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Today, I'm sharing a podcast interview I did with Perry Rosenbloom. I think you will find his story interesting, because he was able to build a large website based on his passion for hiking and the outdoors.
The site was so successful that he expanded his business into other related sites and was able to quit his full-time job about a year ago! These are the kind of success stories that we all love to hear about.
However, Perry's journey has not always been rosy. Shortly after quitting his full-time job, Google Panda hit which had a big impact on his sites. He has since been able to recover his primary site, but he has also been savvy in diversifying his business income as well.
Here's Perry's Story:
Perry went to film school and was always passionate about writing. However, after discovering that being a screenwriter is a tough business and doesn't pay well for those that don't make it, he took up waiting tables to make ends meet.
However, along the way he was able to work 2 summers as a guide at Glacier National Park and absolutely LOVED it! So, while he wasn't waiting tables, or hiking, Perry decided to create a site with his writing and hiking skills called: Glacier-National-Park-Travel-Guide.com . He wrote content based on his experience and was able to share information about Glacier's hidden gems that many other sites didn't.
The site wasn't an overnight success, but Perry had planned on the long term. After almost a year of writing great content, he had only made a couple hundred dollars from Google Adsense and other Affiliate programs. But in the second year, the traffic started to grow consistently and so did the income.
With his new found site building and monetizing skills, Perry went out and built several other niche sites as well. Then about a year ago, he pulled the trigger and quit his full-time job. The majority of his website income was and still is from his Glacier Travel Guide site. However, he is now involved in SEO consulting, Domain Flipping, and more.
I think you will really like the example he shares of how he got some GREAT high quality links to his Binocular review site. The strategy he shares is something that anyone could implement as an effective “white hat” link building technique.
Here are some the topics covered in the Podcast:
- Glacier-National-Park-Travel-Guide.com
- Writing great content
- The importance of keyword research
- AvantLink.com (affiliate network Perry uses)
- Binocular Review Site
- Linkbuilding strategies that work
- Perry's new project: OutdoorEquipment.com
- Domain Flipping
- Perry's Blog: BrighterVision.com
- Follow Perry on Twitter: @seosherpas
Overall, I think you will love Perry's story about how he's been able to build an online business around his passion for the outdoors.
As always, I'd love to hear and comments or questions that you have below!
Enjoy the podcast? I would LOVE it if you left me a review on iTunes here! (This helps others know that my podcast is worth listening too).
Listen to the Podcast Here!
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16 Comments
Conversation
Loved this interview. I felt like I could relate to Perry and what he’s doing on many levels.
What I found most encouraging was the fact that he said he went a long time without making any substantial money from the site, which has made me think I need to lower my expectations somewhat for my fairly young authority/info site I’m creating.
Great job guys. More of this please 🙂
Thanks Dan, glad you enjoyed the interview! (And yes, there will be more 🙂 )
Glad you loved the interview, Dan! I still find it hard when building a new website to delay monetizing it. And when I fail in my delay, I always end up getting disappointed lol.
It can get disheartening at times, but it’s worth the fight!
~ Perry
I would rate this podcast your best Spencer if only you’ve focused on few things to cover.
Therefore, may I ask another podcast session with Perry to go over let’s say his Consulting business.
Here are few questions that I would like to have addressed:
How does Perry gets his clients (Besides his blog)?
How about the back end fulfillment, does he complete the work himself or outsource it?
How does Perry collects payments from his clients? What type of contract are used?
How does Perry manage his clients exceptions?
How does he keep his clients informed about his campaigns? Do they play a role on promotions?
How does Perry measure a success for said SEO campaign i.e more clients, more traffic, conversion increase ect…?
I’ll stop here…let’s take this a notch this coming year Spencer. Clearly others are doing some cool stuff out there.
I agree, there was a lot that could have been covered. I tried to focus mostly on his websites – the consulting business was not really what this podcast was about.
Great interview guys. I love following along with Internet Marketers’ journeys.
A question for you Perry, when you were just starting out with Glacier-National-Park-Travel-Guide.com, how did you determine what was great content for the site?
Yes, you can base your posts off of you keyword research, but how do you come up with that great content? Are you mixing in personal stories/experiences and etc to the posts?
@Youssef – Answers to all of those questions would have taken another full interview 🙂
@Larry – Great question! I didn’t know anything about Internet Marketing then. I knew a little bit about keyword research because of the CMS I used (Site Build It).
I basically spent about a week doing keyword research and cherry picking keywords that I thought were relevant to my site (and future site). Then I just wrote articles that were unique and incorporated them in.
Sorry there’s nothing more concrete about it.
Great Podcast, I love hearing these stories about building quality sites through great content. I get frustrated sometimes trying to follow all the new IM tactics and love how content marketing is the best long run resource.
I feel really stupid but I have NO IDEA of how to listen to a podcast on my computer (I don’t have an IPhone) – it must be my age!!! I miss so many of your great interviews. I have Windows 8 on a brand new computer so could you PLEASE tell me what to do so that I can follow these interviews.
P.S. Happy New Year
Ruby, at the end of the post, there is a player. You just click the play button (looks like an arrow). Just click the arrow and listen…enjoy!
Nice podcast guys…I NEED more domain flipping information! That’s awesome…I’m heading over to your site to learn more.
Great podcast! This podcast and Spenser’s software long tail pro have inspired me to approach my website building a lot different than I have done in the past. So far I found a pretty good keyword and I have started building the site. Two weeks ago I started building the site and I have added 10 articles. One article is ranked 14 and a few others around 20-40 and two that are 500+. I plan on adding content daily for a month and then slowing it down after that. But my question to you Spencer and Perry is, when do you guy’s start to monetize your new sites? I haven’t added any adsense or affiliate code yet. Thanks again for the great info!
One I start getting more than just a few visitors a day, or when I’m ranking well. The could be a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
Great podcast! I particularly enjoyed Perry’s choice of website (i.e., one based on an activity [hiking in Glacier National Park] that he enjoyed). Not sure if I have the guts or patience to follow my own interests when I finally design my niche websites, though (I think I’m going do niche sites on whatever keyword has the lowest competition, regardless of subject matter!).
Keep up the great work, and I think I’m going to tweet this link, if you don’t mind. 🙂
Question for Perry, or maybe Spencer can answer…what are the advantage to using hyphens in your website? I checked out of curiosity and saw that Perry also owns the non-hyphenated version. Is it due to ease of reading, as its not all clumped together?
What a great story. I love seeing people succeed in this business. But what it really brings home to me is going for your passion, and sticking with it. Learning along the way.
It’s like the old saying, if you love doing what you are doing, you will never work another day in your life.