James de Lacey is a great example of what you can accomplish in the online business space in just a short time.
He’s a rugby and strength and conditioning coach who, thanks to Covid, got into SEO and online business out of necessity.
Now he has 2 successful fitness brands, multiple side projects, and is working his way towards 6 figures per month.
He joins us on the podcast to share lots of important insights into brand building, monetization, and more!
A key takeaway from James’s insights is the emphasis on creating valuable content to establish authority in the industry.
Thanks to his sports science background, James produces informative and engaging content across writing, podcasts, and videos – including reaction videos and detailed reviews.
He highlights the necessity of demonstrating expertise and trustworthiness in the fitness niche, stressing the importance of outbound links to reputable sources and in-depth analysis as integral components of his content strategy.
In terms of E-E-A-T and the HCU update, he shares strategies that helped him enhance his site’s visibility and expertise and shares tips on changes in review titles to improve rankings and create unbranded mentions on other platforms for brand recognition.
James also shares insights into the membership model for stable revenue, highlighting some of the challenges he’s experienced along the way. And touches on social media and how Pinterest SEO can still be used to boost impressions.
Overall it’s an inspiring discussion with James showing an impressive ability to juggle multiple projects while still managing to maintain quality and consistency.
Watch The Interview
Topics James de Lacey Covers
- His background in sports science
- Getting into online business
- His first site
- Pursuing his passion and expertise
- Acquiring a brand
- Diversifying content
- Benefits of his podcast
- Monetization methods
- Doubling down on video
- How his background helps in his niche
- Linking to authority sources
- How he writes review titles
- Unbranded mentions
- Membership pros and cons
- His sales process
- Social media strategy
- Pitfalls of Facebook
- Juggling a ton of things
- Amazon Vine
- Productivity tips
- And a whole lot more…
Links & Resources
Transcription
Jared: Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. Today. We are joined by James DeLacy. James. Welcome on board
James: Well, thanks for having me on Jared. I appreciate you having me on here. I’ve had you on One of, one of my podcasts, I guess I can call it my podcast, one of my podcasts too. So it’s good to be on the other end being a guest this time.
We were,
Jared: we were joking before we hit record about how we got two veteran podcast hosts here. It’s going to be an interesting one. You get to take a break from the hosting seat and be a guest, which is exciting because we got a lot of Fun things to go through. Um, uh, you are a great host. You host several podcasts.
You hosted, uh, this week in digital marketing with Jackie Chow, who’s also been on before, uh, Forte growth podcast as well, um, which is a newer one, um, previously the host of the niche website builders podcast, may it rest in peace. That was a good one as well. So no secret to, uh, to being on podcasts. Why don’t you, um, uh, I’m sure people have heard your voice in a very variety of different podcasts, but usually as the host, why don’t you give us some backstory?
A little bit more about you because we’re talking about you and your brands today.
James: Yeah. So hopefully if people do recognize my voice, they can put a face to the voice if they’re watching this on video, but yeah, host all those hosted niche website builders, but I have two of my own sites that I own and run a sweet science of fighting, which is geared towards combat sports, strength, conditioning for those.
Then I have lift big, eat big. That’s. Guess kind of more general fitness, but I get towards strength sports So weightlifting strongman and then just kind of like the general fitness era building muscle etc on top of that And those are kind of my two main sites that I work on mainly got some other things on the side We can go into in a little bit as well But in terms of my background as well I have a master’s in sport and exercise science and spent my career working in professional and international sport Until COVID hit, wait, can I say that word?
I hope I don’t get you demonetized or something on YouTube, but, uh, I
Jared: say it all the time, so I haven’t gotten it all yet.
James: Perfect. So until that came across and then ended up moving online. Cause long story short, was stuck in Romania from like April to December trying to get home. No contract. Yeah. It was pretty ruthless at that time.
Um, so they ended up finding my way online and I mean, I was already writing and stuff a lot there for. As a coach, typically you’re running for other websites quite often to get your ideas out, your name out, et cetera. And it kind of helps there, but I didn’t realize you can make money online through actually like, I didn’t know this even existed, blogging, SEO and all that stuff.
So I found my way there and then kind of just built out what I have now somehow stumbled into the world of kind of digital marketing SEO. And I had no business sense before this. Like I didn’t give a shit about business or money before. It’s all I was, was just coaching and, and training. Um, And just managed to kind of meet a whole bunch of different people like yourself and various other people on the podcast and things learned a lot and uh, now I’m here.
Jared: What that, that’s gotta be quite the transition I would imagine going and not like a planned transition, right? Like it’s one thing for you to say, Oh, I’m coaching, but for whatever reason, like the grinds getting to me, I don’t know the passion I used to, let me try to figure out what’s next. Oh, this.
Making money online thing looks good. Let me plan for that. Let me start something. But you kind of had to pivot quickly. Was that a tough transition or did you, I mean, I’m just curious how you went so quickly from not being online, not knowing this world to having that be your income.
James: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it was, it was tough in a sense of, I guess, changing identity, but I’ve kind of kept that still there, right?
Cause my sites are still in my career. So I kind of kept that. It wasn’t initially, I started with a, a bunny rabbit website, right? We had a pet bunny in Romania. That was my first site. It still makes a few dollars a month.
Jared: You don’t look like a bunny rabbit kind of guy. My
James: wife, my wife loved our little bunny.
And, uh, we. We had, uh, we had that. So that was my first site. Cause I learned that from, uh, income school was kind of where I first started back there and then basically went through that. I started after what, five or so months. I can’t write on this anymore. Like. I just don’t care. And then I was, I had an older site that I just had, which is my combat sport site, and they had like one article on it and I checked and it was like getting like a hundred visits a day or something like that for just from one article on, on a WordPress thing.
I was like, Oh shit. Okay. I’ll, uh, double down on this cause that was what I wanted to do. And I’ve just kind of grown since then and learned bits and pieces from various people and applied it to the sites.
Jared: Now, let’s, let’s kind of get into how you got into the two sites you’re working on now. The first one was Sweet Science of Lifting, uh, Fighting.
com.
James: Yeah, Sweet Science of Fighting. That’s the one. People mix them up so much. People will do Lift Big, Eat Big, and they’ll do Eat Big, Lift Big. Or I’m just like completely just like miss everything. I’m like, God damn it. This is pulling
Jared: out the dyslexic part of my brain. That is not going to help be clear about this, but you have, you have the, the fighting site and you have the lifting.
Maybe we should just start with that. We should go with that. And if you want to know the URLs, we’ll put them in the show notes. Um, which one. Uh, came to you first, which one are you talking about that you, you had prior and that you were noticing had traffic? Like, how did you get into these websites and get going?
Um, and I presume this was during 2020 while you were, um, stuck over in Romania. Yeah. Yeah.
James: So the sweet thoughts of fighting one, I got that domain. I bought that between jobs. So if anyone knows like professional sport, you’re always between jobs cause it’s, it’s crazy. Um, and that was in 2018. And I liked writing just as a.
It’s a passion thing so I could go through the research and dissect things on a certain topic, put it up. And so I had one topic up there from 2018 when I was between jobs to keep myself busy and I had that there. That’s when I came back to it in 2020. So that was the first site. And I kind of built that up.
The original goal was, I think everyone at that time, you know, as an affiliate, like that was as far as I was really thinking. Um, it’s, it’s evolved far past that now, but that’s just. At that time, and then in 2021, I think it was September is when I actually acquired lift big eat big from the original owner.
