Ep 191: Buying, Building & Selling a 7 Figure Blog with Shane Dutka

Jaryd Krause (0:00)

What would you spend your million dollars on if you sold your blog for over seven figures? Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause host of the buying online businesses podcast and today I'm speaking with Shane Dutka, who is a former CPA accountant turned digital entrepreneur. Now he got his start with eCom and bow ties and then pivoted to affiliates and pest control content websites and scale to starting a fleet of affiliate sites in various different niches like jewelry painting, babies parenting coffee.

Now he's the SEO director at one of the largest performing marketing companies in the world. Now in this podcast episode, Shane, and I talk about how he's built multiple sites, how he's bought multiple content websites, and how he's sold them as well. We dig into what he's learned about buying websites, and all the intricate things that he looks for when he's doing due diligence on these content websites that you should be paying attention to, we will talk about auditing a backlink profile throughout doing due diligence and what that should look like and how much risk you should take on or maybe not take on then we move into talking about how much content you should be publishing to scale your blog, how much you should be publishing, if you want fast scale, how much you want, you should be publishing, if you just want to cruise along how much you could actually be spending from your current revenue from your content site on potentially growing your site with buying content, we will talk about backlink building and the strategy that can go into that that Shane has used four different pages that you should be building those backlinks for. And what goes into that.

And we'll talk about what you should consider when you're actually selling your blog and how you can prep it for sale. But we also talk about what you should look out for when buying websites from brokers, some things that you should really understand and know before spending your money on buying a website. Now, this is such a valuable episode, you guys are absolutely going to love it. We did talk a lot about buying sites. So please don't go away and do this on your own. Make sure you get my due diligence framework, which I use a lot of my clients use, and it's helped us saved millions of dollars and make millions of dollars through buying websites. So to get that go to buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources, you can get our doodle the framework there and there's awesome resources there as well on that page, you can get to check it out. Now let's dive in to the BOB podcast.

Do you want to build or grow your content website niche website builders have helped hundreds of people that take their content websites from a few $100 per month to over 10s of 1000s of dollars per month with crafted content creation buying age domains and link building strategies. These strategies have helped people increase their Traffic Authority, monthly earnings and their website valuation to head a nichewebsite.builders/BOB/ to get 10% of any link building or 10% more from their content creation services. That’s nichewebsite.builders/BOB/ I'll put a link in the description to that. Shane, welcome to the buying online business podcast. Thanks for coming on.

Shane Dutka (3:07)

Appreciate you having me.

Jaryd Krause (3:08)

I want to ask you straight up, we'll just dive straight on in why blogging? You went from CPA into blogging? Was there some obviously some motivation in that?

Shane Dutka (3:17)

Yeah, I mean, sort of a windy story. But yeah, I mean, an account the accountant life, not exactly one of you know, Glamour and riches, certainly is a traditional low risk path. But, you know, I wasn't super interested in I've always had like certain entrepreneurial bug, my dad was an entrepreneur, you know, like an electrical contracting business and I wanted to do something. So I ended up starting a bowtie site got sort of cut my teeth on content marketing with this while working my accounting job.

And I noticed that, you know, the earnings were coming, regardless of whether it was working or not, you know, you kind of sort of learned that blogs generate traffic, whether you're working on it or not. And I was like, Oh man, like, this seems like a an interesting opportunity that I should probably explore further and then I basically did, I pivoted out of bow ties, which was the original thing when I started just to like, sort of dip my toe in the, in the digital marketing world.

And I pivoted to a bunch of other niches that had more broad appeal like Pest Control, coffee, painting, things like that. And then a lot more things to talk about started walking around or creating blogging and content sites in those niches. And again, the earning started accumulates very, you know, sort of just compounding effect that you know, working as an accountant just doesn't quite have so that was sort of the you know, the arc very quickly spoken about.

Jaryd Krause (4:45)

Yeah, it's pretty attractive when you can have some sites be pretty passive, do some things after work or whatever, and it still be making money. I remember I had three, was it No, I had two businesses before I left my plumbing Job and people like, well hang on how you how come you leaving plumbing? And, you know, its good money as like, is it? I mean, if it's for where people are I guess its good money for where most people are at its good money. But yeah, I mean, it's a demanding job and demanding of your body and for that aspect but for CPA but demanding of your time. So have you bought sites before or you just started on, like looked at niches and started?

