Perry Romanowski has made over half a million dollars teaching others the chemistry skills to make products like shampoo, conditioners and body lotions.
It was great to learn during this interview that Perry used my Blog Profits Blueprint as a starting point for his blogging career, then signed up for my Membership Site Mastermind course a couple of years later, which he modeled to launch his own online course. He’s brought in over 1,100 paying members, generating over $500,000.
I was surprised to hear that Perry also has a second blog and podcast about beauty products with a buddy (there’s nothing weird about a couple of GUYS talking about beauty products), holds a world record for juggling while running, and got his start blogging about a card game.
While taking a look at some of Perry’s web pages I noticed his membership site sales page had a very familiar design. It turns out Perry had copied one of my designs.
Of course he wrote his own content and tweaked things for his audience, but the layout and style was almost a direct copy and paste of my design. I wasn’t mad about this – I was happy! I love it when people copy what I do and it works.
As Perry explains during the interview, he replicated a lot of my approach and system for launching an online course, including…
This is exactly what I was doing and teaching in my course at the time, so it was great to hear about another person who put it into practice and make it work so well in a completely different niche.
The real key to Perry’s success is how dedicated he is to sharing his chemistry advice with the world, by releasing content from his blogs.
For many of his early years online, Perry was still working a full time job, yet he managed to find two hours in the morning before he went to work to write content.
I asked Perry if he spent a lot of time doing things like guest posting or other forms of ‘outreach’ that is common marketing advice today.
His answer was no.
Perry focused on his own content. His blog posts began to rank well in Google, bringing in free search traffic. Some of that traffic became subscribers to his email list, which he then used to find customers for his course (a class 3-step marketing process).
In science niches like chemistry, where there is a specialized set of knowledge that not many people have who want to spend time sharing it online, a guy like Perry can step in do really well.
If you also have specialized knowledge and you’re willing to share it by producing online content through a blog, chances are you won’t face a lot of competition, even today.
This can translate into top Google rankings because there just aren’t that many websites producing lots of high quality content about your subject.
Of course it’s still smart to do some preliminary research to make sure there is potentially money in your market, but as Perry demonstrates with his story, sometimes just being consistently helpful about a specialized topic is enough.
If you’re thinking about selling a course online and building your audience through blogging, this interview is definitely worth a listen. I also recommend you read or listen to my free Blog Profits Blueprint, just like Perry did when he first started.
Yaro Starak: Today on the line I have a guest who kinda popped out of nowhere. This frequently happens, actually, with my blog. He left a comment on my blog and made mention that he actually had followed one of my previous training programs, Membership Site Mastermind, and had grown his membership site (although I’ve just found it’s actually really a course) and made over half a million dollars from this program.
Now, whenever someone comes to me and says, “I followed what you did and made a lot of money,” I love to get them on the podcast to find out exactly what they’ve done. So today we’re gonna’ here all about this course and how it started and I’m really interested to share the topic with you, but first I’d like to introduce you to Perry Romanowski. Perry, thank you for joining me.
Perry Romanowski: Hello, Yaro. Thanks for having me on!
Yaro Starak: So I am looking forward to this because it’s, well, it’s my system that you kind of followed and implemented, but you’ve done it in a really cool niche. You’re in the chemistry world, aren’t you? So certainly something I know nothing about. So I can’t wait to hear how you decided to go, “Well, I’m a chemist, but I want to make some money online” and you’ve done that.
As always, though, I’d kinda like to go into your background first and I’m assuming might be kind of a giveaway here, but I guess you did chemistry somewhere along the lines in your previous education. Is that correct? Or was there like a previous career before you became a chemist?
Perry Romanowski: No, I was a chemist. So I went to DePaul University and got a degree in chemistry and, actually, I was getting a degree in biology first. But then when I was in my first senior year, I was looking and there were no jobs in biology unless you got a PhD, but there were lots of jobs in chemistry.
So I just switched my major and the first job that I got out of college was as a cosmetic chemist. And I went to work for a hair care company where I made shampoos and conditioners and hair products, and also skin products. And it was during that career that I learned to formulate cosmetic products.
Yaro Starak: Okay, when was this? What was the era?
Perry Romanowski: 1992 was when I started working at that company and I worked there for 17 years until I was eventually making enough online that I left that job.
Yaro Starak: Oh, okay. So there is some overlap there.
Perry Romanowski: Yep.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so 1992 we’re talking kind of dawn of the internet, maybe ’95 when it became more exposed and sorta the late 90’s when the dotcom boom happened and it became a place for commerce.
Can you tell me, was there, like I love to know in terms of entrepreneurial aspirations, when did this start for you? Did you kind of, you know, sit there making shampoo but you saw these people doing cool things on the internet and you thought you might do something? Or when did that…?
Or maybe even before that, I don’t know, did you? A lot of people who’ve become entrepreneurs often had the lemonade stand or the, you know, sold baseball cards at the local flea market or did something. Maybe even you were thinking of selling your own shampoo at some point, I don’t know.
Was there any kind of inkling going on?
Perry Romanowski: Well, actually there was. I was always a fan of writing and so one of the things that I did in my spare time as a chemist is that I started writing freelance writing. Now this was before the internet was anything, and so I actually wrote for an encyclopedia company. And so I would write entries about the world of chemistry or how products are made and I would research them and I’d get paid, you know, I think it was ten cents a word. So you’d get a 3,000 word thing and you could make like 300 bucks.
Yaro Starak: Okay, interesting. That was on the side while you actually being a chemist making products.
Perry Romanowski: Exactly. Exactly. And I parlayed that freelance writing career into I started writing magazine articles in the cosmetic industry. So for industry-specific magazines there’s some targeted to cosmetic chemists and so I would write articles and make a little bit of money that way and edit books and things.
And eventually that led to an industry standard book called, “Beginning Cosmetic Chemistry” that I co-wrote with another author. And that book came out in 1996 and it continues to sell even today.
Yaro Starak: Wow. So you were prime to be a blogger, weren’t you? You were already writing so much.
Perry Romanowski: Well, yeah. And, you know, when I found out about blogging, my first blog actually was a blog about a card game.
Yaro Starak: No way.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, the card game is called, “Yuker.”
Yaro Starak: Oh, okay. If you said, “Magic: The Gathering,” I’d be weirded out.
Perry Romanowski: No, no, not Magic: The Gathering. It’s actually a game of skill, Yuker, and I just started a Blogspot blog ‘cause it was free. And the real thing was I used blogging as a way to inspire me to write every day because I really wanted to write a book about Yuker strategy.
