Below is the transcription for this episode:
Dave: Hey, what’s going on? I'm Dave Sharpe. Welcome to Wake Up Legendary. And how many of you are musicians? Right if any of you are musicians or love music? Well we have a musician this morning who has taken you know, as we've said here in the headline of this show today, he's reinvented himself as a digital marketer, and he's pushed himself out of his comfort zone to do so Vasco. Welcome to the show, brother.
Vasco: Thanks for inviting me.
Dave: You're very welcome. Where are you? Calling in from my friend.
Vasco: I'm calling from Portugal. called Istanbul branch, which literally means White Castle.
Dave: Okay, you're saying that's the name of the city or the town?
Vasco: The city.
Dave: Okay, nice. Man. Nice. Very cool. So tell us you know, what has brought a musician like yourself from Portugal. Okay. I've heard of one of the most beautiful places in the world. To go on to the internet. And then to find Legendary Marketer and start an online business. Tell us how that all came to be.
Vasco: Okay. It's a long story, but I'll try to make it short. I've worked nine years as a sound engineer in a major living studio here in Portugal. In Lisbon. We work with DreamWorks and Warner Brothers and Sony of all those major companies with the theatrical animated feature films for cinema. Wow, that's cool. You know, I really love the job and the team. But I always get home late at night and then I have many rehearsals at nights and at the weekend. I was working basically in a dark studio all day. And, four years ago, I quit my job. And I quit without having any idea of what I was going to do. So the natural thing for me was to start looking online. Me and my partner at the time, we started the recipe blog. She was a cook. And so I started following some recipe laws and that's how I knew about marketing. Because I saw a lot of blogs and made tons of money with affiliate marketing. And at the time, I had no idea how to start a blog. I didn't even know what WordPress was. But you know, it was a good experience. But after six months, we stopped because she wanted to go through a route. I wanted to go through another route and we decided to stop and that time I was in the studio. I have some knowledge of stock music, you know Yeah. I experimented with it. And I tried. I tried to compose a stock music track, a corporate stock music track for business, and I uploaded it to a music site and about two or three days later I got a sale. And I said well, it works. And I knew that stock music. It's a numbers game. So I started making a track every single day until about three months after I started earning a full time income just with stock music. But it seemed that it reached a plateau which I couldn't get which I couldn't increase and it was the income from fuck music was great to survive and to pay the bills, but not to thrive. So I started looking again online. What else can I do? And to this day, I still sustain myself with some music but I also have other savings. So at that time, it was two years ago I saw a video by Brian Brewer and he was promoting Legendary and I did the 15 Day Challenge. I even started TikTok accounts but because you see this Yeah, oh, a dumb phone, my cell phone but two years ago my father gave me his old smartphone as an other one that I didn't want to smartphone and read with this. I said okay, so I tried. I tried to create a TikTok account. But the smartphone was so slow, so slow. It was unbearable to make videos. And despite that all the videos were being shown to a Portuguese audience. So I wasn't getting any traction, not following anything. So I quit. And I started the blog. Just starting all by myself I started a blog writing about business tools and software work from home. And I've been growing that blog since then. And last year my father bought a new smartphone and he gave me his old one. And this is modern, so I tried to decline.
Dave: Do you have that phone you can show since you showed us so we can have a comparison between the two?
Vasco: Okay, this is one this is the one that I use for calls and messages.
Dave: The dumb phone and then there's the smart one.
Vasco: Yeah. Because I was never into social media. You know, I don't do well on social media platforms. Yeah. I only use it for TikTok basically. Right. And to report on Instagram reels and reels. Yeah. But I did a thing differently because I didn't want my videos to be shown on unfortunately. Right so all the content is in English. So I bought an American SIM card from T Mobile on Amazon. Yeah, resented the phone to its default settings. I installed the VPN. And then I started creating content and I saw that it was being shown in the US.
Dave: So if anybody's not us and wants to tap in you're saying that you use the VPN. And that was successful. To be able to get to a worldwide audience.
