How To Make Money At Home

This website continues to grow bigger and bigger – watching it develop from when it had just two visitors a day (myself and the Google Bot) to now, when it has a few hundred if not more is certainly a sight that I found pretty good to watch. Although I’ve mostly brought you my own ideas on this website, we’ve had a few guest posts, written well – no interviews though. That changes today – the first (I believe) interview on this website, and what an interviewee it is. The person you’ll be finding a little more about today is Dean Hunt, king buzz marketer – Dean is one of the best around at getting traffic to a website, and the result of our email exchanges is this interview – only for TUK readers.

JP – Jason Pereira
DH – Dean Hunt

JP: Alright Dean, no fluff. What’s your number one tip for getting insane amounts of traffic to a brand new website, one so new them nameservers have barely propagated? I’m talking quality traffic here.

DH: My number one goal would be to be different to all the other sites in your industry, stand out from the crowd. For instant traffic, guest posts and guest blogging are by far the easiest and quickest way to drive traffic.

JP: Sweet. If you don’t mind us asking, what’s your current largest website/project, and how much time/revenue did it take to get it to that level?

DH: I buy and sell and create new websites all the time with my business superstar partner Barry Dunlop, so the answer to this probably changes on a monthly basis… but right now we are working on our first real product launch (www.webtrafficorgasm.com), and that is estimated to be a 7 figure success for us. That said, it has taken us almost a year to fully prepare for it, so it wasn’t a quick success by any means.

JP: My readers are skilled in their own ways, but a lot of them are similar to me, just starting off online. What skills would you recommend developing to succeed at the online game?

DH: Writing is a pretty important skill right now, after all, without the ability to write, you can’t create content, and the Internet is pretty much nothing but content. I am not saying you need to be the next Shakespeare, but you need to be able to convey your thoughts on paper. For me though, I would say creativity is by far the most important skill… yes, it is a skill, not a talent you are born with.

Archive.org has archived over 85 billion web pages, long gone are the days where we could put up a page about dog grooming and start making easy money. You need one of two things to make serious money these days:

1) Big ass budget

or…

2) Big ass creativity/imagination

JP: I promised you an interesting interview, so here we go. If there’s one thing you could see vanished from the face of internet marketing forever, what would it be? We want to know what you really think

DH: Probably hype. I am sick of reading so much hype for utter crap products and information.

JP: What would you say is the best method for building buzz that you’ve used over the years? Do you have any examples of just how effective buzz marketing is?

DH: My content has been on the Digg homepage more times than I can even remember, I have been on the homepage of pretty much every major social site on the Internet, and featured on thousands of blogs in over 20 languages. So it works! In fact, I had over 2 million unique visitors to my network of websites in 2007, and by advertising/marketing budget for the year was ZERO.

In terms of method: Having a blog is a good starting point, but I find that simply pushing people’s boundaries and assumptions is a great way to create buzz.

For example, on my blog at www.DeanHunt.com my feed reader says “6 billion readers“, now obviously that is a spoof/practical joke, but it grabs people’s attention. I also wrote a sales page for my services, but instead of writing the normal rubbish, I wrote things like “you cannot afford me, seriously, don’t even bother trying to hire me”.

Amazingly, I get more job offers from that than I did previously.

I also brand my blog with Killer Bunnies, nobody knows why I do this, there is certainly no logic to it, but it intrigues people, it is different, and people talk about it.

JP: It’s rare I get to pick the brains of an expert in the field, so I’ll have you answer a slightly selfish question. I’ve got two main projects undergoing: a blogging magazine, and of course TUK. Do you have any tips maximizing the potential of both of them?

DH: Both are heavily content based, so you are going to live or die by your content.