Shane Dutka (5:25)

No, I've done both. I've started sides, both sides, by existing sides by new sides sold existing side sold new edge sides, kind of done everything there is to do, I would say, with content sites and blogs and affiliate sites. Yeah, I've, he site, compared to the starting of a site? Obviously, you're jumping ahead, you know, maybe six months, and you're kind of pulling that timeline forward a bit. Then if you were just start from zero. Also, generally, if you buy a site, you'll be buying some kind of earnings attached to it. Unless you're buying say, that's not making anything, which probably wouldn't do that. But yeah, I mean, you kind of see the timeline a little bit, which has benefits, of course.

Jaryd Krause (6:12)

I'm all about proof of concept, buying something that's been proven already. Somebody else has done the hard yards hard work. Have you been through the process of starting things that haven't worked out, as well as you thought they would? Like, you know, starter sites?

Shane Dutka (6:25)

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I've started, I would say, my hit rate from me like 25 to 35%. Somewhere in that range of life is.

Jaryd Krause (6:34)

Exceptional, by the way, right?

Shane Dutka (6:37)

Yeah, it's yeah, obviously, like, it could be like trash, you can do like it, I would say that my average is probably above, you know, like baseball, like it's a decent average for what it is. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, to your point, buying something that's sort of established, Google has looked at the site, it likes how it's built. They like the content, it's, you know, you're obviously making money from the sites, you know, the content that's on the site is generating revenue, there's interest there.

So you’ve sort of checked a lot of boxes when you buy an existing property versus like, start from scratch, which has all the same risks. But then also, you know, all of the time, I want one thing that I say a lot to people who are thinking about getting into like a SEO centric property properties and blog and things like that, and the feedback would be so slow. So if you started, say, from scratch, and you're not really experienced in it, maybe like buying a course or something, or like, oh, yeah, I can do it, I'll save a bunch of money. You like make a bunch of wrong decisions, like the feedback will be so slow that you won't really know you've made wrong decisions until like six months from now. And then by then you're like, Okay, you really motivated and like, probably ready to go back to be a plumber?

Jaryd Krause (7:45)

Yeah, I agree. And the feedback is the most important thing, feedback we get from our business feedback we get from our life and like what we should be doing, like, what are the next step that we should be doing. And that's what you can get, you're really tapping into data already from an established business, I'm sure you've got some stories of due diligence and things that you've learned when you've been looking at sites, I want to come back to asking you about some of the things you look for when buying a blog, through our due diligence.

But what you know, for first time investors looking at blogs, what are some of the things that you would suggest being wary of like some of the things that you may have seen in blogs like, oh, wow, they're doing this some Black hat stuff? And what are some of the things that you've noticed in your journey of buying sites?

Shane Dutka (8:29)

Oh, yeah. 110% link profile is essentially, honestly, at the end of the day, if you cut away like 95% of the frill, you're buying like the brand blog, like the website structure, like how things were put together, and they might look really pretty. And you know, there was a great graphic designer on it. And you might be buying all that which you're like, oh, yeah, you're super jazzed about, but really, at the end of the day, when you're buying a property like a website, like a blog affiliate site is SEO centric site, you're really the main thing you need to be focused on is the link profile. And by that, I mean, you know, the backlinks pointing to the site, right, like, yeah, that is essentially 95% of the failure of buying a site will become a overlooking that.

There's plenty of other things you need to make sure of, obviously, but yeah, I've seen too many sites that just really built on very shaky foundations. And they then, you know, the new owners didn't really understand they thought that site looked links look great, whatever. Maybe somebody told them that were in reality, like the links are all bought links there, you know, all for sites just selling links as a business model. And then, you know, six to eight months later, the site goes to zero because Google devalues all your links. So, yeah, for sure, the biggest risk.

Jaryd Krause (9:41)

I was just, I was just with a client literally, in hrs. looking at a link profile. And for a site that has been listed for sale, they have bought so many links, a bunch of no follow links, and we went check them out. Not the sexiest looking domains, for example was domain.com This forward slash something completely irrelevant to the site, go check out the link, and there would just be 150 links on a boring Pat one, you know, one on one page, and there was a lot of men, you know, they basically had bought a lot of traffic.