Vasco: I bought the US SIM cards on Amazon from T Mobile. resented the phone to its default settings. I inserted the SIM card I turned the phone on. I installed the VPN and instead of one load instead of downloading Tik Tok from Google Play because it was linked to my Gmail account, and sometimes the apps can import us. So I downloaded the APK file. I think it's an APK or a PKG. It is the installation file app. So I found a website where I downloaded that app. Download the Tiktok apk file as a way to bypass Google Play. And it worked. I created a new account and I started getting lots of views and traction and followers
Dave: I also want to talk about your blog too. As much as I want to talk about your TikTok.
Vasco: Well, I decided to invest some time because I'm, I'm terrible on camera. And I'm not very comfortable being on camera. And speaking in public and English is not even my native language so I started using TikTok as a way to challenge myself. Right. And I have been posting three videos every day for the past three months. I just stopped a week ago. I've been getting some people to my email list.
Dave: But why did you stop Vasco Why did you stop a week ago?
Vasco: Well, I stopped doing to go because I had I have a general content to a week ago and I was focusing myself I was focusing on my blog and music also. And although I was learning following on tick tock sometimes I looked at my videos and I said this is stupid. What the hell am I doing? You know, I don't recognize myself here. Although I'm having fun you know I'm challenging myself and having fun. Yeah. And well and to this day, all my all my leads are coming from my blog. Not from TikTok, although my email list is increasing from my blog, and the blog, I know it's a long term, long term project, but it's really growing every week.
Dave: And, and a different thing about social media contents and blog content is that on social media, you don't own your contents. You know, right.
Vasco: On my blog, I own everything.
Dave: That is a big difference. And you know there are a lot of bloggers who, like you said , in every different niche make a lot of money. Specifically because once you rank a page, you know, it's really not your website that's ranking if we want to be more specific. See, language matters when we're describing things so we can understand them and make sure that we're crystal clear about what is actually getting results. In with a blog or a website. It's the page that's ranking. It's not a it's not the website, you know, a website can be full of tons of different pages. And in your case, what you know, over time the majority of the content that is going to be on your blog is going to be a blog post in those blog posts. I was briefly looking at you're looking at your blog, and I came to you know, this, this post right here, which was, you know, one of the posts that I got to write from your homepage, and you know, how to create a website using Astra in Gutenberg block patterns, whatever that is. I'm sure there's people who are searching for that exact phrase. And if I was looking for information on that, and I came to this blog post, especially with how you've outlined and I would assume this is a WordPress plugin, a table of contents plugin. That's just what I'm assuming. This blog post looks very informative. It looks very good and I think that's the big thing that people have to understand about SEO which is called search engine optimization. And for those of you out there that don't know what that means. It means getting your website or the page on your website ranked on that first page of Google when somebody searches for a specific phrase, plumber in Denver, Colorado. You know, if you want either the homepage, your homepage, your website to come up or a blog page on your blog post on your website to come up or something. But the best way over the years, people have done all kinds of what they call Black Hat strategies where they were trying to basically trick Google into thinking that, you know, that Google should rank their post on page one. And so they would get backlinks you know, hey, you know, let me go and try to get my link, you know, 100 websites, you know, posting a link that comes back to my site that's called a backlink. And that'll prove to Google that I'm so popular and they're really just garbage links, and that's why it's called blackhat seo strategies. But the bottom line is what every single top blogger that I've ever talked to, has always said is the number one way to get your blog post on the first page of Google is to deliver thorough, valuable long form content. Do you agree with that?
