After reading
The Death of Adsense I decided to contact Scott Boulch for an interview to discover the background to this latest buzz in the internet marketing world.
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Scott, from your Death of Adsense website I get a sense of an interesting marketing background. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
In my cubicle days , I worked first selling copiers for short time, in order to get cold calling experience. Then I used that to land a Job as a stock Broker for Paine Webber back in the very late 80's around the time we had the crash in 87.
After that I landed in the computer industry, but on the sales side. I managed 4 retail computer franchises for a number of years. Once the Big Box stores came to town the owner spooked got scared, and sold the franchises, and I moved to Dallas to take over as a major account rep for a software distributor. 12 months later and the company I worked for eliminated the entire field force. It was the beginning of down-size-a-palooza, and I made the choice not to go back to work, and to start my own business.
I spent the better part of 10 years after that in network marketing. Unlike 99.9% of everyone that does that, I along with a small group of people treated it like a career. So we all did very well, for a very long time. The company I was with sold out, changed the comp plan, and I had a chance to start over again LOL!
I spent about 3 years flipping real estate. My parents are Real Estate brokers and I knew the game well. I bought and sold around 50 houses during that time, and boy was it an ass whipp'in as we say in Dallas.
I made money, but the time and effort for the return was way off! I also spent part of that time teaching Real Estate investing and providing services to Real Estate investors.
How did you happen to get into the Internet Marketing industry? What were the deciding factors?
I had an experience back in 2000, near the end of my MLM days. I built a website, my first, to help recruit new reps. Later that year I found a source for online leads for biz op seekers, and created Dollarleads.com (no longer my domain). I had a natural market, and a product that was highly in need. This was when biz op leads online were a new thing. I made around 75,000 net profit the first year, and since my market at the time was my own network, when that company tanked, so did my lead business. I did have a taste of what could be accomplished online. I played around with sites over the years. I launched TheSuccessWebsite.com a membership site where you could go online and read, listen to, and watch material from personal development speakers and trainers. Nice concept, but no traffic!
It wasn't until I was buying and selling homes, and I had built a site to capture leads for buyers and sellers, that I stumbled on the real gold of internet marketing. I got a phone call from a friend of mine who I knew from a charity we both belonged to. He said, "Scott, I can get as many visitors to your site as you want, in any niche, in less than a week." It was the traffic equalizer call. Soon internet marketing became a passion and getting traffic to a site, from white hat SEO work, or Black hat techniques became a quest.
It looks like you had some good success using AdSense in the past. What did you attribute your online growth to? Did you follow someone's formula or path at that time?
I did everything, all the time, as much as I could. I was like a sponge and read and learned anything that worked or claimed to work to get traffic to a site. I got good at SEO and traditional white hat techniques, and at the same time, bought every black hat product or course I could get my hands on.
When did you sense the changes in Google's policies?
I learned early on that Adwords was a powerful tool when used correctly, and had been an Adwords publisher, long before smart pricing came around. I got the notice like all the other AdWords publishers, but didn't pay much attention to it other than lowering my content bids and saving a ton of money on the AdWords side. Honestly I didn't stop to think about what would happen to the AdSense side until we were in to smart pricing a few months. My traffic was growing on some sites but my earnings per visitor kept dropping. I cranked out more sites, white hat sites, and used page generators at a rapid pace trying to offset my plummeting value per visitor, with quantity of visitors. I accidentally found out how to monetize like anadult and from then on my income grew exponentially.
You have been getting a lot of press online - do most people agree with you or are you getting a lot of negative comments?
Great question! There are three groups of people talking. First we have the "Gurus" who have unfortunately tied their wagon to a crippled horse. They try to explain away "The Death of Adsense" by saying that I used black hat page generators and that's why my AdSense income went down. It's classic misdirection, it wasn't because my number of visitors changed, in many cases I had more visitors, what changed was my value per visitor due to smart pricing, not the method of generating traffic that killed the deal.
That group will fight to the death to hold on to the cash cow of selling Adsense crap to the masses.
The next group are the smartest in the bunch. They are way smarter than I am, and have long since moved up the food chain, and dropped contextual advertising all together. They are encouraging me like a big brother would.
And finally, are the masses of people that spent their money, time , effort, and put their hopes and dreams in to AdSense riches, only to be disappointed, or worse, have their income grow, then get whacked by smart pricing. They already know AdSense is not the money maker it used to be, and they agree enthusiastically.
The last group has been the most fun to get to know, and that's most of the feed back I get. They are extremely entrepreneurial and they are just simply looking for a process that works and is more stable!
Given your announcement what would you do differently if you were starting today?
If I was brand new today, I would start exactly where I suggest people start on the internetmarketing food chain, as hunters, not bottom feeders. But you will have to wait until the second half to get the details.
I can tell you this, had I started out doing what I'm doing now, I could have retiredby now.
What is your advice to newbie's out there looking to get started?
Get a broad exposure to the industry, learn all you can and commit to learningas you go. Try something, anything, if it works do more of it, if it doesn't, don't do that any more!
There are so many profitable ways to earn money online, that It can lead to paralysis. Just do something! And for Gods sake measure your results!
Find a niche that you like, but if its not working, STOP, and do something else.
Don't just continue on in hopes that it will work someday. This is the internet kids, if its not working sooner than later, chances are your on a dead horse. get off and change horses. And don't, believe everything your sold, told, or think you know.
The internet changes too fast to be right for very long! If your right today, wait a few months and the game will have changed to the point you are no longer right!
If there was one marketing secret you can share with everyone what would that be?
Yes this one is easy. Earn your living higher up the internet marketing food chain and stop settling for scraps.
Just like every detective show you have ever seen, you should follow the money!
Stop and ask yourself, if you are making good money with AdSense, then don't you think the advertiser that put that ad on your site is making more than you?
Stop being the prey and start being the hunter!
What are your plans for the next phase of The Death of AdSense?
Ah the million dollar question! Well first, the release of "Life After Adsense, climbing the internet marketing food chain"
The second installment will show people exactly how I make my income. And I don't know how many times I can say this, its FREE!
What’s really screwing with people is my plan, and marketing method. They can’t figure it out, so they tend to second guess, and get angry, or make wild accusations! Are you listening MadHatter? I've even had one poor soul suggest I was trying to recruit people in to an MLM deal! It’s sad really.
Like internet marketing take one step, and the next will be revealed to you!
I'm using that very technique, there are dozens of directions we can go from here. The market will dictate the next move, not me!
I'm going to give people what they want, instead of what I think they should have, or like so many "Gurus" what I currently have for sale in my product of the day bag of tricks!
I will tell you this, each of you has already experienced exactly how I earn my income, you just don't known it yet!
Scott, great information!! Thanks for the interview! Don't forget that part 2 of The Death of AdSense and the Return to Common Sense has just been published.
By Google's Terms of Service I can't show you the clickthrough rates or page impressions. But you can see the daily earnings for just this single site (I've filtered out all my other AdSense earnings).
