1. Can you tell a bit about yourself? What do you do and how did you get started in internet marketing?
I am 28, born in Slovakia (note, not Slovenia), raised in the lower-ish middle class family with my younger brother and sister. I graduated from law school at Masaryk University in Czechia, where you can find me wandering the streets of southern Moravia drunk to this very day.
I started with IM, remotely, when I was 19. I was working as an externist for one advertising agency as a PPC campaign admin. But the work there went slowly to shit and being 21 and stuck at law school, well, I figured that I might do PPC campaigns for my own clients.
Oh well, how wrong was I. After the initial success I kinda run out of money to promote my service and well, had to say farewell to this idea (From what you can see, I really like to talk about myself).
Then one day I came across BHW, which was a huge coincidence. I remember having a cigarette break with my band-mates during rehearsal and someone came up with idea to make a meme website, like a copy of 9gag. So my job was to find a Facebook clickjacker.
I remember looking for one for hours until I stumbled across BHW and I read threads here until 5am. That was back in 2012. I took the action the very next day, made my first big money the very year and it took off from there.
2. Tell us a bit of your current projects, what are you working on?
Well, to be honest, I am trying to divert from IM altogether. I am mostly focusing on cryptocurrency offline (if they can be called offline) projects (no, I am not doing any ICO). And why the diversion? I feel kinda burnt out and I feel like a change is needed to move in my “professional” life, if we can even call it that.
3. What kind of SEO tools do you regularly use?
My most favorite tools are my employees. No idea how they handle my mood swings and temperament. I guess I pay them well enough. Besides that, I love remote desktop and teamviewer…
No, really, considering that I focus mostly on selling domains, my tools without which I would not be able to do crap are Majestic, Ahrefs, Archive, Domaintools and Hosterstats. One that I love the most, outside the domain checking category, is probably Semrush. Makes keyword research effortless.
And this will sound cheesy as hell, but the best tools are your hands and head. I might be old school, but I still like to do most of my work without any automation.
4. How do you see the role of A.I. in SEO?
I prefer the term “virtual intelligence” for science sake. Well, we can already see it in effect in form of the “Rank Brain”. I believe that if you were to ask a Google engineer why a certain site is ranked #1 for its term, he would not be able to answer. Google algorithm is advancing and learning fast, but the question is, whether it can “kill” SEO as we know it.
And I believe it can’t. There will always have to be some “factors” like backlinks etc., that can be exploited and manipulated. So unless the search engine can read the mind of the user, I think we are good to go. Problem is that SEO is taking way too long nowadays. Ranking site can take years and you have to be content with the fact that you might be
pouring money down the drain for months and might not ever see those money again. Getting your initial investment back can take ages and overall, SEO is a game for big boys only nowadays. You can ask any backlink sellers about how their orders look compared to few years back. Newbies can’t really afford SEO and those who come in with $100 budget
end up very disappointed and demotivated.
5. What kind of link building strategy do you use?
My main focus, despite the fact that I sell domains, is a perfect onsite optimization. Once you build a flawless site with flawless densities, interlinking and keyword research, the entire link building campaign is a piece of cake. And besides guest posts, PBNs and few expired web 2.0s, I do not even use any other links. Waste of time. They don’t do crap anyway.
And unless you are planning to pointlessly play with fire and pump your exact/partial anchors as high as possible, while trying not to end up stuck sandboxed at 2nd page, then you do not need any foundation links at all.
6. Do you still use 301 redirects? What is a proper way to make them work?
Well I have never been using 301 redirects that much and I have not played with them in some time. I know what some of my clients have been doing quite successfully and I’ve mentioned it all over the forum quite a few times (dozens).
– Don’t even bother with some small 10 – 20RD domains.
– Get a big one.
– Like really big one.
– Bigger
– Is it big enough? Good.
– It’s related though, right? No? Sucks.
– Get a niche related one.
– More related.
– Anchors get redirected too you know, so if there are some random anchors, even if within your niche, then it’s not a good idea.
– Good, now build it up.
– What do you mean you want to redirect it at registrar level? No.
– Build it up like a regular site. Populate it with content.
– 2 weeks have passed and you want to redirect it? Haha, no.
– Wait for a few months.
