At a Nick Gray, 2 Hour Cocktail Party author, networking event in Austin, TX, I met a handful of extremely accomplished and interesting people.

One was David Holmes of Red View Ventures, an entrepreneur who has bought, scaled and sold a handful of ecommerce businesses.

David Holmes has been in the Amazon space for more than 7 years and has successfully exited 2 Amazon-based businesses.

In 2020, he acquired an existing Amazon FBA business, grew it 500%, and ultimately sold it to a private buyer in 2022. His work has been featured on WebAcquisitions.com, ImportDojo, and other industry publications.

Now, he helps premium DTC brands take advantage of the full potential of Amazon through his unique launch and scale strategies.

Thinking it could be fun to buy, scale and flip an Amazon FBA site?

I met David Holmes, an entrepreneur who has flipped 6 Ecommerce sites, at a neighborhood networking event in Austin, TX last week.

I got to ask him a bunch of questions. Today we’ll dive into his specific tips to successfully scale and sell an Amazon FBA business.

He’s the best I’ve met at this, so you’re in for a treat if scaling or flipping an ecommerce business interests you.

Has anyone read entrepreneur Nick Gray’s book The 2 Hour Cocktail Party?

I haven’t read the book, yet.. but I want to! I went to a 32 person event the author hosted at Support Ninja founder Cody McClain’s house in my neighborhood in Austin, TX last week and it felt professionally hosted.

It was one of the best events I have been to, and chock full of accomplished, bright, entrepreneurs.

The event is where I met David, an entrepreneur who scales Amazon FBA sites full-time.

How has David sold 6 Ecommerce sites?

David was kind enough to give me some insight into FBA site flipping over coffee – Sharing his tips with you all below as I’ve never personally bought or scaled an Amazon site before.

Hoping to buy or scale your own ecomm business?

If you currently own an ecommerce site, or are interested to buy one, he can help you scale it. David runs an agency now and scales Ecommerce businesses with a profit-share model.

He knows what he’s doing. He helped one Amazon site go from $220,000/month to $2,400,000/month in under 6 months.

Let’s dive into David’s specific tips and experience below:

How did you first get into website investing and flipping?

I started my own content site in 2014 while I was in college. I quickly got it to $1,000/month which was a lot of money to me at the time. When I learned, I could sell it for $20,000+, I was astounded. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked.

What were you doing before you made the switch?

I used to be a mechanical engineer working in engineering consulting. I worked in accident reconstruction – where I would help reconstruct car crashes for civil litigation.

How many years have you been full-time buying and flipping websites?

I’ve been full time for 3 years now. In January 2020, I took the leap and I haven’t stopped since.

Is it more or less time-consuming than when you had a full-time job?

This isn’t what a lot of people want to hear but it’s definitely more time-consuming than a full-time job. You can’t just clock out at 5 pm. You’re responsible for every aspect of your business.

What do you prefer about having your own business vs working for someone else?

The freedom and the opportunity. I’ve been able to travel extensively while running my own business because I’m not tied down to a location.

Tell us about the first site (or last site etc you can choose one) you purchased. What niche was it? What type of site was it?

The last site I purchased was an Amazon FBA business in the skateboard niche.

Where did you buy it?

I purchased it off of Flippa in December 2019.

What stood out to you that made you want to buy it? Were there any red flags?

I had prior experience in the niche and I knew the seller from a previous skateboarding content site that I ran. There were multiple red flags – revenue was declining, product quality was iffy at best, and there was low net profit.

What did you do to optimize it/increase traffic/revenue/profit?

I did 3 things primarily:

1. The business was manufacturing in the USA. I outsourced manufacturing to China – saving 45% on cost of goods sold and improving the product quality
2. I optimized the Amazon Ad strategy. By doing so, I was able to grow revenue quickly.
3. I optimized the Amazon listing. This helped increase conversion rate quickly and helped grow revenue.

With this 2 sided approach (grow revenue and cut costs), I was able to drastically increase the valuation of the business.

How much did you increase its value by the time you sold it?

From the initial acquisition price to the exit price, I increased the value by 5x in under 2 years. Including cashflow while operating the business, it was a 10x return on investment.

What tips do you have for people who want to buy a site and flip it, what should they look for?

Always look at the negatives first. There are always reasons you can think of to buy a site. You need to think of all of the reasons this deal could go bad. Protect your investment first and then look to grow it.

What are your tips for how they can optimize it and grow revenue?

For content sites, you want to look for easy wins first – switch the ad network (Adsense to Ezoic/Mediavine/AdThrive), add comparison tables, add interlinking between the articles.

For bigger wins, add more content, improve backlinks, and start growing pageviews.

Where did you find the buyer?

I found the buyer through Flippa.

Any tips for people looking to sell a site? How can they present it in the best light? When is a good time to sell?

If you’re looking to sell a site, sell while it is growing! It is incredibly difficult to sell a declining site – I can’t overstate this enough. It’s possible but it’s difficult. You want to sell while your site is growing or stable.

You also want to leave some easy wins for the buyer. This gives them confidence they can quickly see a return on investment.

Do you tend to sell sites when they are on an upward trajectory?

I try to but it’s difficult. What I like to do is grow the site as quickly as possible, maintain revenue for 3-6 months, and then sell it – while leaving opportunities for growth for the new buyer.

How much more of a multiple do you find can you sell for if you sell for if you sell it on an upward trajectory vs a downward?

Multiples obviously vary wildly based on niche and the exact site but generally a growing site can go for 3-4x seller’s discretionary earnings. If it’s declining, you’re looking at a 2 – 2.5x earnings multiple.

What are red flags people should watch out for when buying an Amazon ecommerce site?

Product quality and moat against competitors. Amazon has become fiercely competitive in the last 3 years. You want to truly understand how you’ll differentiate from competition and maintain a premium price point.

What are some red flags you saw before purchasing your own sites that you wish you had paid more attention to or that made your growth and flip journey harder?

I wish I had paid more attention to the product quality. There were some quality issues that I fixed but there were other issues inherent in the product. That held back growth.

How many sites have you purchased, grown and sold? Have you sold all the sites you bought?

I’ve purchased 4 sites and built 2 other sites from scratch. I’ve sold all of them now.

Have all your site purchases been successful flips? If not, can you explain what happened and why and the lessons you learned?

Not all of them have been successful. I bought 2 sites built off expired domains in the spirituality niche. I ended up selling them a year later and recouped ~80% of my initial investment.

Biggest lesson learned was time.

At the time of running those sites, I was also running an Amazon agency and my own Amazon brand. I didn’t have enough bandwidth to focus on the sites so I eventually just sold them off.

Can you tell us more about what you are doing right now? What is your business?

I help e-commerce brands launch and scale on Amazon through my agency: https://www.redviewventures.com/

What is the specific service(s) you provide for companies? Does it involve just running their Amazon ads or do you offer other services / does it involve a more comprehensive growth plan or multiple services?

I perform full Amazon channel management – including listing creation, launch strategy, Amazon Ad strategy, scaling, and optimization. My goal is to take 90% of Amazon off of your hands.

Do you offer multiple packages or do you have a single service package offering? If multiple, what are the multiple offerings and who should choose each one?

What types of companies do you work with?

I work with e-commerce companies primarily doing $200k+ in annual revenue that want to expand to Amazon. If they’re not on Amazon, we’ll help them launch their products on Amazon. If they’re already on Amazon, we’ll help them scale to become category leaders.

Do you work with all niches as long as they are Amazon sites?

I only work with companies selling physical products.

How soon do you find companies experience revenue/profit growth after starting working with you?

Typically 3 months is the sweet spot to see good traction and revenue growth.

What is the most monthly revenue growth, and profit growth, a company has seen while working with you and how long did it take to get there?

I helped one e-commerce company go from doing $220,000/month to $2,400,000/month on Amazon in under 6 months. I wrote a case study about it here.

What made that company such a perfect fit to grow with your help?

They had the capital and cash conversion cycle to grow quickly. For other brands, we’ve been able to scale but have been limited on the inventory side.

Where can someone follow you on social media?

Connect with David on Twitter and Linkedin

Where can someone reach out to talk more if they have questions about your company or working with you?

david@redviewmanagement.com

If a Her.CEO reader is buying an Amazon site and wants to work with you, are you interested in running the ad portion for a percentage of revenue share? If yes I can let readers know.

Yes, I predominately work on a performance/revenue share basis.

How important is it to have a map? Does it matter who you buy your map from?

We will get into all of that below.

The ‘Free Map’ versus the ‘Paid Map’

My family and I went hiking in Santa Fe this week.

The entire time we were walking on the hiking trails, my family kept joking about the ‘free’ map we were all using, versus the ‘paid’ map a man in the gift shop had tried to sell us before we went on our merry way.

The man trying to sell the map mentioned that the free map wasn’t accurate and complete and that you had to pay for the map to get all the information you needed.

Of course we didn’t buy the paid map and we started our hike. Right away, we were looking at which trail to start the hike on. The free map didn’t have this information marked clearly on it.

My dad remarked jokingly, “Guess we should have paid for the map! Then we’d know which way to go.”

As we kept walking, the map jokes continued.

One of us would say, “I wonder what those rock formations were used for? I guess we’d know the answer if we’d paid for the map!”

and my sister would say, “Yeah, that type of information is definitely not included on the free map!”

Guess we should’ve paid for the map!

We’d all laugh and say, “Guess we should have paid for the map!” and make all these jokes about the free map missing information that the paid map included, but we were obviously kidding.

It was way more fun to joke about all the things the paid map had that the free map was missing than it would have been to actually have purchased the ‘paid’ map.

Jokes aside, having a map, whether that map is paid or free, can be useful in any endeavor, especially when you’re trying to reach an end goal you have in mind.

If you don’t know where you’re going, and if you don’t have a clear plan written out, then there is no way you’ll get there.

How can you reach a goal if you don’t have one?

One thing that every single goal, website and non-website, I’ve ever reached has in common, is that I knew I wanted it before getting it, I wrote it down, made a plan to get there, and then worked toward it.

The point is, if you don’t clearly identify your goal, make a goal action plan, and work toward it every day, then you will never get to your goal, or any goal at all.

Create a map to help reach your goal

You need to create your own map, and it can be a free one. You can also get a special ‘paid’ map, by paying someone who’s been there to help you create a map, but the main takeaway is you need to identify a goal and create a map to reach that goal.

Otherwise, you’ll be drifting in life directed by other’s goals and wishes, such as your boss’s in your 9 to 5. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to be aware of.

You simply need to realize if you have your own goals to work toward and if yes what they are, or if you would rather be present and live life without specific goals.

Who should you hire to help you create a map?

