This way they can avoid. , and actually I thought I was gonna be a farmer. Kevin: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Here's how to prune it, determine it. But then, you know, 2019 was the year that everything really changed for the business, cuz I decided at that point I had been on Instagram long. Uh, and, and you. Um, and we brought him onto the team. And now he's got 70,000 on YouTube, a hundred and f. 15 on Insta and like 70 on TikTok. It changes colors and everything. Here at Sunset, were currently on a mission to demystify gardening for first-timers. We told the press that people should turn on their heating this summer if they want to save money next winter, and we landed over 20 links in national and regional UK obligations for our boiler client. So this was the hook, and this is why this campaign was so successful. Just a guy who started a website and quit his full-time job while was only earning $400 to now earning, uh, eight figures and, and really, uh, having to expand into a lot of different things. What a masterpiece pring building campaign with 20 links in big publications such as the Sun Express Mirror, Wells online and still landing. Yeah. Maybe the blog itself, like how much was that a factor? It, it's just not, it's not true. In a raised bed theyre growing more similar to the environment that they were evolved in, so its easier to get into raised bed gardening. Planning is key to starting a garden, Espiritu says. That's gotta be. Please try again later. We therefore advise the press with an expert commentary piece on behalf of our boiler client that people should turn on their boiler this summer just when the heat wave is in full swing. That's not where he stopped. Can you imagine when people see this headline in the news, you should turn on your boiler this summer? Yeah. Vintage-cover posters, coffee mugs, jigsaw puzzles, tote bags, and more. It's a great way to put it. Um, so then I could take my brand fully, devote it to YouTube and actually figure out how to do it well. Jared: was, um, when you made the transition, what was the website doing in terms of, you know, was, was it earning. Oh yeah. Jared: Mm-hmm. If my rankings drop, my views don't drop commensurately. WebKevin Espiritu is the founder of Epic Gardening, a multi-platform online gardening education company. The author of Field Guide to Urban Gardening and creator of the website Epic Gardening first began using a hydroponic system in his apartment in 2011, and has since grown to be an expert in urban gardening (and expanded to a beautiful urban farm). He's built an entire brand in the gardening space, and we get to deep dive the entire process with him, and it's such a cool journey. It's, it's actually not that valuable for me to continue writing as it is for me to figure out how to get more people to, to read, to read it. There's a seasonality curve on all of your demand because it's a seasonal business. He lived in a condo back then, so he didnt have space for a big backyard soil garden. But really the, the next couple years we're, we're mostly just scaling up, um, the content, right? Want to learn step-by-step how I built my Niche Site Empire up to a full-time income? Kevin Espiritu is Epic Gardening's founder, and he is a serious green thumb. So like, you know what, maybe I'll, maybe I'll just keep going. Webdepartment of treasury austin texas 73301 phone number; wii sports club unable to acquire data; randolph high school track and field; huntley ritter parents . For like $35,000, I think. Uh, I had some referral traffic coming in. Espiritu is married to his wife, I, this really needs to win a lot more than I thought it did to be comping out better than if I had just been that accountant right Now. Tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe, maybe your story up until the point where you started. A boiler failure next winter and save money. And there might be some really easy ways to change that. We told the press that people should turn on their heating this summer if they want to say morning, next winter, and we landed over 20 links in national and regional UK obligations for our boiler client. Find your friends on Facebook. Facebook gives people the power Facebook Email or phone Password Forgot account? But, you know, we recently acquired a seed company and so like combined, we'll do you know well into the eight figures in revenue this year? So why, why really would you let a brand sort of access your audience when you, you could just serve your audience, right? Probably put 18 months in there, left in 2016 to go full-time on Epic gardening. There's obviously like blocking and tackling stuff of like, okay, well you have to get a customs broker and stuff. But a again, it goes to like, what cannot be faked. For me, it was pretty obvious, like switching networks. Neither of us had ever done it before and I was like, you know what? All Rights Reserved. Yeah. of your brand and certainly at a time, I mean, even nowadays there's a lot of debate about that in the website building space. Kevin: if you will. So like, I'm, I'm never doing that. I, I didn't have enough articles. In 1920 there was 1 Espiritu family living in California. Maybe that's an extreme version cuz I, I would pay anything to not be an accountant personally, but there's certainly jobs that are like kind of fun at the, you know, 90 to $150,000 range that you could do that don't subject you to as much risk. Um, and build, build it