October 5, 2024 • 56 mins
Imagine merging your professional skills with your deepest passions—Weston Davis has done just that. As a digital marketing freelancer with a love for martial arts, Weston shares his journey from the hospitality industry to a life of location independence. Inspired by Tim Ferriss' "Four Hour Workweek," he reveals how he carved out a niche in SEO and content creation while building a martial arts website that offers enthusiasts trusted guidance and generates income through affiliate marketing. This episode promises to teach you the art of blending personal interests with professional expertise for success.
Crafting a website from scratch is no small feat, yet Weston managed to overcome numerous challenges. We explore his strategic approach to developing content that not only captivates readers but also drives affiliate revenue. THis episode underscores the delicate balance between creative vision and the business rules set by platforms like Amazon Associates. Weston also talks about his unique strategy of incorporating martial arts performances into his marketing plan, demonstrating his competitive edge in the digital space.
Weston's story is a testament to the power of adaptability in a rapidly changing world. As AI disrupts traditional digital landscapes, Weston emphasizes the necessity of quality content and continuous learning to stay relevant. He opens up about the personal challenges of balancing career ambitions with family responsibilities while offering valuable insights for freelancers and entrepreneurs on achieving self-reliance and work-life balance. Join us for a conversation that not only explores the fusion of digital marketing and martial arts but also provides a roadmap for aspiring professionals seeking fulfillment and freedom.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex (00:00):
Welcome back to the Remote Work Life podcast.
I'm your host, alexWilson-Campbell, and today we've
got a really exciting guestwith us.
Weston Davis is alocation-independent freelance
digital marketer who has workedwith a diverse range of
businesses.
Weston has a passion forhelping businesses grow organic
web traffic and attract morecustomers through strategic
(00:21):
content.
But what's even morefascinating is Weston's unique
side project his deepinvolvement in the martial arts
community.
Through his writing, westonshares insightful articles on
martial arts, offering guidancefor those looking to make
informed choices about theirtraining, while also diving into
real world self-defensestrategies and sharing inspiring
(00:42):
martial arts stories.
Today we're going to hear abouthow Weston blends his marketing
expertise with his passion formartial arts and the valuable
lessons he's learned from bothfields.
Weston begins by talking abouthow he started out in content
creation.
Weston Davis (01:00):
In school I majored in business and after
university I did a lot ofhospitality work because I had
this wonderful idea of travelingthe world and living an
adventurous life by working on acruise ship.
And then, a couple of yearsbefore COVID made it cool, I
became interested in remote workafter reading Tim Ferriss' Four
Hour Workweek and began a longcareer transition into a digital
(01:24):
marketing role.
At first I wasn't quite certainwhat I wanted to do and no one
would hire me because I had nodigital experience.
At that point, All of my jobshad been in hospitality, so I
had to volunteer and freelance,slowly but steadily, earning
like minimum wage, then moremoney, and experimenting with
(01:46):
different sorts of digitalmarketing, to find my way.
At this point, I am a digitalmarketer with three years of
experience.
My specialties are in on-pageSEO and writing website content,
and I'm refining those skillsall the time.
At this point, I have developeda wide variety of skills, all
geared around building,promoting and then monetizing
website content.
Alex (02:07):
I'm intrigued to know more about your business and
work, so tell me more about thatand how long you've been
running it for.
Weston Davis (02:13):
I've been freelancing and volunteering for
about five years, but I startedofficially freelancing about
three years ago, when I became afull-time digital marketing
freelancer, and over the courseof those three years I've
assisted eight small businessesin a variety of different
digital marketing tasks, butover time I've steadily focused
(02:33):
more and more towards SEO andblog content.
At this point, though, rightnow I am developing a new
business.
I have built my own website allabout martial arts and helping
people make inherent martial artchoices.
I'm monetizing it withaffiliate marketing, so like
promoting different productsthat people will need if they
(02:54):
choose to join, let's say, mixedmartial arts or taekwondo.
I've been at this for about sixmonths and the website is
progressing very quickly.
It's definitely hitting somereally good early metrics that
show that probably in two yearstime it will be a decent side
source of income?
Alex (03:12):
What inspired you to be location independent with your
work?
Weston Davis (03:16):
Wow.
So this question actually cutspretty deep into my why.
When I was a little boy, when Iwas asked what I wanted to grow
up, I would always say I wantto grow up.
I would always say I want to bean adventurer, like the people
I saw in movies, read about inbooks or played in video games.
And of course, everyone thoughtit was ridiculous because no
one could do that.
When they grew up they have tobe policemen or doctors or stuff
(03:37):
like that, and I was confusedabout my life for a while.
But when I became an adult I hadan epiphany and realized that
actually I could be anadventurer.
I just had to find a way ofmaking money while doing it.
And at first I thought the bestway of going about that would
be working on cruise ships, andit's not a bad lifestyle.
But after I learned aboutremote work and the location
(03:58):
independence that comes with it,I realized that was a better
avenue.
And what it really all boilsdown to is I fundamentally
believe that the true currencyof life isn't money.
It's the experiences we have.
Once we are old and can't moveany longer and we reflect back
on our life.
We're going to reflect on thethings we did and the things we
(04:19):
did not do.
We only have one life and wehave a limited amount of time
and I do not want my life to beboring.
I want it to be locationalindependence, so that I can have
a wide variety of experienceswith different people in
different places.
I also believe that locationindependence creates a wide
variety of lifestyleopportunities, like taking a
(04:40):
strong currency from one regionand bringing it to a less
expensive region.
Or alternatively and I thinkthis is something I want to
explore and it's starting tocome about business
opportunities.
We live in a time period wherepeople are able to live in a way
they've never been able to livebefore, and we're only
beginning to start to see thebusinesses opportunities that
(05:05):
are going to come out of that.
Alex (05:07):
Why inspired you to start this particular type of
business.
Weston Davis (05:09):
Okay, so for this question, I'm going to speak
about my martial arts website,Path of Martial Arts, which is
designed to help people makeinformed choices in the martial
arts they study.
And, being straight up, I gotinto this niche for selfish
reasons, for my own personaldevelopment.
At this point in my reasons,for my own personal development
At this point in my career, I'velearned a lot about SEO, I've
learned a lot about how to writeblog posts and I've also
(05:32):
learned a lot about affiliatemarketing.
So what that means is I knowhow to build websites, I know
how to market them and I nowknow how to monetize them.
And while I'm looking for newfull-time work to really refine
my skill set just a little bitmore, I built my own website,
partly as a way to make a sideincome, but also as a way to
develop my skills and constantlypractice SEO, copywriting, web
(05:56):
design, graphic design,podcasting.
I make audio blogs on myarticles all these skills and
the reason I chose this niche isI did an audit of all of my
interests and the ones I wantedto write about the most were
either very competitive or thesearch intent for those topics
was murky.
It's like I wanted to writeabout how to live a good life
(06:18):
and how to develop bettercareers, but if you search stuff
like lifestyle, you're going tofind a whole bunch of articles
about how to decorate your houseand Thanksgiving, so it's very
confused.
But I got to martial arts,which I have a background in.
I did about 10 years oftraining in Taekwondo and I'm
currently training in BrazilianJiu Jitsu and Muay Thai.
I've also trained in karate andcapoeira and I looked at that
(06:42):
and it's a very popular topic,as you could imagine.
But from a web searchperspective like Google, it's
extremely uncompetitive and I'mlike this is a fantastic
playground to practice my skills.
I can write and practice myabilities for SEO, copywriting
and such in this uncompetitiveenvironment where I can get some
(07:03):
easy wins and be motivatedthrough the learning experience.
And as I've gone along, I'vebecome much more nerdy about
martial arts and all the variousaspects of it and I really do
see that I am filling a niche.
I do a lot of research for mytopics different gear, which
martial arts are effective forself-defense or which martial
(07:23):
arts are best for kids and a lotof the articles I see are very
low quality.
They're written by people whoare better martial arts than me,
like their dojo owners.
But the dojo owners don't knowhow to write good content.
They don't know how to makewell-optimized websites that are
easy on the eyes, easy to read,that load quickly, and I'm
really seeing that I'm actuallyfilling a big gap in the market
(07:46):
by creating well-researched,informed, easy to read articles
about martial arts.
Alex (07:53):
How did you identify the niche for your products or
services?
Weston Davis (07:57):
I answered this in the previous question, but I'll
go a little bit more in depth.
As I mentioned, I did an auditof all of my interests for what
I would like to build a blogabout, and I determined, using
SEO tools like Ahrefs, that thenot just one martial art, but
the entire topic of martial arts, like all martial arts.
On Google, the search, it'svery popular, they're very
(08:22):
popular to search, but they'revery uncompetitive.
Like you, do not have to havetoo many backlinks to rank high
for those keywords.
Now, digging a little deeperthan that, what I would
recommend to someone who'slistening to this podcast if
you're considering starting abusiness, I think it's
worthwhile to write down all ofyour interests, everything you
(08:42):
are passionate about or at leastmoderately interested in, or
maybe you had experience in it.
I mean, for me, martial artswas something I did as a kid and
I hadn't done it for like I.
The last time I attended amartial arts dojo before I
started my new website was eightyears ago.
It's something that was in theback of my mind.
You know I wasn't thinkingabout all the time.
Only when I like dance orpractice doing like weapon
(09:04):
performances do I really channelthat martial arts, energy.
So I'd really recommend writingout all of your skills and as
you do research.
You want to look into domainnames.
You want to look into howcompetitive the topics you want
to write about.
Are you want to do research onadvertising?
(09:24):
Is there money if you were toadvertise the?
Are you want to do research onadvertising?
Is there money if you were toadvertise the keywords on the
topic you're interested in?
Do research into the sort ofproducts that you could promote.
I'm very big in affiliatemarketing and I did a lot of
research into various productslike punching bags or boxing
gloves or mouthguards that Icould promote on my website and
(09:45):
get a commission if someonebought those products through my
links.
So I would really recommend, asyou audit your niche, you come
up with your interests, you do alot of research to see how
competitive they are, if theycould be monetized effectively,
and as you choose a domain name,pay very close attention to are
there other businesses that usesimilar domain names?
(10:07):
If you search that domain name,are you competing with big
businesses like Amazon or Apple?
If you were going to name yourbusiness I don't know, apple
buys Apple store or whateverlike that you'd be competing
with Apple.
For that you want to be carefulof those things.
There's a lot of research thatgoes into choosing your niche.
Alex (10:25):
How did you attract your first clients or customers?
Weston Davis (10:29):
Okay, so I'm going to speak very briefly about my
volunteering experience and myfreelance experience, but then
we can talk about my website.
At the beginning, when I wasmaking the transition into
remote work, I had to volunteer.
I had to reach out to people onLinkedIn in topics I was
interested in.
I was really interested inremote work.
So I just joined all the remotework forums and met people and
(10:51):
spoke with people and offered tohelp however I can, and that
gained me some early experience.
It also gained me some like Iwould do some tasks and try new
things and some of them I'm like, oh, this is fun or oh, I'm
good at and you?
I also got some earlytestimonials out of that and I
met my first real client throughthat and yeah, so at the start,
(11:13):
if you're doing a careertransition, you're probably
going to have to volunteer andthen work for minimum wage and
then go up from there Switchingto my website, which is a
totally different business model.
So from a website perspective, Iam now, in six months, sold
about $200 worth of products onAmazon and different martial
arts websites.
I know how to do affiliatemarketing where, basically, I
(11:36):
join the program, the affiliateprogram of different companies
where I promote their productsthrough links that have my
unique tracking code.
And if a person reads one of myarticles about, let's say,
boxing gloves or coupons, whichis a sort of martial arts
self-defense weapon, and theybuy it, and they buy a product
(11:57):
off of the links that I'msharing on that page, I get some
commissions.
So, as I said at this point, Imade about $200 in six months.
I got to be more accurate.
I've sold $200 worth ofproducts in six months, which is
pretty good for a start, butthe commission I'm getting is
they were from three to 10%, soI've actually made probably
about $30.
But as a website increases intraffic and backlinks and such
(12:24):
those about somebody increasequickly, a lot of website
builders can make six figuresoff of a website or multiple
websites, and that's the paththat I'm on now.
Alex (12:35):
What steps did you take to launch the business?
