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While Mike Heroux worked professionally as a financial planner, he always had a financial blog side hustle.
It took some time to finally make the decision to go all-in, but he eventually dove headfirst into blogging. In fact, he grew his portfolio to about a dozen sites.
And then the Panda Update came along. Suffice to say, Mike’s multi-year journey into entrepreneurship has had its ups and downs.
Today, he runs a membership website—Dividend Stocks Rock—with almost 4,000 members earning over $500k per year. And he grew it without using any SEO. He also built up a newsletter to nearly 25,000 subscribers.
Mike has a ton of great insight to share in this interview, so get ready to take notes!
Watch the Full Episode
Mike begins by sharing his story of working as a financial planner but always while hustling on the side with financial blogs, starting his first one in 2006. When, later in his finance career, he started to work with entrepreneurs, he realized he was on the wrong side of the desk.
A year of traveling in an RV with his family around the Americas led him to reflect on the big picture and eventually to quit his job and dive into blogging full time.
He started out selling links on his blog and moved onto buying blogs until he eventually bought The Dividend Guy in 2010. He grew his portfolio to around 12 websites. Then came along the Panda Update.
This led to a shift to email listbuilding and to take over the membership site Dividend Stocks Rock.
Today his site has almost 4000 members with a renewal rate of close to 80%, and earns close to $550k a year. He also gets into other interesting stats.
When asked about how he grew his membership site, Mike talks about using his free email list and also shares the details of his content creation strategy, which is based on the Flywheel approach from Nathan Berry.
He shares a clever way that he gets new content ideas, and then talks about how the structure of his membership site has evolved over time.
After nearly a decade using this business model, Mike has some great advice to share about starting and running a membership site, which he generously shares.
He also talks about why he thinks his members renew year after year, as he has a renewal rate of 80%.
Mike shares some of the downsides of running a membership site as well as some of the ways he markets his business, such as with affiliate marketing and webinars.
He concludes with some great advice for anyone who’s starting a business.
Links & Resources
Topics Mike Heroux Talks About
- Why he quit his job in finance
- How he started blogging
- Current stats
- Growing the business
- Content creation
- How his membership is structured
- Tips for starting a membership site
- Member renewals
- Downside of membership sites
- Affiliate marketing
- Webinars
Transcript
Jared: All right. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bahman. And today we are joined by Mike Ehu. With Dividend Stock Rocks. We were joking that I was not going to get your name right, no matter what. So tell us how to say it. And you didn’t.
Mike: Well, actually the real name is Mikael. It’s even worse, right?
But we’ll go with Mike. It’s going to be easier. And it’s Ehoo, but it’s a French name. So it’s, it’s all right. For all the things that I probably mispronounced throughout the rest of the podcast, you’re, you’re good for one mulligan.
Jared: I told you, I I’ve never gone into a podcast knowing I with a hundred percent certainty, I will say it wrong.
But anyways, Mike, welcome to the podcast. I’m really excited for today. I met you several months ago at the convert kit conference craft and commerce. And, uh, we got to spend a bunch of time together and I got to hear your story about how you’ve grown your, um, your business dividend stocks rock. Um, and I’m just really excited for you to come on and tell us the story of how you grew this.
Um, Maybe before we get into dividend stocks, rock, tell us about your backstory and catch us up to who you are prior to starting that business.
Mike: Yeah. So I always like numbers. I started my bachelor degree thinking I’m going to be an accountant after my first accounting class. I’m like, damn, that’s really boring.
So I switched over to marketing, ended up having a part time job, like summer job in the financial market. So I ended up like going into the financial environment. I became a financial planner, worked in the industry for like 13 years, but always add a like side business aside. So kind of funny because I know a lot of your listeners like have followed Pat Flynn since almost the beginning or he’s like a reference at with, with smart, impressive income.
So I even had the chance to met him like around 2012 or something like that. So back then I had like financial blogs. Doing my business, uh, at the bank at the same time. And I always had that feeling that I wanted to be a business owner, but at the same time I was like making good money, the pension, and I was good.
I was, I was doing, I kind of like enjoy my, my, my work. And the last four years before I took a sabbatical, um, I was a private banker just dealing with entrepreneurs and every single meeting I thought I’m on the wrong side of the desk here. I should be at this place. This guy’s like super passionate about what he’s doing, but yet I was not ready to take that jump.
It’s difficult. And you know, like I have like three kids, a wife, a mortgage. Back then my wife didn’t work. So like, kind of like falling off that cliff and just running my online business. Kind of felt a bit scary, actually very scary. So I had multiple occasions, didn’t do it. And then one day my wife, she was like, she had like a, um, a daycare at home and she was fed up about that.
So we’re having a glass of wine and she said, how about we put everything on the side? I read that blog about that family going on a worldwide trip on bicycle. And I’m like, okay, well, worldwide trip. I’m good. Bicycle, not so much, especially because like the, my youngest one was like four back then, and my oldest one was 10.
So I’m like, nah, that’s not gonna work out. Uh, so we decided to buy a small RV. And we toured North America and then Mexico and we had so much fun. We decided to spend seven months in Central America. We lived in Costa Rica for three months and then we came back home. Throughout that trip, I was 35 back then.
And I kept asking myself that question of like, what do you want to do in life? What’s the big plan here? Cause you kind of realize that you only have like one shot at this. And one day I’m going to wake up at the age of 50 or 60. And then it’s going to be too late. Like if I want to have a business, maybe at the age of 60, I will not have the energy, or I’m just going to be like, Oh, you know, what’s about retirement.