And if people are in, I guess that fitness space or online, they’ll probably know the brand because it was a very well known popular brand from back in like the early 2010s when it first started. So it has a lot of age, but I had literally had nothing, nothing. And I was like, I had been hacked on WordPress.
I was now on works and had like no SEO, no email list, no nothing. It was just getting branded. Branded search traffic. Um, so it was a pretty sweet little deal. That one. I’m
Jared: looking at an age rest. Yeah. It looked like it had some great history and then you’re right. It kind of scaled off there as time went on.
Maybe if, um, we’ll get into the nitty gritty cause you’re doing a lot of cool things like this. Isn’t like you said, your classic ads and affiliate site with all the things that you’re involved in. And I’m so excited to learn more about it, but maybe catch people up to where it’s at right now. People love to hear.
Any metrics you’re comfortable sharing, whether it’s profit, whether it’s revenue, whether it’s number of page views, number of posts you have, whatever the metrics you’re comfortable sharing are.
James: Yeah, for sure. So, Sweet Towns Vining’s been on a slow decline in traffic since September, which is based on what a lot of other people in the same niches are seeing, it seems to be across the board, but revenue stayed pretty stable across that.
I mean, it depends, it depends on the month really, but it can range anywhere from like 4 to 5 to up to like 10k a month, depending on what it’s doing, but it’s mainly, it’s pretty stable right now, it’s mainly, Monetize through my membership, so my training program. So it used to be one off digital product sales.
Uh, into like a funnel with causes that I lumped everything into a membership. I can dive into that too. Cause I made some shocking mistakes starting that, uh, and then obviously the affiliate stuff on top of that with the membership plus the YouTube channel and the podcast, uh, all lumped in there, I think that’s what I got.
And I actually put display ads on a semi recently as well, just to monetize some of the pages I couldn’t monetize with the digital products and things like that, but rethinking if I should keep them on or not, not because of a. Uh, I guess SEO play, but just more because I just hate having display ads on there.
And then, uh, the lift big, which I acquired is monetized exactly the same way. Um, I’m taking them now, I’m taking both of the sites, slightly different directions, but just overall it’s monetized by membership training programs. Again, the affiliate content, the ads, uh, has YouTube and podcast as well, but they’re a little smaller.
Oh, wait, in terms of traffic for lift big, big as well, that now. I think it gets around like 90, 000 people a month. So nothing crazy yet, but the, there’s a huge gross ready to go on it as it goes. I mean, when I got it, it was getting a hundreds a month of that just branded search. So yeah, it’s been a good turnaround on that one.
And
Jared: how much, how much a month is that one making? Uh, that
James: one’s doing like three to four right now. Three to four.
Jared: Good. Okay. Okay. Wow. So five figures a month typically, and you’re growing both brands and it sounds like you’re doing both. Very similarly, which I think is very interesting. Um, and so I really, uh, I, so many ways we could go right now because it’s not your, like you said, it’s not your classic.
Well, I wrote a couple articles. I got some traffic. I started monetizing the traffic. Like you’re involved in. So many different activities for the brands. You’ve got a podcast, you’re on YouTube, way too many. Yeah. How do you manage all that? And, and, and I guess, which ones are the, do you think the drivers of the most, um, which ones have the most influence on your earnings every month?
James: I think the, the best thing I ever did for sweet times fighting was start the podcast. That was easily the best thing I ever did for that brand. The podcast has a pretty big following, um, uh, off YouTube and even. On YouTube to an extent, but off YouTube, a huge sticky following the connections and relationships I’ve made through that podcast and the combat sports world has been massive since my background mainly comes in the rugby world, and I’ve had a few of my colleagues and friends on and coaches and stuff on the podcast to talk from that kind of area, but I’ve kind of, yeah, almost worms my way into that kind of combat sports world.
With the coaches there, which has been it’s been so awesome. So we’re collaborating on a few different things with different people there. I’ve collaborated on a few other coaches where they’ve done training programs and we just rev share. What comes in from their training programs, which has been really good.
Um, so yeah, the podcast has been my favorite right now. Um, so right now the two different directions I’m kind of taking both sites, sweet sounds of fighting. I’m trying to make more of a YouTube video, I guess, brands. I don’t want to say brand like that, but that’s the direction I’m taking the content because I’ve based, I’ve pretty much covered all the written content around physical preparation for a lot of the combat sports and.
Well, it’s all well and good to have that there, but I think the real value and the real drive that’s going to grow that thing bigger is going to have my face all over YouTube with different videos. So I’ve been, I’ve been doing kind of frictionless low F, not low effort, but, uh, easy to produce videos, which have been reaction videos.
So screen record, uh, authority figure, which can be, you know. lawyer, CEO, or whatever someone is, uh, reacts or critiques or whatever. Um, another authority figure, which would be the athlete. And then, uh, the, uh, MMA strength and conditioning routine, it’s just a video. And I’m sitting there basically talking through, uh, what, why, how do I agree?
Do I don’t agree, et cetera. And those have been taking off pretty well and got my subscribers relatively quickly versus a straight informational video, which I’ll still do, but I need to get. I’ve been churning through video editors because they’re all so unreliable so far. Um, but this stuff I don’t need to do anything before editing.
So that’s, that’s the direction I’m taking sweet times of fighting. The written content is still there. I’ll still put up affiliate stuff and update some articles, but that’s not my main priority anymore on, on the site is driving the video and then getting those people to convert into the membership and email lists and et cetera.
For lift big, eat big, I’m doubling down on written content on there because there’s so much to do. It is. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of holes in the affiliate style best articles in the fitness space, even though it might seem saturated, there’s a lot of holes to go in. And I’m ranking for a few different bits and pieces, doing the same thing on some partnership websites and exactly the same topics.
And so I’m doubling down on written content, specifically affiliate stuff. The membership is still there with the training programs and things, which. I mainly sell the membership stuff through the email lists on both sites. Um, and then obviously with the Lift Big Epic as well, we have the YouTube that came with it and the social channels, like we have like a 90, 000 follower Facebook page and all sorts of stuff, but dude, it’s so hard to crack.
A social channels that have been grown by a previous owner and that’s been neglected for five years. It is so damn hard. So I’m just going to give it up on this.
Jared: So you clearly have the capacity to handle a lot of stuff going on. Well, that
James: doesn’t take into account. The podcast for both and then the other random projects on the side.
Like, yeah, it’s been pretty, pretty,
Jared: pretty, I was going to bring that up. I mean, I complain about having to crank out enough podcasts for the niche pursuits podcast. And I’m bragging about how we almost hit a hundred podcasts in 2023. Here you’ve got two podcasts, uh, that you’re hosts for, plus podcasts for each of your brands.
That’s four podcasts by the, by what I count. Yeah. And you’re producing YouTube content . Yeah. So, uh, okay. Um, hey, let’s go to the, um, let’s go to the story. If you could tell us really quickly about buying Live Big Eat. Big. com and you talked about how you bought that in 2021 and you had a lot of work you had to do.
I think that’s an interesting story for a lot of people, especially people who might be looking for a new opportunity this year. Um, you know, we haven’t talked on the podcast in a while about buying a project and some of the challenges that come with it, but then the opportunity you were crazy. You’ve already told us like it was getting a couple hundred page views a month and you know, two plus years later at 90, 000 page views a month.