Vasco: Yeah, completely. And I believe that the Google algorithm values contents more than backlinks. And you know, not all backlinks are made equal, you know, yeah. Right. Having a backlink from a high authority site is better than the backlink from the low authority. Right,
Dave: So just to be more crystal clear for all of you who are listening, if Forbes which I've been lucky enough to have Forbes do an article on me and I think we're I think they're coming out with another one real soon. I'm not sure but we'll let you know if that does happen. But that link, if they have Legendary Marketer on that Forbes site, and when you click it, it goes to legendary marketer.com. That's called a backlink. Right? Because it's a link out to my site, our site. What Google does is it looks at that. It says Wow, the Forbes this kind of big hotshot authority site is is linking back from their site back to this site, Legendary Marketer, Legendary Marketer must be legitimate, and, you know, popular, important website and so we're going to give that a page on that website or that website entirely more authority. And so yeah, it's a combination of good quality websites linking into your website. But as you said, and as I asked you, it's also about that quality content. And that's one of the things that I see that you're building up here, down in, you know, on this on this WordPress blog, is that right?
Vasco: I've always tried to make long form content, even when I tried to monetize my blog through affiliate marketing. And the best posts you can make to monetize your blog are the how to post sometimes and the best posts, you know, the best software for whatever is the 10 best, the 15 best because those are transactional keywords. If I want to buy a piece of software, I want to know what else exists on the market. So I usually type best, whatever I want to buy. So I'm already in bind mode.
Dave: Quite frankly, for those of you who are doing YouTube, YouTube is a search engine as well. And it's really important that we understand how these different platforms work. How do they operate? Well, YouTube and Google are search engines, which means that I am the user I go to and I type something in, as you said the okay I'm in the market for an audio converter. Okay, so I type in the best audio converter software, and lo and behold, wow, I go to Google and in you know, it's got a list in this post comes up number one, this is your post Wow. 17 best audio converter software. Google in YouTube, our search engines users get the ball rolling by typing in what they want to experience. Whereas, you know, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, you're following people, it's more serving you what it thinks you want. And so it's a little bit of a difference, you know, many people have argued over the years, you know, that these are the best leads because they're typing it in and they're like intentional. Many of them are already there. They're in buying mode. So although you may get less leads, the quality of the lead is going to be better. Do you find that to be true?
Vasco: Yeah. In my experience, the reason I started with a blog and not YouTube is because as I said, I'm terrible at video, and I'm much more comfortable writing. Today there are some AI tools for writing. That helped a lot. You have to double check everything. Sure. They help tremendously.
Dave: And I'll be honest with you, it's not just AI it's also cheap labor, my friend and I'll plug him he runs a company called the hawth he also owns free up.com I think it's free up.com It could be free up.net But it's definitely The Hoth is another one. He owns all of these companies. And you know it seems you can outsource your writing. Okay. All three of those companies that I just named free up.com or dotnet The Hoth.com and Iwriter, I believe it's iwriter.com you can all go to those companies. And you can purchase content, okay? It's not already pre written. You'll tell them specifically what you want written and you'll give them examples. And you'll tell them how many words you want it to be Vasco approximately how many words do we have on this in this particular article? Oh, I have no idea. Okay. I would say this is 2000 words. It's got a lot of images in it. Maybe 1500 words. I don't know. Maybe 1000 It's these are you know the other thing that is really helpful in these blog posts, the ones at least that we all love to read because they're so informative. Why? Because they give us multiple, they provide for more than one sense I can, you know, sometimes and also they give us those visual examples. You know what I mean? It's such a big thing to be able to not just read something, but to be able to see it. Such a big deal. When did you realize that going the extra mile of getting the screenshots in showing the examples was so much more you know, so much more popular amongst readers, and how how do you how do you choose which image to put and how also do you avoid any legal issues with taking screenshots of back offices, etc.
Vasco: Well, the only screenshots that I take, if I have the software I take the screenshots in my computer using the software or the software. Most companies allow you to download a free trial. But if I don't have software like that one, the first is a screenshot of the homepage. Right, right, right. And I know I know many bloggers that take screenshots of homepage and to state any problem.
Dave: Yeah, there's something in it again, I'm, you know, I'm I'm the furthest thing from a lawyer or an expert on law but they're they're there. Yeah, there are some protections for writers and in the press and excetera to be able to, you know, to be able to publish pictures of things. You know, if I had to learn the hard way with some of my marketing, I would get cease and desist letters from companies, you know, telling me kind of, Hey, you can't do that. And I was like, okay, sorry, I didn't realize that was a line that I just crossed. So, okay, so what else could we or should we know or can we learn from you about this?
