Human Proof Designs Hits $2 Million in Revenue by Building, Selling, and Marketing Starter Sites For Entrepreneurs

Nathan Latka:

Hello everyone. My guest today is Bryon Brewer. He started in the IT consulting industry almost 20 years ago, working for some of the US’ largest consulting firms, including Accenture and Microsoft. 12 years ago, he launched his own consulting firm and has since started, grown and sold numerous online businesses. He currently owns and runs Human Proof Designs based out of Dallas, Texas. The company specializes in helping entrepreneurs start and grow online companies. Started in 2013, they’ve built over a thousand online businesses and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs grow and flip their sites. His company’s now grown to 16 full-time employees, and with 300 contractors. He also owns and manages several affiliate marketing and e-commerce sites. Bryon, you’re ready to take us to the top?

Bryon Brewer:

Absolutely. We’ll get there.

Nathan Latka:

So, at its core, how are you making money? Is it a retainer to founders that want to work with you or are you actually owning and operating your own properties and then selling them?

Bryon Brewer:

Well, we have two parts. We do what’s kind of a ready-made service. So, we find and research niches and topics that are low competition. And we actually build affiliate and e-commerce sites that have no traffic, they’re brand new. And then, we sell those. We have our customers purchase those, and then we help them grow those into revenue producing sites. So, brand new, completely new businesses. And then, we also buy and sell sites, usually that are making between zero to a thousand dollars a month, kind of starter sites. And we help companies are individuals, entrepreneurs purchase those sites and then grow them.

Nathan Latka:

Tell us maybe the story of one of those so we can dive deeper. Maybe the one that you sold for the most over the past 10 years.

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah. So, we have such a variety because we work in just about every single niche and we also do custom niche sites so folks who come to us and are looking for a specific niche. But for example, if you look right now, we have a niche site in the organic foods market, which is really popular nowadays with healthy eating. That site is selling for 10,000. It’s a revenue producing site that has earned about $4,000 in revenue so far this year using the affiliate marketing model, mostly from Amazon affiliate links. So, that site right there is really ripe for growth. We’ve spent a little bit of work in building it, getting that site to where it is currently. A new owner’s going to pick it up, earning a few hundred bucks a month. And then, with our help and their knowledge, they’ll be able to grow that much bigger than what it is today. So, then that investment is… We’ve got that site listed for around 10,000 right now. So, it’s a great way for people who want to get started in online businesses and need help. That’s really what we cater to.

Nathan Latka:

Bryon, it seems like a lot of work though. I mean, you buy the site for four grand, you put a bunch of work into it, now you’re going to sell it for 10 grand, and you’re going to make a six grand profit if you sell it at that price. That feels like a ton of work to make $6,000.

Bryon Brewer:

Well, it is a lot of work. I mean, obviously, what we do is we have a staff of writers. Affiliate marketing is really based around content. So, you want to build really high quality, especially with Google today, their logarithms, there’s not really another way around it, but to just build really high quality content and do good keyword research, target the right niches. And that’s something that we’ve been doing since 2013. So, we’ve gotten really good at it. So, we can build these, get these generating some revenue and then pass it on to a new owner who then can focus on it and grow it much bigger than we can because we’re not focused on just one business. At any time we may have 50 or 60 of these sites that are in our inventory that we’re building and working and then trying to sell to other customers.

Nathan Latka:

So, Bryon, in 2019, how many total sites did you sell to somebody else?

Bryon Brewer:

We sell probably about 50 sites a month. So-

Nathan Latka:

So, how many did you sell in all of 2019 when you add them all together?

Bryon Brewer:

It’d be somewhere in the 500 to 600 range.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. 500 to 600. And how many of those did you buy yourself and then do work and then resell them versus you built from scratch?

Bryon Brewer:

So, probably about 70% of those we built from scratch and about 30% of those we will purchase. We do have a success guarantee so if someone purchases a site from us and they go through our training program, if in one year they aren’t making the income they want to make on that site or they just got bored with it or it wasn’t for them, then we buy the site back from them. So, it does reduce the risk for our customer. So, we do get some sites back as well that we purchase back from customers after one year if they’re not interested in it anymore.

Nathan Latka:

So in 2019, on 500 to 600 sites sold total, how much revenue did that mean for Human Proof?

Bryon Brewer:

I’m sorry, what was that last part? [crosstalk 00:05:28]

Nathan Latka:

How much total revenue did you do in 2019?

