Ep 232: How To Run A Team And Scale Your Content Website Portfolio with Carl Broadbent

Jaryd Krause:

What's holding you back from scaling your online business and your portfolio of businesses? Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses Podcast. And today I'm speaking with Carl Broadbent, a good friend of mine who went from a regular job to building a portfolio of niche websites, making him well over tens of thousands of dollars now and continuing to build his portfolio. And he builds and sells websites to the public as well. So stay tuned; there are some cool things.

He shares where he sells his websites. He shares how much he sells his websites and how he builds them up to a certain range and then sells them. At the start of this podcast episode, we also talk a lot about mindset. You know I love mindsets. It's super important, as an online business owner, to have the right mindset and know what it actually takes to stay in this for the long haul and how to continue down the track even with the external environment holding you back at times.

We also talk about how many sites Carl has started, how many he actually has now, and how many he's sold. Then we talk about his content creation process. We talk about how he gets content created and what that looks like. We talk about how large his team is, roughly how many pieces of content they're putting out per month, and what they do with it.

We also talk about how to make money. I share this little thing that Carl could do to grow his YouTube channel for his website and actually make more money from affiliates without having to create the content himself. So we talk a bit about how you can use video, why video is super valuable for blogging and for your online business, and what Google looks for when they're testing your business or your blog to see if it is a real business as well.

We also move into link building and a little bit about the industry, and there's so much value in this podcast episode. I'm certain you guys are going to love it. It's a bit of a longer episode because there are just so many good things we talked about, but I'm sure you're going to see that it's absolutely worth it. Let's go, let's go, let's dive in.

What's up? This is Jaryd, and I am stoked to have you here. Before we dive into the show, I want to remind you that for a limited time, you can get one-to-one voice note mentoring with me to help you buy and grow your online business. I'm opening up just a few slots of voice note coaching to give you one-on-one access to me via Coachvox.

You'll tell me your goals and challenges, and we'll work through them together. I'll ask questions, I'll tell you what I think, and we'll get you ticking boxes and achieving your online income goals. You can message me anytime, and I'll respond within 48 hours. Right now, you can get 20% off by using the coupon code JARYD. That's J-A-R-Y-D. And I'll drop the link in the show notes so you can find out more. Until then, let's get on with the episode.

Carl, hello. Welcome back.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for having me.

Jaryd Krause:

Episode 151 is when we last chatted. So now we're around the 230 range. So it's been about a year and a half since we chatted.

Carl Broadbent:

You've been very busy.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, you've been busy too. So at the time of recording, you had just had your Affiliate Gathering event for about a month. This will go live about a month or so after that. And the first one was a success. I have no doubt this last one was a massive success, and you're going to do more in the future, right? Obviously, please?

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, I'm trying to do them annually. We've also rolled out this year what we call social meetups. So we have affiliate gathering socials where we try to get to smaller venues. So we can do more events and reach more people. We know a lot of people can't travel across the world to come to a one-day event; we get that. So we are trying to be as inclusive as possible. So straight after the event that just happened, we're doing one in Spain. So Alex from WP Eagle has one in Malaga that he's holding.

And then there aren't going to be any speakers or anything at those. They're going to be more social meetups. Just a chance for everybody to have a coffee together, have a drink, and talk shop. You know what we're like, entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers. As soon as you put the two of them in a room together, they never stop talking about work. So yeah, just a chance to do that with somebody who understands what you're talking about.

Jaryd Krause:

And it's very different in person, right? I think it's so valuable to know that you're on the journey with other people. And it's one thing to listen to a podcast and watch a YouTube video of somebody else doing it. Say somebody's listening to us, and we're on the same journey as everybody listening. But it feels like there's a massive gap and a massive difference.

Within our community, we have networking and accountability group calls run by some of our program leaders. And people just absolutely love it because they get to see that everybody else is doing the same thing. Ask one of the questions, just hang out, and feel so much more comfortable being a part of a community.

And not just digitally. You doing it in person is huge. I know that I'm going to an event in two weeks’ time with Flippa and a couple of friends that are going, and I'm going to be meeting a couple of people from our community as well. But it's way more personal and fulfilling in person, right?

Carl Broadbent:

You feel more connected and more friends with somebody. You make a virtual call. As soon as you hit the end, it's cut off. And whether you pick up the phone and call them again, sometimes it doesn't happen. You always say, “Yeah, let's jump on the call next week,” and it just kind of doesn't happen.

But when you're there in person, you can kind of pat them on the back, put your arm around them, and shake their hands. You just feel really connected to them. And you kind of walk away thinking, I've got a friend. That's what I always think. I've got a friend now.

The last little social meetup we had was the London one. We went to one in London, and about 30 people showed up. One gentleman flew in from Singapore for the day. And I got to take his contact details, and I said to him, “Listen, if you want a little bit of mentoring, whatever, let's do it. Let's help each other out.” And I learned so much from the people there.

One gentleman had an email list that was tiny. I thought mine was quite small. I didn't actively build it, but his was even smaller than mine. He was making thousands a month, and I was picking his brains. “How do you do it? How do you do it?” And it was just that connection we made together. We've since commented and chatted. I wouldn't have met that on a Skype call or a Zoom meeting.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, definitely. The funny thing is, a lot of people just think, All right, content sites and blogs; it's just content, ads, and affiliate revenue. But there's seriously so much more in it. Like email marketing, I'm working with a lot of my clients to grow their businesses. And by tapping into email marketing, you can actually earn so much more than ad revenue just through email marketing. And you don't need EEAT to promote things and sell products through an email list.

Carl Broadbent:

There are some fantastic email lists going around at the moment. In fact, I kind of got a little bit of imposter syndrome recently reading some of the email lists. They're so good, reading some of the emails going out. Niche website, Lady has one. Jon from Fatstacks has some amazing emails going around, and you can just see their organization and their strategic plan in their emails. It's so clear and so good. And every one of them has a paid ad in the email.

Last year, my email list made me more money than one of my biggest sites. I couldn't sell enough email spaces. In fact, I was kind of running out of things to email about because advertisers were saying, “I want to be in Tuesday's edition. Get me out of Wednesday's edition.” I was like, “I only put one out a week,” and I just literally couldn't write as many emails to get all those spots in. So I kind of reined it back a little bit and started focusing on something else.