And I’m done. So when I came back, I just thought, well, I crossed the border of Honduras and not to go to Roatan Island, but rather to drive throughout the country where it’s like one of the highest murder per capita rate. And I thought, well, my definition of fear here, losing my house or emptying my retirement account because my business didn’t do well.
So I decided to quit the job officially and started working online the next morning. So I had the business on the side, but back then I was generating around like 4, 000 to 5, 000 a month in revenue, which was more than enough to cover my fees when I was in Central America, but definitely not enough to support a family of three, uh, three children and having my mortgage and so on.
So it was kind of like panicking because I needed about 10, 000 a month in revenue back then and I still decided to made the jump because I thought if I don’t do it now, I will never do it.
Jared: I’m fascinated by your like multi year journey into entrepreneurship. When did you, when did you start the website and the blog?
Was it, it was on your travels through Central America and what were some of the early things that had success? So I
Mike: started way before I, I finished my bachelor degree in 2003. And then I started writing about personal finance back then. Like blogs were super popular in 2006. Wow. So, so I had, I had like the financial blogger.
com, which I don’t think exist anymore. So if you ever go there, like it’s not me anymore. Anyway, I sold that back then, but yeah, so. It, it grew from the passion that I realized I love talking about finance and I realized how we don’t know anything about it. If you like, if you don’t study finance or if you don’t have like a relative teaching you.
There’s nothing out there, especially back then. So I started to work like writing, not just about investing, but just like personal finance and so on quickly realized that I could make money selling links, which obviously back then was pretty bad for Google, but I thought, wow, I could make like a hundred bucks, 75 bucks a month per link.
So I started selling links on, on my, on my blog. I was getting some good traffic. And then I made another discovery. Where I, I realized I could buy other blogs for like 18 to 24 months to 24 times their monthly revenue. So like two years worth of revenue where once you start scaling a little bit, most of the time I was able to buy a blog where the blogger was just exhausted, didn’t want to keep the website up to date anyway, because like writing like weekly or, or more than once a week, it’s quite demanding.
So we’re making like global offers. Buying them, making money within the year because we had that like, we had like a good relationship with some like agencies where we could sell even more links. So we grew, the first business was really about getting some AdSense, getting traffic, getting good PR back then and then selling links based on that.
Which was working perfectly. So that was like the first, the first phase. And eventually what happened is On my side, I was like almost kind of like a day trader. I was like buying and selling all the time, but then I completed my financial planning degree, my, my, my, my master at three kids. I’m like, okay, it’s time to slow down.
And it ended up buying the Dividend Guy blog. So the Dividend Guy blog in 2010, this one, we decided not to sell any links on this one and instead grow a newsletter and, and, and get more traction, but it was just AdSense and it was like, not the most. Uh, the most profitable business, but we thought, we know we play a risky game with length, so might as well diversify.
So we go on and we’re, I’m having a lot of fun, like discovering this strategy at the same time. I switched my entire portfolio towards that. So now I’m getting really passionate about talking about my investing strategy period. So that went well. And then in 2012, we have a portfolio of. A dozen website generating maybe like something between a hundred thousand 250, 000 a year, mostly.
Selling links, some affiliates, and some AdSense. And then overnight, Panda update happens.
Jared: I was about to say 2012. Oh
Mike: yeah, I was like, I could remember it because I wake up one day, I look at my stats, and I’m like, Oh, I’m like down 80 percent of my organic traffic. Like Dividend Guy blog back then was receiving like about 50, 000 visitors a month.
And now it was like almost nothing. And the month before that, it was like my record month in AdSense. I made like 4, 000 or 5, 000 just in AdSense only. I was like, Oh my God, that’s a new business popping up. And then boom, like nothing. And then I tried to recover from that. Of course, the website we were selling links didn’t expect much.
But for the Dividend Guy blog, I thought, what’s the problem? This one has like no links, like no bad links pointing to it. No bad links getting ads outside of it. But it was just like, Exact domain match name back then. Like if you had like anything about dividend, most of the people got it. And I kind of had that, that theory as well.
It’s not proven, but I kind of realized that while a few months before I was beating like Forbes or the wall street journal on, on, on search engine, If I wrote an article about any specific topic, I would rank on the first page, way before all those big guys. And then all of a sudden, well, those are the guys that are spending a lot of money in advertising on Google, right?
And not only their advertisements are on top, but then their webpage naturally came on the first page. And I’m like back down to like the fifth or the seventh page, right? And it’s like basically not receiving any, any, um, Anymore visitors from Google. And back then I thought, well, you know what? I build an entire side business, fortunately back then.
And it was always in the back of my mind of like, Oh, I’m going to quit my job. And then those kinds of things happen. So every single time I’m like, Oh, okay. That’s riskier than I thought. It’s more volatile. So I’m going to stay at the bank instead. But back then in 2012, I decided I’m not going to play the SEO game anymore and I’m going to focus on building my email list instead.
So back then I was with Aweber, eventually we transferred to ConvertKit in 2017. But I realized that there’s one thing nobody can take away from me, and it’s the list of emails, because I can have it all the time. Wherever I go, however I do my business, and while the traffic is dependent on Google, well, then every single time that they’re sending a little piece of that, I was able to grow my mailing list with this, and then I just focus on the newsletters to eventually Bye.
Bye. In 2013, um, I decided to launch Dividend Stocks Rock. So at the same time, the same guy that had Dividend Guy blog built the infrastructure of Dividend Stocks Rock. So it was a membership website as like just a layout there and the idea and the name and the license to get the membership and stuff.