And, actually the blog, I don’t write in it anymore, but the blog is still up. It’s called, “The Yuker Universe” and it just essentially teaches people strategy on how to play this card game.
Yaro Starak: When did you start that? What year?
Perry Romanowski: I started that one in 2005.
Yaro Starak: Oh, okay. So that’s not in the 90’s then?
Perry Romanowski: No.
Yaro Starak: Alright, so what were you, like, in terms of those ten years, then, from ’95 when you were writing in magazines to ten years later finally starting a blog on a completely different subject. What were you just working your job or was there any kind of playing around with the internet? Or was it, you were just a career man living your life? Family man? Or something like that?
Perry Romanowski: I was just an unsatisfied career man.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: I always looked at my job as kind of my problem, but they paid me enough money where I wasn’t really…I really wasn’t motivated by money to get out.
Yaro Starak: Wow. Okay, so, just to clarify, today, you live completely off what you do online, right?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, I haven’t had a regular job since 2008.
Yaro Starak: Okay. I didn’t mention earlier on that you’ve had over 11 hundred members in your main course, go through it. So, this is a pretty common situation that I think a lot of my guests on this podcast and certainly a lot of people I talk to go through or are looking to go through.
It’s that, “I’m in a job that I don’t really like, but it pays well.” It’s that golden handcuffs. It’s that phrase I just recently learned, basically means you don’t wanna’ stay there, but they’ve made it so good that you choose to stay there.
But it’s kind of not satisfying and it’s hard for you to leave and, because it take so much time, it’s hard for you to start a business. So did you have all that sort of quandary? That kind of situation where you really feel trapped and, you know, you did wanna’ jump, but you didn’t know how to prepare yourself to be able to jump away from your job?
Perry Romanowski: That was definitely me. I had a job that, you know, but I wasn’t actually unsatisfied with my job. My job was a fine job and they paid me a good amount of money and it wasn’t very stressful, you know, it was an 8-5 job.
Yaro Starak: So why’d you wanna’ leave? Why’d you want something else?
Perry Romanowski: I just always thought there was a thing in me where I should be better than this.
Yaro Starak: You had more to give to the world sort of thing?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah. To tell you the truth, the other thing is like there were other things I wanted to spend my time on. I mean, it sounds kinda silly, but I like to juggle so I wanted to spend time juggling. I like to run, I run a lot…and I just have all these hobbies that I wanted to do and the job was kinda getting in the way of that.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so you’re a juggling, card-playing chemist slash writer.
Perry Romanowski: I actually hold a world record in the sport of joggling which is running while juggling. I have the fastest 50 miles done while juggling.
Yaro Starak: Wow. That’s a thing. I had no idea. Do you, was that officially timed for record keeping?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records and everything.
Yaro Starak: That’s amazing. Well, didn’t see that coming, Perry. You certainly have a range of interests. Okay, well, let’s stick to the plan, though. I’m so curious about all these things, but let’s keep going forward. So you feel like you have more to give to the world, you wanna’ do more, but you’re in a job that’s not bad. So take us forward then. At what point and time, ‘cause we’re talking ’92 you start your job, you don’t have your first blog ‘til 2005.
Perry Romanowski: Right.
Yaro Starak: So I’m guessing there’s a good 13 years there where it’s just a whole lot of doing your job and on the side I’m guessing juggling and running and doing things you enjoy but just not really having the freedom to do as much as you want to. So…
Perry Romanowski: Exactly. Like when I discovered blogging, originally I did it, I was writing about Yuker and then I started, got this idea of writing about cosmetic products. And it was actually right around that time I discovered your free book, uh….
Yaro Starak: “Blog Profits Blueprint”?
Perry Romanowski: “Blog Profits Blueprint,” yeah.
Yaro Starak: Can I just ask though, ‘cause 2005 is, it’s actually when I started blogging.
Perry Romanowski: Okay.
Yaro Starak: And there was a lot of years before that where the internet was a thing. Now, did you use the internet for much before you started your blog?
Perry Romanowski: Not really, no. I used it for, yeah, I thought it was cool and I’d find stuff through Google and I’d use it for research. And I did start a little email newsletter called, “Quote of the Day,” where I had a list of people who I had their emails and I would send out a quote of the day.
It was actually a funny story. When my company, we were sort of slow on getting technology, but we had just introduced email in about 1996 and I had started sending out emails from work to all these people. And at one point I was responsible for over 90% of all outgoing email at the entire company.
But, so, email was never a thing, I never looked at the internet as something to make money on until I started the blogging and started doing some research and finding out that people actually made money at this.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so the blueprint would’ve been a big introduction to that.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, it was huge. I think I found you through ProBlogger, *indeterminable*. He was one of the first ones when I found your blueprint. But what I really liked about your blueprint was that it just told me stuff that I could just try and I that had immediate effects when I did that.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so did that when you launched the chemist blog? Was that at that point or was that with the card game blog, the Yuker blog?
Perry Romanowski: So, it was with, when I launched the beauty blog, I have a beauty blog called, “The Beauty Brains,” actually I simultaneously launched that one and my other one about running about juggling, “Just Your Average Joggler.” But I always knew that the beauty blog had the most potential for making money online.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so, okay there’s a lot of things popping up here. So you hadn’t started the chemist blog or business at all yet.
Perry Romanowski: No.
Yaro Starak: But you had a Blogspot, so a Blogger blog about playing cards, this card game that you were playing.
Perry Romanowski: Yep.
Yaro Starak: Then you discover the world of making money with blogging and then you go, “Let’s try a bunch of things,” so you create a blog about beauty which is called “The Beauty Brains…”
Perry Romanowski: Yes.
Yaro Starak: This still operates: real scientists answer your beauty questions.
Perry Romanowski: Yep.
Yaro Starak: And then you also had a jogging, juggling blog that…and these were all experiments to potentially make money?
Perry Romanowski: Right. I did them all and I didn’t, I did them all on Blogspot or WordPress…all the free sites. So I just started these free.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: My idea of making money on either of them, though, was always I would write this blog and then I would take the blog content and I would self-publish a book and then sell that book.
Yaro Starak: So how did things go?
Perry Romanowski: Well they went really well after discovering things about advertising that I learned from, you know, from your blueprint. I put on AdSense and at one point, this was very early in the blogging world, but at one point the sites were making over 3500 dollars a month just in AdSense money.
Yaro Starak: Wow.
Perry Romanowski: And all we would do is we would get questions sent in and we would write about whatever beauty products people asked about. Or I would write, as far as the joggling goes, my niche there was I figured I could get both jugglers and people interested in running and so I could write about those types of things.