Here are some quick tips:

With your article and blog headlines, if you want success on sites like Digg, you will need more sensational headlines. One technique is to use curiosity based headlines, so give them a snippet, and make them click for more. e.g “You are not going to believe what I just found in my inbox” [JP: *cough*]

Another powerful technique is to write content in list format. There are literally hundreds of reasons why list based content works, and if you look at the Digg homepage, I can pretty much guarantee there will be AT LEAST one list based story on there.

Here is another hugely powerful content trick:

Do the opposite!

For example, I was writing a self improvement blog post last year, and I decided to do the opposite, and call it “10 Step Guide to Being a Loser”. It got me 746 backlinks, hit the Digg homepage, and over 54,000 visitors.

One last quick tip, don’t be afraid of pushing the boundaries. This includes being controversial from time to time. It is better to have people call you an idiot than ignore you on the Internet, because if you are ignored, you will go out of business… FAST!

I wrote a globally successful blog post last year entitled: “Self Improvement Advice from the Devil” it was a monstrous success.

When I was promoting my free buzz marketing reports, I didn’t give them some crappy guru based name like Buzz Marketing 101 etc… In fact, I decided to call the huge bursts of traffic to my websites “traffic orgasms”, hence the website: WebTrafficOrgasm.com I knew it would get people’s attention, and for every complaint I have had, there have been 10 people email me to say that they wouldn’t normally read marketing reports, but they were intrigued by the name.

I once wrote a blog post about creating headlines, and I called it “How I Grew a 12″ Penis by Eating Carrots”. Whenever I fly all over the world to hang out with the biggest names in the industry, they always talk about this blog post. Despite reading hundreds of blog posts and articles every week, they will never forget that one blog post. That is powerful branding.

JP: If you could choose one luxury in life, and just one, what would it be? I’m talking about the dream car, the ultimate house, the private airplane, you get the idea.

DH: Financially I have got everything I wanted, so my luxury would be to have more time. More time so that I could start playing golf again (I used to be semi-pro), more time to hang out with friends, see my family etc… don’t get me wrong, it is not like I work a 60 hour week, far from it, but I will always value time over money.

JP: I read that you liked football in another interview. Any favourite team? Being an Arsenal fan, I’m specifically interested in which English team you support

DH: Yikes, if you are an Arsenal fan, it is probably best that I don’t tell you who I support. Let’s just say that I was born in a Manchester hospital.

JP: Many have recommended a John Chow review as a bridge to get your website from the soggy end of the pond into the glorious castle. For some, however the $500 that’s required is simply impossible to come up with: do you have a more cost effective solution for getting a website’s name out there?

DH: I have already touched on this, but guest blogging is the answer. Why pay $500 when you can probably get on the same blog for free with a guest post? Simply write a good quality article, and email your 20 favorite blogs, and see if they will accept it as a guest post. Include your url in the footer, and hey presto, you have an authority backlink, authority, recognition, and traffic.

JP: You’ve been featured on the frontpage of Digg numerous times. Do you have any tips on getting there?

DH: I have covered a few of them already, but novelty content is another sneaky exploit that you can use. I aim to make 10-15% of all my blog posts novelty content. I have been on Digg homepage with “the world’s best urinal”, “The Ultimate Clock for Geeks”, “The Amazing World Clock” and many more. ANY blog can have off-topic blog posts, and they are also a great way to fill gaps. So next time your friends send you a viral email, or a funny photo, put it on your blog.

JP: Thanks for the interview, good luck with your online ventures

DH: Many thanks, keep up the great work, and for all of your young entrepreneur readers, don’t forget to check out www.retiredat21.com and www.retireat21.com for young entrepreneur advice and secrets… oh, and if anyone was wondering what the upcoming BIG project is… sign up to www.buzzprofits.com and I will ensure you all get on the Beta notification list.

Gracias

And that’s Dean Hunt.

Hope you guys found the interview interesting – there is a lot of decent information out there that will help you guys when thinking of launching/promoting your own Internet projects. I assume Dean will be checking this post occasionally, so if you have any questions for him leave them below and who knows, you might get some very revealing answers