So, Nothing fancy, pretty much like a, an empty shell. And then he’s like, well, if you, if you give me a few grand, I’m just going to transfer it over because I realized I don’t have the time to build that membership. So I thought, well, that sounds like a pretty interesting opportunity to diversify elsewhere.
And I’ve worked for about a year and I launched. Dividend stocks rock at the end of 2013, so way before I decided to take my sabbatical and so on. So while I was driving across North America and Central America, that was my main income driver. But that back then, DSR was making like three, four thousand dollars a month.
It was not that much because of course, side gig, I had about like 200 members at lunch. So it’s crazy. Good numbers, but definitely not enough to build a business out of that.
Jared: Before we get into how you’ve built it from there, maybe fast forward us to today, it’s always great to get a snapshot of where you’re at today, whatever you’re comfortable sharing, whether it’s number of members or revenue or any other, you know, traffic or whatever it looks, email subscribers, whatever it looks like, just to give people an idea of how you’ve grown it.
And then we can kind of get into
Mike: the
Jared: weeds of what you did. Sure.
Mike: So when I came back in 2017, I had slightly under 200 members. Today we’re getting close to 4, 000. Uh, the businesses like DSR membership website is generating close to 550, 000 a year. So a little bit over half a million. The renewal rate is about 80%, so which is a lot better than selling an advertisement or anything else because then I know that next year I’m already starting with over 400, 000 in, in revenue without doing anything.
So if I just do my job right, I’ll be able to grow even more, but at least I have a pretty solid, um, income that I know that is going to come up. Uh, we do have about 23, 000 people on the free newsletter, which is being cleaned up about every six months, I would say. So, uh, and of course, and we’re going to get into that, but, When you run a lot of campaigns, you’re going to clean up your list naturally because a lot of people will unsubscribe.
And if not, if people are not opening my stuff, I just delete them after a few months, it’s, it’s good for the stats as well. So I keep the list clean and the opening rate is. Slightly under 60%, uh, click through rate is about like six to 7 percent on the free side. So that’s like just people getting our weekly newsletter.
And that newsletter is basically an aggregate of all our platforms. I don’t know what, I don’t know if you want me to go through like how I’ve built all the. The free stuff to build the business now, but, uh, that’s pretty much like the numbers. I don’t know if you have any questions about those, but that’s pretty much the, the, the business in a nutshell.
Jared: It’s phenomenal. I mean, I remember talking to you at the conference and I was blown away by the amount of revenue you were generating from really what I would say is not a lot of subscribers. I mean, don’t get me wrong. 23 subscribe, 23, 000 subscribers on the free side is really good. It’s a lot more. You know, I have my personal little, um, uh, email project, but the point is the amount of revenue you’re generating from it.
So, you know, it’s just, it’s quite the accomplishment. Congratulations. Thanks. It’s amazing. I mean, yeah, I think let’s, let’s get into your framework because that to me is the secret sauce here. I’m sure we’ll find others tips that you can share along the way, but the big picture is how you’ve created such a viable business.
And obviously there’s a lot of nuance to it because you’re generating so much revenue from such a small group of people. And I say small with air quotes, but I just mean the revenue per subscriber on the free side is phenomenal.
Mike: Yeah. Well, the thing is the way that we have developed it and I’m going to get there in a second, but for anybody to enter my free newsletter, I have a conversion rate of, uh, of about 8%.
Within the first 12 months. So anytime that I get like a hundred people that got it, that get in, I know that I’m going to make roughly eight to nine cells within the next 12 months. And of course it’s super niche. I mean, we’re, we’re targeting dividend growth investors. Right. I would say 65 percent of my members are Canadian, 30 percent American, and 5 percent across the world, but mostly interested in U.
S. stocks. So it’s really like 60 40 in terms of like, what do I have to cover in terms of, of information. And the website is pretty much 50 50. In terms of like the newsletters and the product that we offer. But of course we track a little bit more us companies because there are just more us companies paying dividend than Canadian ones.
That’s the only reason, but all the contents, when I do webinars and everything else, I tried to really have like half and half to. To gather as like to, to target as many investors as possible. And, and even for Americans, I think that we have some pretty interesting stocks in Canada. So that’s why I’m trying to also to push some of those saying, you know what, maybe you have like the best stock market in the world, but like we do have the best banks and stuff like that.
So you can find a few interesting company to compliment your portfolio as well. So to grow the business. Without relying on Google, I mean, of course it has been quite a challenge because it’s pretty much kind of like the most obvious way and the easiest way if you’re not getting banned by Google almost.
So what we decided to do is we, uh, we, we decided to have a multiple platform where we have like free blogs, we have a YouTube channel, I have two podcasts. And the goal is really to. Provide as much free content as possible. I’ve been lead magnet. So every, like most of the time when I do a podcast or a YouTube, uh, episode, I just mentioned, Oh, like if you’re having this type of problem about investing, you can download this resource, just subscribe to the email.
So pretty straightforward, but following a very tight process throughout the years, I produced a lot of content. And at one point I was starting to get tired of that, obviously. And I realized that I could do it in a different way. And now I’m able to push out a lot more content with less effort. And what I did is I actually followed the, uh, the course from Nathan Berry at, from ConvertKit, uh, two years ago about making a flywheel.
So what I have now is a flywheel content. Every week I write a private newsletter for my members. So it’s an investing newsletter with a specific topic in mind. The newsletter is about four to five thousand words. So I do my research, I have examples, drafts and stuff, and I come, I’m both of that, which is like part of like what my DSR members have as part of the membership.
But instead of looking for new ideas and more content, what I do is I take Pieces of that newsletter. And then I spun off like two, three articles. So I have like one blog that is about dividend investing, but just for American, and then a one that is just for Canadian and the dividend guy blog remain as an more personal blog where I talk about my own portfolio.
