Interview: Christian Guynn

Christian Guynn is a 35 year old, full time online marketer and owner of Mass Kash Media. His main focus is solid niche and keyword research and good SEO practices. In less than a year, Christian has built a successful network of niche gaming sites that are consistently growing in size and revenues.

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I was born and raised in Oceanside, California. I have been doing SEO, design work and online marketing for approximately 2 years, but only full time for the past year. My main area of expertise is SEO’ing niche sites and monetizing with Adsense.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
I have zero formal training in web design, graphic design, marketing or any of the stuff I do on a daily basis. I’ve just taught myself over the years and figured out how to get things done. I love taking absolutely nothing but an idea, and building it from start to finish and making money from it. My greatest accomplishment is learning this industry from the ground up, and finally being able to quit my day job to work for myself. Nothing beats that.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I’ve been building web sites as a hobby more or less since the mid 90′s. When the companies I was working for found out about my “skill”, they usually recruited me to build and maintain the company site. (Whether I wanted to or not) Somewhere along the line, I learned about Adsense, and threw it on some of the company sites. It started generating a couple bucks a day and that’s when I had the epiphany that I could actually use Adsense to make money for myself. I didn’t know that doing 5 figures a month was possible, but I was thinking that an extra couple hundred bucks a month one day might be great. I still don’t think I’m in the “big time”, but I started earning very nicely about 12 months ago and continue to do so, mainly with the Adsense platform.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Become an expert in at least one area of this business. It’s great to dabble in a bunch of different things, but you need to have one thing you can fall back on to make money. For me, it’s SEO. I’ve learned through trial and error methods that work. I know that if I build a site I can get it ranking and making money. This gives me the freedom to explore other marketing avenues, because I’m generating steady revenue from my SEO work. Also, take this work seriously, and run it like a business from day one. If you want to be a hobby affiliate that’s fine, but if you are looking to make your livelihood doing this, you better get serious and start running it like you’ve got something to lose.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
I’ve had as many failures as successes for sure. I put a ton of time, and money into an interactive movie site where people could vote on their favorite films and actors, and win money/prizes. I never could get that project profitable. I think the idea was sound, but the marketing was done poorly. As for frustrations, trying to explain to people what it is that I do for a living. It’s almost pointless really.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
I think I’m going through it as we speak. I’ve got a couple of stubborn ass sites that I just cannot get ranked well. These are year old sites that should be near the top that just won’t get there no matter what methods I use. They’ll make a killing when they get in the top 5, but they’re starting to wear me out. I’ll have to get back to you on how I got through it.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Link building can be monotonous. I tend to outsource the bulk of the link building anymore, but I did it all by hand when I started.

What is the future of marketing?
Affiliates who want to stay in the game for the long term need to develop some diverse, steady, streams of income. It’s not going to be the big money CPA stuff that they chase on a daily basis, but lower risk, reliable income from free traffic sources is what every affiliate should strive to have in their arsenal. I see lots of guys saying that Adsense doesn’t pay enough to make it worth the effort and why do I bother. When you’ve got sites making five figures a month without doing a thing to them, why would you even think of changing an automatic stream of income?

If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
I’m starting to like some areas of the health niche at the moment. I think there are some real gems out there that can be taken advantage of if done properly, and I’m not talking acai or colon cleanse stuff. People will always have heath concerns and issues, so it’s a niche that pays well and isn’t going away anytime soon. The fun part is digging to identify the sub-niches with low competition so you can dominate them.

What niche has worked best for you?
Gaming without a doubt. When I tell people that I’ve made nearly all of my earnings to date from niche gaming sites, they think I’m nuts. Especially when I tell them it’s all Adsense monetization. It’s true, traditionally Adsense hasn’t paid well in that niche. But once again, I find the sub-niche that’s much more targeted and I take it over. That’s where there’s money to be made.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I thrive on organic search engine traffic. It’s targeted and converts great. Yeah it’s risky putting your earnings on the whim of an algo change, but strong, quality sites have nothing to fear from Google and all of their tinkering. If it’s a quality site today, it will be a quality site tomorrow, and even Google recognizes this.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
Good niche and keyword research mainly. Finding niches that are under exploited and developing a good keyword strategy to reap maximum search engine traffic. It’s trial and error a lot of time, but in that experimenting you’ll find things that do consistently work.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
In all honesty no. I was in corporate vehicle sales for the past 14 years, but I didn’t take much from that career into internet marketing. I’ve always had a good work ethic, so maybe that was strengthened at my previous jobs. I really try to work smart, and maximize my efforts when I’m working. If you spend 18 hours a day in front of a monitor, then you’re wasting too much time doing other stuff. Focus, get the job done, and enjoy the rest of your day.

What are your greatest strengths?
Creativity is one of my greatest strengths. I love coming up with new ideas and new ways to make money. Like I said before, taking an idea from nothing to something is just as exciting as the money you earn from it.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
Working on too many projects at once. I like to have several things in the works so I don’t get bored of just one. This is good and bad because it means I have a lot of potential earners in the works, but sometimes one project requires more attention than the others, so it’s easy to spread yourself too thin. My advice to noobs starting out is to focus on one or two projects at most. Them them from start to finish before you move on.

What motivates you?
Watching my monthly profit margin grow every month is a huge motivation. It’s not even the money really, it’s seeing my business thrive and continue to do well. Even though it’s part of the game, I get pissed if I don’t do better than the previous month. That’s what drives me.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
I was always taught the value of saving, and I’ve really learned how important that is. When times are really good it’s easy to think that it’s going to go on forever. But when the money stops rolling in, and you don’t know how you’re going to pay the bills, it’s a miserable, sinking feeling. I know lots of the young marketers out there who make some scratch want big watches, and cars, when they should be buying real estate, investing and putting some money away for a rainy day.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My wife. She was the one who encouraged me to stick with this game so I could get out of the car business for good. Even though she still doesn’t fully understand what I do, she can’t believe how successful it’s become in only a year’s time.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
I’m just as happy not working with others. I like being a one man show, and aside from outsourcing some stuff, if I don’t have to deal with others on a business level, that’s fine by me. This doesn’t mean I don’t get along with people, but I like to be in control of what’s going on, so I just run everything myself.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
I don’t need to make a million dollars a month to be happy. Right now we’re doing well enough that the bills are paid and we live the way we want to. I just want to continue building auto-pilot, repeatable income sources that earn while I focus on the next project. If money was no object, I’d be playing a lot more golf and seeing the rest of the world. And these people who say they’d keep working if money didn’t matter, are just plain nuts.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
No mortgage or bills, owning some additional pieces of property, with my daughters education already paid for. And if I accomplish all that by doing exactly what I’m doing now, that’s fine with me. I don’t need yachts or jets or any of that bullshit.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I’m absolutely obsessed with golf and have been for since I was a kid. If I’m not working or hanging with my family, I’m on the golf course. I’m about a 4 handicap right now, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever get down to scratch. It takes a huge time commitment to get that good and time is limited these days.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would probably would have liked to pursue playing professional baseball or pro golf. I was very good at both back in high school and passed up some opportunities that I should have jumped on. I regret some decisions I made back then, but when you’re 18 you think you know everything, and you really don’t know shit.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Being a great Dad to my little girl. Nothing compares to seeing her seeing her smile when you walk into her room in the morning. If I did nothing else with my life, as long as I’m a good Dad and husband, that would be enough for me.