063: Building an E-commerce Powerhouse with over $7 Million in Combined Annual Revenues (w/ Michael Jackness)
Summary: Michael Jackness is the co-founder of colorit.com, creators of top-quality coloring books for adults. He is also the CEO of terrain.com which focuses on domain investing, ecommerce, SEO, PPC, and affiliate marketing. He is also the co-host of a popular podcast called Ecomcrew Podcast. <br> <br> Michael has been involved in the online marketing world for over 10 years. Since running one of the largest poker affiliate networks in the world with over 60 employees, he now runs a network of ecommerce websites generating over $7 Million in revenue annually. <br> <br> Period in full-time business <br> <br> He started in business for himself when he was 18. He was graduating high school and he didn’t have much to look forward to because he wasn’t going to go to college due to his poor grades and lack of attention in school. So he got a box of business cards and a pager then started computer consulting because he was very good with computers. He would go into people’s homes and help them with their computer needs for $20 an hour. That was back in 1998 <br> <br> Core revenue streams <br> <br> He says that over the last 4 years, they have been immensely focused on e-commerce. In 2017, their projected revenue is $7 Million and in 2018 he projects $15 Million in revenue. They have been growing at 200% to 300% per year and the only thing that slows their growth is lack of enough cash. <br> <br> They currently have 4 brands. The first one was <a href="http://www.treadmill.com/">www.treadmill.com</a>. He has been investing in domains for a long time and says they are like real estate. He ended up starting an e-commerce business with <a href="http://www.treadmill.com/">www.treadmill.com</a> and then sold it at the beginning of 2015 after which he purchased another site called <a href="http://www.icewraps.com/">www.icewraps.com</a> which offers hot/cold packs for different parts of the body. <br> <br> From there, he developed <a href="http://www.colorit.com/">www.colorit.com</a> which offers a brand of colouring books geared towards adults. They also have <a href="http://www.tactical.com/">www.tactical.com</a> which offers information on gear, camping, hiking, hunting, DIY, food, and more. They have a new brand called “Wild Baby” which they recently launched exclusively on Amazon and are currently developing its website. <br> <br> They also have the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ecom-crew-podcast/id1056042180?mt=2">Ecom Crew</a> which consists of a blog and podcast about e-commerce. His background before e-commerce was affiliate marketing and from his e-commerce experience he learnt that he would need to talk about e-commerce through developing different valuable content. They have been looking into monetizing the blog and podcast. <br> <br> Tip: There are a lot of ups and downs in business, everything you start isn’t going to be successful but it’s all about identifying those that can become successful <br> <br> Domain investing <br> <br> Michael does speaking engagements on e-commerce and business in general. He says that domain investing comes down to being at the right place, at the right time, and knowing that domain names are illiquid assets and that they cannot be sold on a moment’s notice. He never really chooses to pick a particular domain name because he mostly gets opportunities to buy them from different people. He may sometimes resell the domain names or choose to develop them like he did with <a href="http://www.treadmill.com/">www.treadmill.com</a> and <a href="http://www.tactical.com/">www.tactical.com</a>. <br> <br> Tip: You have to be prepared for the fact there is only a couple of people in the world that can purchase these mid-6-figure or high-5-figure domain names <br> <br> Affiliate marketing <br> <br> He got into online poker affiliate marketing in 2004 and that’s where he made a lot of his money.