Sometime I discuss a little bit of my business. So I’m going a little bit everywhere on this one. This one is like just. I have fun on my side, but I do have like moose markets that are about Canadian and then dividend mong that is all about the U S market. So I think that information from there. And then what we do is we do podcasts about the same information cause I already did the research once.
Jared: Right.
Mike: So now it’s just about talking about it. Same thing with YouTube. I just talk about it and then we spin it off into like shorter version for social media, mostly on Twitter because I had a lot of fun on that. Now, not so much because it has changed a lot since it became X. And I still say Twitter, so see how I cannot let go of that part.
Uh, so in the future, I might use the same strategy with LinkedIn. I’ve heard a lot of people having good success with LinkedIn. And I think it’s, um, in the early days of like, Like to, to get like promotional stuff and, and information on specific, like either membership website or any content creation based business.
So I think it’s going to be an interesting Avenue, but this is how I generate most of my content. And from that people subscribe to the newsletter and usually the framework to convert them is they will of course have like an email funnels, like the classic, but I also, I will also run campaign, including webinars.
So when I do a webinar, I do exactly the same thing. Webinar topic is being discussed across all the platform for about a month. So telling people, Hey guys, you like the podcast? You’re going to love this webinar. Same thing with, with YouTube and on the blogs and so on. And I usually gather between a thousand to 1, 500, um, registrant.
A lot of them are coming from the newsletter already, but some of, uh, some others are just coming from like word of mouth and out of like those, People, you can think about 30 to 35 percent will see it live. We’ll watch it live and another 30 to 35 percent will watch the replay. So it’s really important to have like a follow up sequence saying, Hey, Jared, you missed the webinar yesterday.
Here’s the replay. So we have like that follow up and usually the webinar is the start of like roughly a 10 day. Campaign where we send about seven emails throughout that period. So one email every two days. And on the last day, we send one email in the morning. One email, um, at the end of the day. To push a little bit more on, on the sell side.
But that’s also the whole point. So if you subscribe to my newsletter and you’re not interested in subscribing to DSR. I don’t mind, but you either pay by reading those emails or receiving them, or you’re just going to unsubscribe and it’s all fine because I am not the right product for you. Maybe, maybe you’re not ready for that.
And that’s also fine. But at this point, there’s no relationship here. So I don’t see the point either. So I rather you unsubscribe and then you move on. So that’s how I was able to get most of my members. And what is great is at the end of each webinar, like the webinar is about 45 minutes to an hour for the presentation.
And then I stay for another hour for live Q& A. And live Q& A, I have like someone in the chat That is working with me, Vero, which is literally like my second brain. And she’s not only there for tech support and to entertain like guests as they they ask questions or whatever, but she also log all the questions.
So we have a content aggregator. And literally, I get all my new ideas. Coming from those questions. Cause of course I’m like, you have the classic question of like, Oh, what do you think about GP Morgan? Should I buy, should I sell whatever? So that’s fine. But some other time it’s like, Oh, I’m about to retire.
And I have this type of portfolio. What’s going to happen in like five years or whatever. And then you have. I have new ideas of what to talk about, and I do the same thing for my members where they have one, um, one private webinar every month besides summer. So we do like 10 private webinars a year where it’s just Q& A.
So I don’t necessarily have, or I have like a small presentation about the economy at that time, but most of the time it’s really, okay, ask me all the questions you want. You can send them to me in advance so I can prepare. So usually I will get. Between 75 to 85 questions every month. So between the free webinar, which is promotional and help me to get members and make money and the private webinars, I have maybe like 150 questions every month where it gets in my content aggregator.
And then we can determine patterns to know exactly what people want to read about and talk about in the future. So this is how I’m never running out of ideas. It’s easier and easier to, to get the content out because I’m getting exactly the point. I’m getting literally like the titles and the subtitles of all my newsletters coming from my members.
And then I just have to do the research or sometimes I already know the topic. So I just move in, start a content, and after that declining it into different format. Not that complicated. So this is how we’ve been able over the past two years to accelerate. That flywheel and we’ve seen, we usually received about five to seven new emails per day about two years ago.
And now we’re like on average between 15 to 20 emails a day, just by having this entire setup where now content is being published every week, everywhere. And the newsletter is more, is also more interesting because we cover more ground and we have like various media. So if you’re a podcast person, we have something for you.
If you write or read, if you write or watch something, we also have it. So it’s, it’s great for, for investors that they have, Exactly how they want to consume the content. They have a way with the same
Jared: newsletter. That really is a flywheel because it sounds overwhelming until you keep reiterating, like, no, it’s kind of a singular piece of content, a singular idea that you’ve just found the way to maximize how you distribute that and get the maximum value for it.
What does the membership look like? Like from a high level, what is the framework you’ve landed on? With the membership, has it always looked that way or have you modified it and tweaked it over the years? Uh, actually it has
Mike: changed a lot. So at first it was really the classic investing newsletter. So we had a website, but the website was a very basic version of a stock screener, which was highly limited by a bunch of stuff.
It was really like us. Putting numbers into a Google spreadsheet and the Google spreadsheet being published somehow on the website and the weekly newsletter. That was pretty much it. And then eventually we had like in like it kind of like evolve slowly and then in 2020 when the pandemic hit. I realized, okay, I, I must do something a lot bigger with the business.
And that point, I invested massively on the website, got like more information, and it kind of like grew like step by step. So, actually, there was one major step before that in 2018. Sorry, kind of forgot that. Then it’s like, My most important thing. So at first that we had like DSR regular, so access to the membership website, analysis of stocks.