But yeah, like I said, there are so many opportunities to make money and grow your business in this space. And that's what I love about it. The diversity in this industry is incredible. I'm always wanting to start new projects, but I'm always trying to rein myself in a little bit and be a bit more strategic. Last year, I was all over the place. So I'm trying this year to be focused, but yeah, it's not working. I'm trying.

Jaryd Krause:

It's very tricky. This funny thing is that people say, “Oh, I just wish I was just a natural entrepreneur like you.” And that's great. But all of our strengths—our greatest strengths—can be our weaknesses and double-edged swords. Like, “Oh, I could do this and forget the 80-20 of it. Let's make sure that's good.” And then maybe put a little bit of time into seeing the other things, but it's a tricky thing.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, I mean, I asked for it. I've done a few interviews myself this past month in the run up to the Affiliate Gathering. And a few questions asked in there were: What keeps you motivated? And the majority of people kept coming back and saying two things. One was competition with themselves or with others. So they either want it to get more views on their YouTube channel, they want to outrank the competition, or they want to just beat their numbers from last year or last month. Competition was a very strong thing.

And then the second point is that a lot of people kept saying they felt it was kind of inbuilt in them, that they had that drive to get up every morning at 7.30 in the morning and do a podcast and things like that. They kind of just said, “Sometimes I don't think you can teach that. I think it's got to be there inside you that you're self-motivated and driven.”

Because it is a lonely business. Nobody stood behind you saying, “Come on, Carl, you didn't write three blog posts today. Get going, get going.” I'll have another cup of tea. I'll do it in an hour. And sometimes you don't.

Jaryd Krause:

It's a funny thing when you actually start to—it's because you’re very similar to me, right? You came out of a regular nine-to-five job to get into a position where you could earn a full-time income. When I was transitioning out and I was making a little bit of money, then I started making a bit more money, and I'm sure that you're the same.

And a lot of other people were like, “Oh, once you start making a little bit more money, you become a little bit more lazy.” Not that you dropped the ball. I know that I just slowed down a little bit. But I think that's a good thing. I think we go through that phase of slowing down. And then, when you're having that cup of tea, you're thinking about more strategic ways and plans.

And coming back, I want to really touch on motivation for people. Because I had a coaching client ask me, “When you were going through, Jaryd, trying to find and buy your first few businesses, how did you keep that fire in your belly?” And like you said, it's innate in some of us, but I also think that we can draw inspiration and build up that fire in our belly with great mindset techniques and strategies.

And I think it's really coming back to focusing on that vision. And if you want that vision bad enough and you focus on it, then that's going to provide that fire and that drive. What are your thoughts on that? Because that's the hardest thing. Keeping that mindset and keeping that fire and drive to go.

Carl Broadbent:

I think that would fall into the competition-with-yourself category in that you're setting them goals. Whether it be monetization, whether it be a career, whether you want to quit your job, or whether your goal is to prove to your partner that you can do it, That was one of my drives, and sometimes you're blessed in life when things happen at the right time and for the right reason.

I was working on the corporate ladder. I was a trader for a large company. I was doing really well. I started building these sites on the sidelines, and I just went to work. And one day I happened to just say to my boss, “So I've got a website.” And we went into a meeting with about 30 senior managers. And I sat in this meeting, and the boss was there, and he had the big screen behind him. I started hooking up his phone and stuff. And I thought, What's he doing? What's he messing with? He's probably been looking over and smirking. I thought, What's he doing?

And he says, “Oh, Carl thinks he's going to be the next Elon Musk. Look, he's built a website,” and he put the website up in the office and showed an article to everybody. And it was full of grammar and spelling mistakes. It was horrendous. And I was absolutely mortified. And he did it in a light-hearted way. Everyone was laughing, joking, and commenting. And I walked out of there, and I thought, Right, I'm going to show you.

And I went home, and I said to my wife, “In six months, I'm quitting my job.” And I told her all about it, and she knew I was building websites. And she says, “Okay, well, this is what you need to do. You need to prove to me for six months that you can bring in double your income. So by month six, you need to be earning double what you are in your job. Then if you quit your job, we've got a little bit of a leeway.”

So I went back the next morning and told my boss, This is what I'm going to do. And he was really supportive. He was like, “Okay, I'll tell you what, I'll give you six months, carry on working, give you six months to grow it. And I want you to prove to me that you have that income.” I said, “That's funny, my wife wants the same.” He said, “Right. You prove to me and her that you're earning more than you are now. And then I'll consider it.”

Six months later, I went back to him and I said, “Right. There's the numbers.” And he said, “Right. Fantastic, you've proved it. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to put you on a garden leave. So I'm going to take you off the system, but you'll still be in the company. So if it doesn't work, you can come back.” So I was like, “Fantastic.” So it gave me a little bit of a chance to have a go at it. And luckily, it worked out. But I always had that safety net of being able to say to my boss, “Hey, you were right, it's not worked out. Can I come back?” And so I had that safety net. So I think I was very fortunate.

Jaryd Krause:

Absolutely. Fortunate is definitely a good word for it because a lot of people, I think, and I learned this from one of my mentors, do about $60 million in property every year. And he said, “Jaryd, what's more important than willpower is the environment.” The environment is stronger than willpower. And it can be at times. I had a similar story. And I think a lot of people listening might have a similar story where they might not be in the most supportive environment.

I remember when I had two small online businesses, and one of the guys at work and I were both supervisors for this plumbing firm. So we're both equal on the ladder. But he said, “Oh, how is your business going?” And I said, “Oh, I've had a pretty bad month.” And he said, “Oh, that stuff, mate, it's never going to work.” And then a lot of the other boys would give me grief about it.

And maybe it's because I was in the construction industry and bantered, and we also have this thing called the tall poppy syndrome, where somebody starts to do a little bit well and we chop them down to make ourselves feel better. That's a societal conditioning thing. And I think that actually lit a fire in my belly as well. Similar to you, it was like, “Stuff it, I'm going to prove these guys wrong.” So that's that competitive fire as well. But having that support is, I would say, far better than not having it, right?