But in essence, once that is found out, after somebody has purchased, the site traffic is coming from those links. But Google's like, hang on, like this is not the most relevant traffic. And it's basically coming from a link farm dangers of that, like some things that are a bad backlink profile looks like but I'd like to get your take on like, what is a good backlink profile? To like a not so good backlink profile?

Shane Dutka (10:44)

Yeah, that's man that takes a much trained eye. Because I think the, you know, the whole due diligence process is sort of invaluable, because like, you really do need to pay somebody who knows what bad looks like and what good looks like or else you are just sort of buying a bunch of risks. That may it might turn out to be fine, and like, everything's fine. But like, you're definitely not going to sleep soundly when the only reason.

Jaryd Krause (11:08)

That's the only reason we have a business teaching people to do DD and have us review them. Exactly. I mean, the risk is so high. Yeah.

Shane Dutka (11:18)

Exactly. The risk is very high. I mean, as with most purchases of businesses, right, there's so much there's always risk, but I think in this particular business model, you know, that is where a lot of it is concentrated. When it comes to like, hey, what's a good one look like assuming that, you know, like, I think obviously not having link farms in your backlink profile, having links from legitimate websites that have really great editorial standards themselves, have really great traffic profiles themselves, obviously are very scrupulous with who they link to and don't link to, right you want to be you want to be placed, you want your links on websites to be very like to be meticulously placed. Right? That’s a great signal that and obviously a niche relevant sites, right, like so I don't have control site. My if you were looking at my backlink profiles full of links from pest control websites, right, which is a great signal, you're like, oh, yeah, it makes sense. Like, yeah, if you like look at the backlink profile, and it like looks like a pest control site, and then you look at the actual site, and it looks like it is a pest controls life and you're like, Okay, those jive, but you might find in fact, bad backlink profiles, you know, link profiles full of mommy bloggers, sites that are these generalists sites.

There's a site that comes to mind called soup.io that I know was used to be had some other purpose. Five years ago, it was bought by somebody else, it now exists solely for the purpose of selling links, but it's like a DR AD, it's got some traffic, it looks good on the outside, but like it's total trash if you were to look under the hood, and like these really generalist sites that don't really aren't really about anything, if I like see, like profiles full of those. It's obviously bad. But on the flip side, niche links editorially placed, you know, the sites themselves don't link out to casinos, CBD sites or whatever they, whatever they're being sold to. It's that's your, that's those are all good, like, signals that okay, positive, and like, in human, like when it all accumulates, you're like, okay, great backlink profile, great site that you got to link on. And that's usually how I kind of look at it.

Jaryd Krause (13:19)

Would you ever buy a site that has not further like the, you know, a decent percentage of the backlinks aren't very quality or valuable? And then remove them, disavow them and go from there? Or would you just move on find something else?

Shane Dutka (13:37)

I mean, as the old saying goes, if the price is right, and like the price is adjusted for the risk you're buying, I think it's, it can be done, I would say that if you're buying a site with a background profile that has a lot of bad in it, and you get a price that's like, you know, reflects that. And then you do all those things. You just mentioned, disavow, build better links, that sort of like berries, the shit, like that's probably in the backlink profile, I think then it's probably possible, but again, like, it all comes down, like it's a really great exam.

I mean, like, really good analogy or metaphor is like, you know, back in, like the housing bubble, you know, there's mortgages that are like really trash, like, from people that are not really like, well qualified buyers. And then there's mortgages that are like, really great and like, from, you know, credit score 800, if you have, if you're a portfolio site owner, which I'm assuming people listening to this podcast might be they might own multiple sites, you might have sites in your portfolio that are higher risk, you know, you got to for a better deal. There's some work to be done and backlink profile.

So you're going to, you know, take that on that risk, but you also have some sites and your profile are like, you know, squeaky clean to some degree. And, you know, if you want to, like buy some of those higher risk sites, and yeah, I would say just go in eyes wide open, you know.

Jaryd Krause (14:51)

Yeah. And usually if there's a lot more risk, and there's multiple risks, you're carrying that risk for a longer period of time because yeah, you know, All Problems are opportunities in the skies, which means a lot of the risks or opportunities, but how many of those do you want to take on that guy, you may not be able to spend the time on rectifying, and carry that risk for too long for Google to be able to go hang on a second. Yeah, this is not viable, it's not good.

