- 03:27 – Matt’s background and journey into digital investing.
- 08:51 – Exploring the process of buying and renovating online businesses.
- 13:46 – Understanding the concept of “Google juice” and leveraging website traffic.
- 19:22 – The importance of mindset and proper due diligence in digital investing.
- Master Class Website: https://www.ebusinessinstitute.com.au/digital-investors-program/
- Website: https://www.mattandlizraad.com/
- Podcast: digitalinvestors.com
- YouTube: @DigitalInvestorShow
- Facebook: /MattandLizRaad
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Email: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
- FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitstrategiessc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
ROBYN:
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CORWYN:
So good morning, and great morning, guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I’m your host, Corwyn J Melette broker and owner of Exit Realty Lowcountry Group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, If this is your first time listening to this show, yes, this show, you are in for a treat. Because our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education, we are legacy building, that’s what we say, that is what we do. And we want you to put a hashtag on that thing that says that you’re doing the same thing. So guys, we’ve been having an amazing ride here, I’m super excited always to be, if you will, not only in your ear, but for those who watch us to be in front of you as well on our YouTube channel. So please make sure you’re tuning in to us wherever is convenient for you, whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s Facebook, when we go live, whether it’s the radio station, wherever it is, if you miss any content, guys go back somewhere else and find it. If you listen to us live here on the radio, in the Charleston market, please make sure that you go check out the show, share it with someone because that information is there is sometimes not just for you is for someone else that you know. And we want to make sure that we get it around to as many people as possible. So guys today, I’m superduper excited and stoked to have with us. Look here. We’re going over a jokingly said this past weekend about technology, quote unquote, taken over. So now we’re going across, we’re going on on the other side, where technology is really taking over, really doing things and helping people secure their future to grow and increase their income, to generate wealth. So guys, today I have with us, Matt Raad. He is the CEO of Digital Investor, also co-founder of Digital Investor. So, Matt, how are you doing today?
MATT:
Awesome. Corwyn, thanks so much for having me on.
CORWYN:
You’re quite welcome. So Matt, the conversation. Behind the Scenes today, I am very interested to get this conversation quote unquote, on the stage out to our listeners to our audience. So if you don’t mind, tell our listeners who you are. Your background, and what is it that you do?
MATT:
Yeah, for your listeners, it’s quite different what my wife and I have done for well, 30 years now. But we’ve mainly made our money through buying and selling businesses. And in particular, what we’ve specialized in is buying and selling online businesses. And so for your listeners, I know Corwyn, a lot of you guys are real estate investors. And we often get asked to speak at real estate, investing conferences and things here in Australia, we’re down in Australia, because our strategy is very like buying and renovating physical real estate. It’s just that we do it with virtual real estate. So we literally buy online businesses, and we rent them out, essentially. And so we earn in a similar way to real estate, we earn semi passive income. So there is work we’ve got to do on these. But what we’re looking for is rundown websites, we fix them up and then we hold them for cash flows and the cash flows are great and you can use the cash flows to cash flow, traditional real estate so that’s why we often get asked to speak at real estate conferences and most people are blown away because they just don’t even know this exists. Anyone that’s a real estate investor would find this absolutely fascinating because it’s a like you said it’s the new way of doing things.
CORWYN:
So digital investing that most people will think okay, we just using technology to whatever but this is a whole nother whole separate concept like talking about here. So let’s go back to you say you guys spent a lot of time over the years buying and selling businesses and people sometimes miss this I’m gonna touch on something Matt and bring this back over to you, for you to expound on but people miss that, conceptually you have quote unquote, made it when you build a business then you sell it off and get cash out because otherwise a business as you age is either going down the vine, unless somebody else comes along and takes it over. We don’t think about that. We think about business and we will stay in business till we did Yeah, well, you might not be able to stay in business until you don’t. So Matt, what does that look like? Like the process of buying a business? What does that look like?