If you want to start a company like Amazon, then paying Jeff Bezos to create your map would probably be a good idea. Although hiring him to create a map would likely be out of most of our price range.

If you want to be a teacher, then sure hiring your first grade teacher to create a map is a great idea. If you’re doing anything but becoming a teacher, then likely you’ll want to pass on Ms. Jenny’s map since she won’t know how to get to where you’re looking to go.

My first website goal

For example, my first website goal was to make $1,000 a month with a website. That is the reason I made my first two to three site purchases, all with this goal in mind.

I looked for sites I could take to this level on Flippa, would buy the sites and then work on improving their revenue.

At first I would switch ad networks to improve revenue to get to the $1,000 a month goal.

Then I worked on keyword research and adding new content to scale the sites farther past that point once I hit my goal.

If I hadn’t had my specific goal in mind of $1,000 a month, then I never would have spent as much as I did on website #2 and #3, because I would have had no reason to without my having my specific goal in mind.

Website Goal Map

1) When creating a website goal map, first figure out what you want and why you want it. You can spend time thinking about this in silence, or go on a walk outside and sleep on it for a few days.

Don’t make any decisions when you’re in any emotional state other than calm. If you’re angry, frustrated, depressed, excited, or emotional in any way, sleep another day or two before making your decisions or goals to avoid rushing into anything.

2) Next write down your specific goal, such as website revenue per month.

3) Then write down how you will get there. You can be specific here and write down if you will buy a site making X amount or start your own site from scratch, then what you will do to increase traffic or revenue and get to your goal:

Examples of action steps:

• Change theme to speed up site
• Test new ad networks
• Test new ad placements
• Keyword research 100 keywords for website
• Write and publish one piece of 1,000 word content per day for the next 100 days
• Backlink strategy
• Promotion strategy
• Email strategy
• Other traffic / revenue strategies

Fit your goals into your daily routine

I’ve found it is best when you can fit each into a specific daily routine, and take time to reflect each week and analyze progress and results, then shift your strategy in the direction of what is working the best

Obviously, this entire goal mapping process may not work for everyone etc, *insert whatever disclaimer here* and this is not advice or financial advice in any way it is simply my own experience and what has worked well for me.

You can comment here and let me know if you have ever reached a goal you set, or your own specific goal-mapping process if it includes anything I didn’t mention!

What is the answer to the title’s question, ‘What costs $1.9 Trillion?’

Hint: It’s not a website, it is Congress’ next $1.9 Trillion stimulus bill.

Congress seems to be fond of conjuring money out of thin air and passing many trillion dollar stimulus bills this year.

Keep reading to learn more about how much debt the US has, how many trillion dollar bills Congress keeps passing this year, why I’m concerned about future inflation, and how owning assets like websites and real estate plays into that.

Here is the final Part 3 in my duplex real estate investing email series about inflation and how that tied into my duplex real estate investment decision.

*again this is not financial advice or predictions, these are simply my own thoughts about my own life I am sharing in an email, end disclaimer here*

how I feel about inflation

the media + fear + the government

This past year has been a scary demonstration of how the power of online media, fear and hysteria can cause regular people and politicians to take extreme actions rooted in fear and concern with how they think “others” perceive them.

Politicians all over the world, including the US, seem to feel they have unequivocal power to shut down businesses without any type of democratic vote and take away people’s freedom of choice.

“Let’s shut down the economy and then print trillions of dollars” – Congress

Then, because the US government decides it has the power to keep people locked in their houses and to shut down the economy, they also decide to print trillions of dollars with no regard for how it will affect the country long-term.

Ask anyone, a stranger on the street or your friend who doesn’t understand basic finances, and they’ll be able to tell you the government has printed trillions and trillions of dollars this year. Obviously doing this has repercussions. You can’t just print trillions of dollars of debt and think life will just go on as normal indefinitely.

As the US isn’t on the gold standard anymore, every time the government prints money, when that money is used, it makes the value of all the other existing money a little bit less.

What is inflation?

Even in regular years of government money printing and overspending, we get inflation each year where the money you have saved becomes worth less.

Simon Black, one of my favorite financial email lists, explains the issue with stats:

• Last year the Fed increased the supply of US dollars by 26%– the single largest annual increase since 1943.
• The Fed has almost doubled its balance sheet in the last 12 months, and nearly 10x’d its balance sheet since the 2008 financial crisis
• The latest COVID stimulus bill Congress passed, is $1.9 trillion.
• $1.9 trillion is nearly 10% of the size of the US economy, and roughly 50% of expected federal tax revenue this fiscal year.
• In simple terms, the Fed ‘prints’ money (albeit electronically) and sprinkles it around the financial system.

Each time the Fed ‘prints money’ it is a form of debasement, not much different from ancient Roman emperors cutting corners by reducing the purity of their gold and silver coins.

What are the effects of inflation? Does it really matter?

Looking at history, debasing the currency causes inflation.

You may have heard of some of the extreme famous historical episodes, like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, or the Weimar Republic, where the government’s crazy money printing caused hyperinflation and now hundred trillion dollar bills are used as wallpaper.

There are countless ‘quieter’ examples of inflation- like Brazil, where inflation is now over 5%, or Turkey, where the annualized inflation rate is about 15%.

15% a year isn’t hyperinflation. But it does make life pretty uncomfortable, especially when wage growth fails to keep pace. It’s still like losing 15% of your saved money each year, like paying a 15% ‘invisible tax’.

Even in a yearly 15% inflationary environment, each year people find themselves much poorer and worse off. 

What is the US thinking?

Even with all this historical data of how printing money can lead to inflation and lower everyone’s quality of life, the US government puts its little head in the sand and thinks its easier to print money and throw it in the air and simply ignores the fact it can have consequences. 

What will happen to the US dollar?

The truth is no one knows. 

The insane government money printing of this year makes me think inflation is going to get very out of hand and make money sitting in bank accounts worth a lot less. Who knows how soon, 2 years? 10 years? Who knows how much less, 10%? 100% less, or more? 1000% less?

Whatever the answer to these questions is, it’s not something I want to wait around to find out. 

Instead of housing money in banks you always have the choice to house it in an asset that has true value.

The most extreme example of worst-case inflation would be, say the US dollar became completely worthless, similar to how the government overprinted money in Zimbabwe and now people use hundred trillion dollar bills as wallpaper.

Why I’m focused on buying assets

In the most extreme case, even if the US dollar went to zero, a business that still has customers would still have value, a website still selling items would still have value, gold would still have value, a farm would still have value, homes would still have value. There are many items that have value that is completely separate from the US dollar, and real estate is one of them.

Technically stocks are representations of business value, and can be an asset separate from inflation, but they are also based on the emotion of buyers, and on underlying company performance, which I feel has a disconnect from stock prices right now.

I had initially been hesitant to buy real estate because of the property taxes you have to pay, and the maintenance costs and managing of tenants. 

Real estate has much higher base costs and recurring expenses than owning a website, and it can be more of a hassle in some ways, which are reasons I had never considered looking into owning any before along with the fact it is simply more expensive than purchasing other types of assets such as gold or websites.

The current crazed government printing and economic control means there is potential for business growth to slow and inflation to happen is why I ended up making my duplex real estate purchase, and am currently focused on purchasing assets.

Now you know my full reasoning of why I chose to move money from sitting in cash or stocks into real estate.

What would Warren Buffet do?

I’ll leave you with this Warren Buffet quote:

“Productive assets such as farms, real estate, and yes, business ownership, produce wealth– lots of it. Most owners of such properties will be rewarded.”

We can all choose where we invest our money and if we place it in wealth-producing, valuable assets or if we’d rather purchase Shawn Mendes digital NFT art. At the end of the day, do what makes you happy, even if that means owning a shirtless Shawn Mendes digital token.

-Stacy

Also, of course my Ad & Affiliate Disclaimers: I often feature products in the form of paid ads which are clearly marked in the email. Also, I often use and recommend affiliate products (only really good ones I actually like and use). If you use any of these products with my link or code, I get a commission, which is something I have to let you know. I’m also letting you know I get compensated for any ads in this email. You can always ask me about specific products or send questions and I read (and currently try to reply to) every one, so always feel free to send your questions.

Financial Disclaimer: *Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, and I’m not a financial advisor. I simply share my own thoughts and actions about my own choices and thoughts. You may find or talk to your own financial advisor if you are looking for financial advice or direction.*            

Today let’s talk about why I moved money from stocks to my new duplex investment.

Today I’m talking about investing in assets and why I chose to move money I earned from website investing first into a business asset, stocks, and now into a real estate asset, a duplex.

Should I turn this into a real estate investing opportunity blog? haha! Just kidding guys.

Before we start, I wanted to say thank you again to my websites for making this duplex purchase possible. Anyone interested in buying their own Austin, TX duplex can search the available inventory here.

Are websites, like real estate, assets you can invest in?

Websites are one type of asset I have invested in that you can also invest in. There are many more investable asset types including businesses that you can invest in via stocks, and real estate you can invest in directly or indirectly through REITs or online offerings such as Peerstreet.

An asset is anything that produces value or income each month. Anything that drains your bank account each month, even by one penny, is by definition not an asset.

This means technically a home you live in, even one that is appreciating, is not technically an asset because you pay more each month than you get back from it.

If you’re looking for further asset reading, I love and recommend the book Rich Dad Poor Dad which goes into explaining what an asset vs a liability is in more detail.

What about NFTs? Are these assets?

I had to throw this one in here. Have you guys heard of NFTs AKA non-fungible tokens? A lot of celebrities, including Shawn Mendes are selling digital art of themselves as NFTs..who would buy that? Sorry if you already bought one, I’m sure it’s a great purchase.

Some people are investing in these as though they are appreciable assets, and they may be, but personally I would not invest in a digital Shawn Mendes art token.

Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet as an NFT, and someone may buy it for $2.5 million. If you know more about NFTs feel free to email me because I don’t know much, but there are many other assets I would invest in before buying an NFT.

NFTs also don’t return monthly income, so they may be more similar to gold and bitcoin than actual assets such as dividend stocks, websites or real estate that can appreciate and return payouts each month.

What do you do with your asset payouts?

Some website owners like to pour all their profits back into their websites, which can speed up their growth as well as have nice tax benefits, however I actually prefer to take my profits elsewhere for diversification purposes and grow my sites with as little expense as possible.

That’s why I invest the majority of my website profits in other things like stocks, annuities, and now real estate.

This is the email that dives into why I moved a large chunk of my savings, earned from website revenue FYI, from stocks into real estate. *Note, this is not monetary advice, none of my emails are, and I’m not a financial advisor, etc. This is simply my experience and thoughts, end disclaimer*

My feelings on stocks, website investing, and why I bought a duplex

how I feel about stocks 

Stocks are a way to buy a part of a company you believe in, and you can get payouts in the form of dividends, and reap the benefits as the stocks grow in value.