Shane Dutka (15:20)

And then when you go to sell the say, you're going to, you know, you're basically, you're going to have your own, you're going to have yourself and if you ever do sell it, right, you're going to have a problem, because like, assuming you sell it to somebody who's like, a well-educated buyer, you're going to have to deal with that. And you might end up you know, unless you did some a lot of work on that billing profile, you're going to have to adjust the price, or not even be able to sell it at all, depending on how the market is at the time.

Assuming again, like, I think you've made a good point, like, you have to have the operating system to like, fix it, right? And if you don't, then like, you're probably not even you should not even get into that even at a good price, because you're just buying something that's going to fall apart eventually.

Jaryd Krause (15:57)

Yeah, correct. And that's where most people that are beginners, they see some of our content, and they go, Cool, I want to go buy it, buy a business, buy a site, and they see the risks that are involved. And they don't actually know how to turn that into an opportunity. And so they move to the next phase like we teach people how to do that. But there's a lot of people to try to do this themselves and go, Yeah, cool. I can just listen to one podcast or one YouTube video and do it better.

There's complexity in, in growing a site, that's for sure. And de risking. And so I wanted to ask you about that, like, what are some of the top things that you've done with your blogs that have netted? The biggest returns? Do you feel? Is it still the 8020 of content and links? Or are there some other intricate things that you've done?

Shane Dutka (16:48)

I mean, again, I like to simplify it, it really is just content and links. You know, you could have I've seen really rink dink looking blogs of great backlink profiles that are just crushing it, you know, like, you could have the greatest paint job in the world. And like great, right, like I was saying earlier, great graphic design, great widgets, and like all the frills and stuff but have a sheet backlink profile and make no money.

So I yeah, I think having that backlink profile is like key. And in terms of like things that I've done to help facilitate that, it really does come down to having content but then promoting it right. Like, I'm not like there's some people on your net, like, yeah, just create great content, people will find a link to it. I have not in that camp, I mean, maybe yes, like you'll get some links that way, but you will not go like a million dollar property that way, I'm very much in the camp of build assets. Like, you know, an example, from my old pest control sites was I built, I basically was covering a pest control product called diatomaceous. Earth, you probably never heard of it, it's really fine.

But in the health supplement space, this product was like blown up super popular, but it was actually crap. You know, for this for the purpose that people were touting it for and people it was really very much an echo chamber thing, like everybody was saying was great. And then like I took this very edgy approach was like, it's actually trash. Here's why, like all the backing and research. And then I promoted that. And I got dozens of very high quality niche links from sites that don't give out links very often, right? Because they saw this piece of content, it was actually valuable, had real value. And it was helping the reader so they you know, they linked to it.

And then you built sort of a playbook around that you're like, Okay, what else can we talk about? That is maybe somebody only know what he's talking about, right? And then you know, that's basically the digital PR strategy. But doing something like that. That's it doing what I just described is like what most people don't want to do, because it requires time and energy. And but that's how you build sites that most people can't build, you know?

Jaryd Krause (18:44)

Yeah, that's right. Most people want the lifestyle, they want to buy their way into the lifestyle buyer site, and then just pay for content and pay for links. And you just don't get that level of growth without the input in making a quality like quality content quality links. So I guess we should talk about that. Are you big on a lot of content? Or are you big on just have enough content that make it awesome, and keep updating it? And then we'll then we'll move to links up to that chat about links up to that.

Shane Dutka (19:17)

Yeah, I'm definitely it depends. I think that I would say like I'm 60% quantity 40% quality like I do need content, like you can build up like a site that is like 50 blog posts or whatever 50 pieces of content and like it can do.

Jaryd Krause (19:34)

Just keep itself exceptional content, update it every year. Make it out of this world. Good.

Shane Dutka (19:39)

Yeah, exactly. You can do that. Especially if like Blink backlink profiles there's support it. I think that once you've established trust with Google, like hey, your site is legitimate, like it's a niche you know, it's got authority in a given niche pest control, whatever jewelry doesn't matter. You can publish 50 100 Like once you have a system of with a good have decent writer, they understand your system, they have an outline, they have outlines, they have whatever they need to like produce, you know, have them sort of keep busy.