MATT:
For us? We’re always about buying a portfolio of businesses. We start as nothing. We’re from rural Australia, like we live in. We grew up on farms, my wife and I, and we knew nothing about business. So what it looks like for us is we’re totally self taught. And we’ve always gone for in the sort of businesses that we’ve bought ever since we first started, we read lots of books about business to learn about them. And we’re very heavily influenced. This was once we’d already started buying businesses. When Robert Kiyosaki’d book Rich Dad Poor Dad came out. And it was like a light bulb moment for us. Everything in that book was so true. And we were always drawn to those semi automatic businesses a little bit like real estate where, whereas real estate is slow growth, we wanted. The same thing is what real estate gives you. But with businesses and Robert Kiyosaki talks about remember, he wrote about owning things like laundromats and car washes, where you get people in to run them, and then you can build them up. And they’re semi passive. And to this day, that’s driven us. So for us the sorts of businesses we’ve bought and sold typically a wholesale import businesses or manufacturing businesses. But core when it all changed when the internet came along. It’s that’s really difficult to do, really difficult to do. It’s not– anyone listening here, I’m not giving financial advice. I’m just merely sharing my 30 years experience here, I would not recommend buying bricks and mortar businesses in this day and age. It’s way too difficult. We were like a lot of your listeners may be with real estate, the biggest problem we had when we’re buying businesses is the same thing as you real estate guys have, which is the banks. We’re always in debt as young entrepreneurs before kids came along, we could take risks, but it was scary well close to the wire for 20 years, or, well, 10 years. So the first decade, as a long time where it’s pretty stressful buying businesses just like for anyone that owns a big portfolio of real estate, cash flowing, everything is really tricky with the banks. So when we discovered the internet businesses, you don’t have to spend millions of dollars to buy really good internet businesses, you can buy online websites, you can start, we start our students, for under $5,000. And they can buy little tiny websites and practice and learn on them. And that’s a great thing. They’re really safe. So for anyone listening to this who’s entrepreneurial, and wants to, maybe you’re in a job working nine to five, or these days, it’s five to nine, if you want to try doing these. what we do part time in the evenings as they call it a side hustle. online businesses are perfect for that, because the buying price, like I said, you can buy a really good one for under $5,000 or, and start learning the ropes of how that works. And these sites, we have clients that have bought sites for under $5,000. And they make anywhere from 500 to $5,000 a month return on those when you know what you’re doing when you fix them up if you can buy fixer uppers, once you get good at it. It’s like real estate, you’ve got to learn how to renovate them. But once you know what you’re doing, it’s a very powerful strategy.
CORWYN:
So buying, proving what is that like, conceptually, I get it. But in actual theory and practice, where the risks, the pitfalls, where are the opportunities for the greatest reward, like where are those different things in there?
MATT:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Well, I guess. Have you heard the term to call in real estate, you’ve got flipping but in our industry websites called website flipping. And what you do is you buy these rundown website businesses that are owned by people, because people start websites all the time. And what we teach is that in terms of your question, like where’s the risks or where should you head with this? You go into niches where people are passionate, so they might be passionate about golf, or just odd niches, not odd, just passionate niches where people are. They’ve been blogging a lot. They’ve had a food blog for 10 years are a travel blog and they’re bored with it. They don’t make much money. But it’s been set up on the internet’s been ticking along. It’s got age, it’s got traffic. It’s got a presence in Google but it’s rundown, it’s tired. It’s old, the person’s gotten distracted with kids, divorce, whatever. And they just sell it off. They sell it off really cheaply. And then we come along and fix them up and we can flip them. So we can do a quick Reno. But then you need to hold it for generally a flipping website. If you want to flip websites. It’s normally a 12 month process, just like with real estate, though, but I’ll give you a really good example. Some clients of ours who are also coaches with us, they bought a gardening site for $400. It was this guy, he was into native gardening, and he just neglected it. He’d had it for 10 years. He’s just passionate about he’s really into gardening. Now. Nathan, Alexa, they’re a young couple. They know nothing about gardening. They live the laptop lifestyle. They live in Thailand at the moment, they bought this thing for 400 bucks because this guy just hadn’t touched it. So they contacted him say what are you doing with it? You said up, thank you, you can have it for $400. That same website, right now is making them $4,000 A month, that’s four grand, they fixed it up. Now they had to spend money to fix that up. That’s not a, you didn’t