I’ve had a large chunk of my savings invested in stocks, most of which I invested during the COVID lockdown-induced dip around April of last year. These stocks did very well over the past year, as most stocks did, ironically so, as investors were pouring money into the market while companies were suffering financially in reality.

At the time, I put money in the market because I thought the economy and US businesses would be back to normal or better in 2 or more years. Now, I actually don’t feel that way anymore.

I’m very happy I had money in the market during this time. However, I see the large discrepancy between actual company performance and stock performance now and the past few months.

Companies are still hurting from the excessive government regulations and people are bullishly pouring their savings, their government printed stimulus checks, and their unemployment money into stocks, driving the market up while actual company performance is suffering.

Who knows how much longer the stock market rise can continue? Either way I don’t feel very good about either the short or even long-term future of the stock market, more because I am now uncertain about the future of the US as a pro-business and prosperous country, and US dollar inflation.

how I feel about website investing

Yes, I still think websites are a great asset to have as part of my overall income and investment portfolio.

Obviously I think that, as they are the reason I am able to earn a living on my own, and the reason I was able to purchase a duplex. I love owning and investing in websites and will keep doing so for a long time to come.

My point is that I have always, and will keep always owning other assets as well.

Every asset and investment comes with risks, and websites are not immune to that. Even assets that appear they have no risk, yes, still have risk.

No investment is risk free.

Other examples:

• Stocks can always go down, just paper money.
• Bitcoin can be hacked or stolen. You can lose your Bitcoin password or hard-drive. Or it could just tank in price due to excessive government regulation, or people losing interest and moving on to the next internet fad.
• Real Estate. Here I am, talking about how I just bought a duplex, but real estate prices can fluctuate up and down, property taxes can rise, maintenance costs can arise, natural disasters you’re not insured for can happen, tenants can stop paying rent and the government can forbid you from evicting them (lol it’s funny because it’s true).
• Annuities & “Guaranteed” Investments. Even “guaranteed” things like fixed indexed annuities have risk. In a crazy scenario, yes, there is always the possibility your insurance company or all insurance companies backing your annuity could go out of business.
• Even bonds aren’t risk-free. Bonds are yielding 1.4% right now. Combine that with the current 1.4% US inflation rate and they’re break even after adjusting for inflation. Then add in the potential for higher inflation and even lower interest rates and there is always the possibility for a negative bond yield after inflation adjustments.

Alternatively, the US dollar could also become worthless. Or, it’s very possible inflation could hit a point with inflation where your annuity could be worth less than half or less of its value very quickly before you have a chance to take the money out.

Every single investment in the world has risk, even if people try to tell you otherwise. Life has risk.

Is website investing still a good idea?

I still love investing in and growing the websites I own. They are my main income stream and have been for the past 4 years. I am currently actively working on and growing the sites I already own. I did also purchase a small website of my own this year. I’ve always invested in multiple things at once, as this is basic diversification.

Now you know the first part of my thought process on why I purchased a duplex as opposed to putting all my website profit and savings into more websites.

Benefits of re-investing asset profits to grow the asset?

I know some website investors and owners like to pour 100% of their website’s profit back into their current site or sites, or purchase new websites with the profit.

This has some benefits, such as being classified as a business tax expense write-off, and allowing you to scale your site much more quickly in a hands-off way. I personally usually prefer to simply take most of the profits, and then use those to invest in other assets so I’m able to have some savings in different areas and so all my eggs aren’t in a single basket.

That’s why I recently purchased my duplex, partly to diversify, partly to move money out of the uncertain future of US stocks, and partly to hedge against possible inflation.

The final email in my duplex purchase series, Part 3, will include my thoughts on and some stats on government spending & inflation. Then you’ll know my full thoughts on why I invested my website profits into stocks and now into real estate in the form of an Austin duplex.

Feel free to reply and let me know what types of assets you are investing in right now.

-Stacy

Also, of course my Ad & Affiliate Disclaimers: I often feature products in the form of paid ads which are clearly marked in the email. Also, I often use and recommend affiliate products (only really good ones I actually like and use). If you use any of these products with my link or code, I get a commission, which is something I have to let you know. I’m also letting you know I get compensated for any ads in this email. You can always ask me about specific products or send questions and I read (and currently try to reply to) every one, so always feel free to send your questions.

Financial Disclaimer: *Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, and I’m not a financial advisor. I simply share my own thoughts and actions about my own choices and thoughts. You may find or talk to your own financial advisor if you are looking for financial advice or direction.*

UPDATE #3: November 28th, 2022

As a small business owner I would recommend not doing Solidarity Healthshare.

For anyone considering Solidarity, I would think twice and simply pick a less expensive, higher deductible plan that lets you do an HSA and is more regulated by law. Solidarity is too risky. Especially if you have a high healthcare expense. You also can’t do an HSA when you have Solidarity.

Since they raised prices Solidarity Healthshare has become very expensive with the majority of each payment going toward unnecessary admin fees.

Crazy that the majority of each payment goes toward administrative fees and a reason on its own not to use Solidarity.

I just switched to an HSA eligible, very high-deductible plan that is only $133/month versus Solidarity which has recently raised prices to $247/month with most of it going to admin fees.

$130/mo of the $247 a month goes toward the share amount. The rest goes to administrative fees. A huge $50 goes to admin and $67 to services.

That is a huge amount going toward admin which is not necessary and not where I want my money going at all.

When I tried to cancel, they also made me pay for 2 full more months even when I requested ending it earlier, which is not right especially as the contract says all donations are ‘voluntary’.

Legally Solidarity cannot take my money after cancelling as all donations are purely ‘voluntary’ in nature. If only I’d read this more carefully upfront and realized I didn’t need to pay this entire time! Haha just kidding! But actually, I’m sure some people do that.

See contract below:

I did open a dispute with my bank for the $247 paid for my cancelled month. I also setup a stop payment on the account so they cannot withdraw any more money as they are trying to withdraw an additional month as well.

I am fully backed by my signed contract with Solidarity and they have no legal right to be taking money out of my account once cancelled. Or even while my account is active as all donations are purely ‘voluntary’.

Additionally as a small business owner you can’t deduct any healthshare expenses for tax purposes and you can with health insurance. You can also put money into an HSA with a high-deductible health insurance plan which you also can’t do with a health share plan.

Wish I had cancelled Solidarity sooner. I didn’t think about the tax and HSA implications the past few years which was my mistake. I had thought all health insurance plans were $400+/ month which is why I hadn’t considered any earlier.

Very happy to have made switch now.

UPDATE #2: January 13, 2021

Solidarity redid their website and their customer service model, and I just called with a billing question and had no wait time.

The customer service person went above and beyond to figure out the discrepancy and was able to do their job quickly and effectively.

They seem to have fully turned around to offer exceptional service to all customers without the hold time and other issues of the past.

I am very satisfied with them now (although they did increase their price, which probably allowed them to get more customer support representatives), and am happy to be their current customer.

Huge improvement so far this year, and I would recommend them to other freelancers as well and those looking for a lower cost option, especially since their entire service and platform seems to be operating at a much higher level based on my recent experiences.

You can read about their older model and my experience below, but am happy they have taken feedback, improved and are now a service I am happy to be a part of:

UPDATE as of 6/19/20: The below experience was my initial Solidarity experience, but after a year, a very helpful representative did reach out to me and fixed my concerns including any miscommunication and full eligible reimbursement for my plan.

I now think much more highly of Solidarity, and am glad I did use it for the past few years as I have been able to save considerably as opposed to getting traditional health insurance, even though it was hard to get used to using at first.

I now do highly recommend Solidarity, however it simply took a long time to get my initial bills reimbursed & communication fully figured out.

My full experience below:

Is Solidarity Christian Healthshare a good choice for entrepreneurs? Or for anyone? I describe my own experience with Solidarity’s Healthshare and opinion on who, if anyone, should use it, below.

I was so tired I could not run for longer than 3 minutes without stopping to walk for at least a minute. And when I say “run”, I mean hobbling a long at an 11 minute mile pace, barely faster than many people can walk.

I’m a fairly athletic person, and always have been, swimming High School Varsity section and state meets since middle school, running two marathons and being the type to go on a run even when it is pouring rain or in any cold temperature except ice on the ground because ice makes it too slippery.

After more than a month of 3 minute slow-motion running followed by a minute walking, I decided to go in for a blood test to see if there was anything wrong with me.

At first I had thought my slowed down running was just me getting older, but when you can’t run for more than 3 minutes at a time, are only 27 years old, and are used to being able to run marathons, you start to realize there may be something wrong.

Wanting to be able to run again, I went in to get my general checkup and blood test for the first time in over 5 years since the mandatory college tests.

I got the test results and found out my red blood count and iron count were incredibly low and I had iron-deficiency anemia, which was the reason I had been so exhausted I could barely find the energy to “run”, if you can call it that, at a crawling pace for more than a few minutes.

To fix the iron-deficiency, I took iron pills for 8 months, got re-tested, and found out my blood count was still slightly low. Then I took the pills again for a few more months. Finally I got re-tested and found out my blood count was fine, which I already knew because at that point I was running for 30 minutes straight at 8 minute mile pace daily on my building’s treadmill.

The doctor visit + the blood test added up to ~$500 + two more blood tests for a total around ~$700.

Not a health expense that would break the bank by any means, with or without insurance, however, I had been told *in writing* via email multiple times before going in for the general checkup that Solidarity Healthshare covers general checkups 100%, and any reasonable follow ups 100%.

I was under the impression I would submit these bills via the Solidarity portal, get a reimbursement check, and be done with it.

Nope. Not even close.

Christian HealthShare Bill Processing Experience

I submitted my bills and forgot about them. My mom asked me a few months later, “Did Solidarity ever reimburse you?”

I logged back in to check, nope, still “processing”, 3 months later. Still processing 5 months later.

From the day I submitted May 12th, 2019, it took Solidarity 5 and half months to process the first iteration of the bill which was finally incorrectly processed on October 30th, 2019.

After waiting for months, I finally I got an email notification they had been processed 5 and a half months after I submitted the bill.

I logged in and found Solidarity had “re-priced” every single bill that I had already paid full price for, meaning after my $500 deductible, they decided to “re-price” all the bills I had already paid in full so they could reimburse me for only the arbitrary “re-priced” amount, not the amount I had already paid in full.

Their strange “re-pricing” strategy meant they were only reimbursing me for around half of the rest of the general checkup and blood test bill.

Note: The way Solidarity processes and prints out the processed bill PDFs is also super confusing.