Bryon Brewer:

Oh. In 2019, we were at revenue standpoints without some of our bigger sites, kind of adjust that, is about 1.5 million. And this year will be somewhere around 2 million.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. And again, the majority of that revenue is coming in 2019, the 1.5 million, came from you selling those 600 sites?

Bryon Brewer:

Correct. Yeah. And part of that revenue is also we provide SEO and growth services to our customers. So-

Nathan Latka:

How much of the revenue came from that?

Bryon Brewer:

It’s growing. I think over the years, as we’ve gotten a larger customer base, we’ve started to serve more of our customers from a growth standpoint instead of selling sites. So, it’s probably about 40% of our revenue now, the share.

Nathan Latka:

Got it. So, call it like 600, $700,000 is what you’ll do on your SEO growth services?

Bryon Brewer:

Correct. Yeah.

Nathan Latka:

And is that productize, are they buying software or is that you getting on a coaching call once a month with a group of people?

Bryon Brewer:

It’s somewhat productized. I mean, we do things like video production, so we kind of have a format and a system in place where we take existing content, turn it into video that they can share on YouTube, social media, other ways, to grow their sites. We do content writing, we do backlink services, guest posts, all of these types of outreach efforts to help grow their site, on-page and off-page SEO services. So, it’s more of a service and less of a productized type of offering because it is custom to each site.

Nathan Latka:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, how many, here in 2020 you think you’ll do about 2 million in revenue, 40% will be those SEO services, how many unique customers will you work with in 2020?

Bryon Brewer:

Gosh, it’ll be in the hundreds. We probably, in a year’s time, we’ll have 500 customers we work with.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. And so, in 2020, again, there’s four or five months left in this year, you think you’ll work with about 500 customers, how many total sites will you sell this year do you think?

Bryon Brewer:

It’s probably going to be similar. Back when we started-

Nathan Latka:

So, 500? When you say similar… Sorry. 500 or 600 sites this year?

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah, 500 to 600. I mean, back in the day, when we started back in 2013, all the way up until just about two years ago, we were only selling ready-made sites. And we started, almost two years ago, selling revenue generating sites. So, these are smaller sites that have revenue coming in already. So, they really get a fresh start. I mean, the problem with ready-made sites is Google has kind of a six-month sandbox. So, a site isn’t going to rank and isn’t going to grow and develop your revenue, likely, for the first six months. So, you’ve got to have a little patience if you’re buying a ready-made site. Of course, it’s a good time to start growing and adding content, getting your site ready. But you’re really looking at six months before you’re going to start earning revenues on this site. Whereas if you buy one of our revenue generating and our age sites, then you’ve got revenue potentially coming in right away.

Nathan Latka:

Of the 500, 600 sites you’ll sell this year, how many are aged versus brand new?

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah. So, most of them are going to be brand new. We sell, maybe 20 to 30% of those are going to be revenue generating sites.

Nathan Latka:

Got it. Are older or revenue generating.

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. Interesting. And I mean, do you make money? If you do 2 million this year, will you make money?

Bryon Brewer:

Oh yeah. Yeah. We’re profitable.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. And can you break me down? Obviously you have people expenses, you had 16 people on the team it sounds like?

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah, that’s right.

Nathan Latka:

And how many are engineers?

Bryon Brewer:

So, we have a technology team that is 4 engineers. And then, we have a content team, kind of manages our writing production, video production, keyword research, all those activities. We have an investment services team.

Nathan Latka:

How many people are on the content team?

Bryon Brewer:

So, the content team, it varies. We have about 300 contractors and most of them are on that team doing writing services, video services, all sorts of creative services. But we do have a full-time staff as well, that kind of manages that contract team. And then, we also have an investment services team, they kind of manage the overall due diligence on sites that come into us, that we look at purchasing and then growing and selling. So, they handle kind of all those aspects, as well as customers who come to us and say, “You don’t have a site in inventory that I want, but can you help me find one?” And so-

Nathan Latka:

Where can we view your inventory?

Bryon Brewer:

Sorry, what?

Nathan Latka:

Where can we view your inventory?

Bryon Brewer:

humanproofdesigns.com

Nathan Latka:

And I’m there right now. Where do we go?

Bryon Brewer:

Okay. So, click on services.

Nathan Latka:

Yep.