And then we had the newsletter. Then in 2018, my partner said, how about we monitor all the quarterly earnings for our members? So we thought at first, Oh, if we look at that and back then we had maybe like. About a thousand members. So if we upgrade to a pro version, we’re going to start with a better version of like getting like 30 people.
See if it’s worked out. So we send the email within 24 hours, we get 30 people to actually pay a premium to get the pro version as a beta. And the idea was. Every quarter, we’re going to make a summary of all the companies you have in your portfolio. So half a page, like telling you what happened with the revenue, the earnings, the dividend, the quote from the CEO, the link to the press release, and our thoughts about it.
Like what happened? Was it a good quarter? Was it a bad quarter? So you don’t have to trail the earnings day. You don’t have to read financial analysis. You can do that. Every single quarter you receive one document. You spend two hours, you read that and you know exactly what’s going on in your portfolio.
So that was the idea. Which was great on paper. Then, 30 people started to complete their, their um, their spreadsheet on Google Sheets. So we can have like all the stocks that we need to analyze. So it was just that, it was not portfolio analysis. It was just, do you have Apple, do you have Microsoft, do you have BlackRock, whatever.
But then I thought, Oh, we’re going to cover like a hundred stocks, right. Or something like that. Yeah, we, uh, we started the first quarter with almost 500. So
Jared: my gosh,
Mike: yeah. And then it was just like me, my partner and Vero, that was like what the three of us. Like working 12 to 15 hours every single day, going through those earning statement and making those summaries.
And at the end, because nothing was automated. So when we’re doing those, we were just like copy, like building like a huge Word document. Okay. So like every, like two, two company per page. Like a thousand, like a 500 pages where they’re like 200 pages. And then we were doing like control F and copy paste for each of them.
So I had like, okay, Jared has like 28 stocks and then it was like stock number one, stock number two, stock number three, and so on. So, yeah, so I was burning my brain and my eyes doing this, but that was pretty much the only way we could actually. Offer a great service and make a lot more money out of that.
So then we had members, we could upsell them, which was an incredible success. Today we have. Almost 70 percent of our members are DSR Pro members, so they’re all paying for the big thing. And it also helps me when I do promotion, I have, okay, so you can go for the basic membership at 199 or you go for the pro version at 399.
And then whenever I offer a rebate, it’s the same percentage rebate, but it’s always the same thing. You have like the smaller version or the big version. And most people are thinking, I’m going to use the big version and if it’s not working for me, I’m going to downgrade. But now, with DSR Pro and then fast forward to 2020, made major investments, everything has been automated then.
So now, We do still cover, but now we have like a team. So I use mostly contractors. So it’s easier this way. So they receive a list at the beginning of the quarter of like a hundred stocks or whatever to follow. Now we’re able to track 11, like 1100 companies. So we have like seven people doing those summaries.
They key in their information, and then we have a system where it all bundles it up, create the report automatically, and on top of that, you can build your portfolio on the website now. So with all those improvements, Of course, it cost me like, maybe like 200, 000 over the past, like between 2020 and 2024, spent about like 200, 000, 250, 000, mostly just in web, web development team, just creating those new features where you can create your portfolios, as many portfolios you want, you get all the stats, all the graphs that are pulling out of this.
We have a stock comparison tool now. So we have like all those great tools. So everything that is. Upgraded is part of the pro version and the, the regular members still have access to the stock screener, which is now powered by Refinitiv, which is the equivalent to Bloomberg. So it’s like very, very powerful.
So we have like an amazing stock screener, very professional. We have the newsletter, we have the private webinar. So they have access to all of that in our stock analysis. So we, we, we do 400 companies that we really like, or that are either super popular at DSR. We do those, those, uh, analysis. And then you have the pro version where you have like all the upgraded tools.
And most of the time what happen is they go either for the pro version right away or they start with DSR. And then we have like a small sequence say, Hey, if you like DSR, you’re going to love DSR Pro. So not too pushy because of course they’re already members. But we’re already giving them the, like, the, the opportunity to upgrade like maybe two or three times a year.
So this is how we grew while we started with 30 members at DSR Pro to like 2, 500 now today in, Six years.
Jared: Wow. Okay. So multiple tiers of memberships, um, a little pain along the way, but sweat equity aside, you now have quite the system in place on the back of quite the investment you’ve made. I mean, what do you think are like the biggest takeaways if someone’s thinking about starting a membership component to what they’re working on?
Um, clearly like there’s a lot in what you share. So I’m not trying to, trying to, trying to say that you haven’t given that, but maybe. If you could, what were, what would the high level takeaways be if someone wanted to start a membership site and what they could learn from, from your like almost a decade long journey on it?
Mike: Yeah. So I think the first lesson and, and I kept hearing that everywhere, but like your avatar is super important, but not just to define, to know where you like to who you sell it for, but you don’t want to have bad clients. Like you don’t want to have clients that are not your right fit. And I’ve learned that from actually being a financial planner and I was still like, cause.
Most financial planner or financial advisors will just go after the money and I’m like, well, Jared, if we’re not a good fit to work together, I don’t care if you have like 5 million to transfer me over. I don’t want to build the relationship with you because I don’t think I’m going to right fit for you.
So I manage my business the same way being very. Narrowed into what I am targeting. So now I can tell you that most of my members are between 55 and 65. They have over half a million dollar. Most of them are men, unfortunately, but this is, I mean, this is the generation where most of the time men’s are running the stuff and I know exactly how to approach them, what is important to them.
