Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

In the last post about making f*ck you money online, Duncan Longshaw asked a really, really great question that I didn’t feel I could best answer in a Comment response:

“Is bigger necessarily the way to go though?

Beyond a certain point, I’d personally rather work less time on the business, than try and make billions. If your making more than enough money for your needs, then why not focus on working less, and spending more time with family and friends?

Not many “guru’s” are preaching this, but there are a few (like Tim Ferris, or James Brausch), who focus more on saving time than making money. They don’t seem to be doing to bad out of it either…”

That is so very true, Duncan, and it is actually a timely discussion for me.  On the flight up to San Francisco prior to publishing “How To Make F U Money Online”, I reread Tim Ferris’s The 4-Hour Workweek.  Even though some of the references in the book are slightly outdated, this should still be required reading for any SEO, affiliate marketer, or other such webworker.  This is the third time I have read it and I do so every couple months or so in order to “get my head right.”

As Duncan mentioned and Tim asserted, there is very little to be had by the traditional “going bigger is going better” model.  That was the unfortunate economy our parents were dealt.  It doesn’t make sense for the average intelligent worker on the Internet and it certainly creates an existential question for those of us sitting on some the most disruptive talent in history. 

Tim Ferriss asserts that the New Rich mavericks should use a figure of around $5000/hour (page 36) as the measuring stick of productivity.  Let’s look at some of the opportunites for those of us with a Competitive Internet background to reach that goal.

The Lazy Affiliate Model

I’d tell you how to do this, but Hagans has already given you the roadmap to the lifestyle.  My only concern here is that it’s highly unlikely you’ll create sustainable $5000/hour production because all affiliate markets become more efficient (less valuable) as they get older.  In order to keep finding lucrative niches to sustain the desired rate, you may run out of hours.

The SEO Consulting Model

No matter how good of an SEO Consultant you are, you are not going to maintain that pace for any sustained period of time.  At my peak, I was charging 1/5th of the “New Rich pace” and all that level of pricing did was ratchet up clients’ expectations of how much of my time was actually in play.  You’d also be somewhat of a dick if you charged full-price for every hour in a bulk hour relationship.  Most of the top SEO consultants I know and who I have compared billing styles with might bill $1000/hour, but none of us ever made more than $500,000/year at the most exclusive of rates and with the most exclusive of clients.  Plus we had the added benefits of working our asses off and subsequently worrying about getting sued by a multibillion dollar client (my favorite being one of the top law firms in the world…that coulda hurt if I dropped the ball!). 

Bigger was not better in this model.  And that’s why I walked away from it. 

The Entrepreneurial Model

This is where I found a little religion a couple years ago.  I could take all of my disruptive skills, join some friends, go tackle a $100 billion market as it was coming online, and dive head first into the venture capital community.  In the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Spam, this gave me an outlet to build something substantive and that would leave more of a legacy than taking $50 at a time from people looking for debt consolidation. 

The downside is that I took nearly a 60% haircut on pay.  That is probably going to be an irrelevant stat as we are building something of value wherein the equity stake will exceed the opportunity cost….but it won’t exceed the $5000/hour for the 4-6 years of investment horizon.

This is an amazing country.  There is a ton of investment capital for people like us to take an idea or product to market.  Given the right idea or product and the proper management of your capital, you can start something like Google, Youtube, or whatever the next big thing is…and $5000/hour will probably nothing more than an uncomfortable line item called “Strippers” on your accountant’s monthly itemized report.  Just be prepared to devote 10 years of your life and alienating just about everything else to get there.

The Disruptive Advisor Model

This is something that can be done parallel to the above two.  It is something I have done for the last three years and, in effect, have become my own venture fund.  Like any venture fund, some of those equity stakes I have earned as an Advisor have turned out to be worth less than the imaginary paper they were printed on…but a few have more than made up for it. 

Listen, as SEO’s we had to learn a lot more than rudimentary page tweaks to bring in the most money for our time.  Our competition…which is primarily Google…looks at just about every signal on the web.  And, in response, we had to learn how to manipulate every one of those signals.  While search may be the scorecard of the Internet, you really have to master every other audience discipline to reach those top SERP’s. 

With that meta-level of expertise in mind, you will find that just about every entity with an online audience would kill for some of your time.  Give it to them.  And then wet your beak appropriately.  If you don’t fully buy into their business model or the relationship, take cash.  If you think it’s the next YouTube, take as much equity mix as you can.  Trust me, they are broke startups and looking to offset big consulting fees.

A hybrid of the Advisor Model and one of the preceding Models can get you to $5000/hour.  Just be ready to juggle chainsaws instead of entering dance competitions in South America like Tim.

The Ultimate Leveraging Of Your Knowledge:  The Competitive Internet Hedge Fund

There is a great confluence of events happening right now in the SEO/Affiliate ecosystem.  There is a rising class of of us that can be Accredited Investors (or we have learned how to raise money in lieu of personal investment) and there is an ocean of distressed Old Media companies that we could radically benefit (look at what Marshall Simmonds did at The New York Times,).

Over the last year, I have had at least a dozen of these multibillion dollar companies try to bring me in to create a strategy for their online future.  As I have zero bandwidth or the inclination to do this on their terms, some of you reading this have been given those referrals (and you’ve done some amazing work).

But let me ask you this…what if there was a hedge fund comprised of the top audience builders and a mountain of cash to corporate raid the Internet?  With the top hedge fund managers earning in the billions last year and these being multibillion dollar issues we could influence, it would be like breaking into Fort Knox…but probably take less effort.

There you have it.  That’s my next move.  Exploiting opportunities in the financial markets with asymmetrical knowledge.  I can do that sh*t all day long from the beach (and with historically cheap debt or other such weapon of high finance). 

Whether it comes to fruition for me (or just become blogging delusions of grandeur), I would still keep encouraging each of you to think bigger.  Bigger doesn’t always mean more hours of work.  Or it may mean just that.  But don’t ever sell the skillsets we have short.  Sometimes you have to think bigger just to realize how powerful each of us can be. 

Godspeed, my friends.  And don’t forget to send me a Christmas card full of cash one day if you get there first.