Make sure you save your welcome packet so you can check what plan you have, if it is the one that reimburses 100% or 70% like I have, or another variation.

A deductible means what you have to pay out of pocket each year no matter what. So I knew I would be paying the first $500 out of my own pocket and was ok with that.

Reimbursements & Customer Service

Here’s how it worked out for my ~$700 checkup and blood test:

I submitted my claims and waited 5 and a half months for processing

Then for the next “eligible” $200, they “repriced” the bill to be $100…even though I had already paid, in full, the full $200 bill.

I called to ask why they repriced it and only sent a partial reimbursement

They told me the documents I had submitted weren’t proof of payment so I had to re-submit them.

I resubmitted all my proof of payment documents (so much for *trust* in a Christian Healthshare I guess)

I called again 3 weeks later to check in.

They told me to re-email everything.

I called again 3 weeks later to check in.

Still processing.

I waited every month or few months to call in again and check, and no one was ever able to help me get the bills finalized or paid.

The support representative would always say in a sing-songy sweet voice, “oh, it is still processing in billing, we will call you again in 10 days to follow up with an update”.

And I would say back as nicely as possible “oh I don’t think you will call me back, just because I’ve been told that many times before and it has never happened.”

They would say, “oh, of course honey we will call you back”, and I would laugh quietly in my own head because of course they would never call me back, and they never did.

Finally, it has been over a year and I am writing this at the time of C-virus lockdown, so of course they have practically shut down even though they are a remote phone-based business.

In a few months I will call again and see if my bills from over a year and a half ago have been processed as was promised.

UPDATE: 6/19/20 A few weeks after publishing this post, I was surprised to see that a Solidarity representative did reach out to me via email to schedule a call to discuss my situation.

We talked on the phone several times to clear up any confusion, and she was extremely helpful as well as had the knowledge as well as power to help and get the rest of my reimbursements.

She explained to me that the re-price was because I had chosen the lowest plan level which is only a 70% max reimbursement rate, which makes sense and was ok with me. If you are looking to get a 100% reimbursement, you simply have to choose a higher plan level.

She also sent the two checks that I had never received which I just got the other day in the mail, so I did end up getting 70% of my eligible medical costs covered, which was great.

I have to say I was surprised to receive the pro-active outreach and help from her, and she was exactly the kind of customer service I had previously not seen in Solidarity but had been looking for.

I also have to say I do recommend Solidarity based on my most recent experience with them and how they cleared up any confusion on my end as well as sent the rest of the eligible reimbursement money.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Solidarity or a Christian Healthshare?

The answer is it depends on many factors, but I now think much more highly of Solidarity and will consider staying on the next few years, however my monthly subscription fee is increasing this October, so I still need to decide if traditional insurance is a wash or not cost-wise or worth it in other ways.

Before getting the pro-active customer service outreach from Solidarity, the worst part for me was having this hanging over my head for months and months and over a year. I simply wanted to submit a bill and know it has been taken care of. I would rather have an honest, upfront, easy to work with health insurance provider, and for a year Solidarity had been the opposite of this. I have to say they are now the opposite of what I previously thought, I now see them as much more upfront, honest and capable due to my recent experience.

I am happy this is no longer hanging over my head, having to resubmit bills, wait months and call every month for over a year and still not being reimbursed for a small amount. Solidarity as a Christian HealthShare has met and exceeded my expectations with my most recent experience.

I was very happy to be able to speak with a Solidarity customer service representative who was on point and had the power to deliver while I was on the phone with her.

Christian shared health insurance is a good idea in theory, but has some serious flaws in the way they can be set up. I recommend building a strong relationship with them if you do get their insurance so you can get priority support and have a good experience like I had a year after my initial experience.

There are still valid use-cases for shared health insurance such as those who have very little to spend on health insurance or are willing to take the risk of not being covered.

I likely will continue to use my Christian HealthShare for at least one more year due to its low cost & now good support.

However, I recognize that because of this low cost, getting any money for submitted claims can be like pulling teeth unless you get a good customer service representative on the phone.

I currently use Solidarity Healthshare for my insurance, and started doing so when coverage was mandatory under Obamacare laws, when my mom recommended it to me due to the faith-based nature and low costs when compared to traditional health insurance plans.

I work for myself and did so at the time, so I wasn’t covered by an employer, making health insurance a cost that I wanted to keep as small as possible, similar to many self-employed people.

I have paid $107 a month for my Solidarity Healthshare membership these past few years, plus an annual $75 renewal fee which adds up to $1,359 a year.

Looking up other standard Health Insurance plans such as Blue Cross Blue Shield it’s easy to see how health insurance costs can add up to over $350 or more per month or a much larger expense of $4,200 or more per year.

Solidarity did a great job proactively reaching out to me a year after my initial concern and completely fixing any miscommunication and reimbursements.

My Solidarity renewal is coming up in October, and with it comes a raise in my current price to almost the level of a traditional health insurer. I may stay with Solidarity after my recent experience with the wonderful, knowledgeable customer service representative and how they clarified any miscommunication and sent the full reimbursement.

In conclusion, using a HealthShare can be a good short term health insurance solution for some people, but you’ll need to think carefully about the costs and benefits relative to your own situation.

Let me know your experience with regular health insurance and healthshare insurance in the comments below and we can compare the two.

Christopher Schwab started an outsourced Cleaning business from his college dorm, and grew it to the point he was able to work entirely remotely from Japan and London.

From there he grew to become a virtual assistant hiring expert and started a VA outsourcing company as well as a handful of other successful ventures.

He shares his experience starting a cleaning business, growing it, hiring VA’s for his company and for others, and how he was able to remove himself from day to day operations to be able to live the digital nomad dream and work completely remotely.

If you are thinking of starting a cleaning business, hiring a VA, or learning to outsource day to day operations in your own business, this article will help you learn how to do so.

How to Find a Virtual Assistant

If you really want to find a great VA, you want to find someone who might not necessarily even label themselves as a VA. But nonetheless, who can do the job you require remotely.

For example, my VA company, we focus on admin work for local businesses, we’re not a sales VA, or a real estate VA. Instead we’re really Office Admin for local businesses. So we don’t need to specifically hire a local business VA.

This means we can hire someone who’s helped run a family business, or who’s done admin work for much of their career, or who’s worked as a specific type of secretary. And then we can train them on the virtual aspects.

And I actually find this works better to find someone with the underlying skills that you need, and hire them and then train them on the virtual side, instead of finding someone who’s a VA and then teaching them the underlying skills that we need.

I think a lot of people get that wrong. And so we focus on the underlying skills.

So for someone who’s qualified and has the experience, we look for people who aren’t really marketing themselves as vas, but who can become the best VA that we need.

Common VA-based Business Mistakes

The most common mistake I’ve seen that can make a VA-based business crumble is promising quality of service at the level of an expert. I see a lot of VA companies doing this, where someone says they need a marketing funnel designer and a good marketing funnel designer can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000.

I’ve spent 10s of thousands of dollars on a really good funnel designer before. But I see VA is offering the service for $15, or $20 or $25 an hour. And it’s just not a realistic thing to offer.

If you’re being honest about the level of quality that you can deliver to the client, you are not an expert in that field. But many VA businesses fall into the generalist category, but they sell themselves as a specialist. So many VA services offer 10 or 12 or 15 different services to their clients. But they’re a generalist to all of them, and that’s fine.

But, but they need to recognize and be honest that they cannot deliver the quality of an expert specialist who only does that one service. And I see a lot of VA companies making that mistake. And so their clients inevitably get disappointed when they get something that is not at the level of expert that they were hoping for.

So you have marketing VA’s, you have econ VA’s, and funnel VA’s, you have all these decent all-rounders, which is great. But you just need to be realistic about what level of service you can actually deliver. That is probably the biggest mistake that I see people make.

And this is not just true to the industry, but it’s particularly true of the VA industry. So what led me to start thinking it’s what I want you to do for that is Google Think Maids Side Hustle School, there’s a quick five to six minute interview that Chris Guillebeau of Side Hustle School did that answers questions three and four.

Why Should You Start a Cleaning Business?

Starting a cleaning business allowed Chris to become location independent and fulfill his dream of working for himself.

Starting any type of business can help you gain independence and allow you to work for yourself. Choosing cleaning specifically is a niche you could get into if you enjoy cleaning, or if you see a need in your community for more cleaning services and think you can do a good job fulfilling this either yourself or by outsourcing the work and doing the marketing, sales and business side yourself as Chris has done.

Comment below if you have ever thought of starting a cleaning business and your experience so far.

When Should You Start to Outsource Your Business

You can outsource any type of business tasks, including cleaning business tasks, as Chris did.

Here is some detail to help you figure out if your business is at the point where you should outsource.

When you should start outsourcing your cleaning business or any VA-based business entirely really depends on the business model that you’re running.

For example, an e-commerce business doing $20,000 a month is totally different than a local business doing $20,000 a month. And it’s totally different than your manufacturing business doing $20,000 a month. I see a lot of people say, Hey, get to $10K a month and then outsource, get to $20K a month and outsource. And it’s just terrible advice.

Because it’s not specific to their business model is not specific to their industry. Those things really do matter. There are certain things that you can generalize, but this is not one of them. You need to know the business model, and you need to know the stage of growth they’re at before you can make a call that you need to outsource things because a lot of people are starting to outsource too early, and it’s an enormous mistake.

Of course my specialty is local businesses. So I will stick to that but if you local service business, you shouldn’t even think about it before getting to around $15,000 to $18,000 a month, unless you have a full-time job. If you have a full time job, and you just need someone to cover some of that basic admin, and you can afford it from the salary in your full time job, that’s fine.

Otherwise, you need to have a base of revenue, and you need to have a base of profit coming through before it makes sense to offload that. So when you’re an owner, you really need a solid foundation built, meaning you’re profitable, meaning you have a base of recurring revenue every month, and you have clients that are with you a long time.

You also need to be consistently closing sales and growing. You don’t need to have a crazy growth trajectory, but you need to be closing more business than you are losing every month. So your closing rate needs to be higher than your churn rate.

And the last thing is you need to reach a point where most of your day to day is spent on busy and work and the busy work is what is really stopping you from growing, because you’re just spending so much time on the basic running of the business. And when you get to that point, that’s the point, at least in a local business, where you should start to hire a VA and offload some of that admin work so that you can refocus on growth.