just get it for 400 bucks, I had to renovate it. And they put more content on there. And the reason that site works is because people are interested in these passion sites, Corwyn, are where it’s at because people, anyone that’s into gardening, is going to want to go to an old site like that, because there’s lots of wisdom on there. So what they do, they have to a team of writers, they hire gardening experts, you can hire them off websites called upwork.com, or Fiverr. Maybe your listeners have heard of those places. And they post content onto this site about gardening, Nathan, Alexa know nothing about gardening. But they what they do know is how to do what’s called keyword research. And they can figure out what people want to know. And they’ve also renovated, the website made it physically look better. And it’s easier to navigate. Now, the websites really nice and easy to understand. So anyone interested in gardening will go there to learn about Native gardening. And when they’re there, they can click on an ad, a Google ad, or they can click on what’s called an affiliate offer and buy something and they can Alexa get paid. And that’s how they make their money. That’s how they make these $4,000 a month. So people don’t realize, and this might be mind blowing for you, listeners, these simple little passion sites that you see when you’re on the internet, looking up your favorite passion, like how to play a guitar or how to play golf, or how to cure acne or how to sleep better or how to garden better, or how to invest in real estate better. When you’re on those sorts of websites. If you see those ads, you know, the ads that is sitting there, when people click on those, that’s how we get paid 24/7. And I know it sounds really simple. There’s obviously a bit more to it than that. But essentially, that’s the business model. That’s how these guys work. So that’s why they’re safe. You’re not selling physical inventory. With this is not e-commerce. We’ve never done e-commerce. We make money off people clicking on ads with like online billboards in a way. So all our jobs is to find old neglected websites and renovate them just like what you do with real estate. You want the worst house in the best street type thing. And then our skill comes down to keyword research. That’s what Nathan Alexa noticed on that website was in a really good niche called in gardening. It was very sub niche. So it’s native gardening. And then when people get there, the guy that owned it, he’d never bothered really monetizing it, because he was just passionate about it. So instantly, Nathan Alexa, just put ads on there, rented it out, and they get paid clicks, it gets 80,000 visitors a month onto that website that they do that it’s huge. Absolutely huge.
CORWYN:
So Matt, one of the things that I heard in there, there’s a term that I just moved some of my domains and stuff around for our websites and stuff here at the office, but you get if you will, the term that me and some of my colleagues okay have coined and that I use is Google juice, basically the site is full while the internet knows it’s there is longevity. So, what happens is it ranks higher because of that a site as you say is not in the best shape or the best condition it could be improved substantially there could be other opportunities in there to monetize etc that have been missed but the function of it the color, the pop, if you will is missing so someone could then buy that site go in and do the pop and because they already have the you will the Google juice then the traffic is already coming and then as they improve the site then their traffic increases because people begin to share from the site and help draw more people they so becomes more organic. Yeah, I got it. I’m over here thinking yeah, yeah.
MATT:
Now even open your eyes cool and it’s what we love doing this Why are we getting asked to speak at real estate conferences and stuff? See you’ve got that. So now, when you’re looking out their Corwyn, at any website, not just your own, you’ll probably start to recognize, oh, wow, that websites got lots of ads in the right hand side, because that’s where the eye goes. And people click, or you’ll note start noticing affiliate offers on where they recommend products. And when people click on that link their cookies, everything’s tracked these days, and whether you like it or not, but that’s a good thing for us wanting to make money. So this happens 24/7. So for us, in Australia, we’re on the other side of the world, most of our websites are in the US. But 95% of our websites are US based. So we can make money while we sleep. Literally this morning, I woke up and I could see in my affiliate account, there was another three grand on a particular website that we own. It’s just while I sleep, I didn’t speak to anyone, I did nothing. It’s just exactly what you described. So this is the thing we love doing is every single day, there’s these opportunities right in front of people, if you know what you’re looking for, you can go ooh, I wonder if I could buy that site, or you can emulate it, you could maybe create your own website in the gardening niche or real estate niche or whatever niche you’re interested in. And you don’t have to be an expert in a niche. But if you are all the better. And if you can get traffic to it, you can make money. Basically, when we started online, we learn a thing, if you get a million eyeballs on your website, you’re gonna make a million bucks. And that’s pretty much the numbers.