Weston Davis (12:38):
All right.
So, talking about my martialarts website, I mentioned this a
little bit in a previousquestion, but I audited my niche
.
I did a lot of research on thedomain name, because that is so
important.
Your domain name really is youridentity and you want to make
sure that it's unique.
You want to examine the groundupon which you build, like I
should my.
(12:58):
I think my first name was likeyour martial arts journey.
I chose that domain name.
No one had it, but then Isearched and I saw that there
was another YouTube channel, avery popular and established one
, called Journey of Martial Arts, and I would be competing with
it and it could cause meliability issues where our
brands would get confused witheach other and they might send
me nasty emails.
(13:18):
I just saw all of this and I'mlike, oh shit, I got to change
my name, so I went with Path toMartial Arts and I realized that
with that name, it evokes thespirit I'm trying to get of make
informed martial arts choiceswhile also having, if you search
, path to Martial Arts, I'mreally competing with a couple
of forums for the first spot onGoogle, so that's fertile ground
(13:39):
.
After that, I signed on withWordPress, and WordPress is a
wonderful CMS to build yourwebsite with, because I was a
novice with WordPress up likethe way I wanted to, or
structure the website the way Iwanted to, and they walked me
(14:13):
through how to do it.
And by walking me through howto do it, they were teaching me
how to build websites.
And at this point I built twobeautiful websites using those
lessons.
I built two beautiful websitesusing those lessons.
After that, I think the firstthing I did was I targeted a
topic martial arts weapons.
I targeted it one becausethat's where I've had a lot of
(14:34):
martial arts experience.
I know my martial arts weaponsvery well.
I do a lot of danceperformances with martial arts
weapons and I also knew that Icould market those affiliate
products training staves or evenreal staves, or training swords
or real swords.
I started with that and thenafter that, I created a content
plan where I said, okay, I wantto create topics on what are the
(14:55):
best martial arts forself-defense.
So I'm going to structure it asa tier list and I might do a
martial arts industry report ortalk about what is the best
martial arts for kids or martialarts gear.
And I haven't written all thisyet.
I've written probably half ofwhat I just said, Because what
I'm realizing now is all of thisstuff is important for
different reasons, but I have toprioritize certain things.
(15:18):
Right now I'm prioritizingarticles about martial arts
equipment, because it means thatI'm creating more affiliate
links to martial arts productson my website and once I write
all of those articles, I'm goingto any article I write about
mixed martial arts.
I could post advertisements tomartial arts MMA gloves or MMA
(15:40):
boxing pads.
It allows me to monetize myfull website by writing those
articles.
My next step after that isgoing to be pursuing backlinks,
because right now, my websitehas no backlinks and it's still
on page two or even four or sixfor a lot of the searches I'm
going for.
Even though it's anuncompetitive niche, it's very
important for me to reach out toother martial arts creators or
(16:03):
communities or stuff like that,and encourage them to link to my
content.
So that's going to be the nextmajor step, did you?
Alex (16:11):
face any challenges in the startup phase and, if so,
how did you overcome them?
Weston Davis (16:16):
Oh, my God, have I faced challenges over the past
six months, oh Lord.
I came into this and I cameinto this from a strong position
.
I'd been writing websitecontent for years.
I'd had victories.
I'd gotten blog posts to rank apage one at Google at this
point.
I managed an affiliate programfor safety wing.
I learned from the very bestaffiliate marketers in the
(16:39):
travel industry in that job, soI came in very strong.
But I still faced hugechallenges over the past seven
months.
I think I've already mentionedthat the domain name was a
struggle.
I had to learn a lot about howto choose a good domain name and
make sure that it's going tohave great potential for the
long term.
I had to learn how to buildWordPress websites, and I think
(17:03):
I mentioned that WordPressthankfully has this excellent
assisted service where you canwork with happiness engineers
and they will walk you throughstep-by-step how to do, how to
write blog posts or how tostructure your website just the
way you want, and if you reallydon't know how to do it, they'll
help you do it.
But I never let them do it forme.
I said you show me how to dothese things, walk me through it
(17:26):
, but I will do it and by doingthat, I went from being a novice
in WordPress to actually beinga pretty advanced user in about
six months.
Affiliate marketing man.
It's a beautiful business model, but it comes with a lot of
hurdles, like, for example,amazon has very strict rules
about its affiliate marketing.
(17:46):
You can't copy paste images.
You have to use API HTML to getimages from them.
At this point, with the Amazonassociates program I had I
learned that joining affiliateprograms often takes like days
or even weeks, and I want towrite content like right now.
I learned about affiliatenetworks where you can join like
multiple companies at once justthrough that one application,
(18:08):
and that was a big time saver.
It definitely got me, and alsoit got me access to some of the
best companies that I wanted tomarket their products anyways,
that's how I found out aboutthat.
Going forward, I think joiningaffiliate networks would save me
a lot of time and energy Alsowith affiliate marketing,
there's compliance issues andsaved me a lot of time and
(18:30):
energy.
Also with affiliate marketing,there's compliance issues and
I'm a bit of a perfectionist.
I love.
I've really enjoyed building mywebsite and writing my content
because it's like building ahouse for me and I enjoy the
artistry of building a website.
So where I'm going with this isbalancing the artistry I have
in my mind with these rules isreally hard and it's very
satisfying to break throughthose walls at the end.
But it's like there have been acouple weeks or even a few
(18:52):
months where I was just bangingmy head against walls, trying to
figure out how to balance therules and limitations that these
programs were forcing on mewith my artistic sense of how I
want these articles to look.
And it really just takes a lotof talking to tech support and a
(19:14):
lot of research and a lot ofpractice and a lot of learning
to make that happen.
But I've recently brokenthrough some major walls and the
content's flowing swimminglyright now, so I'm so happy about
that.
And the last thing is writing.
I grew up being very proud ofmy large vocabulary.
I was taught how to write longform essays in English class and
(19:39):
then I get into sales andbusiness positions and writing
positions and realize, wow, noone wants to hear me talk about
all the details or jabber,jabber, jabber about this or
that.
They want me to keep it shortand simple, not keep it long and
lengthy.
And as I was writing, I wouldwrite these very long, very
detailed articles that even if Imade them visually stylized,
(20:03):
they could be very dense.
The way I got around that was Ispoke with, I found mentors.
I was very fortunate to connectwith the head of content at
SEMrush and I paid him forconsultation calls to advise me
on how to write my contentbetter and get to value faster,
and his advice definitely helpedme.
So reaching out to mentors wasgood and I also learned
(20:24):
something great If I write areally long blog post, yeah,
that blog post by itself is avery bad thing, but it's
actually an opportunity to turnthe topic into a content pillar
when, if I write about everymartial art and how it ranks for
self-defense on the A to F tier, I can actually create
(20:45):
sub-articles for each martialart explaining why they are
ranked the way they are, andthen briefly link you know,
briefly summarize that in themain article and link to it and
instead of having one extremelylong, extremely dense post, I
now have 16 concise, connected,interlinked posts.
That increases my SEO.
(21:05):
So those are some of thechallenges I've dealt with in
the past seven months and it'sbeen a really great learning
journey, frankly.
But oh my God, if I tell you,if I had hair, I would have
pulled it out a few times.
Alex (21:18):
What marketing strategies have been most effective for
you to grow your client base orgrow your customers?
Weston Davis (21:24):
At this point with my website.
It is all organic.
There are a couple of friends,especially in the martial arts
sphere, who I share my contentwith, to get their opinions, but
I have to say that for the mostpart, I write the articles, I
index the articles, I make surethat they are as well written as
I possibly can, and one of thebeautiful things about websites
(21:44):
is I can update them to makethem better written and more
stylized to attract moreattention.
And, following my SEO playbook,in the past six months I've
gone from zero monthly trafficto over 150 visitors a month,
which is a good start.
In my experience with SEO, Iknow that probably in a year, by
(22:07):
the end of the year, especiallyif I keep going at the rate I'm
going or increase the amount ofcontent I'm going at, which is
actually very possible now thatI've built a lot of the systems
that were slowing me down, I'mconfident that I could get a
thousand views and monthlyvisitors and probably by two
years that number could go to5,000 or above, depends how hard
(22:27):
I work, and I'm working prettyhard.
So I think I could go above5,000 in two years, but that's
all organic.
One strategy that I'm mullingaround in my mind right now and
I'm about to implement it is Ido these dance performances with
martial arts weapons or usingmartial arts techniques and I'm
thinking that I will create asection on my website where I
(22:48):
will integrate YouTube videos ofme doing these dances and
promote the products that I'musing.
If I'm doing a staff dance, Ican promote the staff, but I
think it also creates anothermarketing avenue and also an
element of virality where I candress up as Saitama from One
Punch man and do some martialarts stuff, or dress up as Fade
Rothman and do like dancing withknives or stuff like that to
(23:09):
draw in a more casual,interested crowd who might then
check out the highly informative, no-nonsense martial arts
articles that I've written.
So that's another avenue to getbacklinks.
That's going to be a majorthing for me and I'm on that end
.
I'm thinking that I'm going tohave to do some community work,
where I'm going to have to joinmartial arts communities and
(23:29):
develop relationships withdifferent martial arts
businesses so that they promoteme, and that's a very important
element of my marketing, becausewithout backlinks my web pages
their growth is going to becapped what sets you apart from
your competitors In the martialarts sphere.
I would say that if you look atvideos on YouTube or TikTok, the
(23:57):
topic of martial arts iscompetitive.
You definitely could tell anamateur from someone who's like
a professional fighter in MMA ora sword master who could cut
through three watermelons in oneslice.
You know what I mean, but inweb search it's a lot simpler,
and that's the primary arenawhere I'm competing right now.
I believe I only have trulyfour businesses that I would
truly consider real competitorsto myself.
My most of my competitors aredojo owners and martial arts
(24:24):
martial artists, mma fighters.
They have a lot of experience.
They are.
They're almost certainly betterfighters than I am.
They are less rusty.
They've trained longer.
They probably trained studentsI've never trained any students
so they have the advantage ofhaving more experience and more
skill as a martial artist.
(24:45):
My advantages, though, is thatthey are terrible writers,
generally speaking, and they'reeven worse with web design and
seo.
If you look at most of theranking articles for what is
taekwondo, or what is itshistory?
Or is it good for kids, or isit good for self-defense?
What is the equipment that Ineed if I'm going to start
(25:06):
training in Taekwondo?
The articles are crap.
They really are Talking aboutmy strengths now and my
advantages is I know how to doSEO far better than them.
I'm a better writer, but I alsoam very determined to research
good information.
I intensely research the topicsI'm on Right now.
For example, I'm writing aboutwriter, but I also am very
determined to research goodinformation.
I intensely research the topicsI'm on right now.
(25:26):
For example, I'm writing aboutTaekwondo gear that you're going
to need.
So it'd be stuff like a uniform, like a chest protector, the
right head gear and stuff likethat, and at first I, from my
own experience, I knew what sortof gear you could use.
But doing my research, Ilearned that if you want to
compete in Taekwondo at thehighest level, like
professionally or at an Olympianlevel, you need gear that is
(25:49):
approved by the World TaekwondoFederation, and I completely
altered my article to find gearapproved by them.
Adidas makes a whole bunch ofgear that's approved by the
World Trade Taekwondo Federation, so you can use that gear at
any level.
And I made sure that was thestuff I was promoting, because I
want to make sure that if Irecommend something, it's
(26:10):
well-reviewed.
I've personally used it ideally, but rarely that is the case,
or it's got to be something thatyou can carry all the way to
the top, that you keep on using.
For years.
I put a lot of energy intomaking sure that my information
is good and that I'mrecommending the right things,
and especially if I'm talkingabout stuff I don't know, like
I've written about mixed martialarts.
(26:30):
I've never done mixed martialarts and I've ranked martial
arts trainers who are way moreexperienced than me on YouTube
comparing different martial artsstyles, and I took detailed
(26:51):
notes about what they said andreferenced those notes and
linked back to the parts of thevideos where they spoke about it
.
When I said something that wasthat I didn't know was that I
hadn't personally experiencedthese more professional people
had experienced.
So I put in tremendous researchand energy into making sure
that what I'm saying has rounds,has backing and you know,
(27:15):
between them and me, hopefullywe're getting close to the truth
.