I see a lot of business owners get to a good stage of growth and then hire a VA and offload everything to them. One that’s bad because the VA is only good at certain things. And you should only offload the things that they’re good at. So if everything but to it’s bad, because I see the owners become complacent. And they don’t take the extra time that they gain from hiring their VA to refocus on growth. And that’s when their business starts to crumble. So before the that stage, money should be reinvested back into marketing and sales for quicker growth,

Until you’re hitting around that $15K to $18K mark in a local business, all your profits, you need to reinvest back into marketing and sales. If you’re not paying yourself or if you can afford to not pay yourself, you should also work on systematizing before you burn on help, otherwise, you’re just wasting money that needs not be spent otherwise.

I’m a big fan of systems and automations but you shouldn’t do it with everything. You know, if you ever call a bank, and you can’t get a hold of a human, it’s a really frustrating experience. And it almost it just makes you angry. So there’s certain things you should not automate. But there’s a lot that you can and you could automate and make your business twice as efficient, and then bring on the extra time and revenue. And then you’re saving all that extra money, because you’re not having your VA is having to work two hours a day instead of four, six. So that’s a big one.

Outsourcing Cleaning VA’s vs Hiring Full-Time Employees

In terms of outsourcing and using a VA or a full-time employee, what makes more sense?

If you are a bigger business, you know, if you’re running seven figures in most industries, e-commerce is a little different, because there’s so much volume and not that much profit, but manufacturing too.

If you’re a bigger business, it’s better to go with employees generally but it differs by industry and is not something to generalize.

If I had to generalize for this question, it would be roughly seven figures is going to cover most industries, is when you should start transitioning over to full time dedicated in office employees. Before that point, VA’s grow really well with you, they’re really adaptable.

And you can build a specialized team of the A’s for each little service that you need. After that point, it becomes better and more profitable to have an in house team. You know, if you’re only doing $10,000 a month, you can’t afford an in office employee, you can’t afford it in office marketing team, you can’t afford it in office salesperson, you might have one or two marketing platforms that you’re using, like Facebook ads, you might have a VA that’s helping with a couple hours of admin work.

But at that revenue, you can’t afford to have people in house full time on a salary working for you. But as you scale up, and you have those profit margins, and you have that leeway, it actually becomes cheaper and more effective to have an in house marketer to have an in house sales guy to have an in house admin team because you’re paying them a set salary every month, you know what’s gonna cost and they’re in the office with you and they’re able to work more closely on your business goals. Instead of just viewing you as a client, they’re viewing you as their employer.

So when you’re bigger it’s a con to have a VA you can still have the ACE for specific tasks. Of course we still do that that goes without saying. But generally it becomes a con to have a VA versus a full time employee. So stage of growth is the biggest thing that’s going to determine how Reliant you become on VAs. The other thing is with outsourcing if you outsource to US-based agents, this is this is not much of an issue. And it happens rarely, although it does happen.

But with international VAs, it’s just unfortunately the case that ghosting clients is quite common. See, and part of this is pay rate. You people pay want to pay an international VA $5 to $7 an hour, which is okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. I know this is a, a big debate in the industry. But there’s nothing wrong with paying someone a good pay rate for their country. Right. It’s just geo arbitrage.

But if you pay a cheaper rate, be aware there is to a certain extent you pay what you get for it in this industry. And it’s increasingly common, where people come to me that their VA from the Philippines or from somewhere else, has ghosted them. And they don’t have access to the account they gave the VA to anymore. The VA is not responding to the emails a week went by, and they didn’t hear anything. So their customers weren’t being served. And so they come to us, and they want to try to transition to a US based firm for more reliability. And I don’t like making these generalizations again. But unfortunately, this is one that generally does hold true, is US based firms tend to be more reliable, they tend to be easier to track down, they don’t tend to ghost you as much. It’s just what it is.

Another con is reliability. If you’re hiring internationally, it is just less reliable. There are so many good days and so many good companies internationally, but they’re less generally reliable in the US. So that’s another con if you’re hiring internationally, for a VA, especially as you get bigger becomes mission critical to have that reliability.

Where to Find a VA

For us, we look a few different places from sourcing VAs.

Where we actually source vas is a mixture of Craigslist. It’s a mixture of indeed, it’s a mixture of Facebook groups, LinkedIn and old VA forums, we found if price is not an issue, VA forums are actually a great place and VA societies as well, are a great place to reach out to VA because there is a vetting process.

There people who’ve been VA s often for 10 or 15 years, they were among the first batch of VA s, when this was kind of a new job, it’s not so new. Now, it’s been around almost 25 years now. Some people were doing this, really in the late 90s. This, that there were very, very few, but there were vas who were VA’s in the late 90s. So you know, this is not a new industry now. But it’s fairly new to most people as of the last 10 years or so still, maybe even the last seven or eight.

Having said that, we find if price is not an issue, VA societies and VA forums are a fantastic source for more experienced VA’s who have industry experience as well.

• Facebook Groups
• Craigslist
• LinkedIn
• VA Societies
• VA Forums
• Facebook Ads
• Recommendations

We find Facebook groups are okay. But the but it’s mostly newer VA’s. There are there are of course many viewers who are not. But a lot of the newer VA s are the ones who are jumping on the job posts immediately who are applying. And so there is a lower level of expertise in Facebook groups.

Having said that, if you’re bringing them on in house as an employee VA versus a subcontractor, you’re that’s okay, because you’re able to train them on your processes. But for us, it’s a mixture of Facebook groups, Craigslist, LinkedIn, and VA societies and forms. Those are the main ones. We’ve played around with Facebook ads, and we’ve had some success. But we don’t really use that unless we’re in a pinch, just because you know, it’s a more expensive option to get applicants through. Those are kind of the sources that we use.

Other ones just include asking our current fees if they know people who are reliable that they’d recommend for this job. And honestly, just asking friends and family, if they know any former office admin staff who might be interested in remote job. So that’s kind of how we source for it. There’s no secret sauce there that you could look for. It’s pretty standard sourcing.

And what I would do a tip that I would give to people for the location they live in is to go to Craigslist and go to their local Craigslist, and then put up a post in the local high like the local office and then customer support and sales sections of the hiring board on Craigslist. And you get a lot of people applying to those ads. They’re not currently VA’s but they’re very open to becoming VA’s. And so that’s been a great source of new ways for us.

I know Craigslist has a very bad reputation. But that was the early days of Craigslist. It’s a very different place now there there are still scams that go on. There are still people who reply who aren’t serious. But Craigslist has evolved as a platform and become a very good source of job applicants. So it’s a good tip for people looking for ways outside of the typical Facebook or LinkedIn.

Cleaning Business Operations Roadblock – Case Study

The biggest roadblock I encountered starting to think maids was the speed of our growth, we went from $0 to $20,000 a month in less than 90 days. And that caused issues because I was a first time business owner. For me, it meant that I was just focused on booking people and getting them on the schedule.

I wasn’t learning how to handle my teams particularly well. I had great teams early on. So they put up with me, and they put up with a lot of mistakes. But one big mistake for me was Halloween. This is actually the story. I’ll keep it very short, just a few seconds. But this is how I ended up starting my VA company was in my cleaning company. Halloween 2016, I was still a full time student was in my final semester University.

And I was doing all exams at the same at that time, it was midterm exams, and people were calling left and right for Halloween cleaning. And I didn’t say no, I was booking people thinking that my teams would want to be on with all the extra money coming in, because we pay them a percentage. So the more cleans they do, they get a lot more money.

I was thinking that they would want to do these cleanings because hey, more money for both of us. But a lot of my team’s called off last minute to be with their family, which is perfectly understandable. I just didn’t have the foresight to ask them ahead of time.

On those days, if they would be available, I just assumed that they would be. And so I had a bunch of customers who were very angry because every other cleaning company in the city was booked. And I had really screwed up there. And some people missed their cleanings for that day. And so that was a really tough moment for me as a business owner.

Not only did my customers lose faith in me, I lost a couple of those customers. But also my teams were frustrated because I was scheduling them for cleans that they couldn’t go to. And so it was just a very big issue for me as a first time business owner, learning that balance of how much business we could take in versus the needs of my teams. And and the time respecting the time of my teams as well. These are issues that I hadn’t thought about before as a business owner because I’d only been in business a few months. So this was a big roadblock for me.

I had wanted to grow, I wanted to grow so fast, and it was going so well. But I was humbled by this experience of finding out that maybe the marketing or the sales isn’t the problem. But there’s all these other parts of running the business that maybe I wasn’t doing a good job on.

And actually I had to step back and learn those things. I had to learn the operations, I had to learn how to handle my teams properly, I had to learn the customer service parts, I had to learn foresight, right, I had to learn how to predict these things ahead of time for the next busy season, and how to handle those ahead of time. And so the biggest roadblock for me with Think Maids was really those other parts of the business.

They’re actually my strengths now. Our operations, our customer service, our teams, those are our main strengths were even better that than that. We’re even better at those than marketing. But those were early on the struggle. I would say the proudest moment with Think Maids was when I was able to take it remote.

But when I started Think Maids, it was kind of a side project I was I was debating that, or becoming a web developer at the time. I just I didn’t want to work for a boss. And so I I gave it a go and I started this business. And that was a beautiful thing when I had that first booking come in. But what made it truly real for me was a few months after I graduated university, I realized that I had slipped into this thing full time. And I had gone from kind of a side business, and it just naturally evolved into a full business.

Taking a Cleaning Business Remote

I had brought my VA on at that point for a few months. And I found out that I was able to just take it remote full time. We did a test run in November when I visited my girlfriend in Japan for a week and a half. But, and that that went perfectly well the VA handled everything while I was away. We jumped on meetings at weird times to make sure things were fine, but everything went okay. And that was a beautiful moment in my business where I thought maybe we can do this.

But the moment that I’m most proud of Think Maids is March 2016-2017. At the end of March, I believe it was March 24 or 25th 2017. I took off and I moved to Japan for an entire year. And I’ve been living since between Japan in London these past three years. But I moved to Japan for an entire year March 24th or 25th and in 2017 and I made this permanent, running my business remotely a permanent thing.

And I realized that I actually hit this dream that so many of these digital nomads talk about that so many of these business owners talk about, but they never show you how to get there. They just tell you it and then they sell you the dream, but they don’t tell you the process, I realized I’d actually hit that myself. And I did it myself.

And in just a few months that that was really the culmination of, of what I do working towards at that point for thickness. And it just made me so indescribably happy to know that that was my situation. So I would say that’s the proudest moment.

Adding Cleaning Business Services

And we’re looking forward to adding additional services we’ve played around with carpet and window cleaning these past few years. It’s something that I want to make a permanent offering what we do as well. So that’s a major focus of this year, it was a major focus last year.

But between my other businesses I just didn’t get around to it. So for think Nate’s the focus this year is really adding those carpet and window cleaning services as a full part of our business rather than just to existing customers or just to people who ask about it.