And so, from an advertising standpoint, that was working very well. Now over time, with AdSense, I think there’s just so much more competition that those revenues just slowly and steadily declined to where they are now which is probably, you know, 4 or 5 hundred dollars a month.
Yaro Starak: That was the golden era for AdSense. I remember the sort of mid 2000’s 2005, 6 you could pretty much just put a blog up, publish a lot of content, and because, especially if you’re using Blogspot which is owned by Google…
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: …Google would send you a lot of traffic and you’re using their AdSense system which meant they’d get a cut for the advertising, too, so it was like a win and a win for them. And, for the bloggers, they could do really well. But like you said, it just sort of got so crowded and it just no longer became, I guess as good a viable income source. Certainly a scary one to wanna’ base your future on.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, absolutely. You have to soon get out of that or make that a supplement to something else.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so what happened next?
Perry Romanowski: So after that I, you know, I read your blueprint and there was the idea of, you had this course called, “The Blog Mastermind,” and I had considered taking that, but I’m very skeptical about all of these online courses, I have to say.
And I figured, before I took any course, before I paid any money for a course, I would do everything that you suggested in the free stuff. I would get as much out of the free stuff as I can. And it just turned out that just following the stuff that you give away for free—which I still find amazing—I was able to build a steady income from the beauty blog until then we self-published our first book called, “The Beauty Brains.”
And one of the things that I learned from your system was that you should start an email list. And so I got started up with AWeber, I started an email list, and we quickly built over 10,000 people on our list, just through our beauty blog.
Yaro Starak: Wow. What year was this?
Perry Romanowski: This would’ve been 2008.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so that’s three years since you started your first blog.
Perry Romanowski: Right. So in about three years we just took stuff from, took the best stuff from our blog, edited it, put it into a PDF, and self-published it. But when we launched it, we launched the book; we gave people free copies if they agreed that they would do a review on Amazon.
And this, back then we weren’t violating any rules that Amazon had so we did that and that got us to about 50 reviews on Amazon. And while it didn’t lead to a ton of sales we did make enough money to cover our costs and make some money, but what that did lead to was, a book agent was looking through Amazon they saw how many reviews we had, they saw our website, and they offered us a book deal.
And so eventually that led to a book deal with Harlequin in which we had a five-figure signing bonus.
Yaro Starak: Wow.
Perry Romanowski: And so that actually led to…so this was in 2008 that book came out, it was called, “Can You Get Hooked on Lip Balm?”
Yaro Starak: Great title.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, and so we did that and that actually led to going through the process of being on TV and I’ve been on the Doctor Oz show a bunch of times…
Yaro Starak: Wow.
Perry Romanowski: …and the Rachel Ray show. And that all came about just from the stuff that I, you know, just from my blogging activities led to the book deal, it led to being on TV.
During that time, though, that’s when I launched my “Chemists Corner” blog or website which had a more targeted audience and ultimately that’s the thing that led to making more money than even any of the other things I had done before.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So in the meantime, what had happened to the running/juggling blog and the card game blog?
Perry Romanowski: Well, after a year and a half of writing about the card game every day, I was burned out and so I never got around to turning it into a book like I ultimately was going to. Just other projects took precedent, but people still do contact me because of something they read on that blog. It still exists there and eventually I might do something with it, but I just have so many other projects that I don’t write in it anymore.
As far as the running and juggling goes, now that’s turned more into a personal blog. Because, actually, and this is a lesson for everybody, in 2013, I had, you know, it was a very troubling time for me because my web host, their server went down and they lost all the content on my websites.
Yaro Starak: Oh no.
Perry Romanowski: And the juggler blog, and they didn’t have a backup of it.
Yaro Starak: Oh god. Nightmare.
Perry Romanowski: It was a nightmare. So I lost almost all the content for my juggler blog, for my beauty brains blog, I lost all the content there. Fortunately for my other blog, I had that backed up on my own system and was able to recover.
So my juggler blog, I never really was able to recover all my content and it turned into more of a personal blog. It keeps track of my runs. Eventually, I’m gonna’ relaunch that but it’s just a holding pattern now.
Yaro Starak: Did you ever look up something like the Wayback Machine to see if it was archived there?
Perry Romanowski: Yes, and I got a lot of things from the Wayback Machine, but it just takes a long time to rebuild that.
Yaro Starak: Yeah, frustrating.
Perry Romanowski: Right, frustrating. And since I really wasn’t making a lot of money off of that site, so I have to focus on the things that I was doing that really could generate some income. To tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s a lot of money in running while juggling.
Yaro Starak: Yeah, fair enough. No, but yeah.
Perry Romanowski: No, actually, that website has been great for me, too. I mean, it got me in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Yaro Starak: Okay, now I gotta know…
Perry Romanowski: Sure.
Yaro Starak: …you’re still working a full-time job and you’re writing three blogs. How on earth are you, you know, managing? Not to mention getting on TV, still actually doing the act of running and juggling and playing cards. How did you make this work with your time management and your productivity?
Perry Romanowski: I have to say: I slowly got out of my job in 2008, so I only did that for about two years.
Yaro Starak: And what was the secret during those two years? ‘Cause a lot of people listening to this will be, “You know, I’m in a full-time job. How do you get so much content published?”
Perry Romanowski: So I would wake up every morning at 5 o’clock and I would sit down at my computer and I would write until 7 o’clock. I would get ready for work, go to work at 8 o’clock. And so I just, those two hours a day, really. And I was very dedicated to those two hours a day and I just got my writing done.
The thing about when you have a limited amount of time, it’s a lot easier to avoid distractions like Facebook and Twitter and that sort of thing. And so, now that I have all kinds of time, I’m much more distracted with other things.
Yaro Starak: Irony, huh?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: You’re a really good example of that cash prize I use on the blog profits blueprint of how to make a full-time income off two hours a day running a blog. You actually literally were just spending that first two hours in the morning to pretty much feed the machine, that content machine.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, absolutely. I focused all on content because there wasn’t really social media and stuff. That stuff wasn’t really around.
Yaro Starak: Right. That’s amazing. And that’s three blogs worth of content, still, in those two hours?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, pretty much.
Yaro Starak: Wow. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend that today to people starting out, but, you know, you’re a good example of how you can pull off that.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: Alright. So let’s go forward. So finally the blog that actually made the big money is coming up now, so your cosmetic blog. So how did that happen? Why’d you even think to do that? Like, were you…’cause normally you sort of think, “How can I turn this already successful site into a bigger money maker?” But instead you’re like, “No, let’s start something completely new.” What was the thought process behind that?