And then like take, I don't know, five 10% of your of your revenues three invested in the business, you will get that back. Right? If like, if you're saying hey, like 50 pieces of amazing content and then just refresh it every year, I would say you're probably leaving money on the table.

Jaryd Krause (20:23)

Yeah, cuz there's going to be more to cover on the niche. Right? Right, exactly. 60% quantity, 40% quality. So say somebody's bought a site, and they've got maybe, you know, 100 pieces of content on for them to get exceptional results. How regularly should they be posting quality content? And we're talking like, Listen, guys, when you listen to this podcast, we're talking about like content that reads well. It's written well, and it's got different formats of content, not just text, it's got image video, and all those sorts of how many of those should they be putting out per month per year to get exceptional results? Do you believe?

Shane Dutka (21:01)

I would say again, it's depends on the niche depends on the category they're in, like, if you show me a pet blog that has 100 articles on it, and like a great domain like, you know, DR 50, whatever strong backlink profile. Yeah, I could probably put the content strategy together that's 50 pieces along 100 pieces long. And it's totally justified in its approach. And I think it depends on like, what you’re the business that's buying, it wants to do, right? If you're trying to live want to grow? Yeah, exactly. Like if you're trying to grow slow. And you could definitely get away with like, 10 pieces a month or something, right?

If you want to grow fast, you know, like, I'm like, I guarantee you every unless, yeah, I mean, I guarantee you to grow as a category. And there's probably a content strategy and content roadmap that you can put together, that would be like 500 pieces long, right, which would reflect a totally different business strategy. So like, I think, depending on the business goals, like, hey, we want to want to cash flow this, we want to have some distributions for the owners of whoever buys it. Yeah, then yeah, you go more conservative, and that's totally fine. And I think you're, you'll be totally fine and doing that. But if you want to go super aggressive, you can you can take that path to really do depend on what the business objectives are for sure.

Jaryd Krause (22:15)

The way I look at it as well is that if somebody has some resources to put 10 pieces of the content out there per month, and they want to double the business, kind of like double the inputs, it's not going to be the exact same return, you may get more because of compounding of growth, you may get a little bit less depending on what ranks what lands well on Google what people love to read. And there's so many variables there.

I wanted to speak to you about backlinks are you typically when you go to build some backlinks? Are you looking at your top few pages and going, how do we make sure these are solid? And then you're building backlinks to those? Or are you just what's your job a different approach?

Shane Dutka (23:02)

Yeah, when it comes to building backlinks, you generally produce content made for that purpose, right. So you're building backlinks to like, for example, like my diatomaceous earth example earlier, I didn't write that to rank on the word diatomaceous earth like injury traffic, if I get it great, but that was not the goal. Right? The goal of the piece was to promote it and get links to it through cold email outreach, basically. But the goal of generally speaking, the goal of building a, you'd create content for the sole purpose of building links, because like what Google likes, and what will drive traffic through organic search, can get legs, but it's usually not super sexy, right? It's like, you know, what's the best dog food?

Or like, you know, how do I change the tire or something? Like, those are articles that will do really well on Google and lots of people are searching for them. But they've sort of been beaten to death on the internet. And like, you do it for SEO reasons, but not really, it's not really going to drive tons of links for PR reasons, right? So you got to Crona sort of had two different approaches. If you want to create if you want to do like a, you know, build some extra backlinks to your site, I would look at your niche and be like, you know, what can we talk about that we'll get attention to get links and get people talking about our site and sometimes producing content that's sort of controversial, or taking a topic that is, you know, different right? Like if you're in the pet niche again, it's super popular niche, but like you maybe you're saying like, why nobody should buy Purina and like you do an article about how like sort of a hit piece on Purina, I'm just making this up.

But it's something that could get attention, right. And you'd like to pitch to other pet blogs and like, Hey, I just did this research about Purina you should link to me because it's like, you know, it's different, and nobody's talking about it. And then that's like your angle, right? Yeah. So definitely different sort of different approaches there.

Jaryd Krause (24:54)

And so when you're building out backlinks, would you try and find multiple pieces that can intent? Or would you at once I guess this is a, this is a question of like how fast you want to grow, right? Like, typically for yourself for some of your own sites would you look at, alright, let's create let's find 10 unique pieces of content that's controversial different. That's out of the box. It's not the status quo and build out 1010 pieces and then link to those or 20 pieces, you know, how much is are you looking at?