So you’ve done great work with it, but what were some of the things that you had to do to that site when you first got
James: it? Yeah, well, the biggest thing was when I was looking, so it was a private deal. So he just posted on Instagram, like he’s either going to shut it down or someone can take over it. Then we ended up getting chatting and ended up buying it.
And if you think about the domain itself, like. Links from crossfit. com, bodybuilding. com, all these other big ass fitness websites, 10 years of age on top of it and everything else is, and I was like, okay, and plus branded traffic, like over 200 searches a month of branded traffic. like, yeah, this is a no brainer.
Plus all the products, all the programs. So all the assets with it, all the designs, everything. And I was like, okay, so I can just literally hit the ground running selling the programs on there. But, um, the biggest things were. It was on Wix initially, oh, at this time, and there was just like no SEO done, no email list, nothing.
So the first thing was I just kind of moved it to WordPress, I went through all the old content and saw what had links and just kind of either put those articles back up or if they were relevant enough I was going to write a new article on that topic or have an article similar topic and just kind of redirect it and then the rest of the content kind of just left didn’t serve any purpose and then once I got that down it was just having the WordPress site trying to get as much content going as possible and then setting up the funnels and whatnot for the digital products which were at that time being sold as one off I don’t know if there’s any more detail you want me to go into there.
No, that’s
Jared: good. I mean, transitioning off of a old or a different CMS for lack of a better term into a new one is, um, is challenging enough. Like, did you find that as you started publishing content to this site, um, it, it, it started getting traffic and reflecting, I guess, the value of a, of an age site like that?
Or did you have to do certain things to kind of, uh, I guess, uh, revitalize it,
James: if you will. No, this one started, it started going, if I recall, I can’t remember exactly, but it was, it grew from, as I started to publish content, I didn’t have to do anything extra, put it that way.
Jared: Oh, that’s the dream. I bought a site.
I’ve talked about it on this podcast. Actually, Spencer interviewed me a year or so ago where I bought a site that. Uh, had a lot of similar metrics. It was like a 16 year old domain, had a really strong branded presence in the industry, and it took like a year of publishing content before it started really responding
James: well to it.
Damn, such a long time, man. It’s so hit and miss though. I’ve had, I’ve had expired or aged domains that I’ve redirected and stuff that I swear I’ve done nothing and others that may have done some making it’s, yeah, it’s such a crap shoot.
Jared: I definitely want to spend the majority of the time talking about some of the things you’re doing that are a little bit more unique or that we haven’t talked about like memberships and your podcast and that sort of stuff.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t at least ask because you have gotten that site to 90, 000 page views a month. What would you say is, um, if you could draw one or two unique things that you’re doing with your content that have led to its growth like that?
James: Uh, I think it’s just because it’s my career background helps because I’ve talked about this on some other.
Podcasts and shows and stuff, but fitness is seen as a saturated market, but it’s just saturated with dog shit content. If you look at, if you search any term, you’ll get presented the same magazines, you know, men’s health, very well fit, whatever else. But the content is typically bad and most of the time is actually like factually wrong content, which is, I don’t understand how it, how it stays there, but it means that yes, you’re probably not going to rank for how to get a bigger arms cause that’s like dr nineties all the way down, but there’s so many other spots you can get in there with the content and.
I won’t say it’s because I do these things, but some of the things that help is I have a lot of references throughout my stuff. So each page is almost like a literature review. So if I take that same example of how to get bigger biceps as an example, it’ll be like the anatomy was references. It’ll be.
The exercises with videos and pictures of me doing it, there will be, uh, references of say like muscle activation studies or hypertrophy studies or whatever it is in there to back up what I’m saying. And I don’t know, this is, I haven’t done any testing, nothing like that. I ain’t no SEO. I just do stuff. I just use SEO to rank my head, to run the business.
But, um, having those outbound links. To those journal articles, I think helps with, you know, some of that ranking. I do the same thing on my, on my buyer’s guide. So like, I’ll talk like I’ll break down, for example, under certain supplements, I rank for some pretty competitive review terms now on my site and on partner sites.
Um, because I’ll break down the ingredients list. You know, these studies, uh, talk about, Okay. Uh, this does potentially having this effect, um, but then I’ll go deeper typically and kind of go why there’s differences between sin studies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If I’m planning to do a really deep in depth review like that,
Jared: obviously so much conversation throughout the last say 12 months or 18 months has been around topics like EAT, which is expertise, um, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, um, haven’t had to say that in a while actually.
So that’s, that’s, that’s fun. That’s why. Yeah. And then obviously we had the helpful content update that almost was, I mean, I don’t want to over synopsis or give an over summary of it, but certainly seems to have, uh, have, have rewarded people who have almost taken an anti SEO approach to their website.
Perhaps people like yourself, like what have you, how has your site responded since EAT and the HCU has come into play? And at the same time, like maybe a bigger or more broad question is what have you done to make sure Google sees and understands that you truly are an expert in this space? You’re not just kind of.
Making it up as you go. We’re doing some content research to, to produce a content.
James: I’ve got, I’ve got a few different things here and I’m going to refer back to people that I’ve like you, like you, I get to talk to a lot of different people in the space too. So I’ll, I’ll reference them as well. But firstly, yeah, I mentioned the sweethearts fighting one’s been on a slow decline.
It’s kind of leveled off and slowly trickling out with me, but it’s kind of just stayed stable and gone slightly up, um, in terms of things that are, that I’m doing. The first one is a change in the way I write some of my titles, uh, for my review stuff. So this is something that I’ve, I’ve been doing and it’s been, it’s been working like a, like a charm actually is instead of going, uh, let’s just talk, uh, here we go.
Monster, uh, monster energy drinks, zero ultra review 2024, right? Instead of that, I’ve write something like I tried a case of monster. Uh, uh, for 30 days or something like that. Here’s my 2024 review, or here’s my 2024 experiences. So it’s more of a u, I guess, YouTube style clickbait title. The the slug is still Monster zero Ultra Review, right?
But the titles become now. More experience based and that stuff’s been ranking really, really well. Um, you have a lot of people that said this podcast, so hopefully the serbs don’t become flooded with a bunch of I tried,
Jared: but we got a lot of people immediately changing all of their 2021 review titles
James: as we speak.
Yeah, so that’s something I’ve been doing. It’s been working really well. I haven’t cracked how I do the titles for the roundups. I’ve just kept it the same, like best energy drinks for XYZ. Um, I don’t know if there’s a way I can have more experience in that title, but yeah, for individual reviews, that’s something I’ve been doing, uh, in terms of myself, in terms of, I guess, creating the EAT on the site.
So I talked to a Gareth Boyd a lot. He owns the Forte Analytica with the Forte Growth podcast. He’s done a little bit of. Deep digging and stuff that we’re looking to do and doing more of is this idea of like unbranded mentions of your site and things like having other sites. Okay, we can talk about links, right?
Other sites kind of voting for your site, but this is more than just that. So it’s like almost having things in the title or articles. Dedicated to your brand or yourself. So things I’m looking to do. I have my, oh, that’s the other thing I forgot to mention. I look for you because I sell my own products too.
Um, yeah, I have my own, uh, supplement. That’s the other thing I was gonna turn into a fully fledged supplement company. Basically, that’s why I’m going to go down the affiliate line. I should have written all this stuff down, but, um, the supplements are there. So basically on my partnership sites, I’m going to write reviews.