Carl Broadbent:

I think, like others, it's the unknown. They've not stepped out of their comfort zone. They've not tried anything entrepreneurial. They've just done their nine to five. There's nothing wrong with that. But they are so scared to look outside of that box that they just fear that it's not obtainable, it's unachievable, and it's pie in the sky. And my wife thought that. And again, my wife needed reassurance. I was lucky enough to win a competition with Income School, and Income School Ricky and Jim flew to my house and gave me two days of one-on-one coaching.

And the thing that I got the most out of that was that they sat with my wife. She had a quiet moment with Jim, and she was like, “Jim, is this really going to lead to anything? Are you just winding him up? Are you just leading down a path?” And he said, “Right. Let me show you some numbers.” And he showed her his websites and the income and some of the income from their customer base. And he kind of proved to her that the industry is real.

And she was like, “Oh, I get it now.” She didn't know how you made money from a website. She was like, “He's got no products. He doesn't sell a service. How is he going to make any money?” So once he reassured her, I think that gave her the confidence to say, “Okay, I'll support him now.” Because she couldn't support me with something she doesn't understand. So again, I was lucky and fortunate to have that situation happen.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, that's great. It is funny to think when people come and say, “Jaryd, I want to buy a business.” What people think about when they think about an online business is that they think of a product, whereas the product can just be media, and you can put ads, affiliates, and all that sort of stuff.

I won't dive into that. But I want to dig into the weeds of where you're at in your businesses and your sites. So tell us where you are. And I know that you're very open to this and will share what you feel like sharing. And if it's something that you don't want to share, just let us know. But I know that you're pretty open because you do your income reports and stuff like that. But where are you with websites? Have you bought any? Have you started all of them from scratch? And how many are you running at the moment?

Carl Broadbent:

So over the last four years, I've not bought a single website. Actually, I say a lot. I bought some really small domains that they'd just bought. They put a little bit of content on. So we're going to be talking $2,000 or $3,000, which is the most I've spent. I've not actually bought an open running income-generating website. I built them all from scratch.

Over the past four years, I haven't actually added it up, but I think it's going to be between 15 and 20 sites I've started, of which I've only got, I think, four left now. So you can do the math. I've sold quite a few. I tend to build sites up to a point where they're earning or valued at around $20,000 to $50,000.

Jaryd Krause:

Of value?

Carl Broadbent: Yeah, sell value. I worked it out the other day. The average was about $26,000 for the sites that I've sold. And I think it's just because it's a number that's achievable for quite a few people. They can maybe dip into their savings for something like that. They're not having to take out huge loans for a site of that size. So I find it an easy size to sell.

So I’d be building my community and my audience right from day one. And I kind of knew that I would have or need a community to help me with different projects, whether that be building websites and selling them, launching another product, or anything like that.

So I was fortunate enough that I've managed to build this community behind me where if I want to sell a website, I literally just go on YouTube and say, “Hey, guys, that website I've been building for a year in front of you, which is now earning X amount of money, I'm thinking of selling it. I'm open to offers; fire me an email; let's see what happens.”

And it is usually as simple as that. I usually get instantly three or four responses saying, “I've been watching it for a year. I'll take it over. If you are coming to the end of that public case study, I'll take it over, I'll buy it, and I'll offer you whatever multiple it may be at the time.”

So that's where I am with the websites. I've also kind of, like I said, launched into other business ventures. So I'm a part owner of a WordPress theme called Popcorn Theme that's been developed by a friend of ours. And it's fantastic. It's doing really well. It's selling like crazy. So I'm a partner in that. And then, obviously, Affiliate Gathering is something else that I've branched into, which is also, again, a profitable business. So I'm still focusing on my website, but I am trying to get into other parts of affiliate marketing and the business.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Cool, cool. Congrats. Also, if you ever have sites above that $26,000 or $50,000 site range and you want buyers, people listening to this podcast are cashed up, hungry buyers. So just reach out, and we'll be able to sell your site for you.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. I mean, my focus last year was going to an event run by Ezoic in California, and I met some of the biggest publishers. I know it sounds cliche, but These are huge publishers. I was hearing numbers of, “Oh, I'm doing 15,000 and 20,000 a day.” And I was like, “Oh, page views.” And they were like, “No, dollars.” I was like, “$20,000 a day?”

And they’re like, “Yeah.” So I kind of got blown away by the whole industry at that level. And when I spoke to them, one thing that I walked away with was that every single one of them that was really, really successful had been focusing on one website. They'd had it maybe for 20 years or ten years. Or they were all focusing on one website that had big teams around it. There were no distractions. They just all focus on that one.

So I've done that this year. Hence, I've gone from 15 websites down to four. I say four. One is Carlbroadbent.com, which, to be honest, I don't do too much on. But of all my affiliate websites, I've got three of them, and they're the ones I'm focusing on. And one of them in particular was going to be my focus. I said I'd do it for a year.

100% all-in on that for a year. However, my backup site took off. It's just flown. So I'm now a bit torn because I've now got two that are doing really well. So I can't do that all-in on one website. But while two are going well, I've got to keep working on them. So yeah, I'm active.

Jaryd Krause:

I've got an idea. You could sell one of them. And then take the resources and pour them into the primary one. I'm a big believer that if we want to grow wealth, we need concentration. To preserve wealth, we need diversification.

I'm probably similar to you and many other people thinking and listening. When I first started, I thought I needed multiple businesses because I've been taught that if I'm going to invest in things and have a business, I need diversification. And I've bought three businesses in three years and just scattered, to be honest. And one of them did really, really well. And then I sold off a few and concentrated on one.

And I think that's super important for people listening. Because a lot of people listening, Carl, are looking to buy a business, and they want to buy multiple businesses, but they don’t realize that focusing on one at a time is where you're going to actually get the results, right?

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. I do a lot of testing. So I'm a big, big believer in testing and looking at the data and the numbers. So I tend to, when I see something moving, kind of jump on it and go all-in on that one project. But if you have multiple ones sitting there, they are always on your mind. Whether you think it's distracting or not, you might be saying, “No, I've never worked on it.”