After Outsourcing Cleaning & Adding New Businesses

Yeah, so for my local business MBA program. This is for people who either want to start a local business from scratch, or people who’ve been stuck in their local business for years. In so in one case, we’ve been helped a lady who’d been stuck since 1989, at the same place.

This is a program for people who are really stuck or new. And the people who are stuck when they join with us, it’s to rebuild the foundation of their business, they often haven’t, they’ve often been good at sales or marketing, or they’ve been good at word of mouth or just teams, they’re usually good at one or two things and bad at a lot of things.

This is for people who plowed ahead being good at one or two things, but never did the basic foundational work of their business.

So this getting unstuck part of the MBA program is really about rebuilding the foundation of their business. So they know the basics in every area are covered and functioning well. It’s about implementing the right systems, of which I have many detailed tutorials for everyone goes through it.

And it’s about removing yourself from the day to day, that’s kind of the final stage is you rebuild your foundation, you put the right systems in place, you start marketing and sales, again aggressively with the right strategies. And then you start to remove yourself from the day to day so that you’re more of a business owner and less of a business manager. So that’s kind of what people sign up with us to fix is to get unstuck to get to the next stage of growth, or to start from scratch.

Comment below if you have started a cleaning or VA based business and your favorite takeaway from this article.

Flippa – I’ve Spent $35,700 on Flippa, What did I learn? Avoid my mistakes. Learn from my experiences on Flippa by watching the video below or reading the article that outlines the lessons:

Pre-Flippa: My 9 to 5 Background

I’m going to start by giving you my background from the first business I started to feeling trapped in my first 9 to 5 job to spending $35K on sites from Flippa to where I am now. I’ll take you through my experience with Flippa and what I learned form each purchase so you can learn from my mistakes and successes and get a feel for what’s possible buying websites on the Flippa platform.

I remember when I was really young, in elementary school and high school, and I would see my dad and other adults go off to work each day and come home each night, and I always assumed they were all so happy and having so much fun each day at their work!

I never thought about my own work or future at that point or even looked forward to it and I never wanted it to come faster, I just assumed when I got there it would be great and that I would absolutely love each day. I never even considered the possibility they were only doing it for money or what each day really entailed. I think I assumed because they were adults and knew everything and had everything under control that they were choosing to go to a fun place each day to something they loved to do, it never even crossed my mind there was any other possibility. I never thought about salary or salary caps or freedom or anything, I didn’t even really realize people got different amounts of money for different types of work – it wasn’t something I ever thought about.

Even in college, I never connected my major to the job I would eventually have. I didn’t even think about choosing a major connected to my future job, it never really crossed my mind, which looking back doesn’t seem very bright, but I wouldn’t go back and change a thing.

I graduated from Boston College and found out later that my dad had wanted my sister and I to apply to the Carroll School of Management, aka the business school at BC so we would have better paying job prospects, but my mom told him we should be able to follow our hearts and choose the majors we were most interested in.

It’s funny because I love business and my first job was even in marketing, but it never crossed my mind to major in ‘business’ because I clearly was not thinking in any type of long-term way since at this point as I still assumed everyone got a job they loved and went away each day to a fun retreat type setting or something – honestly I never gave it much thought.

So I majored in psychology in the school of arts and sciences at BC because I loved psych classes, and I knew from the start I never wanted to be a psychologist or go to any more years of school – that never interested me. I was able to get a job running google ads for an ecommerce marketing agency, mostly because I’d already run google ads in an unpaid internship the past summer, not because of my psychology degree. However having a college degree definitely helped me get the job, and I don’t think that company or most companies will hire you without some type of college degree.

I was so excited to get my first job offer and to finally be a true adult and going to the special adult work club each day. I actually loved my first three months at my new job and thought it was such an exciting, fun and new experience.

Once I settled in I realized how constricting it was. My boss actually sat me down and said, “ I noticed you have been eating lunch away from your desk each day, for over half an hour?” I said,”yes, I like to go get lunch and eat it outside and stretch my legs, it’s nice to have that time to myself” he said “that’s not how we do things around here. You should try to start packing lunch and eat at your desk for no longer than 15 minutes each day.” I remember being flabbergasted that he would even say that.

In his mind, and most company’s mind, they are paying for you like some type of ‘workhorse’ and they want you to be seated at your desk for 8 to 9 or in some cases more hours each day, and that is how they measure your productivity and dedication to your job. They don’t care about your results as long as your results are mediocre or better. If you only worked 4 hours each day but had insanely good results they would definitely fire you which doesn’t make any sense at all but that’s how it is because of the way companies look at owning you and your time.

The funny part is sitting all day is unhealthy, and honestly even worse for productivity because you need to get up and move in the middle of each day for blood flow and to think more clearly.

I know now every time I take my midday run, it completely resets me mentally and physically and I’m able to start working again after it with an incredibly clear mind and start working as effectively as I was at the beginning of the day again as opposed to petering off mentally with tiredness and anxiety as I used to after the half way point each day at my 9 to 5 when I was stuck sitting in the same position the entire day.

Companies including my 9 to 5 roles also don’t pay you based on results, with the exception of commission in a handful of sales roles, so no matter how long you sit there each day and no matter what results and revenue you bring in to the company, your pay stays the same or goes up very slightly. Effort and results aren’t tied to pay in a normal company setting.

For me, even worse than the pay caps and no match between effort results and salary, was the lack of freedom, and the relentless sitting each day, and that started to wear on me mentally. The fact someone else owned me, and my time, and that even a simple vacation request had to be submitted and could be denied, which actually happened to me at my first job, and vacation limited to a small number of days each year, and that I needed to sit in a chair for 8 or 9 hours each day plus two hours of driving each day, meant I had only a handful of hours truly to myself each day, and only a handful of hours I could do anything but sit forced and trapped staring at a computer screen each day.

I remember my face would get really inflamed and red from anxiety of feeling forced to be sitting at my desk for the 8 hours each day. The company wasn’t paying for results, they were paying to have me chained to my desk each day. Every company does. I guess it’s an easy way for them to measure your perceived effort even if it doesn’t help them maximize their own results.

Anyway, I realized a few months in that I would really rather have control over my own time each day, and I would really rather see a correlation between my effort, results and salary as opposed to some type of artificial cap where I could never really make over a certain amount.

I kept working there and learned a ton about paid ads and SEO and ecommerce marketing so it was a great learning experience, and I was able to learn even more online marketing skills that have helped me tremendously to get a website investing ROI and still help me to this day.

Flippa Mistakes: My First Flippa Purchases

At my third 9 to 5, working in the marketing department at a financial technology type company, I started reading even more financial freedom and how to make money online blogs and for the first time I started seriously implementing what I was reading.

This is the time I read a Niche Pursuits blog guest post article where I learned about Flippa, a website buying and selling platform, and I had more disposable income than I’d ever had before at this time due to a multi five figure salary raise I’d gotten when I’d switched from my second to third job. This was when I took the leap to purchase a website on Flippa while I was still at my 9 to 5.

I remember scrolling through hundreds of pages of both live and expired listings, poring over each one and trying to figure out which to buy. I was really desperate at this time in my life in the sense I felt I needed to be making more so I could stop feeling anxious and trapped all the time. My desperation put me in a poor place to be making any type of buying decision, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

I ended up rushing into buying a small website that educated people on technology and iPad case coverings monetized with amazon affiliates. I paid $1,300 for the site which the owner claimed was making $350 profit a month, so I thought oh this is an incredible deal I’ll be able to make back what I paid for the site in less than 4 months, this is great! He even showed me revenue screenshots from his amazon account that showed over $300 each month in affiliate commission, and I had Google analytics access to the site before buying it.

I remember my gut telling me there was a red flag. When I looked at the amazon affiliate screenshots, the majority of the purchases were not technology related, they were bible or other related, and the thing about amazon is they pay affiliate commission on all purchases someone makes after clicking your link, not just the direct purchase of the item you inspired them to purchase.

This means logically there could have been a lot of other non-related commissions being received. But I had a feeling there was something off, but I ignored it out of desperation to buy a site that was making money. And I told myself, worst case scenario it has to be making something.

At this point I’d never evaluated a site to determine how much it is currently making and what its potential is via google analytics so I saw it had around thousand visits a month from only 30 or so visits a day and thought maybe it just had a very high conversion rate etc, I wasn’t diving deep to verify things and I was way too trusting.
Another red flag was he was selling it for a 4X monthly profit valuation and I knew that the going rate for sites at this point in time was 20X monthly profit valuation, another “too good to be true” signal.

I put in my offer and bought the site and transferred it into my hosting account. I remember getting the first affiliate commission from it for a few dollars and how excited I was. It really is a great feeling to make your first few dollars from something online, if you’ve done this already you’ll know what I’m talking about. And then there were crickets.

I realized pretty quickly he had lied about the site profit and revenue and that I’d fallen for a Flippa scam.

The site was only making around $20 a month, and the previous owner had said it was making $350. Turns out I had paid a 65X monthly profit valuation multiple when I thought I was paying a 4X multiple, and had been lied to about site revenue.

I reached out to the seller and he never responded of course, and to Flippa to report his account, and they were able to take action and deactivate his account, but I had been lied to and had fallen for one of the many Flippa scammers who try to lie about revenue to sell sites for a lot more than they’re worth.

Looking back it ended up being a great first lesson for me because I’d only lost a small amount of money, $1,300, to learn such an important lesson that has likely saved me from losing tens of thousands I could have lost if I’d made that mistake on a bigger site purchase.

Imagine if my first $1,300 site purchase had been an honest good purchase, and then I’d lost way more on my next bigger site purchase that was a scam. I definitely got lucky that I only fell for a scam on my first very small purchase because the main takeaway I got was a lesson to never fall for any similar scam again.

You have to remember that no platform has time to really dig through everything which is why you as an individual, always have to verify everything and dig through everything before you make a purchase, before we make any investment before you buy stock, you need to look at all the financial statements and dig through it to make sure it’s a solid company. Similarly, you have to do the same thing before you buy real estate before and before you buy any investment. For example, you have to go and inspect a house before buying it and make sure it checks out as well as look at historical rental rates in the area and other numbers to determine if it is a good investment.

Even though my first purchase didn’t end up having a positive ROI,=it also got me hooked on Flippa and buying websites in general, because it was making a little bit of money when I first bought it. I remember seeing that money go into my Amazon affiliate account.

It was just a few dollars and I thought so happy because I realized what was possible with owning a website and buying websites that you could actually make money online, it really opened my mind I never even realized websites could make money. The first site purchase ended up being a blessing overall because it encouraged me to keep going.