Perry Romanowski: Right. Well, when I, it all came around, I had that book called, “Beginning Cosmetic Chemistry,” and I work with an organization called, “The Society of Cosmetic Chemists,” and I am one of their instructors for their live courses. So I do continuing education for the industry.
And what I…
Yaro Starak: When did that start?
Perry Romanowski: So that started right around 19…right around 2000.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so you’ve been doing it for a while.
Perry Romanowski: Right. And so I do maybe one class a year.
Yaro Starak: Right.
Perry Romanowski: So it just got repeated. And I enjoyed doing the class and it was a 6-hour course and I would get 30 or 40 people to do the course. And then I started doing the math ‘cause I didn’t really get paid a lot to do this, I’d get my travel paid and then I’d get an honorarium for doing the course, but it made money for the organization and I was happy to do that.
But it started to occur to me all the people that were in my course were flying from all over the country and spending money on hotels and it was costing a lot of money to take this course. So I got this idea that I could just do this online.
And that’s about the time when you launched your Membership Site Mastermind and it just occurred to me that what I was doing live could be turned into an online course just kinda the way you were doing it.
Yaro Starak: Right.
Perry Romanowski: And specifically targeted for cosmetic chemists. And so that’s really what I did. I begrudgingly joined up with your course…
Yaro Starak: I was gonna’ ask: What brought you over the line this time, you know?
Perry Romanowski: Well, you wanna’ know what really brought me over the line was that I was so appreciative of the free thing that you gave out that helped me so much that when you came out with a new class and I saw the potential for what I could do with it, I just signed up. And it was almost more was I was paying you back for the help you gave me that you didn’t even know you were giving me.
Yaro Starak: Ah, okay. So it’s a real example of just, you know, give, give, give and you build up a lot of goodwill and at some point, like you said, you know, it’s almost like…you know that, what’s that called? The law of….it’s one of Cialdini’s psychology persuasion things. I don’t wanna’ turn this into…it’s a bit more warm and fuzzy when you say it your way, but it’s a sort of a…
Perry Romanowski: Law of reciprocity
Yaro Starak: Law of reciprocity, thank you. Yeah, that’s where I was heading. Yeah, exactly. So that’s that in action.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, and it really was that, because, you know, as a scientist, I’m really skeptical of these things, quite frankly. And I have to say, when I took your course, it was totally worth it, I have to say, but one of the things that I got out of it even more than the course material was the way that you did the course.
And the content was great and all but when I discovered how you ran the course using an email list and how you set up the pages and that really was enlightening to me. Where I could just pattern my course, ‘cause I knew all the content—I could record all the stuff and do all that, I knew the content—but the way it was delivered, that’s what I learned more than anything from your course that was most valuable for me was how to deliver it and how to do the course in that way.
Yaro Starak: I remember when I created Membership Site Mastermind and also Blog Mastermind, the two courses I had back then, I was a fan of not having too many moving parts. So a lot of people nowadays we have such complex membership site systems and course delivery site systems, learning management systems and I was like, “let’s just give them the content via an email sequence and have it locked away behind a password protected WordPress blog.”
You know, it’s a lot less confusing to set up and I was all about lean getting things done. And it’s funny you say that, because I actually, the very first course I ever took, which was a Rich Schefren training program, I think I learned more about how he delivered the training than I did the actual training. So I think that there’s a lot to be said for taking programs just to learn how it’s done than anything else.
Perry Romanowski: Oh absolutely. And I actually, I had no background in marketing or email marketing or anything and I’ve learned a ton of stuff, I’m on a lot of these, you know, email marketing, uh…
Yaro Starak: Newsletters
Perry Romanowski: …newsletters and things, yeah. And what I learned most from those, I almost never buy the products, but what I learn most is just how they do it and what is compelling to me and I pattern my own email marketing after the kind of stuff that people are doing.
Yaro Starak: Yep. You can’t find out how they do their products until you buy product, can you? So I was the lucky one in this case.
Perry Romanowski: No, absolutely. And, you know, you buy products…the one thing that I, before I’ll ever buy a product, is, what I have to do in my mind is I have to figure out, “How am I gonna’ make this money back with this product?” And I’ve been that way with a lot of things.
Like, I have a computer. If a computer works perfectly fine, I’m not gonna’ go buy an upgraded computer. The only time I’ll buy something upgraded is when what I’m using now, it doesn’t work as well and it’s slowing me down and then I will upgrade. A lot of times people will just upgrade with the potential. I upgrade or buy courses when they’re something I can’t do right now.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so. 2011, I think was the, I think that probably would’ve been the last run I did of Membership Site Mastermind, that’s the one you took part in, right?
Perry Romanowski: I took, I believe it was 2009 because….
Yaro Starak: Okay, so the first one.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, because that’s when I launched my first course.
Yaro Starak: Okay. Did you go through my free report the Membership Site Masterplan before you took the course itself? Or you just went straight into the course?
Perry Romanowski: I got your free e-book…
Yaro Starak: Free report
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, free report, I did that. Yeah, I went through that and I was, that one left me with enough questions and actually I was still mostly appreciative of the Blog Profits Blueprint that I figured I’d join the course…
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: …and see what happens.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So just before we move on, I’d love just to grab any feedback in terms of Membership Site Mastermind, maybe…actually let’s keep going because I think you haven’t built the course yet and I’d love to know what particular things you actually applied from my course in your course. What you learned there.
But before you even do a course, you had no audience in actual chemistry. You had it in beauty, but not in chemistry. So how did you even start this new business, basically?
Perry Romanowski: Well, what I had done was I’m fairly well-known in the cosmetic industry, so what I did do was I started a website called, “Chemists Corner.” Now I started Chemists Corner in 2008 and essentially I took the idea of, my audience was people who want to formulate cosmetic products and really what I wanna’ do is bridge the gap between people who had chemistry degrees and they didn’t know what they wanted to do with their life and if cosmetic chemistry was what they wanted to do they could go to my site and learn all about that.
And so I focused on the careers, I focused on the chemistry, and so I started to develop an audience there and right away I gave a free e-book called, “How To Knock-Off Any Cosmetic Formula.” And if you go to my website now you can get that free e-book. And so that’s when I started building an email list.
Yaro Starak: Okay, ChemistsCorner.com…
Perry Romanowski: Yes.
Yaro Starak: …is what we’re talking about now, if people wanna’ take a look at that. We should probably, just to clarify, TheBeautyBrains.com is the beauty blog we were talking about, so TheBeautyBrains.com for all the previous things we we’ve been talking about and we’re starting the ChemistsCorner.com story now.