On my own supplements on my own memberships and products. So it will be lift big, eat big review, whatever it is. That’s a, that’s an unbranded or unlinked mention, I should say, just like that. And so I want Google to basically pick up all these different entities on my brand. So if you search my brand without my site, there’s a shit ton of other sites talking about.
Two tons of fighting, let’s be eat big or James D’Alesi or whatever it is, uh, on there. Now I’ve already done a bunch of different posts on various sites as myself, uh, in the past, but just to strengthen it even further, that’s one of the big, big things that I’m looking to do this year too. You’ve got
Jared: a lot going on.
I’ll keep saying that.
James: Um, Well, that’s why I’ve completely forgot to mention about my own products, because something’s got to slip out the way. So I’m like, my head’s too damn
Jared: full. Full circle, full circle. So let’s move into this conversation about, about memberships. I know we’re ping ponging around a bit, but I kind of feel like.
It sounds like, you know, you have so much going on. Like I want to make sure topically, we kind of weighed our way into a couple of things, typically we’ll take like more of a timeline approach here, but this just lends itself so much better to like a topical approach. So if you’re listening and you’re like, why are we not going in order?
Um, I think topics will work better today. So let’s talk memberships because we haven’t really talked a lot about memberships, um, in a while. And, uh, I mean, memberships are known as in many ways, the holy grail of, of, of how you can earn money from your traffic. I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about how.
Ads is probably pays the least per visitor. Um, then affiliates to like an Amazon, uh, and then maybe an affiliate to, uh, a private affiliate program or one that you have a better connection with and on down we go. But membership, I mean, per visitor is often known as one of the most profitable ways to monetize your traffic.
Talk about maybe how you chose the membership route. Um, and then let’s get into how you started it. Any mistakes you made along the way that you think might help people. Yeah,
James: people say it’s a holy grail, but it’s probably the hardest bloody thing to do and I would advise most people to probably not do it.
It is so much damn work to do a membership, but I think my membership is just a little different in a sense that it’s less of a community and more of a ongoing subscription if that makes sense. So that makes it a little easier on my end. It doesn’t mean that I’ve done a good job of it because if I have more of a community aspect, I’ll probably have better retention and everything else on top of it.
So I went to a membership model mainly for a couple of reasons. One of them was the one off product sales is volatile, right? You know, make one K one month, three K another month, you know, whatever it is. And it’s kind of up and down, um, tweaking that funnel. And obviously it’s dependent on new traffic coming to the site.
And I had, I use basic miles. Beckler was. His videos were kind of like my inspiration around that whole funnel with the one time offer and everything. It worked really well. Um, but the membership, the second reason went to the membership is, uh, I could have, I could white label my own app. So I’d have my own training app.
All my programs would be in there. No one could take them, post them anywhere, et cetera. So that was the other reason, but I didn’t start like that because I started thinking that someone would pay just to be in a community membership. Now, obviously that stuff, it works in certain niches. And if you’re a certain type of person, I have a certain audience for sure.
Um, but most people don’t want to pay just to be and basically a glorified facebook group or wherever you’re hosting it. So when I launched it, I was like, oh yeah, you’ll get access to me and a bunch of other coaches that have been on the podcast will help you with any of your training stuff. And I launched that and that was like crickets.
I think I’ve got like one or two signups at the time and I was like shit because I was like, I should have the membership separate and I can keep selling the programs one off and almost like upsell them to the membership. And that just didn’t work. I launched that on both. No, I think I only launched that on one of them.
I can’t remember now, but I launched that initially. It sucked. I was like, okay, well, what I’m going to do, I’m just going to throw everything into that membership. Now I’m going to put everything under one subscription. What’s the description you get? Uh, everything I got, everything sorted for black Friday, two years ago on both sites and then launched them.
On both sides like that. And then that went gangbusters. So that works really, really well putting everything into one subscription. So if anyone is looking to start a membership, just put everything under that one thing. I started at relatively cheap and I’ve kind of increased the price over, over time, but yeah, that’s been relatively stable.
Um, that just the, obviously the hardest thing is getting new members. To stay ahead of the churn and if you’re someone who hates seeing people leave your stuff, you will, you will be butthurt every single day if you run a membership. So just bear that in mind. But yeah, it’s, it’s having two different skills, right?
Cause you’ve got to be able to bring the members in, which I think most people can probably do listen to this, to have some kind of marketing as your background, but retaining members, that’s a whole nother ballgame. Takes a lot of time and effort, which right now I haven’t put a lot of time and effort into, um, except for just kind of adding new training programs into the app.
Um, everything of mine’s in a discord community, uh, where people can, it’s kind of like, I think of it more of an add on. So it’s kind of like they come in, they get the program set in the disco community. I’m in there with a bunch of other people with, Hey, I need to exercise substitute for this, or I’ve got this fight coming up.
How should I. Uh, do you know XYZ so that kind of helps there or people want to post videos of their of their lifting they can post them in there too. So, I mean, it’s, it’s not active, active, but there’s people that post in there. Yeah. There’s posts in there every week. Put it that way.
Jared: What’s the most, is there like an 80, 20 in terms of the popularity of all the things you have in the program and what people like the most, take advantage of the most, like sign up the most for something because you have a lot in there.
It sounds like, and I’m just trying to, I’m wondering if like there’s something that moves the needle more than another thing. It’s just the
James: training programs. I can’t see what training programs they sign up for with the app. Um, but yeah, they’re basically all in there for the training programs. There’s courses like courses in there too, that I originally created, um, that were like basically teaching people how to, uh, the science behind and how to build their own training programs, strength training, conditioning.
Uh, I had a friend do a weight cutting one, have my wife do a sports psychology one. So there’s four of those courses in there. So those are in there. I don’t, they don’t get as much love, but that’s fine. Like I don’t really mind. It’s more the programs are the main, are the main, main product.
Jared: A lot of people will be familiar with maybe launching their own product or maybe a couple of products, right?
Like they have their website, they have their brand and they could launch a product or two. You’ve gone and taken those products and whether. You started with the products, it sounds like you did and then rolled them into a membership. Looking back on it now, several years in, I mean, you’re sticking with the membership.
It’s doing really well for you, but like for someone who is, who has some products and is listening, what are the advantages of rolling them into a membership? And then what are maybe the disadvantages of the things that, you know, you’ve seen be a disadvantage to not having them as standalone individual products that you can sell?
James: Yeah. That one of the big disadvantages is your average order value stays. Low because obviously you’re just kind of getting them on a monthly basis, right? Or, or on the yearly, like I try upsell to the yearly as much as possible. Um, the other disadvantages. No membership platform has everything you need.
It is such a pain. Like some will do, uh, I don’t know, maybe have a good interface to use, but you can’t do live video or you’re limited with live video with your members. Um, pretty much all of them have the most dog shit. Uh, funnel or no funnel at all. So you can’t do any kind of upselling or within your, within your sales funnel, so that kind of reduces your average order value too.
So those are the really big ones. And then obviously the, the retention and churn, all that kind of stuff. Uh, what was the other part of that question? It was like, why is, why start the membership?
Jared: Yeah. I mean, what are the advantages? I mean, the advantages may be like, is your, I’m trying to think, is you’re like, I suppose the ongoing revenue.
Go ahead. Revenue. Yeah.
James: Yeah. Long going revenue is probably the main thing. Like it’s not so volatile anymore. Like I know that I’m probably going to make X amount each month. And I know if I push out a sale, like I make most of my, most of my members of sales through sale periods, right. Through the email lists.
