Quick Interview: Rae Hoffman-Dolan of Sugarrae.com

Rae Hoffman-Dolan is one of my marketing heros and I’m pleased to have this quick interview to share with you.

Can you tell us a little bit about one of your profitable sites?

I have a variety of sites on a variety of topics – many profitable in different ways. Some are very profitable as far as net figures (earning five figures per month net) but take a LOT of effort to keep them competitive, ranking and bringing in those numbers. I also have a lot of sites that are very profitable ROI wise. For instance, they may “only” make 2,000 per month, but they are pretty self sufficient after the initial build (which my employees carry out according to my plans), so their earnings per hour spent to develop and maintain it are way up there. Additionally, much like I advised people to start doing years ago when I wrote my affiliate marketing blueprint, my affiliate sites are also monetized in a variety of other ways as well (though affiliate remains their highest single revenue source.) That said, because I do occasional SEO consulting and because of my “visibility” in the SEO industry, I tend not to publicize the bulk of my affiliate sites. Unfortunately, sites owned by “SEOs” – especially ones that make themselves visible – are often held to a different and much tougher standard by Google.

That said, my publishing company, MFE Interactive touts a few of our transparent sites on it’s homepage. As an example, our site on prepaid cell phones is hugely successful. But, it also genuinely deserves to rank. Every ounce of content on the site is 100% researched and original and we have over 15,000 reviews from actual consumers (more than any other site on the topic – by far – to my knowledge.) That site ranks because it should – because it’s the best one there is on the topic (even if I am a little biased.) One of the things about my affiliate review sites is that I never alter the content based on “who pays the most.” My general theory has always been have the best information and be honest – you’ll get more users that way and if you have the users, you’ll find a way to make money.

How did you choose the topic and know it would be profitable?

I’ve never denied that I’ve dabbled in the darker side of SEO in what now seems like a prior life. Way back in the day when Yahoo first came out with its own algorithm, I’d built some sites for a specific prepaid cellular provider meant to be thin and rank specifically in Yahoo using loopholes in the engine (I knew the topic made money as it was featured in a minor fashion on some “white hat” telecommunication sites I owned. It made sales. But as I decided to move back to the “whiter” side of things, the industry interested me, because aside from two other websites, no one really had gone super in depth on the topic and built some quality sites. The two sites with decent information had a lot of things lacking about them. So I decided to build a real site dedicated to the entire topic rather than simply one provider – and build it to be better than the minor competition, which I think we very successfully did. It was a LOT more work than building the thinner sites – but it’s also been a lot more defensible in surviving the numerous algorithm changes Google has put into place.

I know that you do quite a bit of outsourcing for your websites. How do you go about choosing a reliable writer?

I actually have a few (awesome) writers employed full time. That said however, I still do outsource projects. I used to find a lot of people via Elance, but lately it is just so much easier to hit my Twitter account and make an announcement that I’m in need of a writer. I’d also recommend folks check out the ProBlogger writer board. You have to pay to submit a listing, but he’s got a huge following of good writers. So if you’re looking for exceptional writing, rather than simply filler, it’s a good place to hit up. Just be very specific in your ad.

Have you ever swung and missed with a project? If yes, what did you learn from it?

Absolutely. Anyone who claims to be successful and claims they’ve never had (multiple) failures is full of… crap. :) I’ve had numerous failures during my career in affiliate marketing. I’ve had sites flat fail because I never worked on them past them “thrill of the chase” mode (AKA, my own lazy fault). I’ve built sites in smaller industries only to find out the money wasn’t there. Our BlackBerry website was a perfect example of a hugely successful site traffic wise that we struggled with the monetization of for a long time. I think you just learn to keep going. There’s a quote that goes something like “Success is going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.”

In addition to the “keep going” I’ve also learned to always keep expanding my baskets too. Right now, I’m making my first attempt at being a “real merchant.” I bought into and am now the SVP of Marketing for Speedy Incorporation – which allows small business owners to easily incorporate online. So this will bring me in from the opposite aspect as I work to get our affiliate program in place and launched over the next few months. Hopefully, this one won’t be a swing and miss project though. :)