You're thinking about it. Your brain cells are ticking over, and it's always in the background saying, “I should do something with that. Why don't I start building an email list for that?” Again, that's just taking valuable brain processing power away from your main project. So 100% of the time, I get it.

I like to say that out of the three sites I've got, one is a public case study, and it's definitely coming to the end of its lifespan. So that will be sold very soon. And it's making decent money. It probably took me a year to build, and it probably has a $30,000 value on the site. So that's good. It's been a good public case study on YouTube. People got a lot of lessons out of it. I've learned some new things out of it, and it paid for itself at the end. So we've got that.

That would leave me with two travel sites. And like I said, both are doing really, really well. I'm fortunate to have built a team that can cope with two. I definitely couldn't cope with much more than that without thinning ourselves down. But my team can definitely cope with two. I'm training another editor at the moment. Well, actually, I got to the point where my editor is training another editor, so I've got a nice little workflow going at the moment.

So as you mentioned earlier, one thing I just want to jump back on, if you don't mind, is that when you're growing sites and you start to earn some money, you kind of get a little bit lazy. The money comes in, and you ease off. One thing I found is that the more money I'm earning, the more I'm outsourcing. Now, I don't know if this is lazy; you might be able to tell me, but I'm outsourcing more and more each day.

And I do feel a little guilty sometimes. I did yesterday. I outsourced something yesterday and I walked away and I thought, “I could have done that myself. It took me 10 minutes. Why did I outsource that out?” But it was like a $20 job. Somebody said, “Hey, can I help?” And I was like, “Yeah, just do it.” And somebody reached out to me this morning for thumbnails.

He's like, “Hey, Carl, your thumbnails could be better.” And I was like, “Okay, well, I do them. My son does them. We do a bit.” And he's like, “I'll do them for $8 each.” And he sent me a sample of them. Wow. They're amazing. I'm like, “$8. Yeah, do them. Just do them.” That's another thing off my plate.

Jaryd Krause:

I had somebody who was going to partner with me in one of my businesses last year. I am great friends with him, still surf and skate with him, and catch up with him. He's coming to the Flippa event with me just locally here. And he said to me a really cool thing, he sold quite a significant business on Flippa, and he said to me, “The poor spend their time to make money, and the wealthy spend their money to make time.”

And I was like, Wow. Because I had this hang-up about hiring somebody for a certain role. And I was like, Wow. If I need to put myself in the wealthy category, and I want to, and I believe I am wealthy in a lot of areas of life, including financially, I need to really just get to the next level. I really need to step into that.

And it's a scary thing, right? It's much like that scariness of, “Oh, I'm going to put myself out there. I'm going to go from work life, corporate career, to this.” It's a similar thing of, “Oh, am I going to pay that much money to get somebody else to do it?” And when I feel that energetically, we open up so much more space in our lives to start thinking more strategically on other areas of our business that are more income-generating parts of our business.

And yeah, I totally get where you're at because it's something that I struggled with, and I still do. I mean, not perfect. I still need to work on myself to get to these other levels. And I think people listen—I think it's a really good thing for them to understand that we all go through it. And I do want to break down your day—maybe not your day-to-day, but what your team looks like, and then what your 80-20 is that sort of gives you guys the best results. So what does it look like in terms of team, writers, editors, or anybody else that's a virtual assistant, and how does it look?

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. So the team currently has 12 writers. I won't say full-time. I give them as much content as we can handle to edit. So that's the issue. And it's like anything. You build up a team of writers, and when they first start for you, they're really enthusiastic, and they're pumping out content, and it's great. And invoices are coming in left, right, and center. And then they kind of slow down a bit. And then, at 12 writers, I expect X number of articles per month. And some hit that target and want more. Some are really slow.

So it's difficult to judge how much content can come from that. But at its fullest, we were producing about 300 to 400 articles a month, and the invoices and bills that were coming in were just horrific. It was just constant. We're talking $5,000 to $6,000 a month in income coming in. So invoices are coming in.

So the team was quite large. Now I give them 25 articles per month for each writer, and then some of them will hit that target. Some will say, kind of, “I've only done ten. Can I roll the rest over to next month?” And I'm okay with that. So we have, yes, 12 writers. I have one proofreader, and she basically just looks at qualitative content and proofreads it. We have one main editor. He is in charge of formatting and making the articles look pretty, adding tables, charts, infographics, and things like that.

And now he is training another editor because there are two travel websites I've got, and we've started implementing multiple affiliate programs. So we were just with Booking.com, and now we've added expedia.com and hotels.com. So we're going through all the old posts and adding multiple options to book a hotel.

So if you see a hotel in the post and the only option was a booking.com link, we're now putting three links because Google likes you to give people options, and some of the other affiliate programs that we found now have better cookie periods. So there's a lot of work going back to the old post, and it's quite laborious and a little bit boring. So we hired this new editor. So he's doing that. So that's fine.

And then, on the video side of things, I have one voiceover lady. I have two video editors. They come up with scripts and do the video editing. So in the video section, there are three people. So yeah, proofreader, two VAs, three in the video section, and 12 writers.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, cool. Yeah. You've got quite a content production team there. And I want to get into revenue generation and stuff like that because your content is one part, and then you've got revenue generation. What's your take on the quality of content versus the velocity of content? What are you geared more towards, and how do you go down the quality route with your writers?

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. Well, we've always been down with the bulk publishing method, but not low quality. So it's always been humanly written. It's always been proofread. It's always been edited nicely. It's always had original images where possible. We're now adding videos where possible. So it is bulk content, but it is also of decent quality.

So I spoke to somebody the other day. Her website gets like a million and a half views per month, and she only publishes four articles each month, and each one is world class. And I was just like, You can get to that point when you have some traffic and some revenue coming in where you're not forced to push out more revenue-generating content in bulk. There's a point where you have to get some quantity out there to get some money coming in to be able to say, “Okay, now we're going to ease back and we're going to really do 6,000 words of world class pieces of content.”

The average person will find it very hard to do that on a new site because they will see their income coming in so much slower in the beginning. They might get a little bit disheartened, and they might just not follow through. So I think in the beginning, you have to churn out a little bit more content. But I'm definitely not in the camp of let's put a thousand articles of anything out, it doesn’t matter what it is. I'm not in that boot camp.