So 1 trials for the month, get a bunch of people in there and hope they stick on, um, or I’ll do big discounts on the annual. And your thing and get people in for the year just to get it like, like over the last bike Friday, um, that went pretty nuts. And I just like gave a huge discount on the annual and gave the 1 trial as an option for people doing what the annual and that pumped really well.
So, yeah, that’s one of the advantages there. It is lower ticket, but I think, yeah, people are becoming more subscription adverse, but I mean, I think you also have to have enough stuff that’s evergreen to keep people on. Like I’ve, I saw some, uh, fitness products recently. From a well known fitness, uh, I guess you could say coach or just fitness influencer and their app was.
Uh, I think it was three, eight week programs and it was 99 a month and then you get direct access to this person. And this person was pretty popular. Uh, so like basically their value of the length of the, someone would generally say on that might, let’s just say for six months, that’s 600 just as an example.
But then there’s nothing to keep that person on unless they really wanted to be in touch with this person. And I think that’s where. So if someone’s looking to do a membership, you’ve got to think, you know, what’s going to keep someone on for longer than your three month challenge or one month challenge.
It needs to be something that’s going to keep them going. Like, for example, I have my initial program. So only. Uh, eight or eight to like 14 weeks long, and I was like, well, you know, someone might go through that again. Sure, but there’s no reason for someone to stay in the membership on the app. And they’ve gone through the program a couple of times, even if they like it.
So then I ended up making additional programs that was like a whole year’s worth of training for that sport. So it kind of take them through different cycles so they could do these hallmark training programs of that a competition coming up, whatever. But then if they’re not in there, they can do like a whole year’s worth of training.
And then they can be on the app and that’s way a bit of value for them, but also means that at least it helps increase their attention, increase their attention for them to stay on there.
Jared: You say it’s a ton of work and maybe like devil’s advocate, so you create the content, you gotta, you know, log in once or twice a week, get on the discord, like what, what’s so much work about it?
You know, why is it so much more work than all the other mediums of content creation?
James: So the one off product, I get to sell it and I get to sit back and have a beer if I want and don’t have to worry, obviously, with the membership, it’s like having, you know, how many customers? Yeah, well, let’s just say only a small amount of your customers are really going to be active and at least ask a lot of questions.
I get a few questions from different people and they’re perfectly fine because they’re kind of just going through the program, trying to figure things out or trying to figure things out for the upcoming next fight or trying to. And the lift, but give it a membership, trying to perfect some different lifts.
I mean, it’s relatively, that stuff’s relatively easy, but yeah, it’s just more time on top of doing other things to keep people happy, you know, versus just selling a lot of product and then sitting back and letting them do what they do. Yeah.
Jared: Yeah. I feel like, I mean, I have a digital marketing agency and while it’s not a membership, you know, clients are on retainer.
Most of the clients are on retainer and, um, it’s hard to quantify like just the amount of kind of maintenance work that goes into. Making sure they’re happy and, you know, there’s always a little one off things that come up and emails and, you know, questions and it definitely, I mean, we now have a whole person to handle just all that stuff does that I was being devil’s advocate.
I know it’s a ton of work, but I just wanted you to kind of outline why it was so much
James: work. No, for sure. For sure. That’s, that’s exactly it. Hey, that’s your job as the host, right? You had to give me some layups like that as the,
Jared: I’ve got to give you a couple of layups. Yeah. I got to make you look good, man.
That’s what I’m here for. You know that. Um, Hey, so what’s the, you mentioned churn a while back as kind of the, um, something that needs to be paid attention to. And the way you’re really addressing it now is just get more people in than are leaving. What’s the pipeline for people to get in? Like, if we go all the way back to your website and how you generate traffic, is the pipeline like, um, Uh, uh, web traffic, organic web traffic to email list to membership, or is it more social media traffic straight to membership?
Like what’s the funnel look
James: like? It’s either organic traffic to a page that is like strength training for whatever combat sport. And then on that page is an opt in and a pop up to the email list or at the bottom of that page is a banner with. With a link to the product page, and so it’s not just one membership landing page.
I’ve got a different landing page for every program that leads to the same membership checkout page. And that was just because I built it out initially with the one time offer. I think it makes it more specific to the person that’s, that’s, uh, on that page. Funnily enough. When I was selling the one off digital products, I was selling more from the bottom banner because I was getting the full price purchases versus the one time offer after the, uh, signing, which was, which was funny.
Okay. So that’s why I always kept that there. Um, so that that’s, that’s the main thing on the written page and on the YouTube, it’s like in the description, I’ve got a link straight to the membership kind of sales page and things like that. That’s there as well for people to get into. And that’s And then obviously the email list as well as when I’ll email, email out sales and things like that to them.
Those are the three main places that I bring people in.
Jared: Let’s, uh, you know, sticking with the topical theme. Let me ask you about social media and your efforts there. Um, I mean, I’m looking at some of your stats. You have 67, 000 Instagram followers. Oh yeah, I acquired
James: those.
Jared: Okay. Well, hold on. Let’s make sure we talk about that.
You got 94, 000 followers on Facebook. Um, you’ve got a growing YouTube channel with, uh, five and a half thousand subs. Um, I think you’re dabbling in Reddit. Like if we call that, what do we call it? Do we call that social media these days? It changes hands so much. Um, you know, like talk about what’s working.
Talk about what’s working for you on social media and some of the stuff that you’ve tried that’s worked well. Maybe some of the stuff you’ve tried that hasn’t
James: worked well. I’ll say, so those are the lift big, eat big stats, and those are the ones that came, those numbers came with the acquisition. So when
Jared: you said it had a big following that you haven’t been able to revitalize earlier in the podcast, that’s kind of, okay, that’s the stuff you’re talking about, alright, good.
That’s the big
James: following. So like, I think the content that was being posted previously was all of the owner, and he was doing some pretty whack shit, but um, It’s hard to, it’s hard to create that same content to, uh, I guess reach that same audience. And I don’t want to create that content for the audience anyway.
Like to me, it just, it’s not valuable. Um, but essentially the platforms have been dead. I mean, We’ve probably lost 3, 000 subscribers, uh, 3, 000 followers on Instagram since acquiring it from posting on there. And then YouTube lost a whole bunch as well. But I’ve basically, I’ve come to the idea, YouTube and stuff like, as I mentioned, I’m going more on the written side, growing kind of the supplement side of it and the training side.
That’s cool. YouTube is more just, Hey, I’ll post the route. If I have, if I’m doing a video review, It’s going on that YouTube and that YouTube is going to be embedded in the article anyway. So it’s just going to grow organically. So whatever for the Facebook, I tried an experiment, you know, everyone’s smashing Facebook right now.
So, okay, I’m just going to post memes every day. Yeah. Memes take off and stuff, but it did absolutely nothing for my page, even though I posted some, I was, I tried something. I was going to be like, okay, I’m going to post a meme. So we sell some, uh, one supplement right now and we’ll expand it eventually.
And that’s a point that you’re doing it right for something. Doesn’t that’s just purely of SEO. Um, I’ll post a meme about that supplement and it under in the comments because means fly in the comments. Hey, a flash sale, 10 percent off today. Only use code. Facebook did nothing. And I was like, I can’t, I can’t correct it.
