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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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