I also, on my website, reallystrive to be humble and let
people know that there's a lot Idon't know and I'm doing the
best I can and I'm referencingthe work of other people.
So and that's something I alsodon't see a lot of my
competitors.
So those are some ways I standapart.
Alex (27:34):
How do you stay productive while working
remotely?
Weston Davis (27:38):
Staying productive while working remotely is a
process of years, if not alifetime.
I'm certain for some people itis a lifetime process.
I certainly.
When I started working remotely, if the pressure was getting to
me I could easily getdistracted.
I could goof around on Netflix.
This was some years back.
Over the years I learned that Ithink working remotely, and
(27:59):
especially if you're asolopreneur or a freelance,
you're setting your own schedule.
It's super important for me toI keep two schedules.
I keep a Google calendar whereI write out all the different
things I'm supposed to do duringthe week and for really
important meetings like, forexample, recording this podcast,
I mark those things in red so Imake sure I don't miss them.
I also keep a daily journal andI write on a long post-it form
(28:21):
like the work tasks I have to dowhat are the top three things I
need to do today, what are thetasks and chores I need to do?
And I also have a couple oflittle daily things like daily
exercise, brushing my teethtwice a day, stuff like that.
Those are a couple of ways Ikeep myself organized and keep
myself focused on the bigpicture For this business
staying organized in that I'veactually created sort of my own
(28:44):
content calendar where I'veidentified topics for different
things and I have it all in aspreadsheet and I also keep
track of.
I have notes for every articleI write and over time I'll
realize oh hey, I actually needto update the affiliate links on
this page to make sure they'remore compliant.
Or I think that after I writethis future article in a few
months I need to come back tothis article and link back to
(29:05):
that article, or so on and soforth.
So that's another way I stayorganized.
I think the last thing I wantto say about this topic is in my
work.
I find that the sweet balance ofwork is your job should be 50%
fun, engaging and free flowingand it should be 50% very hard,
(29:25):
very challenging, but you'relearning a lot.
See, if your job is like alwaysfun and super easy and stuff
like that, it means you're notgrowing.
But if your job is super hard,where and I had this like where
I was trying to solve some verychallenging affiliate marketing
compliance and design problemsand web design problems even
earlier than that, it was justso hard and so painful.
(29:49):
I was learning a lot but I washaving like zero fun and my
productivity would nosedive,where I would spend more time
playing video games or more timewalking because I just wanted
to get away from my work.
And I think as you do remotework and as you grow as a
professional, you're going to gothrough times where sometimes
you're having a lot of fun andit's just so easy to do the work
(30:11):
, but you're probably notgrowing that much and other
times you're just going to belike oh my God, it is so hard
and I'm slamming my head againstthe wall and I'm bleeding hard
and I'm slamming my head againstthe wall and I'm bleeding.
It hurts doing this work.
And as much as you can try andfind and choose work where you
reach that balance of you'rehaving some fun and you're
(30:32):
learning some stuff, that's thesweet spot and if you are in
that sweet spot you will beproductive, you will grow,
you'll become a betterprofessional and you will get
better career opportunities overthe years.
How?
Alex (30:43):
do you manage the day-to-day operations of running
your business Are there anyparticular tools or techniques
that you use?
Weston Davis (30:51):
All right, so for day-to-day stuff.
I mentioned in a previousquestion and how do I stay
productive?
Google Calendar Get a calendar.
It is super important for yourlife.
I also personally love writingdown my daily tasks in my
journal and scratching them off.
It feels so good to scratchthem off.
If I scratch off everything onmy list, I've had a really good
day.
(31:11):
I tell you that In my websitebusiness, every morning I check
Ahrefs and I also check GoogleAnalytics and I check WordPress
activity to see how my websiteis growing, if any technical
health issues have cropped up orwhatever.
To monetize my website, I'verecently invested in a program
(31:32):
called Lasso, which tracks allof my affiliate links, which is
extremely helpful.
I was having to use aspreadsheet to track all of the
sales and stuff up until thispoint and it's also really
useful for creating affiliatemarketing promotions and using
Amazon products in a way that'scompliant, while also still
being able to use their imageswithout having to do HTML coding
(31:53):
or API Getting a littletechnical here.
When it comes to writing, I'mdefinitely using a lot of AI,
but not in the way you wouldthink.
I don't tell hey, I don't tellAI hey, write this article for
me and I'm going to copy pastethat shit.
No, I use AI to help me edit mywriting.
I'll write what I want to sayand I'll run it through Chad,
(32:14):
gvt or Gemini and say, hey,rewrite this using simple words.
I want it to condense my ideas,make it easier to read while
still keeping the main spirit,and oftentimes there's a lot of
times where I'm like, okay, this, and I do the sentence by
sentence.
Oftentimes a sentence is perfect.
I'm like, oh, awesome, I'lljust copy paste that.
But other times, like AI isjust not getting the message, I
(32:36):
need to edit it myself.
Or I actually don't like how AIis rewritten and I alter that.
So AI plays a major role in howI edit my stuff.
I also sometimes use it to lookup these topics, but I always
want to find the sources of thetopics if I'm going to be
writing long form about them,because in the modern age, it's
so important to establishcredibility, and if you don't
(32:56):
have the credibility withinyourself, you need to have the
credibility of other people whoare smarter than you and have
spent, or who have at leastspent, more time writing the
topics than you have and havecredibility.
Alex (33:07):
You need to reference them can you give me a high
level view of the differentrevenue streams within the
business and, if possible, whatthey generate?
Weston Davis (33:17):
ladies and gentlemen, this is the section
you have been waiting for,because I'm going to share with
you something that is veryvaluable for a wide variety of
people who want to becomelocation independent.
In the website business and inthe YouTube business.
There's a thing calledaffiliate marketing, and you
might not know this, but 80% ofthe businesses you love, from
(33:39):
the mom and pop brick and mortarto the big Apples and Googles
and Disneys have an affiliateprogram.
What it is in a nutshell is youjoin an affiliate program
saying that you will promote theproducts of this business and
you promote it as a link.
They give you a link to any oneof their products with a
(33:59):
tracking code unique to you, andif you share that link on your
website and talk about theirproducts, or if you share that
link on your social media oryour YouTube channel and people
click and buy, you get acommission based on the sale.
The commissions range fromcrappy commissions, like 3%, to
awesome commissions, like 25% ofthe sale.
Imagine selling, let's say, a$5,000 massage chair and you get
(34:24):
10% of that.
If you advertise these $5,000massage chairs on your YouTube
channel or your website orwhatever, and you make a sale
every time you make a sale,you're making $500 for that 10%
on the $5,000.
So you know a lot of people aremaking six to seven figure
incomes on this stuff.
I used to work at Safety Wingwhere I worked with the best
(34:46):
travel influencers in the worldand the affiliate marketing.
These are people like you andme who got interested in remote
work, decided to start travelingand they wrote articles about
their travels and usually they'dwrite it in a frame of here's
the awesome stuff to do inMexico or here's the stuff to
watch out for in Thailand,thailand, or here's the most
beautiful parks in the world.
(35:07):
As they do it, they have theseaffiliate programs like travel
insurance or backpacks or hotelsor flights you can do, and
these guys were paying for theirtravels and their lifestyle by
writing these articles andpromoting these products.
It's an extremely powerfulmodel.
Another revenue stream that Ican use on my website is AdSense
(35:28):
and advertising, which issomething that I can do.
Once my website hits certainmetrics, I can put WordPress ads
on my website.
After I get 1,000 monthlyvisitors a month, I can also do
Google AdSense as I get approvedfor their program.
A couple of other ways ofmonetizing, like websites and
YouTube channels are likeselling my own products or
(35:50):
creating digital resources thatI could sell, usually like
educational resources or stufflike that.
Website writer, youtuber orsocial media influencer, there
are going to be businesses thatwill pay you to use affiliate
links or advertisements fortheir products on your website.
So not only are you getting theaffiliate revenue or the
(36:12):
advertising revenue, but you'realso getting like 500 to a
thousand or ridiculous amountsIf you're like huge, like a
major influencers might get paidlike $10 dollars for a post,
and that post generates a lot ofadditional affiliate marketing
revenue for your, for them and alot of sales for the business.
Alex (36:30):
So it's a really good model what are some of the
biggest challenges that youcurrently face as a location,
independent professional?
Weston Davis (36:38):
right now.
We're living in a time periodwhere it is very difficult to
get like upper level remote workjobs.
I know that there's a lot ofarticles that say the economy is
strong, job market is good, butI tell you I'm not feeling that
, and I know a lot of otherpeople aren't either.
It's very difficult to get anew job these days, and I say
that as that's one way ofgetting income.
(36:59):
We're talking about freelancinghere.
I think it can be challengingto get freelancing clients too.
It's just a very competitiveenvironment at this point.
Talking about the websiteindustry, currently AI is
disrupting things and makingthings simultaneously easier and
harder to progress.
I think AI is an immenselypowerful tool, but a lot of the
(37:20):
search engines are figuring outhow to use it and they're making
adjustments that are crackingdown or changing the game so
rapidly for creators.
For example, I believe lastmonth or two months ago, google
de-indexed 40% of the internet.
I'm going to say that again inlanguage you'll understand.
Google removed 40% of websitesfrom search.
(37:42):
That's if they were makingmoney through their websites.
40% of the internet just losttheir business, and the reason
is because Google deemed theircontent unhelpful rubbish.
Ai, cheap quality crap.
But if you're a small businessowner, you don't know the rules
like I do.
I study them.
(38:02):
This is where I want to go withmy profession.
Also, talking about AI, there'sa question.
I feel like the bar isconstantly being raised these
days.
I've learned so much and Istill feel like I'm constantly
under threat of being renderedcompletely irrelevant by
technological progression In theSEO business and website
(38:23):
content business.
I think a lot of people aresaying that it's going to be
good for the best talent, thoughit will enhance them, not take
their jobs.
But that's the best you got tobe, the best to rise in.
Today, the mediocre are dead.
I'm going to say that again themediocre are dead in the world
of AI, and that's a very scarything.
(38:44):
I do not want to be mediocre.
I'm terrified of being mediocrebecause in five years, mediocre
is dead.
So that's a big deal I thinkthe future of there's also a
question about is AI the Googlekiller?
Are we still going to searchfor things on Google?
Are we still going to searchfor Weston Davis's opinion on
martial arts when we can askChatGPT or Gemini to give us
(39:06):
information on martial arts andthe answer there is hey.
I want to make sure that whenChatGPT or Gemini mentioned
stuff on martial arts, it'sreferencing my website.
So I still get traffic that way.
So that's a new frontier.
And talking a little bitpersonally, one of my biggest
challenges with locationindependence so this might ring
true for a couple of yous is myfamily.
(39:27):
My father is elderly and he isin his life where he does need
help, but he's very stubbornabout getting it from any
outside source other than family, like me.
So I last year I actually had alocation independent job where
I could go anywhere and for mostof the time I was living in San
Francisco, which is veryexpensive taking care of my
(39:49):
father because emotionally it'she needs me and it's tough, but
it's difficult for me to leavehim knowing that he wouldn't be
able to take care of himself.
I just want to mention thatbecause maybe this will speak to
you.
There's times where I think alot of people's parents and
families and friends can be veryresistant about you traveling
(40:10):
the world or stuff like that.
But there's a whole addeddimension of difficulty to
really spread your wings andlive location independent and
free when you have an elderlyfamily member who needs you to
survive, and it's a long processof compromise and difficult
discussions to help that personaccept that they need that.
(40:34):
We need to put structures inplace that don't involve you or
me being the support, the fullsupport.
Of course we are going to bethere for them.
But yeah, that's one of thebiggest challenges I've dealt
with in my location independentcareer and when I talk to people
about it they're just like wow,that is a tough problem and I
(40:54):
don't know how to solve it.
And I tell you what I don'treally know how to do it either.
I'm figuring it out as one ofthese days.
Alex (41:03):
How did you assess the demand for your products or
services in the market?
Weston Davis (41:08):
So when building a website or a YouTube or a
content channel, I think there'sa lot of tactics and tools that
make it fairly easy.
Talking about websitesspecifically, it's very easy if
you have the right tools.
