The Interview

1. Where do you live?

Long Island, New York.

2. When did you start creating content?

I created a blog in December 2009 named Investor Junkie which focused on investing and personal finance content.

3. Are you a full-time Creator?

Yes, since August 2011.

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

I was promoting an affiliate link of a stockbroker. In August 2011, I made more money in one month with that one vendor than the other businesses combined I owned at the time.

5. How many niche sites have you created?

6

6. How many are you still running now?

1 – LarryLudwig.com

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

I sold Investor Junkie in 2018 for $5.8 million. I can’t reveal ROI per my NDA.

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

2

9. How much are you earning each month?

• $10,001 – $50,000

10. What are your current streams of revenue?

• Affiliate Sales
• Digital Products & Courses
• Software (SaaS)
• 1-on-1 Consulting

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

• Match intent for the articles you write.
• Create articles that not only are written well but add functionality as well (comparisons, summary, price tables, etc..)
• Internal linking is an often underutilized strategy.

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

Because of the way Google works today, SEO content has become very homogenized. You cannot expect to rank for an article on ‘why 401(k) plans are bad’ if the sentiment of all other articles ranking in SERP are positive. It’s like looking East expecting to see a sunset. It’s never going to happen.

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

For SEO Ahrefs, Surfer and my own in house development for schema markup.

For analytics, since Google Analytics is garbage, I use Woopra. Woopra makes Google Analytics look like a toy. Instead of having data silos of analytics (each service like ThriveCart, ClickMeter, ActiveCampaign, etc. with their own reporting) I see the complete journey of a visitor from beginning to end. I can track affiliate conversions and see the multi-touch points before a visitor finally converted.

14. What has been the biggest mistake you made?

My previous business was web hosting and stayed too long in the business before venturing into affiliate marketing.

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

Take on new skills in which I lacked experience. At one time I did not know SEO.

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

Understanding how SEO, social media, email, and paid traffic are different with their intent. The other skill was how to get the right audiences into a sales funnel.

17. What’s your 12 month goal?

Introduce YouTube videos for my personal brand.

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

Read a lot of testing reports and white papers, consulting for other websites, and creating experiments on my own website.

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

Starbucks venti ice coffee with oak milk and sugar-free syrup. 

20. Where can people follow you?

• Website – https://larryludwig.com/contact/
• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/larryludwig/
• Twitter – https://twitter.com/lludwig
• Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/larryludwigpage/

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

When picking a niche you can see if there are things in your life you want to improve or perhaps know there’s a better way. It’s the “scratching your own itch” when picking a niche. Though all too often people create content that’s for themselves. You should create content that helps others and not create ego-driven content.