Vasco: My first ones. Yeah, well, the thing with the blog is, the blog is, like any other other blogger since the blog is a living entity, you know, yeah, you can update your content over time. If you see that the blog post is ranking. And if you started updating that Google will see this oh, this post is getting new content.
Dave: Oh, this is so good, man. I mean, then the way that you've got these, this, this table of contents, you know function over here that as you're scrolling, it continues to show I mean, it's so functional, man. It's really, really good, Vasco. I can tell that you're just taking pride in your work. And I think, how can people learn from your attention to detail? I mean, this isn't just a blog that got thrown together. I mean, this has got all the right stuff. I mean, you've even got your affiliate. disclosures here. You know, you've got you've got banners over here, you're using your real estate in a way that's, that's so productive. Obviously, all embedded throughout each link are affiliate links. And anybody who knows as you said, you know, it's a great way to build up a solid foundation. As you said earlier, you're still living on the affiliate income from the the music, the stock music that you're selling from those niche blogs you set up a couple years ago, but you know this I can tell that you take a lot of pride in it, not only from looking at it clearly the end product is beautiful, it's functional, it's great information. But you know, I can also tell by the way that you're talking about it that you take a lot of pride in this. This is like a personal canvas. In a you know, not that you're emotionally tied up in it. But it's a representation of you and your work and you want it to look good and you want the information to be good. And it just sounds like it's something that's more than just a way to make a quick buck but you're actually really trying to provide a quality product to people. And what's the beautiful thing about it and I want to point this out to everybody is you don't even have a product to sell. You know, you're simply your product is the value that you deliver in the bridge that you build from where they were when they were looking for a solution to now leading them to that solution basically, in a safe and comfortable way and saying look, this is you know, this can help you go with confidence and by but anyways, just what I said feel like it fits?
Vasco: Yeah, I like that my blog feels nice to whoever is reading it. And to myself also. There's a great thing that I had no idea would happen is when your blog starts growing, and you have lots of affiliate links and you speak about brands sometimes they'll start reaching out to you. As an example, I have a blog post and if it's not ranking, it's not ranking on the first page. And it's like 23 best web hosting services and I had a company that was on the number 14, I guess, and their affiliate manager reached out to me and he said, Hey, I would like our company.” He moved to the first three positions. Can we get to an agreement? And I said yes, you can give me a backlink. Or she proposed to double my Commission's so I moved that brand to the number three position and my commission has doubled that. So and like that there are a lot of collaborations and strategies that you can use when your blog starts growing and people start reaching out to you.
Dave: Yeah, wow, what a story man. What a story. That's a great example. I know people whose single blog posts have made them, you know, an obscene, ridiculous amount of money. And so you know, the most beautiful thing is it typically becomes fairly consistent. And it happens on an ongoing basis because again, it stays there in Google and doesn't move things around. You know, to quickly so, you know, if you come back and you update your post, you know, I know a lot of people who will say that the 27 best dictation software for 2021 and then they'll come back and update that for 2022 and even update the post and if you keep that content relevant and you actually really treat your your, you know, if you're writing a blog, or if you're curating a blog, you're really you're really like a media company, you know, and it's really about it's really about, you know, that is your product, you know that is your it's, as you said, there's a lot of reasons to take pride in that because you do own that and you would have to do in a whole lot to have the hosting company. You know, delete your hosting, you could take your site and usually move it to another, another hosting platform. Before you would ever lose any of your content. And you also have rights because you're a paying customer of those hosting companies. If they were to ever screw anybody over there would be, you know, 10s of 1000s of people and in their business would likely go out of business overnight, because now all of the customers would be scared that their content also could get taken down. So you've got rights and you've got leverage. And at worst, the worst thing that could happen is a hosting company comes to you and says, We no longer want to host your content because we don't like the theme. We don't like the topic and we don't like your position and or it's against our terms and we need you to move it to a different you know, a different hosting company. And so then you scramble to go find another hosting company or you set up your own server. You know which some people do as well.