I used Ahrefs.
I could have used SEMrush orUbersuggest, but I used Ahrefs
to research the topics that Iwanted to write about with
(41:30):
martial arts and I saw that alot of these search terms let's
say, martial arts, weapons ortaekwondo could get thousands of
monthly visits and theirkeyword difficulty, which is a
ranking that Ahrefs giveskeywords based off of their
competitiveness, was almostuniversally in the easy category
or the mildly easy category.
(41:51):
It still takes a lot of work toget them, but it was incredible
the opportunities that wereavailable there.
I also assessed the advertisingcapability by going on AdSense
and searching terms related tomartial arts that people would
advertise to pay money topromote.
This was a trick I got doingresearch on how to do this stuff
on YouTube videos and thathelped establish that there was
(42:14):
definitely some monetizationpotential there.
I did a lot more research intoaffiliate products, like the
best affiliate programs formartial arts, and determined
that there were a lot ofproducts like equipment martial
arts buy to train or services.
Like I saw, you could make somedecent money promoting kung fu
retreats, for example.
So there were all these.
(42:35):
There were all theseopportunities in place.
I just saw that it was.
It was uncompetitive, it waspopular, there was a lot of
traffic, there were monetizationopportunities.
Alex (42:46):
What advice would you give to somebody who's looking
to start their own location,independent business or
freelance career?
Weston Davis (42:53):
The beautiful thing about being a freelancer
or entrepreneur is that you cando things for yourself, and in
today's world, I think that ismore critical than ever.
Being raw, frank and maybeslightly bitter, I'm going to
say that you cannot rely onanyone for your career or your
(43:15):
life.
It's beautiful when theysupport you, and I think people
are really there for you onceyou reach a level where there's
value for them.
But think about it Back in theold days certainly before my
generation you could get anentry-level job and they would
train you and you could get theskills you needed and you could
rise through the ranks.
These days, you need threeyears of experience for an
(43:38):
entry-level job, don't you Thinkabout it?
At every level of business,people want to hire people who
already have the skills.
How do you get the skills?
How do you get the resources,whether you're getting freelance
clients or a job or people toinvest money in you or
mentorship, it just really feelstoday that no one will give you
(44:00):
anything unless you alreadyhave something.
And this is where freelancingand entrepreneurship is the
answer to your problems.
By freelancing, by startingyour own business, by
volunteering, you get to controlyour progression.
If you want to work and youwant to develop your skills and
(44:22):
you want to start making money,you can't rely on someone else
to hire you.
You're going to get rejectednine times and six months later
you might get a job.
That's six months where youweren't earning money or gaining
experience.
But if you freelance, if youstart your own business, if you
volunteer, you create your ownexperience and experience.
(44:42):
So, talking about someone likeright now, I have three years of
experience.
I know enough to feel confidentthat I can start a business
that can make money.
At your start, just get started.
Volunteer work for less thanminimum wage.
Do anything you can to gainexperience in the direction that
you want your life to go.
(45:03):
If you want to get in realestate, shadow a real estate
agent.
If you want to get into SEO,volunteer like, network with
people on LinkedIn and volunteerto work with them.
If you want to get intopolitics I don't know do
grassroots politician campaigns.
My point is that you, to start,you're probably going to have to
volunteer.
(45:23):
You're probably going to haveto freelance at less than
minimum wage.
You need to make it worthwhilefor people, to give you the
opportunity to gain experienceand gain testimonials, and over
time you build things up andthen once you get to the point
where I'm at, where you havethree years of experience and
people still and it's still hardto get a job in this economy,
it's still hard to get freelanceclients or this that that's the
(45:47):
point where you start your ownproject, for two reasons One, it
might be a great source ofincome.
You might actually reallysucceed and build your own
business.
And two, you're learning,you're gaining experience.
You're controlling your owngrowth and progression.
You give yourself the gift ofgrowth.
So I highly recommendfreelancing and entrepreneurship
, especially if you are at apoint in your career where
(46:09):
you've been rejected for thehundredth or 200th or 300th job
and no one's giving you a chanceto prove yourself or no one's
giving you a chance to do whatyou were put on this earth to do
.
Give yourself the chance, screwthose guys and reach.
Actually, I say screw thoseguys, but still reach out to
them, still apply to jobs orstill hunt for freelancers or
whatever, but by building yourown thing, you are controlling
(46:30):
your growth, and growth iswhat's ultimately going to give
you a great career one day.
So get started.
You can get started freelancingor building your own business
at any stage.
The further along the way youare, the more likely you are to
succeed.
So I actually think that it is agreat idea to work with
professional companies, peoplewho really know their stuff, for
(46:52):
three to five years, especiallyfive years, because by that
point you're going to have likelow level senior skills.
You're going to know a lotabout that business model.
Those skill sets enough to sellyour own skills as a freelancer
or as a businessman have agreater chance of success.
But at any level you couldstart, and it's a great idea to
start at any level, especiallyif no one in the world is giving
(47:14):
you a chance right now.
Alex (47:16):
And how do you maintain a balance between work and life
to hopefully avoid burning out?
Weston Davis (47:21):
I certainly maintain a decent balance for
myself, but this question is alittle tricky because I think
there is a time to work crazyhard and there is a time for
work-life balance, and I'mtrying to understand what that
is.
So, talking about me quickly,what I do is I have a part-time
(47:43):
job and thankfully I'm able topay my bills doing it, and I
spend my free days building myown website.
I have reached a point where Iwant to make sure that I'm
exercising, eating healthy orstuff like that, and I'm
limiting my TV video game timeto ideally three hours a day,
although sometimes I go overthat.
I find it fairly easy to dothat and basically say, just by
(48:08):
like, by nine or 10 o'clock, I'mdone.
You know what I mean.
Like.
At that point I should justrelax.
So I think that helps me turnoff.
It's very important to makesure that you're not taking
calls or checking your phone atcertain times.
I used to work for a globallydistributed company, safety Wing
, and like half of my team wouldbe sending me messages at three
in the morning, so it's reallyimportant to just not look at
(48:31):
that.
Your choice whether you look atyour text messages or your
emails after hours, don't do it.
But getting back to thephilosophical question of
work-life balance I raisedearlier, I recently read a
wonderful LinkedIn post from aman I respect who built a
business, a very successfulbusiness, and one thing he said
(48:54):
that stuck with me is, at thestart work-life balance is
stupid.
Your intensity is youradvantage.
If you're working like 12 hourdays when you're young, when
you're hungry, when you're inyour 20s, early 30s, to build
something meaningful that cangive you work life balance, do
it.
And I was like that's veryinteresting and I asked myself
(49:15):
can I work like 12 hours, sixdays a week or seven days a week
?
Gary Vaynerchuk is anotherexample of this.
That guy, in his book Crushingit, recommended lionizing people
who were just like totallydedicating themselves all their
free time to building their sidehustles or their businesses.
I think the answer is you needto be doing something you love,
to work that hard.
(49:36):
If you're doing something youlove and it excites you and it
fulfills you, it's not going tofeel like work or pain.
You might even learn to lovethe long hours that you're
putting into your projects.
And I think when you're young,while you're in your 20s and 30s
, before you have all theseother life balances, like kids
and stuff like that.
It is an interesting time toconsider saying you know what?
(49:59):
Screw work-life balance, let'sget this going on.
You know what I mean.
That said, I'm not sure I wantto promote like burnout or
mental anguish.
I think it's really importantthat if you're going to work
like that, you have to findsomething that you love doing
and satisfies you, and I saidthis earlier, you need to find
something that's 50 fun and 50challenge.
It needs to be fun so that youenjoy doing it and so that you
(50:21):
don't burn out, so that it fuelsyou, it gives you energy, and
it needs to be also somewhathard so that you're learning new
things and you're growing andyou're learning from your
mistakes and building newbusinesses on top of of those
foundations.
Until you build a system, anincome revenue stream in your
life or multiple income revenuestreams that give you the
(50:44):
freedom of location,independence and to have a
phenomenal work-life balancethat others only dream of, as
they're working three jobs andserving coffee and then doing
the graveyard shift.
I'm also trying to find thatbalance, like how much work-life
balance is right for now andhow much work-life balance
should I just defer?
Should I just work like crazyduring 2024 and make this thing
(51:06):
happen?
I think, if I'm having enoughfun, I can.
So that's my answer to that.
Alex (51:11):
And what are your goals and aspirations for yourself and
the business for the future?
Weston Davis (51:16):
Starting with my business.
I'm very much aiming to buildthis website for two years and
this martial arts website andthen see where things go from
there.
There's a lot.
I have a lot of love for acertain style of martial arts,
but I would say that onlyrecently have I become nerdy and
passionate about stuff like UFCor the training or the sparring
(51:37):
.
I'm getting to an age where Ilike doing Muay Thai and
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and a lot ofguys get hurt doing that stuff,
even just doing the practice.
I don't want to break myselfand I'm not really at a point
where I want to spar and competein that sense, but I don't
really see myself doingcompetitions.
So I almost see an upperceiling to how passionate I
could be about this niche I'm in.
(51:58):
But that said, if it'sextraordinarily successful,
we'll see what happens.
You know what I mean and Ithink by adding more of my
dancing elements into it, Ithink I might increase my
passion.
But getting back to the pointmy aspirations for my own
business are in two years it'seither I'm going to learn an
enormous amount, no matter what,which is great, that's
guaranteed, whether I win orfail.
(52:19):
I've developed so many strongskills.
I've learned how to buildWordPress websites, which is a
skill I could sell.
I'm learning so much aboutaffiliate marketing, which is
something I could use for otherbusinesses, etc.
And in two years time, mybusiness will either be a nice
side source of income or maybeeven a full time source of
income, and there's also thepossibility that, if one day I'm
(52:43):
done with this martial artstopic, I could sell my website
for a decent sum.
There's ways of doing that.
My aspirations going beyond thatfor business, though, when I
decided to make a website, Ithought that the thing I could
truly commit my life to isresearching and finding
(53:03):
resources that will help peoplelike you and me, and I think
I've definitely talked to theright people here, especially
people like you or me, who yearnfor freedom and experience and
a full life, a life of meaninggiving people the resources to
get that, getting a little bit.
I know that's a vague topic,but some things I was thinking
about is like doing research onwhat goes into a lifestyle and
(53:26):
how to balance it, or somethingvery practical which a lot of
people can appreciate is givingpeople resources that will help
them get a career that enablesthe lifestyle they want, whether
they want to travel or spendmore time with family or so on,
because a career and theresearch I've done on lifestyles
a career has an enormous impacton your lifestyle.
(53:49):
Probably the only thing closeto matching it would be your
mental and spiritual health,which is another topic I would
be interested in exploring.
The reason I didn't write aboutthese things was they're very
competitive and sometimes thethings you would search around
these topics can be pretty murky.
I mentioned this earlier If yousearch lifestyle, you're not
(54:11):
going to see how to build a goodlife.
You're probably going to see alot about how to decorate your
house during Christmas and thebest curtains for your house.
So, my God, this is what we'researching for with lifestyle.
But I digress.
But I started with martial artsbecause I needed to develop my
skills, my power, my capacity todo something great, and that is
(54:32):
what I'm doing.
I'm developing my ability togive.
My aspiration is, I think, agood example of one of my idols
would be Tony Robbins.
Those would be Tony Robbins.
That is probably the greatest.
He's probably the greatestforce human force towards
helping people improve theirlives and live more meaningfully
(54:54):
, and I would love to worktowards that same end.
I would be happy to do it bymyself and I would honestly.
I think the best way of makingan impact is through people.
Everything we get, everythingworthwhile, comes through other
people.
I honestly think To work withcompanies that truly enable
(55:25):
people to find meaning in theirlives, that would be my dream,
and whether I do it by myself ordo it working for a company, or
do it working in alliance withcompanies, the goal is the same.
I care about that because whenI was younger, I was deeply
depressed and I didn't see anymeaning in life.
Frankly, I was a danger tomyself at that time and I saw
(55:47):
cause.
I had no purpose.
If you have no purpose, youdon't see all the other
beautiful things in your life,which is something I realized
after I got out of that funk.
The whole world opens up and yousee the beauty and the love of
your family and your friends andjust the sun and the birds
singing and the flowers.
You can find gratitude everyday and that.
