3 Million in 6 Months With Adsense

The Power Play Interviews: Markus Frind- $3 Million in 6 Months

This is the first in a series of Internet Success Stories that you will begin to see on the Power Play Blog.

Hope you enjoy them!

Markus Frind, the creator of Plentyoffish.com is a success story worth noting, as he has managed to take a niche formerly ruled by giant corporations and give it his own brand of marketing savvy.

A case of David vs. Goliath, where the little guy comes out on top in the end.

Markus is the top "individual" adsense publisher in terms of pageviews.

Lets find out what some of his secrets are as he shares some advice with our readers.

Feel free to comment!

Markus, what is your experience in computer programming and how did it prepare you for becoming a webmaster?

The average pageviews a day is around 14 million for the last week.

I'm getting another 80 million pageviews a day from users polling the site to see if they have new messages.

Really intensive bandwidth wise!

When I go to your website, I notice that the ads are targeted to my region, yet I have not even registered- can you explain to our readers how you accomplish this feat?

I'm just using ip2location.com- Basically i take your IP, look it up in the database and it tells me what your city is.

I then bring up a list of users in your city, nothing magical about it at all.

Are most of your visitors coming primarily from search engines (SERPS), or are you finding that they come from other avenues? Do you actively advertise in the media?

Search engines account for something like 2% of my traffic.

The vast majority of my traffic, like any other site with over 5 million pageviews a day comes from word of mouth, and repeat visitors.

The services on your site seem to be offered at no cost to the registrants.

Is there some advantage you have over your competitors that allows you to do this?

I've developed new algorithms that allow me to create a mega site for next to no cost.

Several years ago I created algorithm that was thousands of times faster then the algorithm used in the 1990's to find a string of 22 prime numbers.

At the time a professor used several super computers and hundreds of regular computers over the course of several years to find a record.

I did the same thing on 1 computer in 2 weeks.

Fascinating! Are there any other sites you currently maintain, or is plentyoffish.com the only one?

Its the only site at the moment.

I've got a few other sites I registered for friends so they could learn to do marketing/affiliate stuff.

At this point i think 1 site is enough.

Any tips for those looking to create a profitable endeavor on the internet?

IF someone else thinks what you are doing is a cool idea I'd say it isn't...

Find something no one else thinks is important and build up a site with big traffic in that area.

Also keep in mind, sites that have low monetization today but have traffic may be the gold mines of tomorrow.

In the internet world anything and everything will be monetized at some point and traffic is king.

Traffic is King- very wise advice, Markus.

One last question- How do you find the time to maintain such a large commodity on the internet?

Surely you must have some other interests in life besides programming and website monitoring?

It only takes a hour a day on average, but its very tiring work.

I spend the other couple of hours reading and seeing what is going on.

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Before Going Into Business

01. Why should there be anyone would do business with you?

This could be the very first question that you must ask yourself before anything else.

You got to demand yourself to an answer to this.

Why the heck on earth would anybody pay for this “Junk” you’re selling?

Yup, “Junk”, as I phrased it.

It doesn’t matter how good your product is to be, to the eye of others, it’s just another piece of product in a sea pool of other similar products.

So, still be very proud of your product or service?

Truly you’re 100% proud of it?

You truthfully and deeply believe people would be dumb by NOT buying from you?

Well…you passed the first barrier!

You’re ready to start go to next stage.

02. The basic business needs 3 things: Lawyer, CPA, and Creative or crazy fellow, which could very well be you.

Almost every business gets themselves for the first two.

It’s understandably so.

Good creative person are really hard to find, hard to manage, and you’ll never sure of what you’re paying for.

Every established and sizeable business knows the creative side plays a heavier weight than the lawyer and CPA.

CPA’s and lawyers can help you when you are up there.

But at the early stage when your business is still an infant, your business live or die depending on it’s business branding activities in areas like business identities, logos, marketing campaign, advertising copy and  business slogans.

Now, are you NUTS enough?

Have people been calling you NUTS?

If so, you are ready for the next stage!

Do give yourself a “Cheers”!

03. Singing for Your Own?

You Got To Promote Yourself In Every Possible Way.

Do all of them.

Yes, Do whatever possible to get your business name to be up there!

Get your Business Brand being noticed by others.

There more the merrier!

Business can just comes and go so fast before anybody could hears of them.

People are busy, what do they care?

They don’t care about you and your business.

Why should they care?

Get serious.

Do everything you can possibly and reasonably afford to do.

But beware; you must not mislead others because it’ll backfire quickly enough to wipe your business off.

Do you “Sing for your own self”?

Then you’ve passed!

Move on to next stage…

04. Big Decision: Could You Win The Competition.

It’s very likely that you’re entering a crowded business market when you first started.

Take a hard and closer look at what other fellows are doing; what your competitors are doing right now could affect your business greatly.

At this stage, you got to decide: Are you going for “Head to Head” fight?

Competing on better quality?

Crazier pricing strategy?

Extra Mile Service Level?

Better Marketing Campaign?

or what else?

Or you would avoid all that, and create you own niche, where you are the leader?

If you decided to be offering the same or very much similar product at the same price, but your marketing materials doesn’t look half as good as your competitors…hey, you’re in deep trouble! If you’re charging half compare to others, then it’s still alright to “Look” cheap, simply because you are the “Cheaper” alternative where people are looking for.

05. Marketing is basically just a matter Perception.

”Perception” is just another fancy word for thoughts.

The thought by the public has in mind all about you and your “Good” or “Bad” business.

Good salesmen control the perception more on personal level like putting on neat suit, very nice smile and sincere voice, firm handshake…etc.

And your business marketing campaign need to strive to achieve equivalent level of effects.

And it needs to be at a more abstract level by means of having an attractive Business Name, Eye Catching Business Graphics, Professionally dressed-up staff.

Any things that just might seduce and persuade a potential visitor to become a paying customer.

06. Your Business Identity; Your Business Equity.

The Business Name, the Logo, the projected Business Look, the public’s perception, recognition, or even affection if there is; these are critical to business success.

Big businesses routinely pay big buck like million dollars for these aspects for the business.

Your Business Identity must be well organized to target at desired market.

It’s what termed as the “Face” side, the side which public always sees first.

Work on refining it so it works wonders.

Improve it to get better and even better, and then protect it, and treasured like your beloved!

Yup, there are so many people who just bought a ready business.

But every time they run a new marketing campaign, they tend to fall into trap of projecting a different business image and look.

Really, don’t ever make such mistake like an amateur.

Consistently stick on to the business branding strategy that your have chosen on the very early stage.

This is your Business Equity.

By keep changing the business look, you’ll get the public confused, and worse still if they see that you don’t even have the basic respect for your business identity.

Don’t destroy the business equity; you need to be utmost concerned with your business image to the public.

It has its own personality.

It has to stand out from the rest.

It has to send clear signal to the targeted market: “Here We are, Come To Us”, “Get Us Today”.

Do Love Your Business, just like you love yourself.

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