So that’s the first thing. The second thing is. I’ve always worked thinking about the long game and the only moment where I was trying to make a quick buck right away was when I quit my job in 2017 because of course I had like not, I was not generating enough money. So to compensate the first month, for example, I was reading, I was writing.
For Seeking Alpha. So Seeking Alpha is a big investment website and back then I was maybe getting like, I don’t know, like a hundred, 150 per article, but since I’m really good at writing and I can write days long without even being tired, I’m like, okay, I’m going to do that. But while I was pursuing income for the following month, just to pay my bills, I was not building anything.
I was not working on a relationship with free readers. I was not trying to grow my newsletters. I was just trying to make a buck right now. So that was a, a, a. Not like it was a necessity. So I’m not I’m not ready to call it a mistake, but if you can act Operate from a place where you don’t need to make money right away.
So start as a side gig grow your readership your audience That’s probably the most important part Make sure that you possess that because sometimes I hear people that they build a huge following on the platform But I’m like, yeah, that’s great What if they change the rule tomorrow morning? You know, I have like 25, 000 followers on Twitter.
It’s not that much, but now it’s not growing anymore because the rules have changed. And I kind of didn’t. Didn’t bother to try to change my way of writing and doing stuff, interacting with the platform the same way when Google decided, well, your website is not good enough for me. So I’m like, okay, so I just need to get control over my readership, which the only way I found was through the newsletter.
So that would be takeaway number two and takeaway number three. I would say going for a,
don’t be afraid to ask people money. Too often people don’t want to sell, sound salesy, but when I run a campaign, when I do a webinar, or when I send like people like five, 10 emails, and we were discussing that before we started recording, the market was going crazy at the time of recording. So I’m like, you know what, that’s a great opportunity.
I’m going to do like a four or five days, every single day, I’m going to send an email because people are being uncomfortable. They have concern. The about to panic sell sometimes. And my conviction here is not just, Oh, it’s a great opportunity to make money, but rather it’s a great opportunity to help people because my resource, my membership is actually helping like that’s my tagline, help people invest with conviction so they can enjoy their retirement.
But this is exactly what we do inside DSR. During the crisis of 2020, I held weekly private webinars. For my members, like every single week I was putting up the show in March and April. And of course, I had no clue what was going on either, but I was there to help them relax, to joke a little bit aside and to focus on what really matters.
Oh, there’s a lockdown. Well, it’s a good thing for Microsoft because they’re doing online stuff and they’re strong with corporate America. If everybody has to work remotely for the next 10 years, Well, this is a company that is going to make a killing. So those are the type of things I was able to do to help my members reach their goals.
And that for me, if I don’t push and I don’t market and advertise my membership, I’m actually making a disservice to all investors. So investors should be aware of what I do, and then it’s up to them to decide if it’s the right fit, if it’s the right strategy and what they need. But if so, I want to be there and I want to make sure that they know that I’m here to help them out.
But I mean, some investors, they’re just super happy, super confident. They have their strategy. They don’t need DSR and that’s totally fine. But thinking about how you really help people instead of just like trying to sell something just for the sake of selling something, because you want to have a business, I think it’s the most important part because then you just fall in love in what you do.
Like. People are talking about retirement a lot, especially because I’m in the investing world and I can even picture myself retiring anytime. I think that as long as I have that capacity of like writing and talking, I’m just going to do it. So maybe I’m going to work until the age of 75 or 80. But it’s not work for me.
It’s just having fun, you know, and I have this flexibility where now I’m at the stage where there’s like fast forward today. I can travel as long as I have a laptop. It’s all good. You know, I spent a couple of weeks in Iceland and then I went off in Argentina earlier this year. And, and in the meantime, I had like spring break with, with my kids.
We rented a vacation property, so I’m able to take time off all the time. But at the same time, I’m always working. I was in Iceland, like, updating my database in the middle of the night. But I mean, I didn’t mind, because I’m just having fun. And I kind of accept the fact that, yes, I’m not able to disconnect for like, a week in the Bahamas and not reading any emails.
But on the other side, man, I, I have like between two to three months a year where I can do wherever I, whatever, whatever I want, wherever I want, and that’s all good. So for me, that flexibility is worth everything. And if you find your passion. And you’re all good. You don’t, you don’t need to worry about when you will retire.
Jared: I think a lot of people listening will have had, uh, many of them will have had a similar story over the past year or so. Google has done another one of these taking traffic from people. And so I think a lot of people are really going to lean into some of the things you, you were just, You know, ahead of your time, uh, maybe what some would say, like you, you pulled the pivot off 10 plus years ago.
Um, yeah, I want to go back to a comment you made and I’ve had circled here for a while. So I want to make sure I get this in. He’s talked about 80 percent of members. Stay and stick year over year. And I guess maybe from a high level churn is something that I know is a big challenge for memberships and really anything that has a monthly or yearly fee for it.
What do you think is like the big component that gets people to stick year in, year out? You talked about a lot of the things that people get in the membership. That all makes sense. But in terms of stickiness, like why do people continue to pay? What is it about? Have you figured that out?
Mike: Uh, yeah, of course.
I mean, quality of product is obvious, but on top of that, I’m lucky to evolve. About like to talk about the stock market, cause it’s always changing. So the fact that there’s always fresh news, fresh ideas, fresh content, I think it’s, it’s a key component here for the membership. It’s not a place where you go in.
And in three months from now, you have consumed all the content and you know, everything, and now you’ve became. Three months, a year, whatever. But then after that, there’s a period you say, Oh, I’m all good. Well, you can’t with the investment world because there’s always something different. You know, recently we had like inflation and interest rate, which has not been discussed for more than 15 years.