Like it’s yeah. Facebook’s such a funny one. Oh, if anyone’s listening, he’s just good at Facebook. Hit it, hit me up then. But, um, yeah, so Facebook’s like being like that. So I’ve kind of spent, I’m not gonna waste my time. Instagram has been. again, means fly on there too, which is fine. But again, like whatever.
So I’ve kind of left those for three times of fighting. Uh, I like the social aspect and it does well. So I get to, so I do some, I’ve been doing research reviews for a company called science for sport for about six or seven years. And it’s just, that’s just like, uh, summarizing some of the latest sport science and strength, conditioning research for their, uh, subscription product.
And so they help push a lot of my stuff. They’ve got like. 400, 000 followers on Instagram, a bunch of stuff. And so I, as part of that, I co I collaborate with them. With from my Instagram every month on whatever I want or so I’ve been doing that on my sweethearts are fighting. That’s how grow. I think it’s like a one and a half thousand followers.
Now I’m growing. I should post on there more because it actually does. All right, but it just takes time because I typically cut up my shorts into an opus dot pro, which is the AI one. So I’ll put like my youtube clips of podcast, whatever in there, get the things out and I’ll post them up when I get a chance.
Um, yeah. And the off the one thing I have been doing with socials on the big is trying to grow Twitter. And that’s been a big one. I got the help of a Twitter guy I know there to help grow that that’s only on like three and a half thousand followers now, and that’s gone from scratch. So that one’s going all right.
But the goal there is to grow a big enough Twitter audience there where I can monetize it to membership, potentially high ticket coaching services, affiliate, all that kind of stuff. But, uh, Twitter’s a pretty hard nut to crack right now, too.
Jared: Yeah, well, all these social media channels are, are, are challenging.
A lot of people are turning towards them with, you know, the changes in organic traffic and, and Google, uh, how, how Google does their rankings now, but yeah, it’s um, it’s certainly still a, I don’t want to call it the Wild Wild West because it’s been around forever, but it changes so rapidly that it’s hard to kind of pin something down, especially when you’re not just looking at We’ll say vanity metrics, like you’ve got lots of followers, but to your point, like if they’re not translating to dollars in terms of revenue, then, you know, it’s a bit of a vanity metric.
James: Yeah, and there’s no real reach as well. I will say my wife’s been doubling down on Pinterest for lift big eat big and she’s doing really well. She actually got this course, um, not affiliated at all, but people always ask. So I’ll mention now it’s, um, Amy LeBlanc. Pinch, I can’t remember what it’s called, but if you just search a lot Pinterest, you’ll find it But it’s just like 67 course and it basically takes you through proper Pinterest SEO stuff I mean, I didn’t even know apparently colors matter on Pinterest.
So there’s like dominant colors and stuff like that So my wife’s been smashing that she started using What’s the automatic Pinterest? Poster Pinterest pin generator. I think it is as well. Now. Yeah, she’s up to like 15 to 20 pins a day And she’s cranking our impressions are like we’re at like 40 or 50, 000 impressions a month And that picture scams were like hasn’t been going for that long.
So she’s just pushing Pinterest hard for us, too So we’re kind of diversifying with that as well. What
Jared: um In terms of launching your own product, and it sounds like that’s coming in the pipeline. Um, when is that going to hit and, uh, kind of, how are you going to, you know, infuse it with all the things you have going on right
James: now?
So right now we do have one. Okay. So I have one product that I’ve private labeled on the piggy bank and that’s on a Shopify store. So it’s just shop. lifpebit. com. Um, So there’s a few things that I’ve planned to do there. Let me start with Sweet Science of Fighting because that’s a shorter one. So Sweet Science of Fighting, I have my own products.
I collaborated with a big upcoming brand called X Marshall, and basically we’ve just co branded my own rash guards with my own design. So I’ve got my own. So when I go train jiu jitsu and I’ve got a bunch of people that actually have the rash guards too, which is awesome. I have my own gear, shorts and rash guards, and those are sold.
through them, but I just kind of affiliate link to that. And then on the piggyback, it’s our own supplement. And only recently I’ve come to the realization that I can just turn this into a supplement company because there’s actually a huge, uh, not, it’s a huge, obviously huge market and supplements, but even though it’s saturated, there’s actually still space for the company.
So I have one product there and that’s selling purely for three years. Yeah. So basically I’m taking the exact same approach with. SEO, writing all my, um, buyer’s guides with myself as number one, and then doing a bunch of informational content about all the, uh, different supplements. And then doing exactly the same thing on my part, like some best of terms.
I ranked twice on page one now with my product on there. Number one. So I’m just going to, I’m just going to take over page one with my own products. And then the goal is the goal is so right now it’s private labeled. So the margins are pretty shit and the shipping times are pretty long, which is a bit of a pain in the ass.
So as it grows and get more capital, eventually manufacture my own and then three PL it, um, PR looks like it’s not too bad. They charge, I think it’s like 20 bucks a month for the pallet and then 1 for pick and pack on top of that. They can also put it all together for you and everything like that too.
So it’s not too bad in terms of that. Um, and I’ve inquired about, uh, importing some stuff too, which has been all right. So eventually I’ll get there, but the goal is to get to a point where I know I can increase my average order value massively because. Even some of my current funnels are working like right now I’ve basically ripped a landing page right where I do bundles.
So it’d be like you get one tub for X amount, two tubs for X amount or three tubs, which is like heavily discounted basically. And then if you order, if you go to order one tub, I hit you with an upsell before the cart to get 10 percent off three tubs, which has been working. But there’s so much more I want to do.
Like I want to hit them with bump offers of bundles. Hey, you got this, get these two things with it and bundle it together. If you don’t want that down, sell them on a subscription for the one product post purchase upsell them on more of the same thing. Like there’s heaps I want to do. Um, but it’s just a matter of.
This one private label company right now just doesn’t have the, the quality of the products that I want currently, or at least to be associated with, with the brand, um, until they get better quality, better quality, I guess, uh, products there, then I will start to, to expand out to that, but right now I don’t want to type a bunch of capital in there, but eventually I will.
Jared: That’s amazing. And, and you’re right, it opens up a ton of doors in terms of what you have the flexibility to, to, to play with if you are affiliating somebody else’s product, even if you have a private deal, even if you have a relationship with affiliate manager, there’s only so much you can do in terms of uh, different deal offerings, different bundle offerings.
But once you own your product line, you can really get creative with the funneling.
James: Yeah, that’s the thing I’m most excited about. ’cause I mean, I play around with a bunch of funnels with my digital products and I just keep thinking like, I’ve seen what some of these other companies are doing. It’s like, man, I’m, I’m positive I can rip out some, some legit different options with the funnels there because yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, like you through the whole process, there’s so many ways I could get someone to opt into something else than just buying the one thing, you know, more, more of the same or bundle it with other things that connect with the similar goals or onto subscription.
Like, yeah, there’s, uh, there’s a lot there.
Jared: So. I want to start to bring this back here. And I want to ask you a question. That’s probably gonna be a little difficult for you to answer, but, um, but you’re up your podcast host. So I gave you a couple of softballs. You get it. I got to ask you a couple of tough ones.
Now, most people listening are not going to have the energy levels you have. And maybe that’s because we don’t work out and eat the way you do. So maybe there’s something in that. That’s the answer then. I just had a moment there, but, um, like most of the people listening, myself included, aren’t gonna be able to like, don’t have the capacity to take on.