Shane Dutka (25:26)

Yeah, definitely how fast you want to grow, I would say for me, I want to be, I want to have like, you know, for every 10 pieces of content, that are for SEO purposes, I probably want one for PR purposes, like from my approach, and then that piece will have some kind of angle or edge to it. That is to get links, right? Like, hey, like, you know why nobody should be eating Purina dog food, and then I will promote that. And then I will like sort of lead it some say, and then every, maybe three to six months, I'll come back to him promoted yet or refresh it?

Yeah, because the topic is sort of evergreen and right, I would just reflect so that reflect it so that it's just reflective of whatever the current events are, and make sure that's up to date. But that that approach is doing really well because then what happens is anybody who talks about that topic Purina dog food, I can just reach out to them, like whenever they produce a piece of crap, like you can sit up like this is getting super tactical, but like you can set up alerts that like, hey, this person just published this article on Purina dog food, I'm going to pitch them immediately.

Like, hey, you just published an article. Yeah, actually LinkedIn, me because you're talking about something that I have produced content. And then like, that's how you create a really like, you know, a moat around your say that, then can put you in the ranks of like, NATO, you know, get into a really strong authority Rangers that make your site bulletproof. You know?

Jaryd Krause (26:47)

And would you just have a number of those number of those articles, quality content, update them every six months? Have those alerts? And is there a certain amount of links that you go, alright, cool, I'm done promoting that piece. Let's try focus on some other pieces. Like, is there a number there or.

Shane Dutka (27:07)

Not really good. Sometimes things will just really hit and you're like, oh, man, that's one generator 20 links, great. Sometimes they'll generate one, and you're like, oh, crap that flopped, you know, like, you know, and then it really comes down to, I would say, prospects, right? Because like, when you produce a piece, you'll there's only so many people that you can pitch, right? That's kind of the bottleneck. So you'll get your prospects, get people to pitch get as many as you honestly, you'll get as many as you possibly can, right?

And then you'll usually segment based on based on audience, you'd be like, Well, these guys are moms talking about dogs with period. And these guys are, you know, this is a dog blog talking about dog food. And that's all they talk about. And that's their angle, you know, then you like create these pitches based on segment. And then you kind of just like exhaust that. And then like six months later, the alerts sort of accumulate more prospects. And then then you pitch those folks. And then that's kind of how it goes. But sometimes things will suit like, just flopping like, alright, that one, we're not all great, like, constantly great ideas on PR stuff, but sometimes it'll work out sometimes.

Jaryd Krause (28:11)

So many variables. Mark, it's easy for us to talk about it here and just be like, Yeah, this is how it's done. And then, you know, when you get some feedback, it's like, okay, change your strategy.

Shane Dutka (28:26)

I mean, it's marketing, though, you know, like, you're basically like a business that a person is trying to buy these, you know, sites. At the end of the day, they're buying, like a marketing like basically established marketing channel, right, because like, there are sites, I'm going to stay on the pet niche, because like, it's super easy, and like relatable. Like chewy, for example, is a big, like dog food or dog. I think they just do dogs, but they're a big pet ecommerce shop, and they have a massive pet blog, right? And they talk about all these things, right? Yeah, they're an E commerce shop, they sell dog and I guess cat stuff.

So their business model is to sell that and they use their blog as a channel to get into the world, right? As a blog owner, you're buying a blog and making money through it usually through affiliate or ads, that's your channel, your like, and your marketing channel for that monetization. So at the end of the day, you're just like, only as good as your idea is to continue marketing your blog through these like digital PR means so like, you got to remember you're buying that sometimes people forget that and like, I'm just buying, like, just like Traffic Generation Machine. And it's amazing, and it can be and it really can be one of the greatest business models and I think one of the greatest business models Yeah, still exists super lucrative.

Jaryd Krause (29:37)

It's incredible how passive it can be to scale it and grow it. It's very cheap to, you know, put your resources into Team compared to say hiring somebody for an E commerce business to manage your ads, the price that you would pay for that compared to getting content written and backlink building is you know, very high value I'm work for Watch quite cheap, I would say.