I understand that so deeply andit was so meaningful to me.
(56:10):
It's probably one of the mostspiritual things.
Finding purpose, findingpassion and reaching a point
where you can live out thatpassion, that meaning, is the
most beautiful thing I I'mdeeply grateful that I found it
for myself and I would love tohelp others find it, whether
(56:31):
it's through their mental healthor their work or remote work.
Location independence AssumingI figure everything out and
really establish myself with alocation independence lifestyle
in such a way where my family istaken care of and I can truly
explore.
I'm also very interested inexploring the possibilities of
the lives we can live withlocation independence or the
(56:53):
businesses we can build, andsharing that knowledge with the
rest of you.
So those are my aspirations.
Welcome back to the Remote Work Life podcast.
I'm your host, alexWilson-Campbell, and today we've
got a really exciting guestwith us.
Weston Davis is alocation-independent freelance
digital marketer who has workedwith a diverse range of
businesses.
Weston has a passion forhelping businesses grow organic
web traffic and attract morecustomers through strategic
(00:21):
content.
But what's even morefascinating is Weston's unique
side project his deepinvolvement in the martial arts
community.
Through his writing, westonshares insightful articles on
martial arts, offering guidancefor those looking to make
informed choices about theirtraining, while also diving into
real world self-defensestrategies and sharing inspiring
(00:42):
martial arts stories.
Today we're going to hear abouthow Weston blends his marketing
expertise with his passion formartial arts and the valuable
lessons he's learned from bothfields.
Weston begins by talking abouthow he started out in content
creation.
Weston Davis (01:00):
In school I majored in business and after
university I did a lot ofhospitality work because I had
this wonderful idea of travelingthe world and living an
adventurous life by working on acruise ship.
And then, a couple of yearsbefore COVID made it cool, I
became interested in remote workafter reading Tim Ferriss' Four
Hour Workweek and began a longcareer transition into a digital
(01:24):
marketing role.
At first I wasn't quite certainwhat I wanted to do and no one
would hire me because I had nodigital experience.
At that point, All of my jobshad been in hospitality, so I
had to volunteer and freelance,slowly but steadily, earning
like minimum wage, then moremoney, and experimenting with
(01:46):
different sorts of digitalmarketing, to find my way.
At this point, I am a digitalmarketer with three years of
experience.
My specialties are in on-pageSEO and writing website content,
and I'm refining those skillsall the time.
At this point, I have developeda wide variety of skills, all
geared around building,promoting and then monetizing
website content.
Alex (02:07):
I'm intrigued to know more about your business and
work, so tell me more about thatand how long you've been
running it for.
Weston Davis (02:13):
I've been freelancing and volunteering for
about five years, but I startedofficially freelancing about
three years ago, when I became afull-time digital marketing
freelancer, and over the courseof those three years I've
assisted eight small businessesin a variety of different
digital marketing tasks, butover time I've steadily focused
(02:33):
more and more towards SEO andblog content.
At this point, though, rightnow I am developing a new
business.
I have built my own website allabout martial arts and helping
people make inherent martial artchoices.
I'm monetizing it withaffiliate marketing, so like
promoting different productsthat people will need if they
(02:54):
choose to join, let's say, mixedmartial arts or taekwondo.
I've been at this for about sixmonths and the website is
progressing very quickly.
It's definitely hitting somereally good early metrics that
show that probably in two yearstime it will be a decent side
source of income?
Alex (03:12):
What inspired you to be location independent with your
work?
Weston Davis (03:16):
Wow.
So this question actually cutspretty deep into my why.
When I was a little boy, when Iwas asked what I wanted to grow
up, I would always say I wantto grow up.
I would always say I want to bean adventurer, like the people
I saw in movies, read about inbooks or played in video games.
And of course, everyone thoughtit was ridiculous because no
one could do that.
When they grew up they have tobe policemen or doctors or stuff
(03:37):
like that, and I was confusedabout my life for a while.
But when I became an adult I hadan epiphany and realized that
actually I could be anadventurer.
I just had to find a way ofmaking money while doing it.
And at first I thought the bestway of going about that would
be working on cruise ships, andit's not a bad lifestyle.
But after I learned aboutremote work and the location
(03:58):
independence that comes with it,I realized that was a better
avenue.
And what it really all boilsdown to is I fundamentally
believe that the true currencyof life isn't money.
It's the experiences we have.
Once we are old and can't moveany longer and we reflect back
on our life.
We're going to reflect on thethings we did and the things we
(04:19):
did not do.
We only have one life and wehave a limited amount of time
and I do not want my life to beboring.
I want it to be locationalindependence, so that I can have
a wide variety of experienceswith different people in
different places.
I also believe that locationindependence creates a wide
variety of lifestyleopportunities, like taking a
(04:40):
strong currency from one regionand bringing it to a less
expensive region.
Or alternatively and I thinkthis is something I want to
explore and it's starting tocome about business
opportunities.
We live in a time period wherepeople are able to live in a way
they've never been able to livebefore, and we're only
beginning to start to see thebusinesses opportunities that
(05:05):
are going to come out of that.
Alex (05:07):
Why inspired you to start this particular type of
business.
Weston Davis (05:09):
Okay, so for this question, I'm going to speak
about my martial arts website,Path of Martial Arts, which is
designed to help people makeinformed choices in the martial
arts they study.
And, being straight up, I gotinto this niche for selfish
reasons, for my own personaldevelopment.
At this point in my reasons,for my own personal development
At this point in my career, I'velearned a lot about SEO, I've
learned a lot about how to writeblog posts and I've also
(05:32):
learned a lot about affiliatemarketing.
So what that means is I knowhow to build websites, I know
how to market them and I nowknow how to monetize them.
And while I'm looking for newfull-time work to really refine
my skill set just a little bitmore, I built my own website,
partly as a way to make a sideincome, but also as a way to
develop my skills and constantlypractice SEO, copywriting, web
(05:56):
design, graphic design,podcasting.
I make audio blogs on myarticles all these skills and
the reason I chose this niche isI did an audit of all of my
interests and the ones I wantedto write about the most were
either very competitive or thesearch intent for those topics
was murky.
It's like I wanted to writeabout how to live a good life
(06:18):
and how to develop bettercareers, but if you search stuff
like lifestyle, you're going tofind a whole bunch of articles
about how to decorate your houseand Thanksgiving, so it's very
confused.
But I got to martial arts,which I have a background in.
I did about 10 years oftraining in Taekwondo and I'm
currently training in BrazilianJiu Jitsu and Muay Thai.
I've also trained in karate andcapoeira and I looked at that
(06:42):
and it's a very popular topic,as you could imagine.
But from a web searchperspective like Google, it's
extremely uncompetitive and I'mlike this is a fantastic
playground to practice my skills.
I can write and practice myabilities for SEO, copywriting
and such in this uncompetitiveenvironment where I can get some
(07:03):
easy wins and be motivatedthrough the learning experience.
And as I've gone along, I'vebecome much more nerdy about
martial arts and all the variousaspects of it and I really do
see that I am filling a niche.
I do a lot of research for mytopics different gear, which
martial arts are effective forself-defense or which martial
(07:23):
arts are best for kids and a lotof the articles I see are very
low quality.
They're written by people whoare better martial arts than me,
like their dojo owners.
But the dojo owners don't knowhow to write good content.
They don't know how to makewell-optimized websites that are
easy on the eyes, easy to read,that load quickly, and I'm
really seeing that I'm actuallyfilling a big gap in the market
(07:46):
by creating well-researched,informed, easy to read articles
about martial arts.
Alex (07:53):
How did you identify the niche for your products or
services?
Weston Davis (07:57):
I answered this in the previous question, but I'll
go a little bit more in depth.
As I mentioned, I did an auditof all of my interests for what
I would like to build a blogabout, and I determined, using
SEO tools like Ahrefs, that thenot just one martial art, but
the entire topic of martial arts, like all martial arts.
On Google, the search, it'svery popular, they're very
(08:22):
popular to search, but they'revery uncompetitive.
Like you, do not have to havetoo many backlinks to rank high
for those keywords.
Now, digging a little deeperthan that, what I would
recommend to someone who'slistening to this podcast if
you're considering starting abusiness, I think it's
worthwhile to write down all ofyour interests, everything you
(08:42):
are passionate about or at leastmoderately interested in, or
maybe you had experience in it.
I mean, for me, martial artswas something I did as a kid and
I hadn't done it for like I.
The last time I attended amartial arts dojo before I
started my new website was eightyears ago.
It's something that was in theback of my mind.
You know I wasn't thinkingabout all the time.
Only when I like dance orpractice doing like weapon
(09:04):
performances do I really channelthat martial arts, energy.
So I'd really recommend writingout all of your skills and as
you do research.
You want to look into domainnames.
You want to look into howcompetitive the topics you want
to write about.
Are you want to do research onadvertising?
(09:24):
Is there money if you were toadvertise the?
Are you want to do research onadvertising?
Is there money if you were toadvertise the keywords on the
topic you're interested in?
Do research into the sort ofproducts that you could promote.
I'm very big in affiliatemarketing and I did a lot of
research into various productslike punching bags or boxing
gloves or mouthguards that Icould promote on my website and
(09:45):
get a commission if someonebought those products through my
links.
So I would really recommend, asyou audit your niche, you come
up with your interests, you do alot of research to see how
competitive they are, if theycould be monetized effectively,
and as you choose a domain name,pay very close attention to are
there other businesses that usesimilar domain names?
(10:07):
If you search that domain name,are you competing with big
businesses like Amazon or Apple?
If you were going to name yourbusiness I don't know, apple
buys Apple store or whateverlike that you'd be competing
with Apple.
For that you want to be carefulof those things.
There's a lot of research thatgoes into choosing your niche.
Alex (10:25):
How did you attract your first clients or customers?
Weston Davis (10:29):
Okay, so I'm going to speak very briefly about my
volunteering experience and myfreelance experience, but then
we can talk about my website.
At the beginning, when I wasmaking the transition into
remote work, I had to volunteer.
I had to reach out to people onLinkedIn in topics I was
interested in.
I was really interested inremote work.
So I just joined all the remotework forums and met people and
(10:51):
spoke with people and offered tohelp however I can, and that
gained me some early experience.
It also gained me some like Iwould do some tasks and try new
things and some of them I'm like, oh, this is fun or oh, I'm
good at and you?
I also got some earlytestimonials out of that and I
met my first real client throughthat and yeah, so at the start,
(11:13):
if you're doing a careertransition, you're probably
going to have to volunteer andthen work for minimum wage and
then go up from there Switchingto my website, which is a
totally different business model.
So from a website perspective, Iam now, in six months, sold
about $200 worth of products onAmazon and different martial
arts websites.
I know how to do affiliatemarketing where, basically, I
(11:36):
join the program, the affiliateprogram of different companies
where I promote their productsthrough links that have my
unique tracking code.
And if a person reads one of myarticles about, let's say,
boxing gloves or coupons, whichis a sort of martial arts
self-defense weapon, and theybuy it, and they buy a product
(11:57):
off of the links that I'msharing on that page, I get some
commissions.
So, as I said at this point, Imade about $200 in six months.
I got to be more accurate.
I've sold $200 worth ofproducts in six months, which is
pretty good for a start, butthe commission I'm getting is
they were from three to 10%, soI've actually made probably
about $30.
But as a website increases intraffic and backlinks and such
(12:24):
those about somebody increasequickly, a lot of website
builders can make six figuresoff of a website or multiple
websites, and that's the paththat I'm on now.
Alex (12:35):
What steps did you take to launch the business?
Weston Davis (12:38):
All right.
So, talking about my martialarts website, I mentioned this a
little bit in a previousquestion, but I audited my niche
.
I did a lot of research on thedomain name, because that is so
important.
Your domain name really is youridentity and you want to make
sure that it's unique.
You want to examine the groundupon which you build, like I
should my.
(12:58):
I think my first name was likeyour martial arts journey.
I chose that domain name.
No one had it, but then Isearched and I saw that there
was another YouTube channel, avery popular and established one
, called Journey of Martial Arts, and I would be competing with
it and it could cause meliability issues where our
brands would get confused witheach other and they might send
me nasty emails.