CORWYN:
That’s interesting. I would imagine right now that there’s someone a listener this morning that may have just dropped, they hold Flapjack on the floor this morning, making breakfast or something you have has looked without looking I’m coming to you want to throw out a breakfast away. You agree it’s because you’re not you a real grid. So the grids burned up all your grids over there, because you live in women, I got a dampener on my website, I haven’t make a million dollars. Yeah, hold on. I’ll be right back. Let me go get this website? Where’s the passion for you in this way? What was your driver? And I know you’ve had the experience of that you said a little earlier. You don’t want to do this, you definitely don’t want to do this and this time. So what was the driver? And where are your eyes open to this as a prospective business?
MATT:
That’s a very insightful question because it is something we’re really passionate about. And that is teaching beginners. Because when we first learned about all this stuff, this was pre GFC, pre 2008. We struggled with the technical side getting online, and understanding how does all this stuff work. So for us, our passion is definitely teaching beginners how the digital skills that they need to do this, because we made lots of mistakes. And not only that is teach is making sure people know how to do website due diligence, just like when you do due diligence on real estate or commercial real estate. What we’re really passionate about is making sure people are safe, and that they learn the skills as beginners. And they learn how to do proper website due diligence. Because once you’ve got that skill, you can do this. And then you’ve got a money making skill for life basically. And also call and we love training people who are honestly, I don’t know about you, but we see so much burnout these days, our community tends to be 40 – 50+ with kids, they’ve been through some things, but they’re high achievers. They’re very successful people. That’s like anyone listening here, anyone that’s listening to your podcast, wants to make a positive change in their lives. And that’s who we love helping as well. Because we realize once you get a bit older with kids and stuff like that, that there’s a lot of stress in life. And people are looking people realize these days, they can’t get ahead just on their wage. And they probably need side hustles or investments. And presumably, that’s anyone listening to this podcast. That’s why you invest in real estate, which by the way, is very smart thing to do. And this is a nice side hustle. So we’re also passionate about that helping people create these additional side hustle incomes, but in a safe, gentle manner. You don’t throw in your job to do this. You’ve got to build up the skills. But that’s our passion set is teaching. At the end of the day, it boils down to where we just love teaching beginners how to get over that initial hump and learn how to do this.
CORWYN:
So Matt, this is probably a great segue. I’ll place a segue and make sure that people have your contact information. So your website what is it where can people reach you? Where can they find out more information about maybe learning more about this from you, your coaching services, etc? What does that look like?
MATT:
They can google my name Matt Raad or our official website calling is a ebusinessinstitute.com.au but that’s a mouthful, I know. But you can go to our digital training organization we’ve run for last over a decade now to a ebusinessinstitute.com.au you or just Google my name, or you can see us on our podcast as well digital investors and what we have when you get there. If you’re interested in this and you want to learn we’ve got a free masterclass where we go through the actual strategy and we show lots of examples of the sorts of sites that we and our students buy. And you can see where we buy them, how much we pay for them, how we value them. There’s a little bit we teach a little bit of due diligence in that masterclass, we show you the main things. And even if you just did the free masterclass, that’s fine. If you’re vaguely interested, check out a free masterclass.
CORWYN:
Now, for our listeners, guys, look, if you miss that here, you will get that go to our website, because we will make sure that we have that information shared as well there as we publish this episode on next week, but just FYI, guys, look, I just went to the website, looking at there’s a wealth, a plethora of information out there guys, courses and stuff. So please make sure that you’re engaged so you can learn the tips, the tricks, the tools, you can take advantage of this amazing opportunity to quote unquote, do something Look, man, everybody wanted. You said this early about making money. Literally why you sleep. Everybody wants to do that. But everybody isn’t willing to do what is necessary to make that a reality. That’s why we have granted God wakes us don’t get me wrong. But that’s why we wake up with purpose because we still got oftentimes, we still got something to do, because we make it we make it happen when we were resting, if you will. So this is a great opportunity for our listeners. So please make sure that you guys take a look at it. If nothing else take the free masterclass as Matt said, So Matt, you’ve been doing this for a while. And obviously your results are results in your well seasoned in this. But this type of lifestyle meaning working doing this type of activity as far as investing, how lucrative have you seen it become for people?