And now since 2022, it’s everything we talk about before that we had COVID before that we had like the Brexit or the tariff war between the U S and China. So it’s always new. So that is. Another thing, and the other one is the fact that we constantly improve and add features. So it’s not just about content, but every year I reinvest money in the membership website to make sure that it, it evolves along the need of my members.
So those are the three key metrics. But I want to also. Talk about the downside of having a membership, because I think, I mean, of course, I’m having a lot of fun, and it’s a successful business, and I’m super happy, and we have like plenty of projects to go to a million dollars and so on, and I know I’m going to make it, but there are big downsides.
The first one I would say is You’re not making much money at the beginning. It’s a very slow process. So at first, I was selling the membership for like a hundred bucks a year. But once you pay me a hundred bucks in August, I have to wait 11 months to get another a hundred bucks from you. So it’s a very long time that I have to produce content.
So at first, my member is like, I’m literally producing content. Like getting like cents per hours of like, of what I’m doing. And eventually it’s going to scale up. So that’s the, the, the downside is it takes time at first. It’s not something that you’re going to grow super fast, but the upside is now the content I create.
I’m making the same effort and it’s the same time that I do today for almost 4, 000 members that I had back then when I was traveling with 200 members. So that’s great. The other thing is with the churn, you get to a level where at the beginning you don’t realize. You have like, let’s say you have 100 members.
So you lose 20 next year. So you have to make 20 cells on that month to renew. So that’s not that bad, right? Making 20 cells. Okay. That’s easy. It’s not even like one cell a month, but now that I have like, let’s say 4, 000 is easier, 4, 000 members. So that means I’m losing almost a thousand members a year.
So the first. 800 cells I make this year is just to compensate the revenue that I’m gonna lose. And eventually you’re getting to a point where it’s hard to scale like a hockey stick because you’re going to grow linear, but you’re going to stop or almost stop because you need to expose your product to a larger audience.
And I’m well aware I’m reaching that point right now. The good news is I haven’t spent a dime in marketing yet. So now I’m going to explore ways with like advertising and stuff like that with, and partnership where I can grow the business more. Another way that I found was to have affiliates. So I do have investment bloggers.
They don’t have a product, but they do have an audience. So, and instead of paying them for advertising DSR, I make deals with them. So, I already have my playbook, so I contact you and say, Hey Jared, I do have this webinar topic and this set of like 10 emails that I’m sending after that. If. You let me send that package to you over.
I’m going to handle all the answers. I’m going to do the webinar. So you just have to go on your email list platform and copy paste all those emails. You have an affiliate code and we share the revenue half and a half. So, and it’s recurring revenue for you. So it’s a pretty good business. And my top three affiliates, they generate, like I, with those three guys, I’m generating more than 200, 000 in sales per year.
So when I was talking, just to be clear, when I was talking about half a million dollars in sales at DSR, I’m talking about net sales. So I’ve already paid roughly 150, 000 in affiliate payments on that. So it would be like, my, my numbers on my financial statements are more like 700. And then I pay like those, those, uh, those affiliates, but just to, to, to remember that what is successful here is not just having athletes for having affiliates.
Like when people are contacting me, it’s like, Hey Mike, I would like to put a link on my blog or whatever. I just say, no, I’m like, if you’re not in for a all in campaign where we’re going to have an email blast, we’re going to have in a webinar and the full package, it’s not worth it. But if you’re willing to do that, if you, and if you have like.
10 to 15, 000 people on your newsletter, well, you may generate for like 10, 000 worth of, of, of sales the first campaign. So you’re going to get like 5, 000 this year, but next year you’re going to get another 4, 000 and so on. And you can run those type of campaigns maybe three times a year. So rapidly, you’re going to grow your, your side income to a few tens of thousands of dollars every year and you do nothing.
And on my side, which is great is I’m able to grow the business faster and I would not have necessarily access to those guys. So, and some of them are actually pretty good at SEO. So I’m kind of like benefiting from Google traffic, but instead of like working on my stuff, which definitely I’m bad at. I let those guys being good at doing SEO gathering those emails and running my campaign through their network.
Jared: You know, I wanted to ask you about it. So let me, let me ask you now, like maybe from a high level, walk us through what a webinar would look like. Um, Do you have like a specific process you go through? It sounds like you do a lot of these, whether to your own audience or it sounds like you’re doing unique webinars to other audiences.
Like what is, how do you put that together? What does it look like? Um, how does the cadence go of it? Do you have a certain process you follow? How do you end up getting sales at the end of a webinar?
Mike: Yeah. So I always have a similar process where I have a clear topic. So example, like how and when to buy, cause that’s like a major struggle.
A lot of people are thinking, is it the right time and what should I buy? And so on. So literally answering a specific question. So just a classic. So I start that and one thing I do completely different than others. And I do that now because. I found it’s better to respect people’s time and to focus on giving value right away.
I don’t have an introduction. So the introduction is literally, okay, Jared, welcome to the webinar. We’re going to talk about this topic, which is split in like three or four subtopics. And there’s obviously a disclaimer because I’m in the investing world. So I have to, I have to like go with the disclaimer and then we start.
So I don’t tell you about my background. I don’t tell you what I am. Like I’m Mike and I’m here to help you out, but you don’t know that I’m like my financial background or anything else. Most of the time it’s just boring stuff. And people want to have answers to their question. So what I do is I usually have like three or four teams, like, like subtitles, let’s where I will go a little bit.
Narrow and answer those specific questions. And every time I answered a specific question on how you can do it, I show how I do it using DSR because in the end, I’ve built that platform. And this is the only platform I use personally to manage my portfolio. So. To make the research, to compare stocks, to, I did like to do the analysis and so on.