Jaryd Krause:

Good, good.

Carl Broadbent:

I did get a bit of criticism on some of my YouTube videos where I did some months of publishing 400 articles, and people were like, “It's crazy just banging out any old rubbish.” And it's really good. It's humanly written. They're $40 or $50 an article. This isn't a $5 article randomly published. This is a decent piece of quality content.

And in the last couple of years, because these are travel websites, I've been trying to narrow the team down to specific regions. So I have writers that live in Canada, I have writers that live in India. I have writers that live in the UK. So each writer kind of works on an area that they're well-versed in.

They know the area really well. So when you say Google's looking for EEAT, well, the best I can do is make sure the article is written by somebody who lives in that country, understands the language, and understands the nature of travel in that country. So I think we kind of meet the authority that way by using writers that are specific to each country.

Jaryd Krause:

Also, certainly, it's going to help you, not just with the authority but with the quality of the content—someone that actually understands the landscape a bit more in depth, understands the culture a bit more in depth, and can actually share local places for people to travel to and whatnot. I think that can really help improve the quality of the content.

With the velocity that you're doing, how do you work out what articles you do go back and update? What are some of the things that you track with your content to help you see them, and do you even update articles? And if so, how often? But what does that whole journey look like for you?

Carl Broadbent:

The workflow of updating all the articles is notoriously difficult, laborious, and tedious. It is. And I'll be honest, I don't know any website owner who will get on your podcast and say, “Oh yeah, religiously, every morning, I update two old articles.” They don’t. They're lying if they say that. It takes a very stringent team to do that. And it is something that we will look back on.

Finding new articles and things, like I said earlier, is very data driven. So we will look at something that has taken off. So ranking. Things like, if we publish this article, how quickly did Google rank it? And how quickly did it send it to the top three positions? Google often picks up on a keyword that you may not know or have come across.

And that's happened recently. My latest case study is going so well because of one keyword. I would not have even thought of it in a million years. I logged into a tool on Ezoic, and it popped up and said, “You're ranking for this.” I was like, “What even is that?” It's an activity. And I was like, “What is that activity?” And I looked in, and I was like, “Oh, okay.”

So this is a new activity that's kind of popped up around the world, and it's starting to grow, and outlets are starting to open. It's starting to trend. So I jumped straight on it. So we covered that activity in every kind of country we could write about. And it absolutely took off.

So we look at data like that and see what's working and what's not. Because sometimes you might have this plan. Okay, I'm going to write every article about the best hotel in California and Disney, and all of them. And it just doesn't work. Your website is not loved by Google for that keyword. It just doesn't. And you can throw tons of backlinks and money at it, and you might just never rank for it.

But you might be ranking something else that's working without really trying. So that's what we do. We look at what's working at the moment for our new content. And that often gives us a topical cluster or authority in that keyword or that nation. We go after that. We kind of doubled down on that.

The old content—we just look at that. I look at that at the end of every month. I just look at the investment. So I'll look at what we've written and see if something's not working at all. If it's getting less than 100 views per month, I'll look into it and see if it's worth actually spending another $30 or $40 to renew that content. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes you just look at it and think, It's just a topic I'm not going to rank for. And I can try, and I can try to beat my head against the wall, but we're probably not going to make that article work. So sometimes we just leave it.

And I've even gotten to the point sometimes where I've just taken off a load of articles. If they're getting 20 or 30 views on that article per month, sometimes I just delete it because Google's not loving it for that. And I've just gotten rid of it and focused on something else. But yeah, updating content is hard. It's hard to do. I hate doing it.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I like that you delete those that are not getting much traffic and are just adding to your site. I think over time it can drag your site down where Google's like, “Look, you've got some really good ones,” but these things are just like, “Why are you taking up space on the internet for even having those when people are going to get more value from your other articles there?”

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. I mean, technically, you're slowing your server down; you're putting weight on the article. There are links that might be 401 links. There might be errors on it—404 errors. There could be anything on it. So there might be Amazon products that have gone out of stock. That's a bad sign for Google.

So there could be all sorts happening on that page that you think, Well, it only gets 20 or 30 views per month. But if there are all these bad signals, broken links, and things like that in the article, it's actually a detriment to you sitting there. So those are the ones that we kind of get rid of.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Hugely, hugely. And do you track all of that? How do you track all of that?

Carl Broadbent:

For broken links and things like that, we can use tools like Screaming Frog. It’s a really good one. It'll just crawl the site, and it'll pull up everything from titles being too long to missing a featured image to a missing meta description. It can pull out things like that. We're actually working on the popcorn theme. We're actually building a lot of these plugins into that theme now. So it is now capable of doing things like telling you if you've got missing images, a low word count, or missing meta descriptions.

So we try to build a lot of tools into that because I hate plugins. I'm an absolute avid believer that probably 70% of the plugins you've got on your website you probably do not need. And I get rid of as many as I can. I like to only have about five or six plugins on my websites now. And I'm trying to build as many tools into that theme so that people can disable them and stop paying some of those monthly subscriptions for a tool that they just do not need.

Jaryd Krause:

So yeah, that's a good thing about Ezoic, right? You get into their Leap program, and you speak to their team. And I know a lot of people that I've helped move and transition to using Ezoic. Ezoic has helped them so much. Speed up their site, make their site way better with fewer plugins, and just have fewer things going on in their site, and it's so helpful.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, all the advertising companies are really helpful, and they'll all help you speed up your site and get rid of some of the plugins. I think it just takes a bit of nerve to go into your website and go, “Okay. Do I just click deactivate on that? What will it do?” And they click deactivate and they go back to the site and nothing's changed. Things like images.

Jaryd Krause:

And you've got a backup as well. You can always revert to a backup from your hosting provider.

Carl Broadbent:

You can always reverse. Absolutely, yeah. Little things like image optimization. People always put image optimization plugins on their sites, and they pay a monthly fee to optimize each image. How many images have you got? Because, to be honest, each day we publish, let's say, ten articles. It's very easy for us to just go into Adobe Stock or Canva and get an image, make the file size smaller, reduce it down, and add it to the article. It takes five minutes, and that's another plugin we don't need, and it's another monthly subscription we don't need.