All that you’re doing to grow your brands, right? Like we went through, you’ve got, you’re working on SEO through organic traffic. You’re building links. You’re pursuing a variety of social media channels. Influencer. I want to ask about that in a second. I don’t ask about Amazon influencer because we haven’t gotten that yet.
You’ve got Reddit, you’ve got a membership. You’ve, I mean, there’s so many things that you’re working on and doing for someone listening, who’s like, man, I don’t even know where to start. I’ve heard so many great ideas on this podcast and I’ve heard how James does so much, like. Maybe help people walk them through with all the knowledge you have looking backwards now, where would someone start if they wanted to start getting involved in all these different channels and all these different traffic sources?
Like what are the ones maybe that are the heaviest hitters or the ones you think are the easiest for people to get started in?
James: I think it’s changed. The landscape has changed as well. Right? Like right now I would be starting video. Like that’s where I’d be. I wouldn’t even, okay. If you had the time, you could also do the website now.
There’s a couple of different approaches that I would take now if I was going to do a new site. And I mean, I’ve talked, talked to a good friend, um, RV Silverberg about this too. He’s sold a massive fitness site and stuff like that too. But now with his new brands, he’s, he’s on the same page, but ideally you would just start YouTube and grow a YouTube brand.
And I’ll give the best examples of websites that absolutely I’ve talked to you about it before. The garage gym reviews one. They started as a pure YouTube channel. Their website’s not a huge authority fitness website, but they rank, if you search any best gym equipment term, garage gym reviews is number one and typically number two or three, they have two spots on number one, because actually that’s something I’ll ask you about too, as the guest, but, um, in terms of, before I get back to this, have you seen a lot of, uh, sites that are now ranking twice on page one, because they have a review article, but they also have a.
Shop page, which is a Product page that just has an affiliate
Jared: link. Have you seen that? And their YouTube video will also rank sometimes, too. So they’ll get three spots on the front page, on the first page, because they have a YouTube product, sorry, a YouTube video that also basically addresses similarly what they are talking about on their website, but they do it in a way that fits YouTube, so it gets traction on YouTube.
James: Yeah, so that’s something for people to think about. But I would be all in on video initially, and That’s one thing. That’s one reason why, because one, you get the video, the video audience, I think is more, uh, they trust you more into the buying things, but two people will then search your brand plus whatever it is into Google to find your stuff because not everyone goes into YouTube to search whatever it is, even if they’re looking for a video, like if I’m looking for a video or sometimes searching Google, um, and you’ll see that brands like garage gym reviews, if you search garage gym reviews and you see all the keywords after it, right?
Garry’s Reviews, dumbbells, blah, blah, blah. They rank crazy, I believe, because of things like that. And there’s a few other examples, um, Built with Science is another example. They have like a DA30 website that ranks for some pretty big terms because the dude has like 3 million subscribers on YouTube. He has a big YouTube brand.
Um, Renaissance Periodization is another one. I don’t think they do much SEO wise, but they’ve got like a million subs on YouTube now. Not only that, it’s a pure YouTube brand, and they’ll be multi million dollars a month. Um, So yeah, starting YouTube, I think, and I think it’s, yes, not everyone wants to get behind the camera and stuff like that, but that’s one way.
I would say if you’re going more down the affiliate route, I would, I would actually start Amazon Influencer and then leverage that into YouTube to create a business that way. And then if you are dead set on having a website, I would take a slower approach now. So instead of trying to, the original thought was, hey, just get 30 to 100 articles up.
Quickly as possible. Now I would do one article and I would then make that a video. And then I would turn that into some ass, like some shorts or something for, uh, the other social channels. And I’ll do that for every piece going forward and take a slower approach, but that’s just how I’ll do it now.
Jared: Great. That’s what I wanted to get. That’s what I wanted to hear. So you teased it. Well, let’s finish on it. , , most Spencer and I dove, uh, headfirst into the side hustle project of the Amazon influencer program in, in last year. Um, and you do, you dove in too. I, I know you and I have messaged quite a bit about it.
Talk about why you wanted to get into it and then how it’s going.
James: Uh, I don’t know. I’m a shiny object. , uh, , goblin, shiny object, goblin man. I can’t stop with the shiny objects, man. I’ve got, but the thing is, okay, put it this way. I’ll call it. It’s a shiny. It’s an opportunity versus more of a shiny object thing because it’s something that can make you money, uh, instantly.
So I kind of class them a different stage. That’s why right now I’m posting stuff all over Reddit because it’s making me money instantly. I’m posting Amazon. Well, I haven’t done Amazon for a while, but it’s still making me money. So I, I deem that as a, as time worthwhile doing versus going to something that’s going to make me money year down the line as a shiny object.
But just Amazon influence. Uh, yeah, we’ve jumped into it. We just had a bunch of stuff lying around. Um, we got probably like only a hundred videos or so now, so nothing crazy. So it only does about two to 400 a month on most months over black Friday though. Holy shit. That thing pumps like one, just one product.
We were doing 200 days of one product and I was like, okay, this is pretty sweet. And I will say, I should listen to your last news episode too. Um, when you’re talking about kind of, yeah, there’s black Friday and Christmas is like Q4 kind of big, but there’s also another day, which is prime day, which is mid year.
Which, uh, which I think was being reported to be bigger than Black Friday on Amazon. At least last I heard that could be way wrong. So that’s probably another opportunity for it to blow up. Um, but the Amazon influence is pretty sweet. Um, in that regard, but before I, uh, you jump in here, but did you know, did you know there’s a thing called Amazon vine?
I’m going to drop, I’m going to drop some, some knowledge for the listeners here. So we’ve been trying to get into it for the past six
Jared: months. And is this going to be my 20, 24 shiny object? Uh, this
James: is going to be a 2024 shiny object. You can share it on the news thing as your shiny object. So Amazon finds an invitation only Amazon program and you, you get into it.
They invite you, you have to be a. What would you, you have to be a reviewer, but like, I don’t know how to explain it. You have to be a reviewer that basically people like your reviews. So if you go into the reviews of a product, sometimes you’ll see, um, Amazon voice, I think that they call it or a vine someone.
And essentially you get into this program. I got told about this at a conference at the conference, uh, mid last year. And if you get invited into it, they send you products every single day for free, and you just have to review them. Like written review and I was like, no way. So this lady I was talking to at a conference, so she was getting so there’s different levels to right.
You start off and I think you only get 1 to 3 products a day and then you can get up to a point where you get like 8 to 12 products a day. And we’re talking like, you know, 1000 products as well. There’s like no real limit on that. Top one. She remodeled her whole house with Amazon products from Amazon vine for free.
She was telling me, and I was like, okay, I’ve got to try and get in on this. So we’ve been writing reviews, haven’t been invited yet. So we’re trying to figure out, like, I think it must have something to do with the engagement on your reviews. So like, you know, you see those top reviews that are bloody like book essays long and they have like a shit ton of upvotes.
I have a feeling it’s. Having a lot of those, but doing apparently doing yeah, reviews, you can invite this program, you get a bunch of free Amazon stuff and you just got to review it
Jared: and then you make influencer videos
James: from it and then you make influence videos on top of it. That’s that is, that is the golden flywheel right there.
If you can get into Amazon vine. So if anyone buys a lot of stuff, yeah, I’m reading it
Jared: right here. Amazon fine is an invitationally program, which just like you said, selects the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store to serve as vine voices. These voices have the unique opportunity to order items free of charge and share their product experiences with Amazon customers to help them make informed buying decisions.
