It's past time for an update!

This is a long one with lots of juicy updates - so grab a tea or coffee and get comfortable!

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Lots of news - here are the highlights:

• I "quit" rank and rent, but only in its current format! I'll share what happened and details on my pivot!
• I started writing on Medium - and not to game the system or do parasite SEO!
• My new niche site is looking good so far...😲
• Into AI automation and ready to explore some business models to replace niche sites and make money with AI? Then you should be interested in The AI Automators! (Their $57/month early access offer ends this Sunday).

Let's get into it!

Oh, and I'm going to TRY and move to shorter, more frequent updates on what I'm working on.

Not quite daily like Shawna Newman at Skipblast (who obviously has a good process in place for that!), but more frequent :)

Shawna doesn't know I'm recommending her Online Income Memo, but I enjoy her daily nuggets and behind the scenes updates, and figure you will too!

Onwards...

Rank and rent wasn't for me

If you've been on my newsletter since early this year, you may know I started Rank and Rent in the first week of this year. I registered my first couple of domains and got one of them ranked for its main target keywords within ten days (Local SEO is crazy!). I believe that's a record as I haven't heard of anyone beating that - but let me know.

When it came to getting going, of course I did that whole niche site / online business owner thing of getting very excited and I registered a stack of new domains. Basically for every niche + location I spotted that looked easy, I registered a domain. Whaddya mean I'm spreading myself too thin?

Cue a pile of 33+ domains in my hosting account! (Good job it's cheap-ish hosting).

So, the above domain started getting inquiries within weeks and I found myself juggling incoming phone calls, topping up the account balance at my call redirection provider, researching business owners to fulfill the leads, tracking everything and wondering how and when I would bill the business owners for the leads (I spent a lot of time deliberating around this).

I didn't make any money with that first site. I did land a nice gig with a collection of other sites that have been a huge success as they rank well and are still generating leads even in a seasonal sector.

This is the gardening niche where I set up a bunch of location domains, plus one main site targeting a wide geographic area (this latter site generated almost 100 leads over the summer).

Rank and rent also landed me a monthly SEO deal worth up to $1k with an established garden maintenance company, plus hundreds of dollars over the course of the summer for the leads.

Something I really like about rank and rent is you can diversify into so many different areas - from client SEO to renting individual pages, pay per lead, etc...

However, there were a couple of things:

First and foremost, I didn't enjoy the work. Figuring out which business owners were good to work with, answering calls and messages and chasing payments are not activities I would do if I didn't have to work (that's a litmus test for you to consider when it comes to assessing what you're working on!).

I enjoy writing, creating, immersing myself in my projects in a quiet space or listening to podcasts, and just working on my online assets. Ideally with a view to monetising with ads or affiliate, where I don't have to chase humans for payments or answer messages or calls. I'm going to guess you're the same!

When it comes to getting paid, I really want to be dealing with some platform or network. I am not keen on the back and forth with business owners, wondering when they are going to pay me, and responding to messages asking about any new leads that have come in when they haven't yet made payment...

Second of all - and this leads to my big learning experience here- I discovered business owners are not always honest with the revenue they are generating from leads (shock!). I was too trusting and too hands-off, mainly due to the above factors.

What I've learned is you need to either get paid per lead or have a monthly retainer in place (by far the best option!). Once I told the business owner I wasn't continuing, he did offer this but it was too late...

And how am I pivoting?

My Rank and Rent pivot plan

• I'm going to make rank and rent / lead gen as hands-off as it can be. I am launching a new site in a new market where business owners are much more used to paying for leads and where it will be easier to get paid! My plan is to either redirect leads to a network that will sell them to local businesses and give me a cut, OR onboard an established company in that location to take the inquiries. These will be high-value leads in an in-demand industry.
• I'm still getting a fairly steady flow of leads for my existing sites, but I'm not doing anything with them! For one of these sites, I'm considering approaching a company to take them directly (i.e. without me being the middleman forwarding them on). These are also high-value leads. I would just need to see how much I could charge a company per lead or per month and if there is enough scope. It's a specialist service and any company in this niche might also be getting the same leads directly.