So just taking care of optimizing your images before you put them on the blog post means you don't need another plugin. And people say, “Oh, it saves you so much time.” If you're publishing hundreds a month, I get it. But if you're publishing four a day, can you spend ten minutes optimizing your images? That seems crazy.

Jaryd Krause:

And it should be a part of the process that the content team is doing the production of it anyway. So when it comes to creating these pieces of content, how much emphasis do you give and put on the writers to do competitive research?

Carl Broadbent:

Well, my writers are at this stage, and now I’m fortunate that they're all quite established and they're all experienced with me and our processes and things like that. So we don't put really specific guidelines in there. We don't say, Here are 25 keywords, and here's an A4 sheet of instructions for each one. They're all experienced enough now to kind of understand what I want and what we're looking for.

My editor is really good at spotting things. In fact, just before this call, I just jumped on an email because I could see he'd pulled one of my writers, and he's amazing. He screenshots everything and links it. He says, “You took that sentence from that website.” I don't know how he finds it, but he's like, “You took that sentence from there and you haven't cited that it's their quote. And if we're going to do that, we need to highlight it.” And it's fantastic.

But as far as instructions go, we only really give them instructions and examples right at the very start if we're hiring a new writer. We've made quite a few videos as well. So I will send them links. I'll say, “This is how I want you to format the article to help the editor.” And I'll send them the videos so they can watch how to do that.

It's all about giving feedback, really. Because the more feedback you give, the less work you'll have in the long run. And I know that for a lot of people, it's really hard to give that feedback. It's really hard to go back to the writer and say, “I'm really sorry, but you've not included any bullet points or H3 or H4 headings in there.

I can't see any quotations. You've not highlighted or bolded any keywords.” And it's really hard for a lot of people to do that. But trust me, the majority of them will come back and say, “Oh, great. Thanks for the feedback. I was wondering if you wanted that. Now that you've cleared that up, I'll do it. I was going to do it anyway.” And you're like, “Phew.” And it just saves everybody so much work.

So, can you hear me? Are you there?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I just stopped for a second. We'll keep going.

Carl Broadbent:

It's okay. So it's so much better to give them that feedback early, and it just saves that snowball effect of either not getting the content how you want it or your editor having to do more work. So I'm keen on that because, as it goes down the pipeline, the chain of command, the invoices for them doing that work get more expensive, if you know what I mean.

So I'd rather the work be done at the beginning, where the cost is quite low, because once it gets to the top of that chain, where my editor has to go in and correct things, that gets expensive. So you have to make sure that feedback is constant.

Jaryd Krause:

It's a really good point. Whenever you do hire somebody, and I've hired somebody that I've been training for almost a year in our business and working with so much, we have so much contact because he's going to play a big role in the business. And even for a writer, the more prep work that you do when you first hire them, the better the onboarding process is.

The more they understand your brand, the more they understand what you want, and the more quality assurance you make sure they go through, what you're actually doing is setting them up for success. And when you set them up for success, you set your business up for success.

And whenever somebody is employed, I know for myself, all I want to do is go to my boss and say, “What do you want exactly? What do you want it to look like? And how can I make you happy?” And when you do that and when you provide that to your worker, everybody wins.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. It's a difficult thing to do because people seem almost ashamed to ask a question, to actually say, “Jaryd, I don't actually quite know what you want from this interview. Tell me right from the start what are we aiming for? What's the outcome? What's your goals? Because I want to provide that for you and your audience. I want to talk and satisfy you and make sure your audience is good.” So sometimes it's difficult to say that.

And I think it's so important that we learn to communicate that, both good and bad. I'm a real believer in giving all types of feedback, whether positive or negative. You just have to do it in the correct manner. I sent an email out recently—actually a video, sorry—about giving feedback to your team.

Not calling people out on a group chat but saying, “Hey, we'll pick that up after the conference,” you know what I mean? And giving feedback in the correct manner, because feedback is hard to give. And if it's given incorrectly, it can be a nightmare. Words cannot be unspoken. So sometimes you have to be very careful how you do it.

Jaryd Krause:

And I came across this, and I think it was a realization when I had this discussion just on the weekend around taking the ego out of us building our businesses. I built this business thinking that, well, the business only exists because there are human beings that need to consume our media or buy our products. So it only grew because they existed, and wanted it. And we were only able to evolve our content, our media, and everything else that we do based on how they react and behave.

And if we actually, what I like to do in my membership and even if people listen to the podcast, if you have constructive criticism, just tell me because I want to give you guys what you want. And the more that I give you guys what you want, the more you win and the more that I win.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, yeah. I gave some criticism to a company recently because they were sending out this email, and I noticed something that was in it and what they were doing in their company. And I hear things. I'm in the industry; I have boots on the ground; I have ears in the field; I hear it, and I kind of just find them an email because I know the owner. I know he's not actively involved in the company. I know he owns it, but he's not active.

And I just said, “Hey, I’ve been getting this from your company, and I think you just need to be careful with the direction you're going. And I see what you're saying and what you're doing is contradictory and it just doesn't feel right. And it's been picked up in the industry. I can hear the rumors; I can hear people talking about it.

Maybe it's just something you want to look into. Check into the company, have a word with the manager, maybe you want to take a look at what's happening.” And I got a really crappy email back just saying something like, “We've got this. Don't worry about it.” And I was just like, “Okay.” I was like, I would rather somebody say that to me that something's wrong.

I had a real-life example the other day. I had an interview with Carolyn Shelby, and I was using AI to generate some clicky, catchy titles, and it came up with one. I thought, Oh, that's really good. And I just put it in my video, and I didn't kind of realize the undertone the title had.

It was kind of referring to her as if she's special because she's female, if you kind of know what I mean. And I read the title, and I was like, Yeah. She's special because she's Carolyn. She’s not special because she's female. And I was like, Okay. And at that point, somebody, a good friend, a big person in the industry—called me out of it and said, “I love you, Carl, but I hate that title. It has some implications in that title.”

And I was like, “Do you know what? You're right. It was late at night. I was tired. I banged it on. I haven't thought about it. Thank you for the feedback.” I instantly changed it. And I just thought, That's great. A lot of people would be worried about that. “Oh, Carl’s been called out in a video.” No, great.