(13:18):
I just saw all of this and I'mlike, oh shit, I got to change
my name, so I went with Path toMartial Arts and I realized that
with that name, it evokes thespirit I'm trying to get of make
informed martial arts choiceswhile also having, if you search
, path to Martial Arts, I'mreally competing with a couple
of forums for the first spot onGoogle, so that's fertile ground
(13:39):
.
After that, I signed on withWordPress, and WordPress is a
wonderful CMS to build yourwebsite with, because I was a
novice with WordPress up likethe way I wanted to, or
structure the website the way Iwanted to, and they walked me
(14:13):
through how to do it.
And by walking me through howto do it, they were teaching me
how to build websites.
And at this point I built twobeautiful websites using those
lessons.
I built two beautiful websitesusing those lessons.
After that, I think the firstthing I did was I targeted a
topic martial arts weapons.
I targeted it one becausethat's where I've had a lot of
(14:34):
martial arts experience.
I know my martial arts weaponsvery well.
I do a lot of danceperformances with martial arts
weapons and I also knew that Icould market those affiliate
products training staves or evenreal staves, or training swords
or real swords.
I started with that and thenafter that, I created a content
plan where I said, okay, I wantto create topics on what are the
(14:55):
best martial arts forself-defense.
So I'm going to structure it asa tier list and I might do a
martial arts industry report ortalk about what is the best
martial arts for kids or martialarts gear.
And I haven't written all thisyet.
I've written probably half ofwhat I just said, Because what
I'm realizing now is all of thisstuff is important for
different reasons, but I have toprioritize certain things.
(15:18):
Right now I'm prioritizingarticles about martial arts
equipment, because it means thatI'm creating more affiliate
links to martial arts productson my website and once I write
all of those articles, I'm goingto any article I write about
mixed martial arts.
I could post advertisements tomartial arts MMA gloves or MMA
(15:40):
boxing pads.
It allows me to monetize myfull website by writing those
articles.
My next step after that isgoing to be pursuing backlinks,
because right now, my websitehas no backlinks and it's still
on page two or even four or sixfor a lot of the searches I'm
going for.
Even though it's anuncompetitive niche, it's very
important for me to reach out toother martial arts creators or
(16:03):
communities or stuff like that,and encourage them to link to my
content.
So that's going to be the nextmajor step, did you?
Alex (16:11):
face any challenges in the startup phase and, if so,
how did you overcome them?
Weston Davis (16:16):
Oh, my God, have I faced challenges over the past
six months, oh Lord.
I came into this and I cameinto this from a strong position
.
I'd been writing websitecontent for years.
I'd had victories.
I'd gotten blog posts to rank apage one at Google at this
point.
I managed an affiliate programfor safety wing.
I learned from the very bestaffiliate marketers in the
(16:39):
travel industry in that job, soI came in very strong.
But I still faced hugechallenges over the past seven
months.
I think I've already mentionedthat the domain name was a
struggle.
I had to learn a lot about howto choose a good domain name and
make sure that it's going tohave great potential for the
long term.
I had to learn how to buildWordPress websites, and I think
(17:03):
I mentioned that WordPressthankfully has this excellent
assisted service where you canwork with happiness engineers
and they will walk you throughstep-by-step how to do, how to
write blog posts or how tostructure your website just the
way you want, and if you reallydon't know how to do it, they'll
help you do it.
But I never let them do it forme.
I said you show me how to dothese things, walk me through it
(17:26):
, but I will do it and by doingthat, I went from being a novice
in WordPress to actually beinga pretty advanced user in about
six months.
Affiliate marketing man.
It's a beautiful business model, but it comes with a lot of
hurdles, like, for example,amazon has very strict rules
about its affiliate marketing.
(17:46):
You can't copy paste images.
You have to use API HTML to getimages from them.
At this point, with the Amazonassociates program I had I
learned that joining affiliateprograms often takes like days
or even weeks, and I want towrite content like right now.
I learned about affiliatenetworks where you can join like
multiple companies at once justthrough that one application,
(18:08):
and that was a big time saver.
It definitely got me, and alsoit got me access to some of the
best companies that I wanted tomarket their products anyways,
that's how I found out aboutthat.
Going forward, I think joiningaffiliate networks would save me
a lot of time and energy Alsowith affiliate marketing,
there's compliance issues andsaved me a lot of time and
(18:30):
energy.
Also with affiliate marketing,there's compliance issues and
I'm a bit of a perfectionist.
I love.
I've really enjoyed building mywebsite and writing my content
because it's like building ahouse for me and I enjoy the
artistry of building a website.
So where I'm going with this isbalancing the artistry I have
in my mind with these rules isreally hard and it's very
satisfying to break throughthose walls at the end.
But it's like there have been acouple weeks or even a few
(18:52):
months where I was just bangingmy head against walls, trying to
figure out how to balance therules and limitations that these
programs were forcing on mewith my artistic sense of how I
want these articles to look.
And it really just takes a lotof talking to tech support and a
(19:14):
lot of research and a lot ofpractice and a lot of learning
to make that happen.
But I've recently brokenthrough some major walls and the
content's flowing swimminglyright now, so I'm so happy about
that.
And the last thing is writing.
I grew up being very proud ofmy large vocabulary.
I was taught how to write longform essays in English class and
(19:39):
then I get into sales andbusiness positions and writing
positions and realize, wow, noone wants to hear me talk about
all the details or jabber,jabber, jabber about this or
that.
They want me to keep it shortand simple, not keep it long and
lengthy.
And as I was writing, I wouldwrite these very long, very
detailed articles that even if Imade them visually stylized,
(20:03):
they could be very dense.
The way I got around that was Ispoke with, I found mentors.
I was very fortunate to connectwith the head of content at
SEMrush and I paid him forconsultation calls to advise me
on how to write my contentbetter and get to value faster,
and his advice definitely helpedme.
So reaching out to mentors wasgood and I also learned
(20:24):
something great If I write areally long blog post, yeah,
that blog post by itself is avery bad thing, but it's
actually an opportunity to turnthe topic into a content pillar
when, if I write about everymartial art and how it ranks for
self-defense on the A to F tier, I can actually create
(20:45):
sub-articles for each martialart explaining why they are
ranked the way they are, andthen briefly link you know,
briefly summarize that in themain article and link to it and
instead of having one extremelylong, extremely dense post, I
now have 16 concise, connected,interlinked posts.
That increases my SEO.
(21:05):
So those are some of thechallenges I've dealt with in
the past seven months and it'sbeen a really great learning
journey, frankly.
But oh my God, if I tell you,if I had hair, I would have
pulled it out a few times.
Alex (21:18):
What marketing strategies have been most effective for
you to grow your client base orgrow your customers?
Weston Davis (21:24):
At this point with my website.
It is all organic.
There are a couple of friends,especially in the martial arts
sphere, who I share my contentwith, to get their opinions, but
I have to say that for the mostpart, I write the articles, I
index the articles, I make surethat they are as well written as
I possibly can, and one of thebeautiful things about websites
(21:44):
is I can update them to makethem better written and more
stylized to attract moreattention.
And, following my SEO playbook,in the past six months I've
gone from zero monthly trafficto over 150 visitors a month,
which is a good start.
In my experience with SEO, Iknow that probably in a year, by
(22:07):
the end of the year, especiallyif I keep going at the rate I'm
going or increase the amount ofcontent I'm going at, which is
actually very possible now thatI've built a lot of the systems
that were slowing me down, I'mconfident that I could get a
thousand views and monthlyvisitors and probably by two
years that number could go to5,000 or above, depends how hard
(22:27):
I work, and I'm working prettyhard.
So I think I could go above5,000 in two years, but that's
all organic.
One strategy that I'm mullingaround in my mind right now and
I'm about to implement it is Ido these dance performances with
martial arts weapons or usingmartial arts techniques and I'm
thinking that I will create asection on my website where I
(22:48):
will integrate YouTube videos ofme doing these dances and
promote the products that I'musing.
If I'm doing a staff dance, Ican promote the staff, but I
think it also creates anothermarketing avenue and also an
element of virality where I candress up as Saitama from One
Punch man and do some martialarts stuff, or dress up as Fade
Rothman and do like dancing withknives or stuff like that to
(23:09):
draw in a more casual,interested crowd who might then
check out the highly informative, no-nonsense martial arts
articles that I've written.
So that's another avenue to getbacklinks.
That's going to be a majorthing for me and I'm on that end
.
I'm thinking that I'm going tohave to do some community work,
where I'm going to have to joinmartial arts communities and
(23:29):
develop relationships withdifferent martial arts
businesses so that they promoteme, and that's a very important
element of my marketing, becausewithout backlinks my web pages
their growth is going to becapped what sets you apart from
your competitors In the martialarts sphere.
I would say that if you look atvideos on YouTube or TikTok, the
(23:57):
topic of martial arts iscompetitive.
You definitely could tell anamateur from someone who's like
a professional fighter in MMA ora sword master who could cut
through three watermelons in oneslice.
You know what I mean, but inweb search it's a lot simpler,
and that's the primary arenawhere I'm competing right now.
I believe I only have trulyfour businesses that I would
truly consider real competitorsto myself.
My most of my competitors aredojo owners and martial arts
(24:24):
martial artists, mma fighters.
They have a lot of experience.
They are.
They're almost certainly betterfighters than I am.
They are less rusty.
They've trained longer.
They probably trained studentsI've never trained any students
so they have the advantage ofhaving more experience and more
skill as a martial artist.
(24:45):
My advantages, though, is thatthey are terrible writers,
generally speaking, and they'reeven worse with web design and
seo.
If you look at most of theranking articles for what is
taekwondo, or what is itshistory?
Or is it good for kids, or isit good for self-defense?
What is the equipment that Ineed if I'm going to start
(25:06):
training in Taekwondo?
The articles are crap.
They really are Talking aboutmy strengths now and my
advantages is I know how to doSEO far better than them.
I'm a better writer, but I alsoam very determined to research
good information.
I intensely research the topicsI'm on Right now.
For example, I'm writing aboutwriter, but I also am very
determined to research goodinformation.
I intensely research the topicsI'm on right now.
(25:26):
For example, I'm writing aboutTaekwondo gear that you're going
to need.
So it'd be stuff like a uniform, like a chest protector, the
right head gear and stuff likethat, and at first I, from my
own experience, I knew what sortof gear you could use.
But doing my research, Ilearned that if you want to
compete in Taekwondo at thehighest level, like
professionally or at an Olympianlevel, you need gear that is
(25:49):
approved by the World TaekwondoFederation, and I completely
altered my article to find gearapproved by them.
Adidas makes a whole bunch ofgear that's approved by the
World Trade Taekwondo Federation, so you can use that gear at
any level.
And I made sure that was thestuff I was promoting, because I
want to make sure that if Irecommend something, it's
(26:10):
well-reviewed.
I've personally used it ideally, but rarely that is the case,
or it's got to be something thatyou can carry all the way to
the top, that you keep on using.
For years.
I put a lot of energy intomaking sure that my information
is good and that I'mrecommending the right things,
and especially if I'm talkingabout stuff I don't know, like
I've written about mixed martialarts.
(26:30):
I've never done mixed martialarts and I've ranked martial
arts trainers who are way moreexperienced than me on YouTube
comparing different martial artsstyles, and I took detailed
(26:51):
notes about what they said andreferenced those notes and
linked back to the parts of thevideos where they spoke about it
.
When I said something that wasthat I didn't know was that I
hadn't personally experiencedthese more professional people
had experienced.
So I put in tremendous researchand energy into making sure
that what I'm saying has rounds,has backing and you know,
(27:15):
between them and me, hopefullywe're getting close to the truth
.
I also, on my website, reallystrive to be humble and let
people know that there's a lot Idon't know and I'm doing the
best I can and I'm referencingthe work of other people.
So and that's something I alsodon't see a lot of my
competitors.
So those are some ways I standapart.
Alex (27:34):
How do you stay productive while working
remotely?
Weston Davis (27:38):
Staying productive while working remotely is a
process of years, if not alifetime.
I'm certain for some people itis a lifetime process.
I certainly.
When I started working remotely, if the pressure was getting to
me I could easily getdistracted.
I could goof around on Netflix.
This was some years back.
Over the years I learned that Ithink working remotely, and
(27:59):
especially if you're asolopreneur or a freelance,
you're setting your own schedule.