One more thing before you continue with that story, did you do any kind of validation or pre-research to make sure there was a market for this chemistry blog? Because to me it sounds like a potentially very niche subject, and I’d be concerned. Is there any search traffic?
Especially because it’s later now, too, it’s more competitive. You’re not gonna’ have that, I don’t wanna’ call it luck, but that sort of more open playground like you did with your first three blogs where you can just publish content and you’ll get search traffic.
With the Chemists Corner you’re probably thinking, “Now this could…” It’s not gonna’ be just like easy in the sense like you just write content and people will show up. You have to do a bit of research, check if there’s a buying market, that sort of thing. Did you do that?
Perry Romanowski: I did no online research, but what I did do is I was in the industry. And this could go for people in all kinds of industries because I think there’s still a big hole for industry specifically focused training stuff. But in the cosmetic industry, no I didn’t do any research on whether this was an audience that was hungry for things.
I just knew from my experiences that I knew that we do continuing education courses, and I knew that I was a chemist and I knew what my internet activities were, and I knew what I wanted to learn and so I just started writing stuff to an audience that was like me.
Yaro Starak: Now, had you quit your job yet?
Perry Romanowski: No, I had not. I quit my job in 20–, oh yeah I had quit my job before I started Chemists Corner and this was specifically because I was making enough money with my other websites through advertising and through book sales that I was able to leave my job.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So you felt confident that The Beauty Brains, the book that was sold from the content in The Beauty Brains, and also you had a few other writing gigs and things going, that that was enough to cover what you were making in your job?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, exactly.
Yaro Starak: Okay. And was that a scary decision to make?
Perry Romanowski: Not really.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: I don’t know why. It’s just that I had worked at the job for 17 years and, you know, I saved up enough money, but my online stuff was making enough money to cover all my bills.
Yaro Starak: Okay. What kind of number was that, just for people’s reference?
Perry Romanowski: I was probably at that point when I left my job, I was probably getting about 5,000 dollars a month.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so sort of bare minimum to quit your job level?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: I mean, the only reason that I quit my job was I was making that in just a couple hours a day of work, I figured if I dedicated all my time to it, I could do better.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: And so, when I was doing the Chemists Corner, one of the things that I did was that I gave away an e-book and I started building an email list and slowly I built my email list up to—before I launched my course—I had an email list of about 900 people.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So where did the traffic come from to get onto that email list?
Perry Romanowski: Mostly it was coming from just organic search through Google.
Yaro Starak: So how much were you writing to the new blog?
Perry Romanowski: I was probably writing four or five articles a day.
Yaro Starak: Oh wow.
Perry Romanowski: I’m sorry, four or five articles a week.
Yaro Starak: Oh, okay. Right, so you started those on sort of one article a day path.
Perry Romanowski: Right, exactly. And what I did before I even started the blog is I mind mapped all of the topics that I could write about. I had five topics like career, science, industry…and then off of those I brain-stormed a ton of ideas of what I could write about. And I just made that mind map and then that had about a year’s worth of content that I could write and then I just wrote every day.
Yaro Starak: Right. Did you do any outreach? Like anything to sort of build links or, you know, get yourself exposure to bring this traffic back or is it just a case there really wasn’t any other people covering the subject?
Perry Romanowski: Right. It’s more the latter.
Yaro Starak: Right.
Perry Romanowski: You know, I was really the only one covering the topic, really at that point.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: And that, it’s still kind of a niche because I have a, I’m in an advantageous spot where I actually know the chemistry and now I know online stuff, so…
Yaro Starak: Yeah, you’re a good example for any person who’s got sort of a scientific skill because, let’s face it, most scientists aren’t gonna’ go and start a blog to write about their science. They’re busy doing their science, right?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, exactly. And most scientists are really, they don’t know anything about the online world beyond, you know, using Google to search things.
Yaro Starak: Right. So if you happen to be a scientist who’s excited about starting your own online business, you might have the benefit like you do of a not hyper-competitive market like we have in so many other industries.
Mainly because there’s a barrier, there’s scientific knowledge required to write about your subject, so I’m guessing that’s what happened with you. You just had the insight into the subject that you just didn’t have competition.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, absolutely. And by the time I had taken your course, I had built up my email list, like I said, to about 900 and then when I launched it, I had 300 people say they were interested and then about 50 of those people actually joined before I even launched the course.
Yaro Starak: Can you explain what you mean by that? How did that work?
Perry Romanowski: so the way I did it is I had this list of 900 people who had downloaded my free e-book and then I sent out an email and said, “I’m going to be doing a course.” And I followed your lead where before I even launched the course, I sent a survey email asking them, “What do people want me to cover?” And I used the responses from that not only to direct what I was gonna’ cover in the course, but also used that in my eventual email marketing.
And so about 300 of those 900 people said they were interested and responded to that survey. And then before I did anything, before I recorded anything, I outlined what I was gonna’ do, but I gave a special presale where if someone signed up before the course was even ready, they would get a special price.
And so I had about 50 people pre-join my course and so at that point, before I had even recorded a single video, I already had, you know, 25,000 dollars’ worth of sales.
Yaro Starak: Wow. How much were you charging?
Perry Romanowski: It was about 500 a student.
Yaro Starak: So, you, even for the early birds you were charging…?
Perry Romanowski: Well, they got 499 was my early bird, right?
Yaro Starak: Right.
Perry Romanowski: And then during the launch it was 599 and eventually it went up to 699.
Yaro Starak: Oh, okay. So just for the nuts and bolts of this, we haven’t really talked much about technology. You’ve already mentioned AWeber for your email list and it looks like you’re on WordPress.org now for your blog…
Perry Romanowski: Yep.
Yaro Starak: When it came to taking those payments for those early birds, did you just send them a PayPal email in the email? Is that how it worked?
Perry Romanowski: Yep. I just took it through PayPal.
Yaro Starak: Okay, so you just said, “Send me 499, this is your special discount, through PayPal and then as soon as the first module is ready, I’ll send you a login.” Is that basically it?
Perry Romanowski: Well, I had a launch date, so I think my first launch date might’ve been like March 15th. And so I said, “The first course will be March 15th, if you sign up before March 15th, you can get this special price.”
Yaro Starak: Wow. And that got you 50 paying customers?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: From a 900 person list.
Perry Romanowski: Right.
Yaro Starak: That’s a pretty good conversion rate. That’s amazing, actually.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah. I mean, I wish I got those kind of numbers now…
Yaro Starak: Yeah, me too.
