What comes to mind when I say the words ‘financial independence’? Maybe…
Building a big company
Recruiting a team
Pitching investors in stressful meetings
What if I told you financial independence was achievable by building cool websites that make money? And, as a team of one.
My guest today is Scott DeLong. Scott has an inspiring story of escaping the rat race and finding freedom on his own terms: fully remotely, no raising capital and no mindless busy work.
Scott has a passion for writing timeless content that resonates with its audience. He’s developed an understanding of human psychology not by reading books, but by tinkering with marketing campaigns that have generated billions of page views and tens of millions in revenue.
This episode is a bit different. Instead of recording a conversation, I sent Scott a few questions that I wanted his perspective on. Here are his thoughts about creating timeless content.
Q: Why build in stealth for so long? What eventually led to you opening up about your journey?
A: Since 2005 when I started making money online, I’ve just always been very private about what I’m doing. I never felt the need to talk about it, and it was always difficult to explain it. People just assumed I was a web designer for years, including my own family.
When journalists dug me up after the explosion of Viral Nova, I briefly tried to embrace it… but it wasn’t enjoyable. The site was slightly controversial and the attention was really stressful for an introvert who just likes to build.
Recently, with the birth of my daughter, I’ve thought more about my legacy and what I want to contribute to the world. And the number one thing I can contribute is this skillset – so that’s why I’ve opened up now.
Q: How do you fight feeling like you have to create content, but have NO inspiration?
A: You really need a driving force to combat that. I was very obsessive through my 20s about reaching financial independence by the time I turned 30. The drive was so strong that, even on days I was burnt out, it just didn’t matter.
The end goal was stronger than the lack of inspiration, so I’d just push through and ultimately find inspiration.
It’s different now at age 40. It’s much harder to find inspiration when I don’t need to find it. That’s why I’m focusing on my number one passion: the process of building a business, not so much building a business. But of course this is a business in itself!
Q: Is your motivation helping people? If not, what is it (other than financial independence, which you’re reached)?
A: Yes, helping people is a huge motivator. I genuinely love receiving emails from people who have learned something. I guess you can call that ego-driven but, whatever it is, it works.
I’m not sure if you’re aware of Financial Samurai, but I basically want to be the website builder version of him. His personal experiences and knowledge really shine through in his writing, and you can tell it’s effortless because he really loves it.
Same here, so it’s win-win for me and my readers.
Q: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve ever been given? What are your general thoughts on advice?
A: My dad is a small town businessman, and I realized later in life how many small things he said added up. He’s a believer in paying attention to the details and the psychological effects on your customer when you go the extra mile. He instilled a work ethic in me without even really trying.
As far as the worst advice, I’m not sure. I tend to think what a lot of teachers and guidance counselors said during high school, but it’s not really their fault. It’s all they knew to suggest and they’ve never broken out of the norm, so I can’t expect them to advise anyone else to do so.
Generally though, advice is thrown around far too much. Too many people without all the details give their opinion, and it’s actually pretty damaging.
We should tread very lightly with what we advise others to do!
Q: Should creators strive for originality?
A: Of course. In Austin Kleon’s books, Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work, he does a great job of very simply demonstrating that nobody is actually original. We tend to mimic those we admire to the point that we ultimately become original.
So there’s nothing wrong with “borrowing.”
Q: On a recent All-In Podcast, David Friedberg said, "If you don't have content creation in your blood, you have to buy a content business, or you're gonna die." Do you agree?
A: Yeah, I think so. You could also pay others to do it for you from scratch, but that’s mostly the same thing.
That said, if someone doesn’t have content creation in their blood, then maybe a content business isn’t for them?
Q: What makes content “timeless” vs. “cheap”?
A: Content that is true at the very core of psychology tends to be timeless. So even if typewriters are obsolete and we all use computers now, a piece of content created 50 years ago is still timeless if it’s about what you can do with the a typewriter.
It’s still true today; just a different medium.
Cheap content comes from researching low hanging keywords and paying someone pennies to write something about it so you can rank for a few months til Google kills your site.
A lot of what I wrote in my guides on my site is already somewhat outdated (at least as I view it), but the core principles I think have been true forever. I like to think it’s got a timeless element to it.
Q: Explain: “I have had this impossible vision in my mind for years: if everyone put forth all of the knowledge and experiences of their lives into a format meant to help other people, the world would exponentially improve.”
A: It goes back to what I am encouraging people to do: identify your passion and expertise, put your knowledge out there for the world to consume, and profit.
If everybody unleashed the actual value in their minds — instead of nonsense, which is so easy to do — it would be like the ultimate interactive, always-evolving Wikipedia with personality.
We’d all get smarter.
Q: Explain: The emptiness of Twitter is destroying our motivation.
A: I believe this originally came from some notes on my phone. I’ve actually done quite a reversal since jotting that down. I was following some of the worst accounts or, even more so, I wasn’t following enough accounts, so the algorithm was showing me awful posts where everyone’s just the worst versions of themselves.
Since then, I’ve cured my Feed to be much better. I do see the value in Twitter, but too much of it detracts from motivation (unless Twitter is literally where you’re making your job of course).
Q: Explain: The dark irony of trying to get rich.
A: I think what I meant here is that those who successfully become wealthy and no longer have to work… end up continuing to work forever.
And those who would actually stop working to enjoy life inherently lack the right qualities to ever make it.
Q: What’s the most ridiculous content site you’ve seen make money?
A: There are some ridiculous ones, but one of my favorites of all time is coolmath.com. To this day, if you go to the site, it looks like it was built in 1998.
When you dive into the story (and some of this I learned at a bar from a friend in the industry), it was made by a random retired school teacher named Karen. It was making as much as $80,000 PER DAY. Yes, per day.
You’ll be hard pressed to find more information, but I believe she ultimately sold it to a private equity company. But I am not sure — it’s just so wild to me that an old school site that helps kids with math can bring in so much money for one person.
That’s why I love the Internet.
Q: Why do you believe “the internet is an infant”?
A: In the grand scheme, it’s still so young. It’s only been the last handful of years that you can have a conversation with the average person and they know what you’re talking about when you say things like Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify, and so on. And, even now, a lot of people don’t.
Ultimately, we’ll probably all be making our money online in one way or another.
Another reason is that, when we look back on the current tech giants 30 years from now, it’s going to be hard to imagine they had so much control. It’s going to be strange that a small business, like a website, could really just go away completely because Google pushed a button.
There’s a lot of learning and evolving ahead of the Internet, and that’s why I say it’s still an infant.
I’ve met a lot of niche website flipping gurus online, and I have to say Scott is the real deal. He takes his craft seriously, and isn’t trying to scam anyone to make a quick buck.
Scott’s running a challenge to see whether he can turn $20,000 into $500,000 in just one year. You can get front-row seats inside the mind of an Internet genius by subscribing here.
I hope this episode was a reminder of why it’s important to trust your judgement and think for yourself.
Thanks for listening!
Another banger from DALL•E for the cover photo 🔥! This time, I asked it to give me a “wizard sitting at a desk on his laptop with money flowing out of the screen.”
Internet Wizardry with Scott DeLong