MATT:
It’s huge. It’s the new way of doing business. You’ll see on our podcast, Digital Investors podcast, I regularly interview people who do multimillion dollar deals, websites, and they start from nothing. And I’m about to interview someone this afternoon, who’s a multimillionaire through buying and selling websites or renovating them up. So if you’ve got the big multimillion dollar goal, and you’ve always wanted to do that, and I know this is a real estate podcast call and but I also noticed on your podcast is a lot of business related guests that you have there. So I’m presuming a certain amount of people in your audience if they want to get into business, and they’ve got the big exit goal because we find a lot of people do want to do the million dollar exit. And we all know businesses where that’s where you’re going to do that. My observation is compared to bricks and mortar. The online space is way quicker and easier relative to bricks and mortar, big multimillion dollar exits. So we’ve seen multimillion dollar exits in websites within five to 10 years easy compared to bricks and mortar. In my experience, because I’ve bought and sold like I was in m&a. It was rare that I would ever see a bricks and mortar business sell for seven or eight figures unless it was more than 15 years old. Whereas websites you’re looking at, if you know what you’re doing. So I did an interview with a guy, he flipped for websites to $9 million in five years. Now that’s unusual. that’s mind blowing. He started out with a $7,000 website, fixed it up, thought this is pretty good. He learned how to do he’s a total beginner, sold that for 20 grand, roll that money into the next website, fix that up, sold that for 200,000. And then he got to the next one he went to that was 9 million in five years. It’s on our podcast. So I have not heard that happening in bricks and mortar world. So in turn, when you ask what’s the wealth levels like, now this I don’t want people to think I’m trying to make it sound really easy or anything like that. I’m saying compared to bricks and mortar businesses, please understand, you know what underpins all this call, and you asked me what’s the what’s the upside and obviously, that’s not typical. But what is typical is you can buy good little semi passive web sites once you know what you’re doing that just tick along year after year making you 1000 bucks, 2000 bucks a month. That’s a nice site that can secure your financial future a lot safer than going out there for the big multimillion dollar deal. That’s my experience. Just sharing that and you know what it all comes down to Corwyn and it comes down to what are your goals and something that I know you’re passionate about sharing with your listeners is mindset. That’s the real thing that I’ve seen here. This is not a bright shiny object. These are real businesses cash flows. They take work guys at the end of the day, you gotta listen to Corwyn. You know what it is? It’s the same mindset stuff that Corwyn teaches you on this podcast is literally because I was going through some of your podcasts, it’s the same stuff in our industry as it is in your industry of real estate. It’s exactly the high achievers, the people that make this successful. At the end of the day, my experiences after doing this for 30 years, and also as a coach for the last 15 years, it comes down to mindset. It’s not even the strategy, which is that’s something else we’re really passionate about, which I know you are, too. But it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? It just comes down to mindset, I can teach you the strategy, that’s easy, but it’s here, you gotta turn up and do stuff. There’s things that have got to happen.
CORWYN:
There is no difference. People oftentimes will look and say, well, that’s you, I get that from people, sometimes I guess you call Corwyn, well, with a me, it’s just what I’m willing to do. It’s not me, I’m willing to do something that others aren’t nothing special about me. I’m just willing to work harder differently than at times, and others. So Matt, I want to thank you, you’ve opened my eyes one, to a tremendous opportunity. So that’s going to be my own work. In the background, as I’m looking at other opportunities over the balance, I’ll be looking into that. So I want to thank you for one opening my eyes to that. I want to thank you for sharing information here on our show. So Matt, we have quickly reached the end of the show. But I really again, just want to say thank you for being a part of the show, and dropping those jewels on our listeners. That was awesome. So for our listeners, guys, look, this has been an amazing show. It has been a turn, if you will, as we continue to explore the opportunities and figure out if you will, what will work and what will work for you. As we avail these opportunities to you please make sure that you engage, please make sure that you explore, please make sure that you put the opportunity in front of somebody else and connect to somebody because that’s what this thing is about each one teach one. If we all do that, and then we reach many and so let’s please make sure that we keep that in mind. Again, Matt, thank you again from the bottom of my heart for being on the show with him today.
MATT:
Thank you so much, Corwyn for having me on. It’s definitely a pleasure to be here.
CORWYN:
So for our listeners one final time y’all know what I do y’all know how I feel. Y’all know what I say? Y’all know always put the two of those things together to you. And I give it to you and say it to you this way. And I mean it. I love you. I love you. I love you. And we’re gonna see you guys out there we go streets.