Goran Duskic: Daniel, can you quickly introduce yourself to our readers? What skills, experiences, and connections (mentors, investors, books) helped you become the internet entrepreneur you are today?
Daniel Stanica: I was starting my online journey back in 2005 or so by doing freelance programming work on a couple of sites active those days: scriptlance.com, rentacoder.com, etc.
After delivering websites and software for a couple of years for customers, I decided it was time to have my own online business rather than working for others. In 2009 I started a few niche websites however the results were not exciting as my marketing knowledge was limited.
In 2011 I discovered SEO, and I started to learn as much as possible about it, seeing how easy it is to get visitors and clients even with a limited budget.
Those years I started with a partner a couple of online businesses like an e-currency exchange company (the grandpa of current cryptocurrency exchangers nowadays). I kept it for a couple of years. Also, I owned a backlinks building service.
Fast forward to 2017, I started with Stephan, my silent partner, and investor, Monetize.info, because I wanted to share my digital marketing and monetization knowledge with people who struggle with it. Also, I started the MediaDigi.com digital marketing agency, which I rebranded this year as Digital Media Intelligence to offer customers digital marketing and online competitors intelligence services.
Guided by radical transparency
Regarding mentorships and investors, I keep close contact with people in the digital marketing space, but I’m not too much a fan of anyone. Yet If I had to mention someone, I recommend Ray Dalio, a an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager. He wrote a book called Principles, where he shares his principles for life and work that helped him become rich yet humble. One of his principle that I’m also guiding on is radical transparency with others and myself.
Goran Duskic: Let’s continue with one of your recent projects. Can you share some of your recent successes with Monetize.info? How does it help website owners and companies to grow and monetize their digital assets?
Daniel Stanica: At Monetize.info, we have a nice community of people who monetize their businesses or digital assets. We focus mostly on affiliate marketing and niche authority websites.
While we have over 350 guides and tutorials that can be accessed for free, our website has been profitable since the 1st year as many companies want to advertise to our audience. Besides that, we do what we preach and make a nice income through affiliate marketing by recommending products and services we personally tested.
Goran Duskic: On the other website, Digital Media Intelligence, I saw that you mentioned LinkWhisper as one of your clients. I’ve interviewed Spencer from LinkWhisper, so I was wondering if you could share how Digital Media Intelligence can help companies such as LinkWhisper.
Daniel Stanica: Sure thing. Spencer is a great guy, and I appreciate his hard work and dedication to NichePursuits. I was one of the first testers and clients of LinkWhisper when he launched it, and I have been using it since then. I’ve reviewed the tool for our audience here. Also, we have an exclusive discount for our readers here.
Lately, I have focused on helping WordPress businesses to reach their audience with the help of SEO and content marketing while keeping a close eye on the competitors.
Goran Duskic: I also see that you worked with TimeDoctor. Are you a productivity enthusiast as well? How do you look at productivity, time management, and execution?
Daniel Stanica: A couple of years ago, I helped TimeDoctor to get natural backlinks to their tool. I’m not the best at keeping a good productivity rate and having strong time management skills. I struggle with these and always look to improve with the help of tools.
Goran Duskic: Are there any other projects that you would like to mention?
Daniel Stanica: I helped multiple clients over the years, but I would like to mention WPRiders, a great WordPress development and support company. They have perfect 5/5 score reviews on multiple sites, so they are good at their job. However, they wanted to do better at getting clients through organic marketing. I have worked with them for close to a year already, and I helped them spot a couple of 1st spot positions in Google for keywords that bring them business.
I’m always happy to help partners that are good at what they do to advertise better and spread the word about their services to reach more clients.
Goran Duskic: In a private conversation with me, you mentioned that you want to purchase projects, websites, WordPress plugins, and SaaS. Can you share any details about that with anyone who would potentially be interested in selling?
Started investing in revenue-generating websites
Daniel Stanica: I make it a habit every couple of years to engage in new business opportunities. As my niche projects and the digital marketing agency are doing well, I want to put my experience of growing websites into a new digital asset brokerage project.
With an investor, we are looking to find interesting niche websites, SaaS, or WordPress businesses and acquire and grow them.
Goran Duskic: Have you bought or sold any other projects or websites? What are your thoughts on buying and selling websites? In which direction is this industry going?
Yes, so far, I’ve bought and sold a couple of websites and domain names. If we start with the domain names, the best ROI I got was when I purchased a domain for $1500 and sold it two years later for $24,000. Another good sale was when I purchased a domain name for $700 and sold it at $3000 a couple of months later. Here is a list of domains available for sale.
If we talk about failures, because failures are the best teacher, I was offered by a competitor a $30K payment for a niche site that he badly wanted it. I was expecting to get at least $50,000 for that site. Fast forward a few years later, I closed the website because the niche was overcrowded with websites, and the profits were minimal.
Lesson learned? If you don’t have a strong plan to grow a website, better sell it to someone interested because neglected websites tend to die slowly.
Speaking about the direction of the digital properties industry, I think the competition will be even higher. Also, we face a period with a lot of uncertainty buyers tend to shrink their acquisition budgets so they will offer lower revenue multiples.
However, solid brands and profitable websites in trending industries will do well.
Goran Duskic: What is exciting about buying and selling websites?
Daniel Stanica: Interesting question, Goran. I like to buy and sell websites and domain names mostly because I can use my knowledge and experience in digital marketing to identify and grow properties.
And I can’t deny that competing in auctions with other people for a website or a domain is fun and engaging 🙂
Thank you, Goran, for the opportunity to share a couple of things about myself with your audience. I hope it is useful, and if anyone has questions or needs a piece of advice, can reach me at:
Website: DigitalMediaIntelligence.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stanica_daniel
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-stanica/