So I really always tie it up to DSR, but I just say, okay, Jared, I do it this way. And here’s like the shortcut at DSR, I do it. And then sometimes throughout the presentation, I usually enable people to download some of the, uh, some of the like most popular newsletter that I, that I wrote that are like private for the membership.
But what is great is since the membership offers so many other features, I can literally give away a few newsletters and no members. It’s feel that they’re getting like ripped off here. They’re just like, yeah, it’s content that I paid for, but I pay for all the other things that nobody have access. So that’s kind of fair game.
So I’m, I’m kind of like sharing maybe 10, 15 percent of what’s inside DSR for free. And, and I’m just building the habit at this point of people just to take action throughout the webinar. Oh, I’m going to download this. It’s free. I mean, you just click on the bottom, you get the PDF. There’s no, like, there’s no email.
There’s nothing. Like, it’s really straightforward. Oh, let me download this. Let me insert a quick, a quick poll. So they are getting the habit of like taking action. And at the end of the membership, before we go to the Q& A, I’m inviting you to DSR with a special offer. And this is where I have like a five, like bit, like when I said the presentation is about an hour max.
The last five to 10 minutes, I really talk about DSR and I, I let people know, oh, you can write all your questions during that time as well. So if you don’t wanna listen to me, that’s fine, but like key in your, your questions. And after that I do the q and a. Hmm. So that’s the first step. And then after the end of the webinar.
We gather all the, um, we, we do, we have a timestamp for all the questions. And when we send the replay the next morning, we also send a timestamp. So for people who wants to go directly for a specific question or anything, again, I respect your time. I, my goal here is to provide a lot of value up front, so I can build trust.
And, you know, when you’re selling a financial product, It’s not about the price. It’s about the trust because people they’re paying a few hundred bucks a year. It’s not going to matter if they manage like a portfolio of half a million dollars and more. It’s like insignificant, but if they’re making mistakes because they’re using a bad product, they’re going to lose tens of thousands of dollars.
So it’s all about the trust that I can build throughout those webinars, but really it’s focusing on the question. Having three or four teams inside the presentation, each as a solution that is tied up to DSR. And at the end, I go with like testimonials and, and stuff that is again, related to the topic of the day.
So of course, if I have like some people said, Hey, thank you, because now I bought this stock or this stock, or like, I’m confident entering the market. And my webinar was about how to buy and when to buy. I’m going to tie them up as well. So it’s really to be coherent. And having those two options, regular, DSR Pro.
And that also helps me to make the difference between both. So I have like a chart. With like, uh, like a table where I can explain here’s what you get if you sign up for DSR and here’s what you get if you upgrade to pro. So it makes also the discussion a little bit more fluent.
Jared: Mike, I have to say that this hour has completely flown by.
Um, I feel like, man, I feel like I, I still have a few more questions, but I got to speak at a respecting time. Um, I mean, I just wanted to kind of put a tie, a bow on it. Like what a cool story. I think it’s such a cool story for people who are listening right now, because a lot of people. Are looking for successful ways to take their knowledge, to take the content that they create, to take their expertise and find a great way to apply it.
And I just think this is great. I also really appreciate that you shared like all the upsides, all the tactics, but also the downsides so that people understand the path and the process. Um, and so I think you did a good job with that. I for coming on. Like, I signed up for your newsletter, your free one, to be fair.
It’s all good. It’s all good. I signed up right after I met you at ConvertKit just to watch how you kind of do your daily or your weekly emails. And I think it’s great. Like where can people follow along with what you’re doing? Um, where would you point them if they wanted to learn more or just keep in touch with you?
Mike: Yeah. The best place is of course, signing up to the newsletter. And I think if you’re interested in dividend investing, the best way to do it is to go to DSR, so dividend stocks, rock. com. Slash income. So this one is a guide, like explaining my strategy, explaining everything. But of course the other side, if you’re not interested about dividend investing, but you want to see how I shape my stuff, while you’re going to get the free newsletter, like you, like you do Jared, and you’re going to see the framework behind it and the ideas, and you’re probably going to see me coming at one point, which is cool because it’s going to give you like a little bit more pointers.
If you’re just interesting on the framework on how it works. Uh, one last piece of advice that I would like to give everybody before I leave, though, is don’t wait until you have a perfect product or a perfect presentation. The first webinar I did when I came back was really okay. I did it on a laptop. I had no lighting, no great camera, no great mic.
I was super nervous, so I did an okay webinar to be honest. Nice with myself, but then my partner told me, you know what, Mike, you’re better at doing webinar than 97 percent of people. And I’m like, what are you talking about? I’m like, well, 97 percent of people never did a webinar. So build as you go, build the plane as you learn how to fly.
It’s all right. Just let people know that this is what you’re doing. So being transparent is going to go a long way, but this is how you can actually take action because like waiting until you have like that million dollar idea and like 500, 000 in your bank account before you can actually jump, never going to happen.
So start slow, but start right away. Take actions like investing. Like the best time to invest was yesterday. The second best time is today. So don’t wait until tomorrow. I mean, you’re just making the same mistake over.
Jared: I love it. I love it, Mike. Thanks for coming on. We’ll get those links in the show notes.
If you’re following along, uh, watching on YouTube or listening to the podcast and, uh, Mike, uh, much continued success. Thank you for sharing your story and all the details.
Mike: Thank you so much, Derek. It has been a pleasure being here and talking about business for once.
Jared: Awesome. We’ll talk again soon. Bye bye.
Cheers.