Lesson 1: Dive Deep into Verification

The lesson I took away from that experience is that if you’re buying any type of investment, including a website, you need to go deep to verify revenue and stats and make sure the seller is honest and telling the truth. You also need to use the common sense test to look at all the website traffic and industry average RPMs and do your own calculations in addition to getting revenue verification screenshots, looking at video earning reports, and diving into analytics to check not only traffic numbers but traffic sources, location, language and more.

Lesson 2: Don’t Ignore your Gut or Red Flags

You also need to listen to your gut if it’s telling you there’s a mismatch, like in my example where a technology site was getting its main revenue source from bible affiliate products and when a site is only getting 28 visitors a day but the owner tells you it’s making $350 a month Which doesn’t past any type of gut or common sense test or even logical test if you site down and work the numbers out and truly think about it.

What you need to realize is there will always be people trying to lie to get more money, yes on Flippa, and yes even when you’re buying a house or buying any type of business or even product. People lie if they can get away with it.

So you need to assume nothing is valid up front and go deep to verify everything on your own before making a purchase to avoid falling for any type of scam.

Lesson 3: Only make investments with a clear, calm mind

The other lesson I took away from this site purchase is to only buy a site when you are calm and have a clear, non-desperate mindset. It’s similar to making a decision when you’re angry, or texting someone when you’re drunk or angry. None of those actions will end well. You should only make a big decision or purchase when you’re in a good, clear state of mind.

It’s also important to listen to your gut even after verifying everything with logic. If something feels off, it probably is, and your gut is a lot smarter than you give it credit for, so if everything checks out on the verification end but you still feel something is off, then my advice would be to not buy the website.

In this specific example, even though I was a website buying newbie and had no idea even how to verify revenue or what a site getting 28 visitors a day in the tech affiliate niche should be making, if I had listened to my intuition that was screaming red flags I wouldn’t have made the purchase.

However, only listening to your gut can only get you so far, you need to have a handle on revenue verification if you’re buying a website, no matter how good your intuition is.

Lesson 4: Weed out sites early on using Flippa’s Verification Features

This website also wasn’t using any of Flippa’s verification features which include google analytics verification and google adsense revenue verification, and I now only even consider sites on the platform that have these two features enabled, so I can weed out fake sites sooner to only dive deep into ones that already have basic traffic and ad revenue verification enabled.

Lesson 5: Buy sites with long-term potential, not fad or trendy

The final lesson from my first site purchase is the content was based around the current iPhone and iPad models, which meant every time a new model came out you’d need to update the content. I now look for evergreen content when buying now so I can focus more on stable growth and long-term revenue producing content, so the cyclical content nature of the site would have been another red flag for me since I buy sites for long term revenue potential that don’t require constant content updates.

My Second Flippa Mistake – Site Purchase #2

I was still at my 9 to 5 at this point when I decided to buy another website, this time for a much larger investment, $10,000. I applied my revenue verification lesson and was 100% certain of the site’s amazing traffic and revenue before I bought it. I also knew I could switch ad networks right away and 2X or more the revenue, so I knew it was a great purchase.

Again, my desperation this time combined with over-confidence lead me to make the purchase.

I was right that the traffic was great and I was right about quickly doubling the revenue, so at first I thought I’d made an amazing purchase.

The issue was the website was based on a trendy app’s popularity, and a few months after I bought it the traffic tanked and so did its revenue.

I did make over $5K back from that purchase from first few months of great performance, but I ended up losing a bit on the total purchase price.

This time I lost money not because of a dishonest seller and definitely not because of Flippa itself, but because I had made a bet on something trendy and short term, not thinking about a long-term content play.

Main Lesson: Focus on sites that are long-term investments, not short term money plays

I was still at my 9 to 5 at this point, and had lost $4K or so my previous two website purchases combined, but I had also learned a lot from the mistakes I’d made.

I knew there was an opportunity to buy a website that could help me achieve my goal of financial independence and I knew I now had the knowledge and skillset to make a good purchase.

I took the lessons I’d learned from my previous two purchases and I was very careful to verify traffic and revenue and to buy a site that had evergreen content and long-term potential, and one that I knew I could quickly increase revenue on in several ways.

How to Have Success with a Flippa Purchase

I bought my third site while still at my 9 to 5 and it was my first success and is what gave me my foundation for financial independence.

On my third website purchase I was able to quickly double the revenue again like I had with my second Flippa site purchase. So in other words, I was able to see how a site could actually make money and how a successful purchase on Flippa works.

With this purchase, I made back all the money I bought from other sites plus more plus profit. This site ended up having aI really good return on investment, and I was able to see how successful website runs and works and how a good purchase on Flippa works.

You have to remember that there are tons of good listings on Flippa, you just have to know what you’re doing and understand the space to make a good purchase.

My fourth Flippa purchase is the one that really knocked it out of the park and enabled me to fully support myself on my own and move out of my rent free living at my grandma’s in the Chicago suburbs.

The site was in a great niche I was able to expand using SEO and consistent content publishing over time.

Flippa Success Lessons

• Lesson 1: Use what you’ve learned from previous sites, investments and purchases to improve your decision making
• Lesson 2: Implement quick wins such as quick SEO wins, ad network changes & placement changes to quickly increase revenue
• Lesson 3: Look for long-term value in sites
• Lesson 4: Use long-term SEO and content adding to grow sites over time

The takeaway is that Flippa is a great place to find undervalued assets is amazing if you look closely enough, and you put in the time to grow them consistently each day.

Flippa assets, and website assets in general, tend to be undervalued as compared to any other type of asset, real estate, you’re lucky if you make your investment back in five or six years in my two successful website investing cases.

My two successful Flippa site purchases I made back my purchase price within 10 months. I increased revenue off the bat and long term for these purchases.

One thing to keep in mind is that website multiples are continuing to go up so you have to make sure you are finding a good deal and a good timeframe that you can actually make it back end websites are a great area to invest in right now they’re a great asset. You can also plan on improving and then selling the site as the multiples keep going up.

Of course there are risks involved, and you can make mistakes. As I mentioned earlier, Flippa has a great selection of sites and is my favorite website broker because it doesn’t vet sites so you have to take on the vetting yourself, and that means you can actually find better deals.

When a broker vets sites they hike up the commission, and this includes broker sites like Empire Flippers that hike site prices so they can take a large cut, making the deal less good for the buyer. I like other website brokers too but Flippa is actually my favorite and I have bought most of my websites from Flippa and had a great overall experience with them.

You guys can let me know if you have you bought a website from Flippa in the comments.

Monumetric is an ad network that requires a minimum of 10,000 monthly pageviews to join. If you have more than 10,000 pageviews and less than 80,000 you will be required to pay a $99 setup fee.

Monumetric Review

Here is my personal Monumetric experience and review.

Monumetric has been an ok way in a select variety of niches to see a slightly higher RPM for ads. It doesn’t have a higher RPM in all niches, so it is one you have to test for your specific site to see if it will be better than your current ad network.

One of the main cons with Monumetric is they have a high staff turnover rate, so you go through a new account manager or contact every year or less.

The main issue I have with Monumetric and why I am hesitant to recommend them is how they handled a mistake they made regarding a website I sold, that was using Monumetric ads.

After selling the site and completing the asset transfer on my end, I sent a clear email to Monumetric that said:

Me: “Hi [Name of Account Rep Here]”

The transaction is complete and feel free to transfer the site ownership to [Name of Buyer’s] account – please keep my account open and ready for my new site to go into.

Thanks,
Stacy

and received the response:

Monumetric Representative: “Great! My team will be sending these over today. Thanks so much!”

Shortly after I see the website taken out of my reporting dashboard and assume everything is in Monumetric & the buyer’s hands now.

One year and four months later I receive an email from Monumetric saying they never completed the transfer on their end.

I had been receiving deposits for the site I had sold in addition to the sites I owned in my Monumetric account.

However, I had no way of knowing this was happening because I had already handed the site off to the new owner and done through so Monumetric as well.

Monumetric then asked me to pay them asking me to pay them $7,103.81. I had to calculate the money I had received minus the money in my reporting dashboard to figure out the discrepancy was much lower than what they were asking, only $4,947.78.

To get to this lower number, it took multiple weeks and multiple emails. I requested a phone call multiple times to iron things out, and was told they don’t do phone calls for this type of issue.

This surprised me, since they were asking me to give them $7,000, and then after correction almost $5,000, in addition to a payment for my own site that had never been completed but were unwilling to get on the phone to discuss it.

If you are asking someone to send you thousands of dollars due to a mistake you made over a year ago, I would think you would be willing to get on the phone to clarify & make sure all the information is correct and that you are both on the same page.

Apparently, Monumetric did not feel that way about the situation.

One moral of the story is if you do use them as an ad provider, make sure you go to the settings page and enter your billing information for every site you have with them, or you may risk not getting paid, or other issues that may be very hard to resolve down the line.

During this process I also found out they had also not paid me $1,474.65 for a site I had never entered billing information specifically for, so I entered that and they are sending the payment on the next payment cycle.

I have worked with competent Monumetric reps, and some who are on the complete opposite spectrum. It’s the luck of the draw, but the majority are unable to understand simple concepts, and at the end of the day it comes back around to hurt the Monumetric customers.

They also shared my banking information with the seller, something that makes me uncomfortable and that I don’t think any company that has access to your billing info should be able to do.

In the end they required me to pay them $4,947.78 for a mistake they made when they failed to finish the transfer on their end without acquiescing to my request to get on the phone, although they did end up lowering the number they asked for and promising to pay me for the site they had neglected after checking their reporting and the back and forth of emails.

Any ad platform that does not own up to their own mistakes and asks its customers for money as well as shares private bank details with other customers, is not one that I would ever actively recommend or promote.

It’s a shame because I did use to recommend them and have on several podcasts.

The customer support is simply subpar, and the RPMs have been going down over the last several years.

I’ve heard and read other negative support stories such as issues with taking larger ads off the page and other response issues.

Keep that in mind when you try them out, you may be on your own and/or liable for any mistakes Monumetric makes on their end, and, keep in mind they are quite likely to make a billing, payment or other mistake.

For example, you may find them requiring you to pay them $4,307.9 for a mistake they made well over a year ago.

Monumetric Pros

• Another ad network to test if the RPM is higher

Monumetric Cons

• Support can take days to answer
• High employee support turnover – new contact every year or so
• Huge ads that can disrupt user experience, or have to deal with lower RPMs
• Have to wait 60-90 days for payment, Net-60 payment, after each month you wait two months or more for payment
• Reporting dashboard is very limited
• Can’t change date when accessing reporting dashboard on mobile
• You need to pay $99 setup fee when you have a site using Monumetric that has less than 80,000 pageviews

Monumetric Conclusion

Monumetric could and likely should still be on your long list of ad networks to test different niches in to see if it does have a higher RPM.

