Part 1 of a 2 part series on Pat Flynn. See the 2nd part in our September issue.
What I think attracts people to Pat’s Smart Passive Income blog is the way that he gives as much free value as humanly possible. In fact, most of Pat’s income is from giving away free information and getting commission from products that he recommends. It’s been a very successful business model.
We got the opportunity to interview Mr. Flynn, who happens to be Filipino, for Amped Asia magazine’s entrepreneur issue. I assure you that you will learn a tremendous amount from this interview. Enjoy.
In 2008, Pat Flynn started a website called “Green Exam Academy” which taught others how to ace the LEED exam, the major exam for architecture students. Pat wrote down study tips on the website for himself, but soon found out that the site was attracting tons of visitors every month.
“I had no idea that I was getting 4-5k visitors per day without even doing anything except posting good content. People were finding it through other people sharing it on forums or through Google searches. It was a free resource that I made for my own notes, I had zero idea that people were even looking at my site.”
Pat didn’t realize that he had a potential goldmine on his hands, but after seeing how many people were visiting the site, he decided to sell an e-book course based off the content on his website. Most of the content was already found for free on his website, so Pat had no idea if it was going to sell.
“I launched it at 3AM by just putting a couple banners on my site. At the time I had no idea about launch preparation. I woke up and got zero sales and thought, oh man, this wasn’t a good idea. Then a couple hours later I got my first sale. Then after that I got another sale. By the month’s end I had made $8,000, which was several times what I had made actually being an architect.”
Pat was just laid off from his architecture job, and the timing could not have been more perfect. His first foray into online business started off with a bang, and he was ready to make even more money. For the first two years he lived off the profits of Green Exam Academy alone and made much more money than he could have as an architect. It was pretty much passive income — because he already had the systems in place and the content on his website, he didn’t really need to do anything to get the checks coming in.
“I learned that people are willing to pay for things if you provide value. I had a free website up for over a year before I started selling a product. People even told me that they bought my product after they already passed the LEED exam because they just wanted to support me and thank me for creating such a helpful resource.”
So what were the keys to Pat’s first big online success?
Give give give. That’s what Pat does and that’s how he runs every single business. He first gave out a lot of free content before he decided to charge for anything, and that strategy worked extremely well. In fact, Pat even says he didn’t have to do much with that first venture except post great content.
“People think I was an overnight success because the first e-book I sold I already made $8,000 a month. That’s definitely not true. I was churning out tons of free content on my blog day after day for a year before I saw any money at all.”
Blogging, Pat says, is a long term play. If you expect to make money with it you have to put in the long hours, build an audience, and create a brand that people can identify with. We’ll discuss those tactics in our next section with Pat.
“I wouldn’t recommend blogging if you’re trying to make money right away. It’s a long term play. All my businesses took over a year before they started to make decent money. Also I don’t make money just from writing posts. I make money by recommending products in my posts or selling a product. The blog acts more like a marketing platform.”
Green Exam Academy wasn’t the end to his entrepreneurial ventures. Pat realized that a big passion of his was to teach others how to succeed. That mentality led to his current and most successful project, Smart Passive Income, which we’ll discuss in part 2 of this article.
Lessons Learned
1) People are willing to pay for convenience if it’s good content. Pat’s website Green Exam Academy already gave out all the information for free, but he still made sales on a paid e-book because it was packaged extremely nicely and conveniently.
2) Pat provides a TON of free value with everything he does. People naturally thought that if the free product was so good, the paid product must be even better. If Pat was trying to charge right off the bat, it’s unlikely he would have seen as much success and have built such a large audience.
3) Make sure your product is great. This is hard to do because we’re so biased about our own stuff, so it’s important to get an outside perspective. Great content will get shared naturally, so if you’re not creating great content it will show because no one will care about it.
Part 1 of a 2 part series on Pat Flynn. See the 2nd part in our September issue.
Written by kevinhype