– Does it rank naturally for some keywords? Good.
– No you can’t redirect it yet, wait some more.
– Are you there still?
– Good, now you can redirect it.
– 2 weeks passed and you have not seen any effect? Bwahahaha.
– Wait a few months and pray.
– Pray some more.
– Nothing happened? Sucks, that’s 301 redirects.
– Oh it worked? Good for you.
– Was it worth the effort? Hm, up to a discussion.
7. When you have a brand new domain, how do you get around the Google sandbox issue? Do you worry about it?
No. You won’t get around it really. There are some “waiting periods” set by Google to discourage people who manipulate the search engines. You can get some stronger auction domain for money site. That tends to help and save you money one SEO overall, but trying to force things and hurry with rankings in the current SEO state is pointless in my eyes.
You really have to be patient.
8. What is your drive to still continue further?
Growing bank account.
No, really, I would change the question to past tense to “what kept you motivated”. During all those years it was one fucking roller-coaster. There were better years, there were worse years. It was especially tough during those bad periods, when you sit on your ass working 12 – 14 hours a day without knowing whether what you do will ever bear any fruit.
There were times when I almost lost it. I remember a year 2013, which was probably the worst period in my life. I had a second and last shot on my graduation exams (You make it, you get a degree, if not, you are out and 5 years of your life are gone), during that I went through pretty shitty breakup and I had to work without knowing whether any of my projects will ever make me any money. That was one of the lowest points and
to this day I still don’t know how I made it through. Over the years there were more moments like this one, but yeah, regardless, I got lucky. Now I am conducting this interview and there might be two or three people who will actually read this vomit. No idea how else than “lucky” I can call myself.
So if I see threads like “Help me rank my site pls?” etc., then honestly, log out and go drive a taxi or something. And I do not mean it in a bad way (not entirely at least), but this job is not for everyone. If you expect to make shitloads of money within a week and without even bothering to open the feckin “making money” section and actually read and test something then really,
just log out and forget you have ever considered something as IM. Regardless of everything, I am one of the really lucky ones. There are people on this forum who have been trying to make money for years and still haven’t made a dime. So think about it a little bit.
Guess I should answer the question though hah. What kept me motivated from the very beginning? My financial freedom was only secondary. I am not too hard to handle. Give me a fast car and a full wine cellar and that’s all I need to shut the fuck up. Primary motivator has always been to support my family. I have mentioned in the beginning that I come from a family with modest income. My parents have basically
sacrificed themselves for me and my siblings. We never had much, but we always had what we needed. They paid for our education, cared for us and so on and there’s no better feeling than to send your parents a nice sum just because you can. And to know the feeling that regardless what happens to your family, you are able to take care of them, because money is not the issue.
So if you think that money, coke and some ugly Porsche will make you happy, then no. Sure, money is one less reason to be depressed, but it’s not about that. Not for me at least.
Remaining motivated after you reach your goals however, is another chapter and that’s something I have been struggling with a lot lately. Coming up with new personal goals is not as easy as it might seem.
9. What are some books that have changed your mindset?
I do not really read books with “business” thematic. I read one, I think it was called Millionaire Fastlane or something. Christ. What a load of crap. I almost wished I picked Twilight back in the day (yeah, that bad). These books serve one reason only in my eyes and that’s to motivate you. And if you need some bad book or some pathetic quote or photo to keep you motivated,
then trust me fam, you do not want it enough. And in that case, you might consider what you want to do with your future. I admit there might be some beneficial books about this entire area, but you won’t learn shit unless you fail and fail again and again and again.
10. What’s the hardest thing about this lifestyle?
Besides the things I have mentioned in the previous 2 answers, I believe, or at least for me, it’s lack of social interaction I would say. I am a strong introvert, even a misanthrope possibly and even for me it gets hard here and there. There are times when there is so much work that my entire weekly conversation (from face to face), is limited to food delivery guy and cashier in Tesco.
Sitting on your ass 16 hours a day gets tedious after a few years. Even if you are successful. And the worst part is, that once you scale up enough, that you can afford to work only a few hours a week, you suddenly have no idea what to do with all the free time.
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Kudos to Nargil. He really gave a lot to this interview. He edited 2-3 times before the final version.