And very hands off. And this is the business model that I refer most people to that are a beginner, because the risks like you can go very slow with it and spend less time on it compared to other businesses and have less skills. When you first start, I guess we're asking you about you’re a proud moment that you've had a project as well. What would you say? Is your most proud of site that you've built and sold? And? Yeah, and why?

Shane Dutka (30:29) I mean, yeah, I mean, the one that comes to mind, obviously, as pet strategies, which was my first day, big one, I mean, proud of them all, they're all my babies.

Jaryd Krause (30:42)

You mean, was that your first big exit?

Shane Dutka (30:44)

Yeah. So I sold that say, for the deal was for over a million. And I sold that back in 2018, was 2019. Now. But yeah, it was a great sale. And I'm glad I did it. Because like, you know, a lot of people ask me, why do you sell when she's down? And like, I thought about that, but at the end of the day, like, you know, it all comes down to like just reallocation of risk. Like when you have one stock in your portfolio, that's like, 95% of the value of your portfolio. What's that?

Jaryd Krause (31:18)

95% of your cash flow as well?

Shane Dutka (31:21)

Exactly, right. You're like, Alright, there's a lot of risk tied into that, like, I should redistribute that from one site to like, five. And then like, that way, you have, you know, five different properties making money versus one. But yeah, I mean, that was definitely my proudest moment. Because like, I did it all perfectly, right. You know, like, I buy the book link building, buy the book content, the site was decently branded, like, I branded myself.

I did all the design web design myself. And it's like, it was good enough. It wasn't like anything I put in a museum or anything. It was perfectly fine for its purpose. And yeah, I mean, it just did really well, the opportunity was there. The competition was relatively weak at the time. I mean, so that really worked out and yeah, it was able to find a buyer sell it, and then, you know, buy some real estate with it, and then also redistributed into some new sites.

Jaryd Krause (32:11)

Yeah. Awesome. What was the niche? Pest Control? Pest? There was a pest control one. Yeah, I got Yeah. And so did you do just that? Did you exit and then redistribute some of that into other assets? And were they online assets? Were they offline assets? Like, what is what did that kind of look like? If you're open to sharing?

Shane Dutka (32:30)

Yeah, yeah, I sold it and basically put a good chunk of it into the stock market index funds chunk of it into real estate. And then a chunk of it went to new sites.

Jaryd Krause (32:41)

Buying, starting.

Shane Dutka (32:44)

I start from scratch. So my bought Yeah, there was one site I bought from it was a fitness site. And then I also bought a small parenting blog and then merged into another blog as a test. So I was doing a lot of crazy stuff, just testing things and different ideas that I had. I wanted to get some reps on. But yeah, that was that was sort of where to do it.

Jaryd Krause (33:05)

Yeah, cool. Congrats. And what did you learn through the exit? Through the selling of that, you know, the process of selling that business? That could be valuable for people listening that are wanting to sell a blog? Or even buy one? I guess?

Shane Dutka (33:18)

Yeah, the biggest thing I would say I learned is, you definitely want to show a track record of continuous earnings up into the right, ideally, growth and like continuous growth, not like giant, you know, downward spikes, that never makes anybody excited, generally, and having a decent team that you could transfer, if you're buying sage, you definitely want to buy from someone who has a writer that's like, been there knows the process knows, like, can you can just feed them new topics, and they understand what to do with that, if you're selling you want to sort of get that ready, so that when you're going through a buyer, they can just buy the system, right? They're not together, they don't need to, like think about all that because like nine times out of 10 Not always but like you might be selling to an unsophisticated buyer, right, that doesn't know how to pull that all together, or maybe only wants you maybe they are sophisticated and they don't want to deal with any of that. Yeah.

Which can be a situation so definitely want to prep all that sort of operating system and then as a buyer, definitely make sure it's there. Links are obviously had you build links like that's number one question you should be asking if you're looking to buy a site and if you're looking to sell you need to make sure that you have a great answer to that question right? And go through exactly how you build them maybe even like go through your link profile and be like this is how I build this one. This is I built this like because what's going to happen is you're going to get a better multiple as a seller you get a better multiple for that. As a buyer, you'll feel a lot better obviously with your purchase.