Perry Romanowski: I think what happens is over time you get people on your list, now my list is much bigger, I think I have a list just for my Chemists one, a list of over 20,000, but what you do over time is you get people who are less radical fans or less rabid fans.
Yaro Starak: Right.
Perry Romanowski: But that’s okay. I appreciate everybody who looks at my stuff.
Yaro Starak: Of course. And take us forward then with the actual delivery of the membership site, or the course. How did you deliver the product?
Perry Romanowski: So I delivered it as I made a password protected WordPress blog and I recorded all the videos myself using Camtasia. And I used, so I created PowerPoint slides and recorded myself using Camtasia so I had the video, I had audio, and then I had text and people could download the slides.
I very much patterned it after the way that you did your Membership Site Mastermind course and I was thoroughly impressed that you let people download things and you just, “Here’s your course.” So I wanted to have that same sort of connection with my students.
And so that’s what I did and all through I just made pages on WordPress and that’s how you deliver the content and then every two weeks you’d get a new module and that would just be an email would send you the link to the module and people would go through it like that.
I also used Google, Google forums, to create quizzes. So once people were done with the modules they would go through and do a quiz. And that would help to reinforce the lesson and it also helps them feel like they’re getting, you know, more out of the course because it’s more like a course than just like a membership site, I guess.
Yaro Starak: Which makes sense for a scientific subject, too. There’s sort of a need to validate your knowledge because you’re not necessarily gonna’ go run away straight to a lab and do this. You might just be learning theory and then practicing later.
Perry Romanowski: Exactly.
Yaro Starak: Can you explain again what the subject of the course was? What were you actually teaching people?
Perry Romanowski: So I teach people how to create cosmetic products. I teach people about the chemistry of cosmetics, the specific raw materials you use, the proportions that you mix them in. I talk about the cosmetic industry, just all the products you can make: shampoos, conditioners, skin lotions, body washes, all of these things. Any cosmetic that you could make, I covered it in my course.
Yaro Starak: So are these hobbyists who buy this product or are these actual scientists?
Perry Romanowski: Well it’s interesting. My target, in my mind my target was always industry scientists. But probably about 30% of my students are hobbyists. Most of the people who join the courses are people who wanna’ launch their own product line.
Yaro Starak: Right. So their gaining some background knowledge before making their own lipstick or facial cream or shampoo or something like that.
Perry Romanowski: Exactly. And so I have range of different students, but yeah.
Yaro Starak: Okay, very cool. Well take us forward then with that business. So you get your first 50 in early birds and then once the course actually started running in earnest, how many members did you eventually get?
Perry Romanowski: Eventually I built it up to another 50, so I got right around a hundred students the first time I launched the course.
Yaro Starak: So how much money was that?
Perry Romanowski: It was probably around, let’s see…just over 60,000.
Yaro Starak: Not bad for your first launch, huh?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: So was that your biggest one-time payday from an online business by that point?
Perry Romanowski: Oh, absolutely yeah.
Yaro Starak: Yeah, okay, ‘cause that’s a salary almost there. I’m kind of curious in terms of, don’t know how I wanna’ ask this…What you did in my Membership Site Mastermind program, it sounds like you did a great job of copying in terms of you replicated the way I delivered the program, you replicated my method for getting early birds, you replicated my method for running a survey to find out what people wanna’ know and who’s ready to buy most importantly.
So you did all the steps through replication, I taught that in the system. Is there something you can think of that you wouldn’t even have though to do that was in the training, as opposed to just copying? If there’s anything you can think of, I know it was a while ago now.
Perry Romanowski: Well, the whole idea, I had no background in email marketing. And I learned my email marketing through what I learned in that course. Not only the content of the course, but the way that you marketed the course yourself. ‘Cause I have a science background and when you take science courses at universities you don’t get any business training at all.
But what I got most from what you taught was, you know, interacting with your students, mostly though, I would say it was the marketing and the way that you set things up and how open you were about giving content to people and how responsive you were with questions asked. And I just liked the way that you did things so much that I wanted to do the same for my audience.
Yaro Starak: It was quite funny before we started this call Perry showed me his sales page for the course as it exists today and it’s got a very familiar design style. If you wanna’ check out how Perry sells his training now, it’s chemistscorner.com/members.
And from my point of view, the first I saw was this blue line on the top of the page. And I was like, “that’s a very similar blue color to my own sales page.” And I scrolled down and Perry true to his word has also copied the way I design my sales pages. And I love that because I think it’s proof that this sort of formula is a formula.
And, if I remember right, in Membership Site Mastermind, I actually gave you, every single email was like an entire launch worth of email that I used in my launch.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, you had, there was like a 99 set email.
Yaro Starak: Yeah, it was pretty comprehensive. Actually, the irony is that I’ve never done a launch as comprehensive as my first launch. I’ve never done as many emails as I did that first one and that’s what I gave people to follow, to replicate. And it’s really about building a story and, like you said, giving content.
It’s so interesting to hear that applied to chemistry, though. You know, I wouldn’t even know where to begin about, you know, giving a story and…Well, I guess I could see how you’d do that. You could talk about people who came up with their own products and sold them. That makes sense to me ‘cause it’s business, but the science part, it’s lost on me.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, well, you know, I think the thing is that if you have an audience that’s hungry for a topic, you can tailor it for them.
Yaro Starak: Okay. Take us forward then with this business. So you get your first successful launch, 60,000 dollars, a hundred members. The one thing I didn’t ask you before, I was curious about, was choosing a price. Five hundred dollars sounds a lot like the same price I was charging, so I’m kind of guessing that’s how you decided the price, too?
Perry Romanowski: Actually that wasn’t.
Yaro Starak: Okay.
Perry Romanowski: That wasn’t. The way that I did the price was I knew what I was charging for my live course or what my society was getting for the live course.
Yaro Starak: Right. So the in-person workshops you did for that organization.
Perry Romanowski: Exactly. And so then I thought, “Well, this is twice as long, it’s a lot of the same content, but it’s twice as long—and you don’t have to travel for it.” And so I priced it based on, I just did a rough guess based on what I could be charging at a live course.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So take us forward then, what happened next? Did you wanna’ grow this?
Perry Romanowski: So I was, yeah, I was quite pleased at my results the first time and I was getting ready to do it again, but then I was contacted by a publisher in my industry—they were actually the publisher of my first book—and they indicated that they wanted to do their own online course.
Now I saw this as potential competition because right now there was no competitors for me, right?
