Today I am presenting another written interview with Jacob. Jacob is a 26 year old internet marketer, web developer, SEO consultant. He owns a success eMagazine www.EliteEnvy.com, which is
directed at young adults. He has been making my income solely from the internet since mid 2012.
- What gave you the idea to start Elite Envy Magazine? Share your story.
Well, I was searching the internet about a year ago for a “business success” type eMagazine that was directed toward a younger generation of business owners and online entrepreneurs, such as myself. There tend to be a lot of websites like Success.com and Entrepreneur.com that target older people who own a business, but nothing in existence that helps my Generation, Generation Y, establish a profitable enterprise or learn the basics of marketing themselves. I created Elite Envy with the intention to help out those who want to create their own web based business, and help them learn the essentials to growing, marketing and earning an income on their own. The feeling of being entirely self sufficient while earning a daily income (without doing the 9-5 grind) is very liberating.
As I continue to write articles and grow Elite Envy, the hope is that the number of individuals that like our brand will grow, and help entice them to take the initiative to create their own online business. Our main objective is to free those willing to work hard from the daily ritual of self loathing, and the disappointment that follows when the eventual realization sets in that you worked your entire life… to line someone else’s pockets.
- How many people help you run the magazine? How has it grown over time?
At the moment I have a team of six people, including myself, who contribute to the website by writing and submitting articles based on their experiences in their given fields. I like to get insight from a variety of individuals with different backgrounds to add a fresh perspective to every article published.
As far as the back-end maintenance goes, I admin the website almost completely solo, with a bit of help from my associate and friend, Josh. Personally, I respond to all emails, design and edit the layout, upgrade and maintain the server compatibility and security, plus do all of the marketing myself. Most of my writers receive some small compensation, but I do have two individuals who choose to write for free as a hobby. They are extremely talented and I’m glad they are part of the team. (Thanks Jolene & Donna- You guys are the best!)
Elite Envy is just over a year old now and started out as a very small blog where I would publish business marketing tips based on my experience, and forward them to like-minded friends. Since its foundation it has grown pretty tremendously with a next-to-nothing budget. We receive between 500-1500 unique visitors a day currently, which puts us at around 60,000 page views every month. Over the past semester we have grown some serious legs, our users are helping us out with their exceptional word of mouth praise and compliments and we couldn’t be more thankful for it. You guys rock!
- Where do you come up with most of the topics shared in the magazine? What helps you come up with ideas?
Topics are actually pretty difficult to come up with for me personally, which is why I enjoy my contributors ideas and suggestions so much. Typically when writing my own articles I’ll ask friends who are new to the internet marketing scene for input on exactly what they are having trouble with, and then write an article based on helping them achieve success in that area.
Once in a while a great idea will pop into my head (one that I remember having trouble with when I was just starting out) and I’ll jot it down in a little notebook of random thoughts I carry with me. (I spared no expense on that notebook! It’s digitally customized with our logo and everything. Hahaha!)
- How have you gone about promoting your magazine?
I have tried a few different approaches, but with a low budget for marketing I had to get creative. So far I’ve dabbled in Google Adwords, Facebook and Linkedin advertising, which all cost loads of cash and offer very little return- so I had to adapt and change my game plan.
Optimizing articles for the Google search engine with the hopes to land on the first page is a staple in my approach. I talk pretty extensively in a few articles about tips and techniques to offer benefit for the reader , which helps Elite Envy snag a top spot on the SERPs. (Search Engine Ranking Pages) I also digitally designed and printed some business cards which I distribute fairly frequently, especially to local businesses that are new on the block.
Social media marketing is also a big one for us, where we use Twitter, Google + and Facebook to help drive traffic to our more interesting articles. Actually, in the beginning we didn’t have much faith in social media with our type of niche, but our Twitter astounded us by expanding at a really rapid pace. (Currently sitting at 50,000 followers!) With the success of Twitter we decided to try and duplicate the growth on Facebook, and although the outcome is less impressive than Twitter, its growth is steady. (We really didn’t attempt to grow it until recently, and although it doesn’t attract the same level of attention that our Twitter does, we will keep it updated and see what happens! Here’s hoping for the best!
- What are your future plans for 2015 and beyond?
The main objective for us in 2015 is to continue to grow in size and increase our readership every month.
How will we do that?
Well, a idea that I’ve been toying with for a few weeks now is to get in contact with a energetic YouTube personality that would be interested in creating success based videos for our site. I think the addition of videos would be ideal for Elite Envy’s target demographic, and hopefully will help bring in a younger type of viewer that’s accustomed to consuming their digital information in a video format. Hopefully we will see that plan come into fruition later this year, as we secure more funding and make contact with an ever expanding list of entrepreneurs.
Other than that, we are going to continue to hit social media hard, provide engaging and useful content and hope our readers return every week for our new updates.
Thanks again for having me, and I wish those of you reading the best of luck with your website success as well! Be sure to check us out at www.EliteEnvy.com should you need a push in the right direction.
We are here for you! 🙂
Yours,
Jacob Horning