In terms of being your first, second, or even third choice, I wouldn’t recommend placing it near the top of the list.

This is for reasons including having to wait up to 90 days for payments, the poor reporting experience, the poorer ad experience for users with intrusive, pop-up ads, sometimes 2 to 3 at the bottom of each page, poor support, high turnover in employee contacts, and potential for you to be liable for mistakes the platform makes in addition to not having secure billing or bank information within the platform with the potential for Monumetric to share that information with other customers.

Simply put, the overall experience isn’t great, you have to wait a long time for payment, and customer service is poor to the point of sharing your private bank details, simple incompetence and long delays, and the potential to be liable to pay the company thousands of dollars for their own mistakes.

 
    Thing
 
 
    Stacy Caprio
 
 
  Rating:
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Many of the following statistics are found in the American Express nationwide study and analysis of 2017 data, which delved into the world of female entrepreneurship.

Female Entrepreneur Statistics

• 11,615,600 businesses in the US are female-owned
• These women owned businesses in the US employ 8,985,200 people
• These businesses generate $1,663,991,700,000 in revenue
• The number of women-owned businesses has grown 114% over the past 20 years, much more than the 44% national growth rate for businesses overall

The Gender Gap and Business Ownership

• Female owned businesses are now 39% of all total US businesses, starting to close the gender gap on gender and business ownership
• When you take into account the firms either owned by all women and the firms owned equally by men and women, this makes up 47% of all US businesses, making the gender business ownership gap barely visible

These statistics are very misleading however, as the true gender gap in business ownership is far from closed.

Granted, this is not something the government should ever try to “intervene” on, and is mostly the product of males and females historically and in the present-day having different ambitions in terms of starting or owning their own businesses.

The graph below shows that women owned business make up 39% of all total businesses, leading many to think that women do have a large impact in the business world.

This is not the case. Women don’t have a large impact in terms of US business when you simply look at the full picture.

Although women own a large percentage of total US businesses, women-owned businesses only employ 8% of all US workers.

This means if all male-owned businesses shut down today, the US would have a high 80 to low 90 percent unemployment rate, depending on what the current unemployment rate before the shutdown was.

Additionally, women owned businesses only generate 4% of US business revenue.

Seeing that women own 39% of US businesses and generate only 4% of the revenue makes me sad.

We need to help women gain the skills and confidence necessary to bring their businesses to the next level.

Imagine what this could do for the economy, if all women-owned businesses started generated their share of the total US revenue commiserate with the percentage of businesses they own.

If they simply even became “average” US businesses, the US economy would boom.

Female Minorities and Business Ownership

• During the last 20 years, while women owned businesses have increased by 114%, women of color owned businesses have increased 467%, at a much higher rate
• Minority women own 46.5% of all women owned US businesses
• African American women own the most of any minority, owning 19% of all women owned businesses

Some people believe this is because many minorities, especially African American women have trouble getting employment unless they create it themselves, forcing many into an entrepreneurship role.

Female Owned Businesses By Industry

Female owned businesses may be making less revenue because the common industries they are in are not the common Fortune 500 or huge brand or VC backed company business industries.

The women-owned company industries are largely service and retail based, which in many cases can be limiting in terms of revenue and potential.

A Bank of America study even found that there are 66% more female owned small businesses than male-owned, supporting the conclusion that women owned businesses are simply much smaller neighborhood based businesses on average, and unfortunately this limits their revenue potential.

60% of the women business owners also feel achieving a work-life balance is their top priority.

This reflects a common male female difference in ambition I mentioned earlier, where many men are willing to sacrifice work-life balance to become the CEO of a large company or have their own successful company.

This could reflect that the women-owned businesses are at least achieving their work-life balance goal, even if their revenues are far below average when compared to male-owned businesses.

Female vs Male Entrepreneur Statistics

Unfortunately the Bank of America study found that only 78% of female entrepreneurs had actually achieved a work-life balance while 85% of their male counterpart business owners felt they had achieved true work-life balance.

30% of female business owners have even had a nightmare their business failed while the men are sleeping much more soundly at night, with only 21% having the same unsettling nightmare.

Women small business owner’s stress is also much higher with 26% having increased stress since starting their business and only 19% of men feel their stress increased since starting their small business.

The two highest emotions female business owners feel about their business work weeks is interesting and fulfilling, meaning perhaps there is hope for the future of women owned businesses.

I personally think there is hope for women-owned businesses.

I also hope we start to see female owned businesses exploding not only in number but in revenue as well so we can all benefit from the positive impact of female owned businesses and a booming US economy.

His story is incredibly interesting, and below he shares how he got into making passive income from websites.

Dreaming of Passive Income?

If your dream is to start a business, you probably have a ton of excuses.

Hence, it is still just a dream.

Some of the most common excuses are time, money and other factors close to these two.

In the end, excuses are just excuses, and if you want something badly enough, you will go for it, no matter your circumstances.

For me, entrepreneurship started with a borrowed computer in a post-communist country. I had little experience, and I worked like my life depended on it.

Now I know there’s a better way.

Starting a new business is super hard, and you have probably heard the statistics on how often fledgling businesses don’t make it.

But, at the same time, looking for shelter behind the image of a “safe job” is not the answer either!

Long commute, putting up with people you don’t like, “doing as they say, not as they do”… Is this all there is to life?

In case you’re wondering, yes, there is definitely more to life, and if you keep reading I’ll share my journey to finding more in life.

How I Stumbled into Website Investing

Fast forward from my “borrowed computer” situation; my VC backed business was struggling. I was quickly joining the trend, and I was running out of ideas.

We were not going under, but we hadn’t lived up to the Silicon Valley high valuation either. It was early 2017, and Bitcoin was approaching its $1000 value.

I had some money saved up and wanted to create my first passive stream of income.

After reading and talking with some of my peers and mentors, I skipped the whole crypto-craze and decided to go back to the roots. Websites!

My first business was a web design and web hosting business. There I learned how to create a website and later how to advertise on Google and Facebook.

We started in 2006, so Facebook wasn’t around, and AdWords wasn’t a thing in Croatia.

I had heard about affiliate marketing, but I had clients to work with, and to be honest, I didn’t know any better. Lucky for me, I learned a lot, and it came in handy when I started buying revenue-making websites.

So, in 2017, I made a smart choice. Instead of running after the latest craze, I looked into acquiring my first website.

Well, technically, it was my second purchase. I got burned on a scam back in 2014, but that’s a long story for another time. More on how to avoid getting burnt, keep reading.

The important message here is that I gathered the courage to try again, and I am very glad I did.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to buy my new lovely small apartment, on an island, within 5 minutes walking distance of an incredibly beautiful beach.

I bought my first website for $500. Second for $550. Third for $2200. The rest is as they say history.

Those first few websites I bought have already made 100% on their returns.

So now I know I am not crazy, and I want to help others join the ride.

I would rather not disclose publicly how many investments I have made. I can share the numbers for those first 3 investments I already mentioned.

I still own all 3 websites.

Editor’s Note: Goran also owns another website not described here that makes him around $5,000 a month.

6 reasons why you will love revenue-making websites

1. You can be wherever you want.My fiancee and I bought this place on an island because we would like to be there. We are not digital nomads per se, but we could be.Two weeks in Florence, Italy, followed by three weeks in Alicante, Spain?No problemo!

   Please don’t be mistaken, we still have to work a lot, but we can work wherever we want.

2. You can pick your projects.Gaming was an old passion of mine, so I bought a website around games. I am vegan, so I bought a website that’s making money with affiliate commissions for selling products to vegans.I am super passionate about website investing, so my company built software that helps website investors.See how that goes?
3. Revenue is mostly profit.The cost can be so low compared to other businesses that most of it is profit, especially if you handle the work yourself like writing, graphic design or SEO.Depending on the website, there have been occasions where I haven’t worked on the website at all, and it still gives good monthly returns 24 months later.
4. Low headcount.A friend of mine runs a ten-person agency. He has so much payroll, responsibilities, projects, office maintenance and he is still not making any money. That’s with 10 people, imagine a 100.And then you know how companies go on a retreat?Let’s face it, most people would rather be somewhere else.
5. Easy to maintain, solid returns.Compared to a restaurant and many types of businesses, websites are easy. Compared to stocks, websites are easy. Compared to real estate investing, websites will probably have a better risk-reward ratio.Before my fiancee and I bought this place, we rented an apartment for €270. If you wanted to buy a similar apartment (same skyscraper), it would cost you €70,000.If I bought a website for €70,000, I would expect my money back within 40 months at the latest, not 260!
6. Choose your work hours.I could have said “make money while you sleep”, because the websites are running 24/7, but working whenever you want is more realistic.It comes with a real challenge to motivate yourself to work.Yes, the money comes even if you sleep. However, it is you who has to push yourself to work.

   You have the option to pick when it’s most convenient for you, that’s the difference.

How to Avoid Getting Scammed When you Buy your First Website

When I bought my first site, everything was going great. Traffic looked realistic in Google Analytics, and clicks were flowing in my Google AdSense account.

One month later when I was approaching the $500 mark I opted for my first AdSense payment.

A couple of days later my account was banned and with it completely shut down. I was so devastated that I completely gave up on those 2  web sites.

Google didn’t tell me why they banned and shut down my Adsense account, but I think the site was built by scammers who fabricated the site traffic and Adsense clicks.

I consider myself a website expert, so I was really hurt when I figured out I had been tricked, and lost money in the process.

It took me years to recover mentally and try again. Back then money was really scarce and I was going through enormous challenges with my business.

Like Stacy Caprio said in her own website buying case study on the Her.CEO site, you have to do serious due diligence before you make the purchase, and don’t invest in fads or you could get burned.

Let’s build upon that.

What I like to do is understand where exactly the traffic is coming from, and how good are my skills at containing it.

I like websites that rely on search engine traffic, and for me, it’s not enough to see a verified listing or verified Google Analytics account. I don’t even look at the Google Analytics account.

I use tools that show me the list of keywords for which this website ranks.

That way I can see that the website I am considering for buying, is in fact at the top for a particular keyword.

I use another tool that gives an approximate number of searches, so I know if that keyword could bring a lot of traffic or no traffic.

Why revenue-making websites are perfect for passive income

So don’t chase the latest get quick rich scheme. Make sure the opportunity (income stream) is the one that suits you most, and then dive deep.

Doing this is what has allowed me to live my dream life with my fiancee, in our gorgeous beachside Croatian apartment. Without risk there is no reward, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Good luck, and see you on the other side!

If you’re interested in following in Goran’s footsteps and buying a website for yourself, you can sign up for Stacy’s Her.CEO website investing waitlist using the form below to receive our occasional, vetted site for sale emails:

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