Bryon Brewer:

And then you’ll see, when you scroll down, there’s Ready-mades, there are Aged, there’s Revenue sites. And so, you can click on, like say, the revenue page there and you’ll see what we currently have available. And it is broken up, we do have a few sections there because we do affiliate marketing and we also do dropship e-commerce sites and then local lead generation sites as well. So, you’ll find three different ways to monetize your site within Human Proof Designs.

Nathan Latka:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Got it. So, I scroll down, I see one that has acne skincare, approximate word count, 80,000, highest keyword, 11, number of keywords in the hrefs, 389, estimated traffic, 20, domain created in 2017. And then, you can click and actually view the earnings. You’re listing this for $2,797.

Bryon Brewer:

Correct? Yeah.

Nathan Latka:

This site gets 20 hits per m… When you say ahref’s traffic is 20, what’s that mean?

Bryon Brewer:

Let’s look at that one. That’s the acne care one.

Nathan Latka:

Yep.

Bryon Brewer:

So, that one is kind of a new site. It’s got some revenues, which you’ll a link there for revenues.

Nathan Latka:

Yep.

Bryon Brewer:

So, you can kind of pull up in, we let pretty full disclosure on kind of all the traffic, the numbers, what the revenues are. Kind of a low entry point, around $2,000 for someone to get started with that. And so, let’s see, it’s got-

Nathan Latka:

$511 in sales.

Bryon Brewer:

Yep. So yeah, traffic would be 20 visitors a month currently. So, it’s-

Nathan Latka:

Yeah. That’s what I thought. I mean, that’s a nothing burger. That’s a big zero. I mean, you might as well put zero.

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah. It’s not much traffic. You’re getting some traffic to it. The key with this site here and what a lot of people are looking for when they buy a site is if I want to start an online business, how long is it going to take me to write 80,000 words of content? That’s a lot of work. Right. And with this site here, we’ve already got 389 keywords that are ranking in Google. So, you’re basically taking a shortcut instead of starting from scratch and creating some WordPress site and then starting and writing 50 articles or in this case, about 80 articles to try to get it to start to rank for certain keywords that you’re targeting. This site is ready to go. You’ve already got the content.

Nathan Latka:

Yeah, I understand. Is that the main thing driving the prices, the how old it is and how many words have been written on it?

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah. There’s two ways to value a site. We can value it on the content, which this site has very little revenue. So, we have to base it off the content, like how much would it cost to build this site today if you were to start from scratch? So, we look at that. And then, for those sites that are earning at least a hundred dollars a month, then we switch over to a valuation model and look at what is the earnings, which most of these sites are going to sell between 30 and 40 times the monthly revenues.

Nathan Latka:

Got it. Or two to 3X annual revenues?

Bryon Brewer:

Correct. Two to 3X annual.

Nathan Latka:

Are you using Empire Flippers? I see a quote on your page from those guys, are using them to sell the sites, Justin and Cooke.

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah. So yeah, Justin and… We work with Empire Flippers a lot because we have an investment services team that helps people find sites. So, we partner with Empire Flippers to match people to sites. But other than that, we’re kind of separate. We don’t buy-

Nathan Latka:

Do you get like a broker fee there? Is that part of your business?

Bryon Brewer:

Well, we do have a relationship with them so we do get a commission for deals that we bring them. But that’s kind of a small part of our business because most of our clients are not looking for a site that’s selling for a half a million dollars, which is, if you’re going to go to Empire Flippers, you’re looking at deals that are a hundred thousand dollars and up mostly.

Nathan Latka:

That’s right.

Bryon Brewer:

We really target those who are starting with their online business.

Nathan Latka:

How many people do you have on your list that have expressed interest in buying a site like this, under $10,000?

Bryon Brewer:

Well, we have a total of about 31,000 people on our email list that are active. And we also have a Facebook Group with about 11,000 people in our private Facebook Group. And we have an early bird list and I think we have about 6,000 people on our early bird list, which they’re the first to know whenever we get a new site or we launch and build a new site. So, about 6,000 people on that list for our early bird notices.

Nathan Latka:

You have all the early pieces of building your own marketplace. I mean, there are companies… You mentioned you have 300 contracts of writers and creatives. I mean, there are companies like Scripted, like ContentFly, that sort of play in this space. And they’re large, I mean, they’re doing eight, nine, $10 million a year in business. Why haven’t you gone that route?