Jaryd Krause:

It's because you don't have an ego, though, Carl. You are in business to do good. And if somebody is going to tell you how to do good, you're going to do it. Like I say to everybody, challenge everybody; challenge me; challenge you.

Carl Broadbent:

You mentioned earlier about growing a business and people having egos. Maybe they want to say, “I've grown this website to X amount of money. I've grown this business.” I don't care who grows my business. I just want my business to grow. I'm happy to go on YouTube and say, “Hey, this website is making $10,000 a week and I've done nothing. My team has done it all. They are amazing.” I'm happy to do that.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's funny. It comes back to, and I've talked about this so many times, that people like to call them the self-made millionaires or self-made entrepreneurs. It's actually practically impossible. Because whenever you just listen to a podcast episode, a YouTube video, read a book, or hear some piece of advice from anybody, you're getting help from somebody. So yeah, it's just an ego thing.

I want to touch on the videos. So you do video production. Obviously, there are scripts, not talking head videos, of course. I'm guessing you've got b-roll, images, and stuff like that with a script and a voiceover. And then what's your strategy with that? Are you posting those on YouTube, and is YouTube driving traffic to your site for affiliate revenue or driving traffic straight from your YouTube videos to affiliate links? And is it a combination of both? Like having video embedded in the pieces of content to add more value as well. So yeah, what's your strategy with the videos?

Carl Broadbent:

So with videos previously, so I'm talking maybe six months ago, it was all just Carl Broadbent, and it was all my videos. And a lot of them are talking head videos on my YouTube channel. Basically, I'm just talking about what I do in the industry each day.

And I've always said I don't teach anything. I really do not have any courses. I don't teach anything. It's just a case of I'll show you what I'm doing. If it works, you might want to try it. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Don't blame me. It's just what I'm doing. That's literally all it was.

In my websites now, only in the last six months, I've really gotten into video because I just had this, I don't know if you call it an epiphany or whatever, just one day, I just said to my wife, “How many articles have you read today?” She was like, “What?” I was like, “How many 2,000-word articles have you read?

I've searched on Google and read an article.” She went, “I don't think I've done any.” I said, “Right, okay.” I said, “How many videos have you watched on YouTube, TikTok, whatever? ” And she went, “Oh, loads, loads. My GHD hair curlers weren't working. And I jumped on.” And I’m like, “Exactly.” I said, “Well, they're all video content.” She went, “Yeah.”

And I just kind of thought, Well, why am I publishing zero videos per month but 400 blog posts? And I kind of thought there was a shift going on here. So I didn't want to get left behind. So that's why I started building a team of editors and video production people. And that's why we're focusing on that.

At the moment, the strategy is that we are taking our most popular articles, if they warrant it, and that's key, and then making a video around that. And then we put it on YouTube, and we link the two together.

Now, the strategy for that is that I want Google to see that we've gone the extra mile. I want Google to say, “Okay, they've covered this topic with, let's say, 3,000 words. But they've also gone the extra mile and put their own images on there, their original images. They've also made a video. Wow, they made a video, and there's a video on there. Sometimes we might even put an audio file in where they can just listen to the blog posts.”

So just doing that extra thing so that Google can link the two things together and see that we're actively pushing our business is important because Google is not as smart as people think. Google just looks for signs that you are a real business. It is literally looking for signs that you are a business. If you had a bricks and mortar shop, let's say you were opening a surf shop, right? What are you going to do when you open a surf shop?

You're going to get a telephone line, and you're going to register that under the company name. You're going to put up and advertise your opening times. You're going to do that. They're going to take out insurance on your business. You're going to do all the things that a business would do.

Why is it any different for a website? And that's what Google's looking at. So Google's looking at signs that you are treating it like a company. Again, if you had a surf shop, you would be on social media. You would be posting videos of you surfing and doing all that. You would be doing that. And that, again, is what Google's looking for.

So that's one of the reasons why we wanted the videos on there to add power to the website and let Google know, Hey, we're taking this website seriously. We're not just publishing content and forgetting about it. I do want to get into video content that is more product focused. I do want to do that. I would like to get to the point where the channels are earning enough revenue, either through affiliate clicks or views on YouTube, through Google AdSense, rather than just backing up the website. I would like there to be two entities going on there. But at the moment, they're not. The channels are just backing up the blog posts, really.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. And there's a cool strategy you could use. I dare say, I know YouTube. We do okay on YouTube with our channel; the ad revenue is not a thing. And I dare say that the affiliate revenue that you generate will be far superior. But I think a cool strategy for YouTube videos and affiliates is tying up with brands that offer adventures and asking for some of their content and the rights to use some of their content to promote them on your channel and link to them.

So you can get content from the actual adventures or the experiences that might be in local areas that promote their thing. But you do it as an affiliate, so you get free content and, basically, not free videos. You have to edit them and all that sort of stuff, but then you don't need to pay for somebody to go out and do the experiences and stuff like that. I think that's a really cool way that you could do it without having to spend too much money on getting content created for the videos.

Carl Broadbent:

See? Exactly. That's the reason why I like to meet up on calls, meet up in person, because you get the little nuggets of gold like that. So you're absolutely right. Imagine how you can repurpose that content. It can be used on TikTok, on Instagram, everywhere. So now that's absolutely fantastic.

In the travel industry, there are a lot of people. I mean, it's fantastic. You just reminded me; I have two or three YouTuber friends who are in the travel industry that do that. So it'd be so easy for me to go—I've never thought of this; this would be great. It's to say, “Hey, film me a little bit of content and I'll promote your channel, but I get a bit of video content out of it as well. So there you go, Jaryd, thank you very much.

Jaryd Krause:

Oh, you're welcome. And they may already have the content there that you can say, “Hey, if you're happy for me to share a bit and we can both make money, then you don't need to get content. You don't need to create the content. You just edit some and throw in some affiliate links, and they win, and you win. So cool.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, absolutely fantastic. Like I said, the reason I did the Affiliate Gathering was to do that, what we've just done, to have these conversations and get them little nuggets of information. Because you just don't have that sometimes in a group setting online, where you can get it if it's a very small or personal group. But that actual meeting, face to face or one-on-one gets you little bits of information. So yeah, it's fantastic.