Jaryd Krause (34:44)

Yeah. Attractive, so attractive for a buyer to be taught by the seller what has worked so they can replicate it again. And you're right, you can get a higher multiple like, I don't know if you've noticed this but a lot of bro workers are doing their best to increase prices so they can increase their income. And they can do that by increasing multiples, adding add backs in and different types of strategies that sophisticated buyers like hang on this add back is really an expense and value that into my you know my offer. Whereas a broker could make it live really a win situation for everyone rather than just try and do some tactic to, to sell a product higher when a sophisticated buyers is going to argue back on it.

Shane Dutka (35:33)

For sure. I've dealt with a bunch of that, like it's kind of it's almost like a stupid game, like they play like immediately. Yeah, immediately the buyer is like, Okay, I'm going to discount all that I'm going to, they're going to usually will the buyer will do is pre produce their own p&l their own pro forma out, like if they're a sophisticated buyer, they'll do all that.

They'll come up with their own price and be like, here's my price figures. And then usually, there's some negotiation, obviously, depending on circumstances, but nine times out of 10. Like they're going to be within like five to 10% of that price. Yeah. That they sort of penciled together. And yeah, like add that like, for example, like, you know, you're talking about add backs. A common one is content, Obviously, the argument is like, well, the content is sort of a, it's a capital asset, right? You buy it, you capital expense, you put the money in the cat, like the content, and then you don't have the technical, you don't have to produce any more content. We don't want.

Jaryd Krause (36:27)

Yeah, never have to update it again, we'll come on.

Shane Dutka (36:32) I mean, that's the argument that the expenses had, and it's like, never coming back. Obviously, as a buyer, like, of course, I'm going to produce more writing, and we're content. So that's silly. But same thing with link building, like, you know, depending on the niche, you're in, like, you know, I know, people who bought sites in the VPN niche, which is like super competitive, and like, you basically can't operate, you can't play in that niche without like a strong backlink profile and continuously building it, that needs to be part of the equation when you're, you know, when the valuation comes together. And then, you know, some brokers are just like, very fast and loose with the multiples, like, I mean, I'm, I know, Empire Flippers likes to inflate the numbers a bit. But ultimately, ultimately, you know, buyer and seller, I mean, you know, come to terms and it'll get done.

Jaryd Krause (37:19)

Yeah. And that's why you really need somebody who knows the true valuation of those types of sites on your site to go hang on a second, this is what it's actually worth, based on your research and your due diligence, because that's, you know, like what you said just now is like, an it's a real thing between multiple brokers. Yeah. Be careful, guys.

Shane Dutka (37:43)

I mean, honestly, to that point, you know, they're there. I think, I mean, there's a smart on them for like, taking advantage on sophisticated buyers. Obviously, everybody listen to this, not because you're, you know, you're probably bigger with Jared here. But they will some buyers might just be like, oh, yeah, that's the price the tag, you know, the tag on the on the sticker price. Yeah, we'll pay it because, like, they just want to get in the game. They'll rush through the process. Yeah. And then, you know, they'll be, you know, they could have gotten a deal for like, 100k less, or whatever the number is, you know, 10% less or something. And they just didn't know. Yeah, definitely can see that happening.

Jaryd Krause (38:17)

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not just about when you're buying a site, it's not just about what are the risks involved? And what are you taking on but you know, can you save money as well when you're doing for sure. And that's a huge, component. We’ve saved people a lot of money but yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been so fun to chat Shane, where can we send people to find out more about you and what you're doing.

Shane Dutka (38:39)

shaneduttka.com So my name my first man's name.com. I have a YouTube channel I have a website so I will I generally try to post some YouTube videos on SEO blogging content all this stuff. Probably why you reach out to me so yeah, I mean, I yeah, I tried to be active there and yeah, that's we can find me.

Jaryd Krause (39:02)

Yeah, thanks so much, Shane. Everybody else's listening as well. Thank you for listening. If you are going to buy a site, I suggest listen to this and another week or two because there's probably going to be some things that you did miss because we went through a lot and we went through it quite fast. So we added of a lot of value there. Also if you know somebody else's looking at buying a site do them a massive favor or growing a site do them a massive favor and share this podcast episode with them. Yes, and helps us you know, BOB, and also Shane, reach more people and help more people. It's also helping you.