It's super important for me toI keep two schedules.
I keep a Google calendar whereI write out all the different
things I'm supposed to do duringthe week and for really
important meetings like, forexample, recording this podcast,
I mark those things in red so Imake sure I don't miss them.
I also keep a daily journal andI write on a long post-it form
(28:21):
like the work tasks I have to dowhat are the top three things I
need to do today, what are thetasks and chores I need to do?
And I also have a couple oflittle daily things like daily
exercise, brushing my teethtwice a day, stuff like that.
Those are a couple of ways Ikeep myself organized and keep
myself focused on the bigpicture For this business
staying organized in that I'veactually created sort of my own
(28:44):
content calendar where I'veidentified topics for different
things and I have it all in aspreadsheet and I also keep
track of.
I have notes for every articleI write and over time I'll
realize oh hey, I actually needto update the affiliate links on
this page to make sure they'remore compliant.
Or I think that after I writethis future article in a few
months I need to come back tothis article and link back to
(29:05):
that article, or so on and soforth.
So that's another way I stayorganized.
I think the last thing I wantto say about this topic is in my
work.
I find that the sweet balance ofwork is your job should be 50%
fun, engaging and free flowingand it should be 50% very hard,
(29:25):
very challenging, but you'relearning a lot.
See, if your job is like alwaysfun and super easy and stuff
like that, it means you're notgrowing.
But if your job is super hard,where and I had this like where
I was trying to solve some verychallenging affiliate marketing
compliance and design problemsand web design problems even
earlier than that, it was justso hard and so painful.
(29:49):
I was learning a lot but I washaving like zero fun and my
productivity would nosedive,where I would spend more time
playing video games or more timewalking because I just wanted
to get away from my work.
And I think as you do remotework and as you grow as a
professional, you're going to gothrough times where sometimes
you're having a lot of fun andit's just so easy to do the work
(30:11):
, but you're probably notgrowing that much and other
times you're just going to belike oh my God, it is so hard
and I'm slamming my head againstthe wall and I'm bleeding hard
and I'm slamming my head againstthe wall and I'm bleeding.
It hurts doing this work.
And as much as you can try andfind and choose work where you
reach that balance of you'rehaving some fun and you're
(30:32):
learning some stuff, that's thesweet spot and if you are in
that sweet spot you will beproductive, you will grow,
you'll become a betterprofessional and you will get
better career opportunities overthe years.
How?
Alex (30:43):
do you manage the day-to-day operations of running
your business Are there anyparticular tools or techniques
that you use?
Weston Davis (30:51):
All right, so for day-to-day stuff.
I mentioned in a previousquestion and how do I stay
productive?
Google Calendar Get a calendar.
It is super important for yourlife.
I also personally love writingdown my daily tasks in my
journal and scratching them off.
It feels so good to scratchthem off.
If I scratch off everything onmy list, I've had a really good
day.
(31:11):
I tell you that In my websitebusiness, every morning I check
Ahrefs and I also check GoogleAnalytics and I check WordPress
activity to see how my websiteis growing, if any technical
health issues have cropped up orwhatever.
To monetize my website, I'verecently invested in a program
(31:32):
called Lasso, which tracks allof my affiliate links, which is
extremely helpful.
I was having to use aspreadsheet to track all of the
sales and stuff up until thispoint and it's also really
useful for creating affiliatemarketing promotions and using
Amazon products in a way that'scompliant, while also still
being able to use their imageswithout having to do HTML coding
(31:53):
or API Getting a littletechnical here.
When it comes to writing, I'mdefinitely using a lot of AI,
but not in the way you wouldthink.
I don't tell hey, I don't tellAI hey, write this article for
me and I'm going to copy pastethat shit.
No, I use AI to help me edit mywriting.
I'll write what I want to sayand I'll run it through Chad,
(32:14):
gvt or Gemini and say, hey,rewrite this using simple words.
I want it to condense my ideas,make it easier to read while
still keeping the main spirit,and oftentimes there's a lot of
times where I'm like, okay, this, and I do the sentence by
sentence.
Oftentimes a sentence is perfect.
I'm like, oh, awesome, I'lljust copy paste that.
But other times, like AI isjust not getting the message, I
(32:36):
need to edit it myself.
Or I actually don't like how AIis rewritten and I alter that.
So AI plays a major role in howI edit my stuff.
I also sometimes use it to lookup these topics, but I always
want to find the sources of thetopics if I'm going to be
writing long form about them,because in the modern age, it's
so important to establishcredibility, and if you don't
(32:56):
have the credibility withinyourself, you need to have the
credibility of other people whoare smarter than you and have
spent, or who have at leastspent, more time writing the
topics than you have and havecredibility.
Alex (33:07):
You need to reference them can you give me a high
level view of the differentrevenue streams within the
business and, if possible, whatthey generate?
Weston Davis (33:17):
ladies and gentlemen, this is the section
you have been waiting for,because I'm going to share with
you something that is veryvaluable for a wide variety of
people who want to becomelocation independent.
In the website business and inthe YouTube business.
There's a thing calledaffiliate marketing, and you
might not know this, but 80% ofthe businesses you love, from
(33:39):
the mom and pop brick and mortarto the big Apples and Googles
and Disneys have an affiliateprogram.
What it is in a nutshell is youjoin an affiliate program
saying that you will promote theproducts of this business and
you promote it as a link.
They give you a link to any oneof their products with a
(33:59):
tracking code unique to you, andif you share that link on your
website and talk about theirproducts, or if you share that
link on your social media oryour YouTube channel and people
click and buy, you get acommission based on the sale.
The commissions range fromcrappy commissions, like 3%, to
awesome commissions, like 25% ofthe sale.
Imagine selling, let's say, a$5,000 massage chair and you get
(34:24):
10% of that.
If you advertise these $5,000massage chairs on your YouTube
channel or your website orwhatever, and you make a sale
every time you make a sale,you're making $500 for that 10%
on the $5,000.
So you know a lot of people aremaking six to seven figure
incomes on this stuff.
I used to work at Safety Wingwhere I worked with the best
(34:46):
travel influencers in the worldand the affiliate marketing.
These are people like you andme who got interested in remote
work, decided to start travelingand they wrote articles about
their travels and usually they'dwrite it in a frame of here's
the awesome stuff to do inMexico or here's the stuff to
watch out for in Thailand,thailand, or here's the most
beautiful parks in the world.
(35:07):
As they do it, they have theseaffiliate programs like travel
insurance or backpacks or hotelsor flights you can do, and
these guys were paying for theirtravels and their lifestyle by
writing these articles andpromoting these products.
It's an extremely powerfulmodel.
Another revenue stream that Ican use on my website is AdSense
(35:28):
and advertising, which issomething that I can do.
Once my website hits certainmetrics, I can put WordPress ads
on my website.
After I get 1,000 monthlyvisitors a month, I can also do
Google AdSense as I get approvedfor their program.
A couple of other ways ofmonetizing, like websites and
YouTube channels are likeselling my own products or
(35:50):
creating digital resources thatI could sell, usually like
educational resources or stufflike that.
Website writer, youtuber orsocial media influencer, there
are going to be businesses thatwill pay you to use affiliate
links or advertisements fortheir products on your website.
So not only are you getting theaffiliate revenue or the
(36:12):
advertising revenue, but you'realso getting like 500 to a
thousand or ridiculous amountsIf you're like huge, like a
major influencers might get paidlike $10 dollars for a post,
and that post generates a lot ofadditional affiliate marketing
revenue for your, for them and alot of sales for the business.
Alex (36:30):
So it's a really good model what are some of the
biggest challenges that youcurrently face as a location,
independent professional?
Weston Davis (36:38):
right now.
We're living in a time periodwhere it is very difficult to
get like upper level remote workjobs.
I know that there's a lot ofarticles that say the economy is
strong, job market is good, butI tell you I'm not feeling that
, and I know a lot of otherpeople aren't either.
It's very difficult to get anew job these days, and I say
that as that's one way ofgetting income.
(36:59):
We're talking about freelancinghere.
I think it can be challengingto get freelancing clients too.
It's just a very competitiveenvironment at this point.
Talking about the websiteindustry, currently AI is
disrupting things and makingthings simultaneously easier and
harder to progress.
I think AI is an immenselypowerful tool, but a lot of the
(37:20):
search engines are figuring outhow to use it and they're making
adjustments that are crackingdown or changing the game so
rapidly for creators.
For example, I believe lastmonth or two months ago, google
de-indexed 40% of the internet.
I'm going to say that again inlanguage you'll understand.
Google removed 40% of websitesfrom search.
(37:42):
That's if they were makingmoney through their websites.
40% of the internet just losttheir business, and the reason
is because Google deemed theircontent unhelpful rubbish.
Ai, cheap quality crap.
But if you're a small businessowner, you don't know the rules
like I do.
I study them.
(38:02):
This is where I want to go withmy profession.
Also, talking about AI, there'sa question.
I feel like the bar isconstantly being raised these
days.
I've learned so much and Istill feel like I'm constantly
under threat of being renderedcompletely irrelevant by
technological progression In theSEO business and website
(38:23):
content business.
I think a lot of people aresaying that it's going to be
good for the best talent, thoughit will enhance them, not take
their jobs.
But that's the best you got tobe, the best to rise in.
Today, the mediocre are dead.
I'm going to say that again themediocre are dead in the world
of AI, and that's a very scarything.
(38:44):
I do not want to be mediocre.
I'm terrified of being mediocrebecause in five years, mediocre
is dead.
So that's a big deal I thinkthe future of there's also a
question about is AI the Googlekiller?
Are we still going to searchfor things on Google?
Are we still going to searchfor Weston Davis's opinion on
martial arts when we can askChatGPT or Gemini to give us
(39:06):
information on martial arts andthe answer there is hey.
I want to make sure that whenChatGPT or Gemini mentioned
stuff on martial arts, it'sreferencing my website.
So I still get traffic that way.
So that's a new frontier.
And talking a little bitpersonally, one of my biggest
challenges with locationindependence so this might ring
true for a couple of yous is myfamily.
(39:27):
My father is elderly and he isin his life where he does need
help, but he's very stubbornabout getting it from any
outside source other than family, like me.
So I last year I actually had alocation independent job where
I could go anywhere and for mostof the time I was living in San
Francisco, which is veryexpensive taking care of my
(39:49):
father because emotionally it'she needs me and it's tough, but
it's difficult for me to leavehim knowing that he wouldn't be
able to take care of himself.
I just want to mention thatbecause maybe this will speak to
you.
There's times where I think alot of people's parents and
families and friends can be veryresistant about you traveling
(40:10):
the world or stuff like that.
But there's a whole addeddimension of difficulty to
really spread your wings andlive location independent and
free when you have an elderlyfamily member who needs you to
survive, and it's a long processof compromise and difficult
discussions to help that personaccept that they need that.
(40:34):
We need to put structures inplace that don't involve you or
me being the support, the fullsupport.
Of course we are going to bethere for them.
But yeah, that's one of thebiggest challenges I've dealt
with in my location independentcareer and when I talk to people
about it they're just like wow,that is a tough problem and I
(40:54):
don't know how to solve it.
And I tell you what I don'treally know how to do it either.
I'm figuring it out as one ofthese days.
Alex (41:03):
How did you assess the demand for your products or
services in the market?
Weston Davis (41:08):
So when building a website or a YouTube or a
content channel, I think there'sa lot of tactics and tools that
make it fairly easy.
Talking about websitesspecifically, it's very easy if
you have the right tools.
I used Ahrefs.
I could have used SEMrush orUbersuggest, but I used Ahrefs
to research the topics that Iwanted to write about with
(41:30):
martial arts and I saw that alot of these search terms let's
say, martial arts, weapons ortaekwondo could get thousands of
monthly visits and theirkeyword difficulty, which is a
ranking that Ahrefs giveskeywords based off of their
competitiveness, was almostuniversally in the easy category
or the mildly easy category.
(41:51):
It still takes a lot of work toget them, but it was incredible
the opportunities that wereavailable there.
I also assessed the advertisingcapability by going on AdSense
and searching terms related tomartial arts that people would
advertise to pay money topromote.