Yaro Starak: Right.
Perry Romanowski: And I thought, “Well, maybe I could just partner with them. They could just take over what I’m doing and then they could use their marketing muscle to really boost up the course and I could be involved that way.”
And so I made the decision to essentially get into a partnership with this company. They gave me some money, they gave me a cut of the sales of future things, and we signed a 3-year contract to partner on this thing.
And it was actually kinda cool because that allowed me, they sent me around the world to go to trade shows and publicize this course and things, which was great! I got to travel to Italy and to China…
Yaro Starak: Wow.
Perry Romanowski: …all around the world just because of this. But unfortunately over the three years we weren’t really able to grow the course much better than I was growing it on my own. And so, after the three years we had maybe gotten a few hundred more people to take the courses.
Yaro Starak: Which really, three years, you yourself easily could’ve probably done that number if not double.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s one of the things, like the professional publishing houses they’re very good at traditional publishing. I just don’t think they’re as good or savvy at email publishing or online marketing.
Yaro Starak: It is an interesting choice for a book publisher to take a course on. It’s almost, I can see the overlap, but it’s quite a different style of marketing. You don’t get to put the course in the bookshop to sell the course, do you?
Perry Romanowski: Right. Exactly, but they also are very…I mean, they have a website and, you know, they have a magazine and they had a newsletter email list, so they are in a pretty good position to be able to do it. So it was understandable for me. It made sense.
Yaro Starak: Right. So what went wrong then? Just they didn’t have the marketing chops? Not great with email marketing and like doing all the launch campaigns and so on?
Perry Romanowski: Yes, that’s absolutely it. They’re very good at magazine advertising sales, they’re very good at book sales, they’re very good at creating one-day events, but the online marketing…certainly at that time, too, there really wasn’t a lot of expertise in online marketing.
A lot of traditional marketers really had no idea what you do with Twitter or Facebook. And a lot of that has changed over the years, but at that time, 2009 or 2010, you know, online marketing was really in its infancy for a lot of industries.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So, during those three years, were you 100% focused on what they were doing or were you still doing your own thing as well?
Perry Romanowski: I was doing my own thing keeping my blogs up and just making ad revenue like that and working with them to keep the course going.
Yaro Starak: Okay. So that would’ve brought you all the way up to about, what, 2012 when that three-year deal lapsed? Or 2013?
Perry Romanowski: About 2013 that year, actually yeah, 2013 that that deal lapsed. So we parted ways and everything’s good there, but I took that opportunity to rework the class, relaunch the class, and I launched it as the Practical Cosmetic Formulator. And that’s the course you can get today.
Yaro Starak: Right. So that’s the one you’ll find at ChemistsCorner.com/members?
Perry Romanowski: Yes.
Yaro Starak: Alright. So what’s happened in the last few years with your business? Where are you at now?
Perry Romanowski: Well for this course, my launch was, you know, I’ve just been building my email list and my launch was much more successful than even my first one. And in the first year, that course had got just about 400 students I got my first year.
Yaro Starak: Fantastic. Same pricing model?
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, same pricing model.
Yaro Starak: Was there much different in the launch process or just a case of more people on your email list, you know, you had a greater sized audience by then?
Perry Romanowski: It was really, I adjusted my launch system. I did some videos and I, actually adding the videos is pretty much what I did change.
Yaro Starak: You modernized it, basically.
Perry Romanowski: I did, yeah. And I also felt more confident that I knew my audience a little bit better.
Yaro Starak: Right. Everything gets better. You know your audience better, you have a larger audience, you have done the product so, you know, the second time you make a version of a product it gets better, everything gets better.
So how exactly does your business look today, though, Perry? Like, what do you, you know, where’s your main income sources? What do you do on a daily basis yourself? And so on…
Perry Romanowski: So my main income sources are my online courses, but I also have my blogs that bring in advertising revenue. And, you know, I dabble with the affiliate marketing programs, but to tell you the truth I’ve never had huge success with the affiliate products just because my particular websites don’t really lend themselves to doing that, I gather. I don’t really know.
In my future is I’m looking to launch new courses because the course I have now is an introduction course. And so it works very well for people new getting in or wanting to know about cosmetics, but people like to get more specific. They wanna’ know about hair care, for example. They wanna’ know specifically about skin care or they have these specific things.
And each of these areas could lead to a different course which I will be doing in the future. But I’m also, one of the things that is very clear to me, is that a huge portion of my audience is interested in launching their own product line.
And so that’ll be coming up next year I will be doing a course just on specifically how you go from an idea for a cosmetic product to getting the thing made to marketing it.
Yaro Starak: Interesting. Yeah, that’s a great niche. I haven’t asked you yet on terms of your team. So, over the years, did you start adding people, contractors? What does it look like today?
Perry Romanowski: Well today with my one beauty blog, The Beauty Brains, I do that with a partner. But as far as technology goes, I do all the website work, I do all the technology stuff, the email marketing, I do that stuff.
And for my Chemists Corner blog I do all that stuff, too, and the only thing that I ever really farm out is sometimes I’ll have webpages made. So I have my brother actually does online graphic design, so he often will do my logos and things like that, but other than that it’s all me.
Yaro Starak: So over the years you’ve managed to basically set up WordPress, set up your email opt-in forms using AWeber, create landing pages, sales pages, membership areas, write all the blog posts, write all the emails, do all that yourself, essentially. You’ve been a one-man band.
Perry Romanowski: Also record all the videos, edit the videos, record all the podcasts, edit the podcasts, yeah.
Yaro Starak: Wow.
Perry Romanowski: To tell you the truth I think it’s one of the things that holds me back.
Yaro Starak: Implicitly. Yeah, certainly slows you down.
Perry Romanowski: Exactly.
Yaro Starak: Wow, amazing. So you must have a strong desire to learn if you’ve not only practiced the art of chemistry, become a good marketer, and become a technician. Those are three skills that don’t normally have one person do them all, you know.
Like I like to say I’m good at marketing and writing, but tech is not my strong point. I wouldn’t be able to do half of what I do without my tech person. So, yeah, you’re a bit of an unusual. Almost like a, what do they, like a triple threat in the business world, so.
Perry Romanowski: I think that’s actually that’s one of the keys to my success is that I’m, if I have an idea I can just make it happen.
Yaro Starak: I love the fact that, you know, you’re not reinventing the wheel. You’re just using the tools: WordPress, you’re using Camtasia for video, you’re just using email, it’s not like you’ve complicated the system I think which has made it possible for you to do so much yourself.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the quality of the content could be much better if I put in these systems. Not that the quality’s bad, but the quality could look a little more professional. But, on the other hand, I also look at it like one of the strong selling points of me is that I think my audience feels more connected to me because thing aren’t perfect, things aren’t really slick, you know.
