunity to buy a site or domain, or I see a niche I like, I’ll add another one. Or vice versa, if I get an interesting offer or it makes sense to me, I’ll sell one of the sites.

I make a lot of day-to-day decisions. I don’t have an exact plan of where I want to be in a year. I know what to do, but not exactly where it will take me.

But I have a personal goal that I’d like to start focusing more on myself. Work on my body, work less, rest more and travel more.

18. How do you stay up to date on the SEO, affiliate marketing, display ad, and other news?

Basically just Twitter, my friends who work in the same industry and private mastermind. It seems to me that not that much new is happening anyway. And it also seems to me that from a certain point on, it’s not so important to study as you already know pretty much everything you need to succeed. I rarely learn anything new in SEO anymore. So my time is better invested in doing some actual work.

19. What do you eat or drink for fuel to keep going?

Water.

20. Where can people follow you?

My main medium is Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexNicheSites 

And then, I have a case study on my blog justalex.com where I build a site on an aged domain from Odys.

BONUS: Anything else you’d like to share that can help others?

Keep going. The most important part of our business is patience and consistency. Don’t give up too soon. And don’t try to fight over huge keywords. Pick your battles.