Bryon Brewer:

Well, yeah, we’ve really focus more on building sites and selling ready-made sites, kind of that done-for-you service. And our service to kind of our services side, our growth side, like content, writing, video production, keyword research, backlinks, you know there’s lots of companies offering guest posts and backlinks, that is a service we really just started focusing on in the last year and a half. And mostly just to our customers that are buying sites from us because they want to grow them. And so, we just naturally started offering those services. So, we haven’t really branched or marketed outside of the people that are buying. These sites was something we were kind of set up to do and is another area that we’re looking at doing over the next year or two. So, I think there’s lots of growth opportunities on our kind of growth side of the business.

Nathan Latka:

And Bryon, have you bootstrapped the company or have you raised?

Bryon Brewer:

No, this is all been bootstrapped. Now, Dom Wells, a colleague of mine, started the company in 2013 and then I acquired it from him. And he started it out with-

Nathan Latka:

In what year?

Bryon Brewer:

What’s that?

Nathan Latka:

You bought in what year?

Bryon Brewer:

I bought it into 2018.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. Got it. Why’d you do that? I mean, I assume obviously that wasn’t cheap. Why did you decide to buy it?

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah, so I was doing consulting work for many years and traveling all over the country. I have four kids and that’s really hard when you’re traveling Monday through Friday. And so, I was looking for an opportunity where I could stay and work from home.

Nathan Latka:

Yep, that all makes good sense.

Bryon Brewer:

So, this is a perfect opportunity. And being in technology, this was right at my wheelhouse.

Nathan Latka:

Bryon, let’s wrap here with the famous five. Number one, what’s your favorite business book?

Bryon Brewer:

Probably, Bill Gates. All of Bill Gates’ books really are inspiring, how he got started. What his thought patterns are behind building businesses.

Nathan Latka:

Number two, is there a CEO besides Bill Gates that you’re following or studying?

Bryon Brewer:

Probably, not. I mean, one of my favorite shows is the Shark Tank. So, I watch all the sharks and what they do and kind of how they look at businesses and how they value them.

Nathan Latka:

Number three, what’s your favorite online tool for building a company?

Bryon Brewer:

Online tool?

Nathan Latka:

Yep.

Bryon Brewer:

Well, the two that I used every day would be Ahrefs and SEMrush, analyzing sites.

Nathan Latka:

It’s interesting you say both of them. Usually, people have a clear favorite. It’s either Ahrefs or SEMrush, not both.

Bryon Brewer:

Well, both of those tools are just estimates and one can be way off from the other. It’s interesting how different they can be on some sites. So, we really have to use both of them.

Nathan Latka:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. Okay. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Bryon Brewer:

6 to 7.

Nathan Latka:

Okay. And what’s your situation? It sounds like you’re married with four kiddos, right?

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah.

Nathan Latka:

And how old are you?

Bryon Brewer:

I’m 43.

Nathan Latka:

43. Last question, what do you wish you knew when you were 20?

Bryon Brewer:

What do I wish I would’ve done?

Nathan Latka:

Something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Bryon Brewer:

Oh. Well, I didn’t realize that the way to really make money and be successful is to go out on your own. Because I worked for a consulting company for many years and they were billing customers $250 an hour for worker I was doing. And I was making a third of that maybe. And so, once I started out on my own and realized that if you’re out there and you let people know what you do, what services you offer, customers will come if you do a great job. So, I wish I would have started a little bit earlier.

Nathan Latka:

Human Proof Designs, they did $1.5 million in revenue in 2019. They’ll break 2 million this year, completely bootstrapped. They have over 500 customers. Those customers buy early stage ready-made sites from the company. So, these could be sites with revenue or with traffic, or they’re just ready to get going and get started. Then after they buy, Bryon upsells them backlink tools, content tools, things like that. And that’s how they’ll drive 2 million bucks in revenue this year. They got a great community, 31,000 on their list, 11,000 in their Facebook Group, 6K on their early bird list to buy these websites and they got 16 people on their team. Bryon, thank you for taking us to the top.

Bryon Brewer:

Yeah. Thank you, Nathan.

Nathan Latka:

One more thing before you go, we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1:00 PM Central, it’s called Sharktank for SaaS. We call it Deal or Bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live. And the founder shares backend dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV. You name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch. Every Thursday, 1:00 PM Central.

Nathan Latka:

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Nathan Latka:

Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We’ve probably talked about your tool if you’re running a company or your firm if you’re investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I’m hanging out with you here on YouTube. I’ll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. If you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them. And know that I appreciate your guys’ support. All right, I’ll be in the comments. See ya.