So that brings you to speed on R&R!

Got questions? Just reply to this email - I might even answer them in a video.

Let's see who is doing rank and rent...

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Need help with Rank and Rent?

Then do check out my friend Jeremy's excellent rank and rent community and online course! I was one of the earliest members of his community and he's a stand-up guy.

Before you decide to invest, check out Jeremy's top-notch free content on YouTube.

Niche site update

Hold up, people are still doing niche sites? Yes, I am! I'll keep this brief as this email is getting War and Peace-esque, but a few months ago I spotted an amazing opportunity to rank in a Pinterest-friendly, visual niche.

What's working SO well here is using Koala Premium images for each post (available on the Professional plan upwards). I am using the sweet Listicle feature for long-form posts. While yes, I am a Koala affiliate, there is ZERO chance I could develop this site without them.

It would just take too much time to craft images one-by-one. Then, I'd also have to match up the content with the images separately. With Koala, I just punch in my listicle title, specify my image count, and hit go!!

The result is an optimised, perfectly-formatted article I can copy and paste into WordPress (or have exported automatically to my drafts!).

I am also using their custom image styles feature to get my images in just the style I need, as the basic image settings weren't doing it.

What ideas can you think of for listicles that might rank in a low competition niche or on social media?

Don't forget to SAVE 15% on all Koala orders when you enter my custom coupon code at checkout: ANTON

And you can use Rank IQ to find hand-picked, low competition topics to target with Koala content!

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Make money and save time with AI (act fast - early bird offer ends on Sunday)

Before I go, I wanted to give a shout out to my friends Alan Walsh and Daniel Walsh over at their fast-growing online community, The AI Automators!

Their community is where you get ahead of the curve with AI and learn some incredible workflows and techniques focused on AI automation.

They have a growing range of in-depth courses and templates for:

-Social media automation

-Content automation

-Workflow automation

-Make.com automations

-and much more.

I'll let the landing page (and Alan and Daniel!) do the talking, but this is an incredible offer.

Let me tell you why:

1. Alan and Daniel are the real deal. I've met them in person and they are super-techy (30+ years of experience in web development). They know what works when it comes to AI, and so whether you want to save time, upskill, or develop new online business ideas and income streams with AI, they are your go-to guys.
2. You will join a friendly, supportive community with instant access to a rich, growing catalogue of online courses, ready-to-go templates, and more. Not to mention direct access to Alan and Daniel for all your questions via the community forum and weekly automation group calls!

The monthly membership is $57/month today, but it goes up to $97/month on Sunday.

​Join before Sunday to lock in this low pricing for good.

Get in on the ground floor!

Join Risk-Free

I should also mention you can try out the AI Automators 100% risk-free with their 14-Day Money Back Guarantee!

No-brainer.

And nope, you don't need to be a coder to join. I am certainly not a techie. When it comes to setting up your automation workflows and systems, everything is laid out in easy-to-follow steps. And of course if you get stuck, Alan, Daniel and the community are a click away!

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Check out The AI Automators before the price increases this Sunday. You will save at least $360 over the course of the next year of membership by joining before the increase. And places are limited, as the guys want to keep the group small and focused.

Here is just a snippet of what you get:

And here's a sample video tutorial from Alan on YouTube to give you a flavour of what you can learn. This one show you how to set up an AI blogging system complete with internal links and social media integration!

OK, that's it from me for today! What questions do you have?

Do let me know if you have a topic you'd like me to cover in an upcoming email.

And feel free to forward this email to a friend if they'd find it insightful!

Chat soon,
Anton

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>>>Useful links:

Koala - save 15% on all orders with coupon code ANTON

Find low competition keywords with Rank IQ​

​View all my tools (I have used them all or still use them)

My affiliate review template (FREE)

Read past newsletter editions​

Disclaimer: this email contains affiliate links and I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one. Thanks so much in advance if you do. I hope you get value from these emails and while they are fun to put together, they sure take a lot of time! :)

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