Jaryd Krause:

Fantastic. Cool. Yeah, let's check in in a year and see how that goes. Oh, there's one more thing that I do want to speak about. It’s those pieces of content that you see, like, Oh, these are deemed worthy of having videos or These are deemed worthy of adding a bit more to it, and then, because it's doing quite well and getting a lot of traffic, All those ones that may be underperforming a little bit that you feel like, Oh, the content is really good and it's better than the competitors, but it needs something else. And it might be links. Do you do any link building?

Carl Broadbent:

The only link building we do is HARO. It's the only link at the moment that I feel is worth the value. I've previously spent tens of thousands of dollars getting DA20 and DA30 links. And it's just that none of them hold much value at all. The only ones we're finding that are doing anything are HARO links, where you're getting links from DA sites 70 and above. One link from something like that will be the equivalent of 20 or 30 smaller links.

So yeah, those HARO links are the only ones we're doing. And we're not doing that ourselves. I am outsourcing it because, again, time sucks. It is really, really draining to do HARO. It's sending out dozens and dozens of pitches each day to hopefully get one acceptor. So that is a cost. It is very expensive, but I do feel that it is one cost that is worth it. And we don't go overboard. I try to do five per month per site. So that's how much I do.

The other thing I worry about with HARO links is that the majority come from newspapers, online publications, and things like that, where they only link to your homepage and won't link to individual articles. So sending 30, 40 high powered links to the homepage each month looks a little suspicious. It looks a little bit over the top. So you might go, Wait a minute, they only have one.

Jaryd Krause:

Unnatural.

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, unnatural for sure. So I just think five is absolutely fine. And I would rather spread the anchor links, the anchor text as much as possible, but HARO doesn't do that. Most of them just go, “No, we just put it in there. It's x.com company. That's all we put in.” So that is a little bit of a worry when doing that.

Jaryd Krause:

That's a great strategy, honestly. Some people just go crazy when they see that happen to them. We won't get into the discussion too much on this particular topic, but some people went to velocity with just articles and put so much in and had been able to use certain tools to go to velocity publishing, like just a lot. And then you're publishing a thousand posts a month. That is not natural for Google to say, “This is not what we want. We want you to maybe create five to 20 amazing pieces, not 1,000 crummy ones.” Google is smart in that way.

Carl Broadbent:

Well, Google looks for patterns. I've been blessed to have a few conversations with people very high up in Google. One was a couple of years ago, where I think the guy had a little bit to drink, and he was in the comments, tweeting or something like that. I was like, “You guys say so much in the comments, but you never have these conversations face to face and really prove you’re worth something.” It was like, “Okay. Jump online then.” And he sent me a link, and I jumped on.

He was one of the original founders of the algorithm program. He's one of the original programmers, and he works at the highest level at Google on their algorithm program. And he said, “It's as simple sometimes as somebody having put a zero where one should be.” And I was like, What? And he was just like, “You think this is really complicated?” He said, “If there's an algorithm update and you're thinking, oh, they're very strategic.” He said, “There's a lot of internal things that've happened that you don't know.

Somebody may have gotten a new job post, and he's trying to prove himself in the company. He's playing with things, changing things, and it hits us hard, but we don't realize the internal struggle that's going on. And it's just simply that somebody accidentally put zero where one should be, he said, and that's it. And then they reverse it. Somebody finds out it hasn't worked, and they reverse it next month and do that.

And yeah, he was just saying so much about that kind of thing, which kind of blew my mind with how we look at Google, how we look at our business, and how we look at SEO in general. I think sometimes we look too deep and start thinking and making up stories about what's happening. They're attacking me; they're going after me; they're going after that. And sometimes it's just a case of Google getting it wrong, or they'll roll it back, or there's an error. So yeah, it's quite interesting still.

Jaryd Krause:

That's a cool story, Carl. I'm a big believer in that. I think a lot of us, in the content site space, get very granular and don't come back and have a good bird's eye view of, like, Oh, these are the main things. This is the 80-20 and I get too lost in the tech of it all and the granular things.

So, Carl, this has been so fun to chat. I'm glad that you came back on. I'm sure we're going to do it again soon. I want to send people to your YouTube channel so they can check out you talking about what you're doing with your sites. What is the name of your YouTube channel?

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah. Just go on YouTube and search for Carl Broadbent. You'll find me popping up for most things related to niche websites. And I do have carlbroadbent.com as my website. I say I'm not as active as I should be on there. But yeah, YouTube is where I'm mostly active.

Jaryd Krause:

And Carl Broadbent, you can get to the Affiliate Gathering. You've also got a link to Affiliate Gathering for people who may want to go in 2024 as well, right?

Carl Broadbent:

Yeah, absolutely. And if anybody couldn't attend the 2023 one, we do have a digital version available for purchase. So you can go to the website, affiliategathering.com, and there will be a link there, probably on the homepage, where you can purchase a digital copy. So you can watch what's going on. We're going to record all the presentations, the dozens of workshops going on, the networking zones, all the backstage gossip, and things like that.

So we're going to put a presentation together—a digital copy. So that if you couldn't travel and see us, you would still get to feel part of it and maybe learn something as well. But yeah, it'd be great if anybody could come out to the next one. We try to do them annually here in the UK. It's only a one-day event, but I think it's really valuable that people can try to attend in person. I think that's the key thing, but it is a big stretch.

I went to California recently, and it was one of the biggest things I've undertaken. I'm not a traveler; I really am. I tend to stick to the UK. But yeah, I traveled to California, so I know how big of a deal it is. But I came back so inspired. I came back with so much enthusiasm for the industry and the way I run my business. It was valuable for me to go to that. And I'll certainly be traveling tomorrow myself.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. It's good that we can do in-person stuff now. Everybody who is listening, thank you for listening. Check out the links that I'll be posting in the show notes so you can check out Carl, what he's doing with the Affiliate Gathering, and all the things that he's got going on. Yeah. Thanks for coming on again, Carl.

Carl Broadbent:

Thank you very much for having me. It's been lovely to talk to you.