Website and business model

(upbeat music) - Matt Oni has worn every digital marketing hat here is. Over the past six years in his day job as an online marketer for a startup in San Francisco. After working hard for his employer, he started to ask why he wasn't putting that sort of effort into something of his own. He'd heard about affiliate marketing and thought it could be something that played to his strengths. On top of that, Matt had an old boss with a successful affiliate website. So he called on him to ask for advice. The old boss was happy to help. He ran through how to pick a good topic and said to make sure it was something he actually cared about. It didn't take long for Matt to settle on health and wellness with a particular focus on mental health products. In February, 2020, he registered the domain name, zenmasterwellness.com. It was a little different, but Matt felt it was exactly the type of branding and image he wanted. With that domain registered, it was time to build a site. And for all his experience, this was one area where his skills were lacking. He wasn't sure where he'd find the time to learn while working full time, but luckily or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, that was about to change. As the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, his employer cut his hours and salary by 20%. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Matt figured that with a little more time on his hands and a little less money, he now had both the space and the necessary incentive to work on his idea more seriously. To start, he purchased web hosting and outsourced a logo design on Fiverr for $50. For the design, Matt installed a plugin called Elementor, It's a popular template builder that allowed for what you see is what you get in terms of the design features with the drag and drop interface. What followed was nearly three months of procrastination. That's right, the slow burn of unmet expectations. Hey, I've been there. In fact, Matt didn't post his first article until May. A review for a tele-health appointment service and like many budding website builders before him. His site traffic was as quiet as a Buddhist monastery during a silent retreat. In fact, the site saw almost no traffic for an entire month. By June, zen master wellness began seeing a whopping three or four visitors every day. Matt was so motivated by this. He decided to write his second article. This was a review for another tele-medicine service. This one, specifically for women. He continued learning, identifying keywords and writing articles on an occasional basis. By July, this method had his site generating around 25 visits per day. Within those articles, and this is key, he began placing affiliate links to the product's website. Those links tracked users clicks, and he would receive a commission for every sale he generated. You know, all those sales that weren't coming in, but wait, we're not done. In the next exciting installment you'll hear much more positive news, including how Matt went from 25 visits a day to many more.