James: Dude, I can’t believe I didn’t know about this.
Jared: Interesting. Okay. I’ll leave it there. Uh, I mean, to that point, Vine or not, the other interesting thing about the influencer program for someone like you is that you can combine that influencer program. With video content about your brand and it can almost double dip or cross serve your YouTube channel as it is.
And so it’s a, it’s an equally interesting opportunity for someone who is building a YouTube channel and is already in the video space, mirroring some of the stuff you’re doing on your YouTube already with the influencer program is a, is a great way to double dip as well. And then I guess with the vine program, if you can get in, it’s a triple dip.
James: Oh yeah, definitely. Well, I will say that a lot of our stuff is like baby stuff. So it doesn’t really fit the brand in terms of videos,
Jared: but, but I mean, you were going workout related stuff, but baby stuff probably does pretty well on influencer. Yeah.
James: Yeah. It’s not, there’s not too much that’s too expensive for baby stuff, but I mean, people buy it.
So it goes around. That’s the thing though. You can do anything. You don’t have to be niche specific, right. With Amazon influencer, you can just literally do review anything. It’s relatively quick. That’s. Completely passive, because once you’ve done it, it’s done. Actually, I, I tried, I tried to, we were at a friend’s place for Christmas and they just bought, uh, a playground off Amazon for, for their, for their baby.
So we did a whole video going around it while we were outside. I tried to upload it, it didn’t work for some reason, I’m going to try it again. I jumped, they might have removed it from Amazon, I’ll have to double check. But, um, that would be a very nice one to get some influencer revenue from.
Jared: I mean, there’s a case we made from the influencer standpoint that you just kind of hit up all of your friends and neighbors and just review their top 10 products.
Right. And kind of move on down the list to take a couple hours per house and you move on. Um, Hey, final question from me, we could go for hours. Um, uh, final question from me, just kind of tie it all together. You you’ve shared so much amazing stuff. I’m sure there’s going to be a, an episode where a lot of people will go back and listen a second time, but tying it all together and sticking with that theme of Uh, how to kind of digest everything, what’s a productivity tip or hack that you can share with people?
Because again, sticking with the theme of you get a lot done and you’re able to do a lot, like what’s a way or one, just one way that you’re, whether it’s how you structure your day. It’s how you approach things. I mean, it’s clear that you’re able to get a lot done. And for anyone who’s struggling with that, like what’s a, what’s a productivity tip you can share with people that you implement?
James: Um, I give a couple of cliches to start, but then I’ll try to give something that’s not, but I, I try to do most of, okay, well, we have a 10 month old baby too. So it’s a little, a little different, but, um, just get the plot thickens. Yeah, but I try to get most of my. Most mentally intensive work done in the morning.
So that’s kind of like when I work best. Um, and then by the afternoon I’ll do more like admin tasks, you know, like for example, formatting stuff, publishing, editing, that kind of stuff. Um, in the evening now I’ll do my videos when our little one’s asleep, because otherwise she’s, uh, yelling in the background or something like that.
So it doesn’t quite work for the video, but I’ll do that when she’s asleep now, cause it’s as low friction videos where I’m just screen recording. And if I’m doing. Um, actual training videos will be in the garage while we’re training, but that’s in terms of that productivity, uh, other things I’ll, uh, this might be just me, but I always listen to, there’s certain music that I’ll listen to, for example, like mixes on YouTube.
Um, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that like a lot of the same stuff. It’s like, and Juna deep on YouTube, if you don’t say it’s like, uh. Deep house mixes there or just liquid drum and bass mixes. Those things. I’ll crank those at like 9pm and just be like having a bloody festival rave on my bloody headphones while I’m working.
Um, but that stuff like literally keeps me on track going there. Uh, some caffeine in the mornings can help too for anyone. Even some. Uh, brain supplement, nootropic stuff that can potentially help to do some stuff there. But other than that, honestly, it’s more the fact that this is literally the moneymaker that I have.
And it’s the thing I need to grow for myself and the family to live and be able to do whatever. So that having that big enough why of doing something is probably bigger than anything. Right. If you’re just kind of doing a side hustle because you’re like you work full time, like, Oh, having some extra money would be nice.
Yeah. You’re probably not going to reach whatever it is you want to do, but. If you’re a dead set, you hate whatever you’re doing. And you’re like, I need to get out of this because in one year I got a contract runs out or rent runs out or whatever it is. I need this to work. Then you’ll probably make it work.
Jared: Putting the hustle inside hustle is what you’re
James: saying. Exactly. Exactly. Got to hustle.
Jared: Uh, Hey, James, this hour’s flown by, um, thanks for coming on and congrats. I mean, you know, we, we certainly talked about a lot of successful projects yet, but I think it’s important to kind of put a fine point in the fact that most of the stuff you’re doing is only one, two, three years old here.
You know, you really dove in head first and really grown things really well in a short period of time. So, um, uh, congrats on everything. And I, I will have to have you back on once you’ve had a couple of months of, Of, uh, of, of the product sales under your belt, the way you want them to be. I’m excited to hear that.
James: Yeah, for sure, man. Like the big, big goal. I’m going to say it here. So when I come back home, we can reevaluate. I want to do, I want to do six figure months, man. I want to do six figure months on this. So it’s nice to have people. Uh, I talked to a lot in my corner to really help kind of, kind of make money like that, not sound so crazy and farfetched because in coaching you’re making like sweet fuck all basically.
You’re making like 50 to 80 K a year, maybe. Um, and that’s even like, that’s like professional, professional. So being able to think like, whoa, like. You know, 10 K months actually possible or well, you can go like, there’s such thing as making 20 or 50. Like, will I ever get there? And then having people be like, no, wait, that’s still small.
Like you can go way bigger and you’re like, Oh shit. Okay. Like it’s actually possible to get there. That’s the biggest thing I think, cause when we all start, we all go, we just want, I just want 10 K months. So if I can just a 10 K months, we’ll be sorted. Right. And then you go, Oh, there’s actually something way bigger.
Way bigger than, than that. And there’s, and people can get there. Like it’s once you start to get deep in the weeds and everything, you can, uh, you can do it
Jared: when you get a six figure month, you call us, we’ll definitely have you back on. All
James: right. I’m pushing there. I’m pushing
Jared: there. Where can people follow along with, um, with what you’re doing?
I know you and I are connected on, on Twitter, but you know, where are the different channels people can go to find you?
James: Um, oh, the main website, three times to find. com left, but you bet. com. But yeah, I’m on. I don’t even know what my, my personal, I don’t really use my personal ones. They’re kind of just kind of there.
So I think it’s at Jay DeLacy 01 on Twitter, on Instagram. I think it’s at Jay DeLacy 90.
Jared: You got Instagram, right? You didn’t get Twitter, right? I can save it for if you want. Yeah, go again. That was another James. I was just trying to give you a softball
James: there, Mr. James. There
Jared: it is. You got it. You got your own handle.
Yeah, there we go.
James: That’s how much I, that’s how much I barely post on those things. But, um, yeah, those are there to find me. And if anyone, Hey, if anyone’s in kind of like this fitness area, coaching, whatever, and you can write good reviews and stuff, hit me up, hit me up.
Jared: There you go. Personal invitation. Hey, James, thanks for coming on.
And I really appreciate it.
James: No, thanks for having me.