This was a trick I got doingresearch on how to do this stuff
on YouTube videos and thathelped establish that there was
(42:14):
definitely some monetizationpotential there.
I did a lot more research intoaffiliate products, like the
best affiliate programs formartial arts, and determined
that there were a lot ofproducts like equipment martial
arts buy to train or services.
Like I saw, you could make somedecent money promoting kung fu
retreats, for example.
So there were all these.
(42:35):
There were all theseopportunities in place.
I just saw that it was.
It was uncompetitive, it waspopular, there was a lot of
traffic, there were monetizationopportunities.
Alex (42:46):
What advice would you give to somebody who's looking
to start their own location,independent business or
freelance career?
Weston Davis (42:53):
The beautiful thing about being a freelancer
or entrepreneur is that you cando things for yourself, and in
today's world, I think that ismore critical than ever.
Being raw, frank and maybeslightly bitter, I'm going to
say that you cannot rely onanyone for your career or your
(43:15):
life.
It's beautiful when theysupport you, and I think people
are really there for you onceyou reach a level where there's
value for them.
But think about it Back in theold days certainly before my
generation you could get anentry-level job and they would
train you and you could get theskills you needed and you could
rise through the ranks.
These days, you need threeyears of experience for an
(43:38):
entry-level job, don't you Thinkabout it?
At every level of business,people want to hire people who
already have the skills.
How do you get the skills?
How do you get the resources,whether you're getting freelance
clients or a job or people toinvest money in you or
mentorship, it just really feelstoday that no one will give you
(44:00):
anything unless you alreadyhave something.
And this is where freelancingand entrepreneurship is the
answer to your problems.
By freelancing, by startingyour own business, by
volunteering, you get to controlyour progression.
If you want to work and youwant to develop your skills and
(44:22):
you want to start making money,you can't rely on someone else
to hire you.
You're going to get rejectednine times and six months later
you might get a job.
That's six months where youweren't earning money or gaining
experience.
But if you freelance, if youstart your own business, if you
volunteer, you create your ownexperience and experience.
(44:42):
So, talking about someone likeright now, I have three years of
experience.
I know enough to feel confidentthat I can start a business
that can make money.
At your start, just get started.
Volunteer work for less thanminimum wage.
Do anything you can to gainexperience in the direction that
you want your life to go.
(45:03):
If you want to get in realestate, shadow a real estate
agent.
If you want to get into SEO,volunteer like, network with
people on LinkedIn and volunteerto work with them.
If you want to get intopolitics I don't know do
grassroots politician campaigns.
My point is that you, to start,you're probably going to have to
volunteer.
(45:23):
You're probably going to haveto freelance at less than
minimum wage.
You need to make it worthwhilefor people, to give you the
opportunity to gain experienceand gain testimonials, and over
time you build things up andthen once you get to the point
where I'm at, where you havethree years of experience and
people still and it's still hardto get a job in this economy,
it's still hard to get freelanceclients or this that that's the
(45:47):
point where you start your ownproject, for two reasons One, it
might be a great source ofincome.
You might actually reallysucceed and build your own
business.
And two, you're learning,you're gaining experience.
You're controlling your owngrowth and progression.
You give yourself the gift ofgrowth.
So I highly recommendfreelancing and entrepreneurship
, especially if you are at apoint in your career where
(46:09):
you've been rejected for thehundredth or 200th or 300th job
and no one's giving you a chanceto prove yourself or no one's
giving you a chance to do whatyou were put on this earth to do
.
Give yourself the chance, screwthose guys and reach.
Actually, I say screw thoseguys, but still reach out to
them, still apply to jobs orstill hunt for freelancers or
whatever, but by building yourown thing, you are controlling
(46:30):
your growth, and growth iswhat's ultimately going to give
you a great career one day.
So get started.
You can get started freelancingor building your own business
at any stage.
The further along the way youare, the more likely you are to
succeed.
So I actually think that it is agreat idea to work with
professional companies, peoplewho really know their stuff, for
(46:52):
three to five years, especiallyfive years, because by that
point you're going to have likelow level senior skills.
You're going to know a lotabout that business model.
Those skill sets enough to sellyour own skills as a freelancer
or as a businessman have agreater chance of success.
But at any level you couldstart, and it's a great idea to
start at any level, especiallyif no one in the world is giving
(47:14):
you a chance right now.
Alex (47:16):
And how do you maintain a balance between work and life
to hopefully avoid burning out?
Weston Davis (47:21):
I certainly maintain a decent balance for
myself, but this question is alittle tricky because I think
there is a time to work crazyhard and there is a time for
work-life balance, and I'mtrying to understand what that
is.
So, talking about me quickly,what I do is I have a part-time
(47:43):
job and thankfully I'm able topay my bills doing it, and I
spend my free days building myown website.
I have reached a point where Iwant to make sure that I'm
exercising, eating healthy orstuff like that, and I'm
limiting my TV video game timeto ideally three hours a day,
although sometimes I go overthat.
I find it fairly easy to dothat and basically say, just by
(48:08):
like, by nine or 10 o'clock, I'mdone.
You know what I mean.
Like.
At that point I should justrelax.
So I think that helps me turnoff.
It's very important to makesure that you're not taking
calls or checking your phone atcertain times.
I used to work for a globallydistributed company, safety Wing
, and like half of my team wouldbe sending me messages at three
in the morning, so it's reallyimportant to just not look at
(48:31):
that.
Your choice whether you look atyour text messages or your
emails after hours, don't do it.
But getting back to thephilosophical question of
work-life balance I raisedearlier, I recently read a
wonderful LinkedIn post from aman I respect who built a
business, a very successfulbusiness, and one thing he said
(48:54):
that stuck with me is, at thestart work-life balance is
stupid.
Your intensity is youradvantage.
If you're working like 12 hourdays when you're young, when
you're hungry, when you're inyour 20s, early 30s, to build
something meaningful that cangive you work life balance, do
it.
And I was like that's veryinteresting and I asked myself
(49:15):
can I work like 12 hours, sixdays a week or seven days a week
?
Gary Vaynerchuk is anotherexample of this.
That guy, in his book Crushingit, recommended lionizing people
who were just like totallydedicating themselves all their
free time to building their sidehustles or their businesses.
I think the answer is you needto be doing something you love,
to work that hard.
(49:36):
If you're doing something youlove and it excites you and it
fulfills you, it's not going tofeel like work or pain.
You might even learn to lovethe long hours that you're
putting into your projects.
And I think when you're young,while you're in your 20s and 30s
, before you have all theseother life balances, like kids
and stuff like that.
It is an interesting time toconsider saying you know what?
(49:59):
Screw work-life balance, let'sget this going on.
You know what I mean.
That said, I'm not sure I wantto promote like burnout or
mental anguish.
I think it's really importantthat if you're going to work
like that, you have to findsomething that you love doing
and satisfies you, and I saidthis earlier, you need to find
something that's 50 fun and 50challenge.
It needs to be fun so that youenjoy doing it and so that you
(50:21):
don't burn out, so that it fuelsyou, it gives you energy, and
it needs to be also somewhathard so that you're learning new
things and you're growing andyou're learning from your
mistakes and building newbusinesses on top of of those
foundations.
Until you build a system, anincome revenue stream in your
life or multiple income revenuestreams that give you the
(50:44):
freedom of location,independence and to have a
phenomenal work-life balancethat others only dream of, as
they're working three jobs andserving coffee and then doing
the graveyard shift.
I'm also trying to find thatbalance, like how much work-life
balance is right for now andhow much work-life balance
should I just defer?
Should I just work like crazyduring 2024 and make this thing
(51:06):
happen?
I think, if I'm having enoughfun, I can.
So that's my answer to that.
Alex (51:11):
And what are your goals and aspirations for yourself and
the business for the future?
Weston Davis (51:16):
Starting with my business.
I'm very much aiming to buildthis website for two years and
this martial arts website andthen see where things go from
there.
There's a lot.
I have a lot of love for acertain style of martial arts,
but I would say that onlyrecently have I become nerdy and
passionate about stuff like UFCor the training or the sparring
(51:37):
.
I'm getting to an age where Ilike doing Muay Thai and
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and a lot ofguys get hurt doing that stuff,
even just doing the practice.
I don't want to break myselfand I'm not really at a point
where I want to spar and competein that sense, but I don't
really see myself doingcompetitions.
So I almost see an upperceiling to how passionate I
could be about this niche I'm in.
(51:58):
But that said, if it'sextraordinarily successful,
we'll see what happens.
You know what I mean and Ithink by adding more of my
dancing elements into it, Ithink I might increase my
passion.
But getting back to the pointmy aspirations for my own
business are in two years it'seither I'm going to learn an
enormous amount, no matter what,which is great, that's
guaranteed, whether I win orfail.
(52:19):
I've developed so many strongskills.
I've learned how to buildWordPress websites, which is a
skill I could sell.
I'm learning so much aboutaffiliate marketing, which is
something I could use for otherbusinesses, etc.
And in two years time, mybusiness will either be a nice
side source of income or maybeeven a full time source of
income, and there's also thepossibility that, if one day I'm
(52:43):
done with this martial artstopic, I could sell my website
for a decent sum.
There's ways of doing that.
My aspirations going beyond thatfor business, though, when I
decided to make a website, Ithought that the thing I could
truly commit my life to isresearching and finding
(53:03):
resources that will help peoplelike you and me, and I think
I've definitely talked to theright people here, especially
people like you or me, who yearnfor freedom and experience and
a full life, a life of meaninggiving people the resources to
get that, getting a little bit.
I know that's a vague topic,but some things I was thinking
about is like doing research onwhat goes into a lifestyle and
(53:26):
how to balance it, or somethingvery practical which a lot of
people can appreciate is givingpeople resources that will help
them get a career that enablesthe lifestyle they want, whether
they want to travel or spendmore time with family or so on,
because a career and theresearch I've done on lifestyles
a career has an enormous impacton your lifestyle.
(53:49):
Probably the only thing closeto matching it would be your
mental and spiritual health,which is another topic I would
be interested in exploring.
The reason I didn't write aboutthese things was they're very
competitive and sometimes thethings you would search around
these topics can be pretty murky.
I mentioned this earlier If yousearch lifestyle, you're not
(54:11):
going to see how to build a goodlife.
You're probably going to see alot about how to decorate your
house during Christmas and thebest curtains for your house.
So, my God, this is what we'researching for with lifestyle.
But I digress.
But I started with martial artsbecause I needed to develop my
skills, my power, my capacity todo something great, and that is
(54:32):
what I'm doing.
I'm developing my ability togive.
My aspiration is, I think, agood example of one of my idols
would be Tony Robbins.
Those would be Tony Robbins.
That is probably the greatest.
He's probably the greatestforce human force towards
helping people improve theirlives and live more meaningfully
(54:54):
, and I would love to worktowards that same end.
I would be happy to do it bymyself and I would honestly.
I think the best way of makingan impact is through people.
Everything we get, everythingworthwhile, comes through other
people.
I honestly think To work withcompanies that truly enable
(55:25):
people to find meaning in theirlives, that would be my dream,
and whether I do it by myself ordo it working for a company, or
do it working in alliance withcompanies, the goal is the same.
I care about that because whenI was younger, I was deeply
depressed and I didn't see anymeaning in life.
Frankly, I was a danger tomyself at that time and I saw
(55:47):
cause.
I had no purpose.
If you have no purpose, youdon't see all the other
beautiful things in your life,which is something I realized
after I got out of that funk.
The whole world opens up and yousee the beauty and the love of
your family and your friends andjust the sun and the birds
singing and the flowers.
You can find gratitude everyday and that.
I understand that so deeply andit was so meaningful to me.
(56:10):
It's probably one of the mostspiritual things.
Finding purpose, findingpassion and reaching a point
where you can live out thatpassion, that meaning, is the
most beautiful thing I I'mdeeply grateful that I found it
for myself and I would love tohelp others find it, whether
(56:31):
it's through their mental healthor their work or remote work.
Location independence AssumingI figure everything out and
really establish myself with alocation independence lifestyle
in such a way where my family istaken care of and I can truly
explore.
I'm also very interested inexploring the possibilities of
the lives we can live withlocation independence or the
(56:53):
businesses we can build, andsharing that knowledge with the
rest of you.
So those are my aspirations.
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