Vasco: For me right now, my life, my business, my online business is divided into stock music, and my blog. Sometimes I go weeks straight only on the blog. And then I stopped and Oh, it's too much. I'm not a blogger, I'm in position and then I go back to music. And then when I see that muse, I can scale music as I want to. I go back to work. So it's a thing. Or, or I'm writing music, and selling music or writing blogs.
Dave: You've given us all a lot to think about this morning. And also I just love that. You know, blogging is not the most sexy, and it's not the most popular strategy. But it's, you know, it's so consistent and it's so reliable and if you do it right, it can produce such results but it really is a commitment and that's one of the things for people to really understand is, you know, tick tock or Instagram or something is a much easier way to get into online marketing if you can overcome that uncomfortability of being on camera. And I love how you have also pushed yourself to be uncomfortable. I heard that loud and clear. And I hope you'll continue to do that. But blogging is a true commitment because you're really truly building a product, you're building a brand and you're really building a really a place where people come to get information because you have so much room to go into detail. Sort of like a YouTube channel. People will use your blog sort of oftentimes and can use it as a manual. They can use it as as obviously entertainment but in this case, most of the time more and more people are using blogs like yours as manuals or as a validation to you know, they're shopping for something and they just want somebody else's opinion and you just happen to if they click your link get you know get the get the commission for that sale for the product that they were already going to buy people that's the thing to understand is they were already gonna buy it. And if I can create a piece of content that could give them further information to help them either say yes, this is for me, or ooh, that's not for me, you know, thank you for letting me know. It's just a powerful thing and I look forward to watching your blog grow and watching your business grow and I hope that you'll keep going and come back and continue to keep us posted. And show us how big and how successful a blogging, marketing business can really be.
Vasco: Thank you. I like to see the blog like a piece of digital real estate. Yes. grows over time. Its value increases over time. True and excellent if it's a project in the long run, and even last year, I was about six months. I stopped writing on my blog for six months and it started increasing. The traffic was still increasing. Right?
Dave: It's unbelievable. I mean, the only two, the only two things that I've ever seen do that is his content on YouTube and content on Google. You know, it's because of the way that you know those platforms work. They're powerful. They're not to be ignored. You know, a lot of you may jump on TikTok at first because it's really easy to get started with, but over time, absolutely. You might want to consider building your central hub. And in that central hub is is is most of the time going to be your blog. You know, there are other things that you can do to create a central hub. Many people use Facebook groups, you know, many people use discord channels. Many people use things like this. There are things that create that sense of community and that sense of delivering information. But, you know, the thing with a blog is is it still is different from those two things that I just mentioned, because that content, as you mentioned, can just grow and gets, you know, Google will continue to push it to more and more people or it just maintains that number one or number two or a spot on that first page and just sucks in traffic from that phrase or that word for you know, years and years. So it's it's awesome and I love it and I I was really in the blogging several years ago and actually owned a company and we had a blogging network in the company, big big WordPress blogging network that we just set people up with blogs, and had 250,000 People blog and it was it was insane. So there you go, my brother. All right, Vasco. Well, I will chat with you later and please keep up the fantastic work and come back and keep us posted on your journey here in a couple of months. Would you?
Vasco: Okay, sure.
Dave: All right, Vasco. We'll talk. Alright man, bye bye. All right, my friends. Have a fantastic Tuesday. And remember that there's going to be some things on the show that apply, and if they don't apply, let them fly. You don't have to do it all on day one. Just know that you have all this value and content in your back pocket. And you can either use it now or you can use it later. Either way. We just want you to have it. So keep watching, keep tuning in. Go ahead and text the number on your screen right now with the letters WUL and make sure that you get a text message reminder every morning when we go live at 10am. Eastern Time. Monday through Friday Be Legendary, get out of here. We'll see you tomorrow.