I think that was one of the problems when I was working with the publishing company is that the email looked really slick, they had great graphics they were very pretty, but I think that starts to disconnect you from me as a person.
Yaro Starak: Yeah. You’re a blogger to begin with at heart.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah. Well I always like to think of myself as a scientist.
Yaro Starak: Sorry, okay.
Perry Romanowski: It’s alright.
Yaro Starak: Scientist first, online blogger, you know, to get that across to the world.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah, no exactly.
Yaro Starak: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, one more question, Perry, before we start to wrap up this interview. People listening to this are probably going, “It sounds like A…” Alright the fact that you’re doing all this yourself is a little bit scary people they’re probably not a triple threat, they’re probably not a technical person as well as skilled at their craft as well as a good writer. You know, you’re kind of doing everything, but that’s okay because obviously there are people who can do some of those things for you.
But you’ve also, it seems to me, I don’t wanna’ say it’s been easy, but it sounds like, you know, your first course launch was great—$60,000 from a 900 person email list, that’s pretty amazing.
Perry Romanowski: Yeah.
Yaro Starak: Every blog you’ve built has grown significant traffic—enough for you to make good money from advertising without you really being like a heavy marketer, you haven’t had to go out there and really expose yourself and do lots of, you know, get yourself interviewed on podcasts, get yourself writing guest posts, you know, participating in forums…
You haven’t really talked about a lot of extensive marketing. It’s mostly just been, “I publish good content on my blogs and people show up.” So it’s sounding, I don’t wanna’ belittle that, but it does sound like you’ve been in the right place at the right time with good content to capitalize on search traffic.
So for the person listening to this, and let’s even try and make it very relevant, if they are somewhat scientific or certainly in a very unique niche like you are where there’s specialized knowledge that they have and they want to follow in your footsteps. How do you advise them? Do you say do what you do or do you think that you’d need to do something different for today’s internet?
Perry Romanowski: To tell you the truth, I think they could do what I did and have the kind of results that I did because right now in industries like the cosmetic industry or the automotive industry or paint industry or architecture or anything, these industries are still very much focused on the industry and they have ignored the online world.
And so right now there’s not a lot of competition for people who have the expertise in one area to bring it online, but there is still, there is a desire for people to wanna’ learn and learning online, well it’s just exploding right now.
Now a lot of people are, you know, there’s places like Udemy or Coursera where you can set up your own course online and they take a huge cut and you’re not building email lists yourself. But if you wanna’ do it your own, certainly it can be done and can be done the way that I did it.
But I would suggest the first thing you do is you get involved with maybe your industry trade group and see what that trade group is doing about continuing education. Those kinds of topics that are successful at a live trade group kind of thing that would be successful, I think, online because it’s already demonstrated that there’s an audience for that. And there’s almost never an online version of that.
Yaro Starak: And then would you suggest start a blog, start an email list, start an online course?
Perry Romanowski: That would be a great way to go about doing this, yes. Start a blog. I started with Blogspot ‘cause it was free. I switched over to my own hosted site after going through your Blog Profits Blueprint.
I didn’t even really understand why I had to do that, but I did it anyway and now I understand because essentially you have no power, you have no control, when you are hosting yourself on one of these free sites. And you have all the power and control when you’re doing it on your own hosted site—and really it doesn’t cost that much money.
So I would suggest you start up your own blog, you get connected, you know, you go to sites like yours or to ProBlogger and you learn how to connect with other people in your blogging niche. Nowadays there are some other people writing about cosmetic chemistry online and we’re all sort of connected via Twitter or online and that can help.
But once you start your blog you should always have a free thing to give away and start building an email list because when it comes to making money online, it’s really mostly in the list. I have other websites where I make money through advertising but it doesn’t really measure up to what I’ve been able to do based on selling products to my audience that’s on my list.
Yaro Starak: Yeah, so you sold over half a million dollars’ worth of products and probably over the years advertising has been one tenth of that, that be about right?
Perry Romanowski: Actually I never really advertised off of my own site.
Yaro Starak: Oh, I mean how much money you’ve made for advertising.
Perry Romanowski: Oh yeah, absolutely. It would be, yeah, one tenth is easily about that.
Yaro Starak: Right, so the big wins when you can make the money so you can quit your job really come from a product in your own list. Alright, Perry, thank you for sharing the details. I love the, I won’t say simplicity of it, but the formulaic nature of what you’ve done.
It really is just you’ve rolled it out in niches you’ve known well, you’re a specialist; you’ve made a decision to share what’s inside your head. That’s probably the point here that made you win, the point I think people should take away, it’s a lot of fundamental technical marketing aspects to everything Perry’s done; but at the heart of it it’s you made the choice to take what you know about and share it extensively on the internet and that’s what allowed you to build your audience and sell your products.
So I think that’s the biggest takeaway from my point of view for other people to think about doing. If you wanna’ share, you can have the sort of experience you had.
Anything else you wanna’ throw in, Perry, before I say our goodbyes?
Perry Romanowski: No, you’re right. I just wanna’ thank you for all the years because to tell you the truth I would not be where I am now if I had not stumbled upon your Blog Profits Blueprint and taken your course. And so when you come out with stuff, I not only am appreciative of what you’re sending out, but I’m also learning. So keep up the great work.
Yaro Starak: Thanks, Perry. Appreciate it. You, too, keep up the great work. I love hearing the success stories from people who’ve taken my programs.
Now, if you’re interested in getting the show notes or the transcript or anything other information from Perry’s interview, you can find that on my blog that’s Entrepreneurs-Journey or Google my name, Yaro Y-A-R-O and you can look under the podcast section to find the Perry Romanowski interview and all the details will be there.
That’s it for this interview. Good luck, Perry. Thank you for the people who listened in, I hope you got a lot out of this. My name is Yaro and I’ll talk to you on a future interview very soon. Bye-bye.
I hope you were taking lots of notes during that interview with Perry. I think there was a lot to learn from his story. Now, to make sure you get my next EJ podcast interview as soon as it’s released, go to interviewsclub.com now right now and then on that page you can sign up for the email notification list so I’ll send you an email as soon as the next interview is available. You can do that at interviewsclub.com.
Okay, that’s it for today’s interview. I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll speak to you on the very next Entrepreneurs-Journey podcast. My name is Yaro Starak, talk to you soon.