into like this media network that has a product network. Kevin Espiritus YouTube channel, Epic Gardening, is a sensation with over 1.5 million followers who flock to him for his breezy style and easy-to-understand gardening tips. I, I purchased a site to get me into the house plant world in, instead of writing all those articles I bought and migrated over the best of one. And so, like I know a lot about that space. Right? And obviously that's gonna be different for every person and every brand. He now has a community of loyal brand followers across platforms, sells his own gardening products, and runs an 8-figure-a-year business that dominates his niche in many significant ways. This was 2017, so there were like four, um, and they were all like 30 to 60 minute shows about a particular topic, usually with a guest. Um, YouTube. I would say this campaign is a massive success. brookstone therapeutic percussion massager with lcd screen; do nigel and jennifer whalley still own albury park Assess your space and see whats possible with the options that you have. From there it comes down to preference and accessibility. This was also the year Kevin decided to quit his job at a company called Book In A Box, founded by Tucker Max. And the writing was sort of on the wall as far as, um, my time there where it was like my role was getting split into like three different roles. Um, uh, you know what? But if you have a container with a lot of drainage holes, then you might be washing nutrients out of the soil, and its a situation where, generally speaking, the plants want a deeper, irregular watering [more] than a certain amount everyday. Welcome to the Niche Pursuits Podcast. So you could do very quick basics, three minute episode, or you could, you could interview a, a guest who knows how to prune tomatoes for 10 minutes, or you could make some sort of master guide. This case study highlights the fact that a clever hook can be applied to any insight or story to make a campaign more successful and more compelling to journalists. My name is Kevin Espiritu, and I run a company called Epic Gardening. CCSO Case # 23-004087 Andrew Paul Jacoby, age 44 Charges: Theft II . Um, again, going to that top 50 pages idea where I profiled things and like put 'em in and, and then there you go. I, I hope, uh, with some interesting plays that we'll be making. So this was the hook, and this is why this campaign was so successful. - Kevin Espiritu, Founder and CEO of Epic Gardening, on his early-career years During the time period after college, Espiritu and his brother started gardening Um, so that's, I don't know if that explains well how I think about it, but, but a topic sort of just has endless amounts of ways that it could be covered. And so I, I had created a subreddit, um, about hydroponic gardening and kind of built a community there, which, which helped like throw traffic and links sort of organically to the site. And so same traffic, quadrupled rpm, pretty easy way to grow your revenue, right? And that's what I mean when I say, when you get to the level, um, that epic's at now you, you kind of just don't really care about the, the sort of world you used to care about. When you buy something through one of the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Jared: it's coming. Uh, before going full-time on, on Epic gardening. Kevin: products maybe? Um, so yeah, we're, we're pretty big on social. . Right. I think probably around 10 million uniques a year. Yeah. Kevin: Have insights into that. So, voila, you don't actually need to rely on a non-existent algorithm for, for podcast discovery, there's, there isn't one. 25 Feb/23. And that wasn't even a full year of selling them. And what's truly unique and valuable is I, there's this sort of metal raised bed that, that everyone kept asking me about that I just happened to have some samples of from this company. And so I was like, okay, well I need to expand and solidify the strength of the business. Um, and you're not subject to any of the like algorithm risk, you know, if you're working remote, doing some programming or whatever, uh, when you get into like, you know, 15 K month, you're looking at like 150 K in revenue. We, we sell all of your product already, so why don't you just join the team? Um, so I started building out a bit more of a, you know, just like a stable sort of foundation. It's doing really great now, I, I personally love following Kevin's gardening advice. They, they're literally selling some random me too product off of Ali Express that thinking that magically someone will buy that and then they don't flip the switch and think like, do they even purchase stuff like that? His mission, he says, is to teach the world to grow. To that end, we asked for his recommendations on how to coax more veggies out of the garden this summer. . Online Poker: Seeing the Matrix For The First Time You wont have to approach gardening as formulaically with raised beds versus with hydroponic. I want to be in my listeners' ears when they're in the garden. You don't work 80 hours a week and sleep under your desk. Certain, certain site owners don't agree with, which is valid, is, is I'm like, if you can't put your face on your business or you can't out your site, for example, to me, you do not actually have a resilient business. I'm gonna try to launch one over the weekend to like, See how easy it is. Never had been in one myself at the time. Right. Then? What a masterpiece pring building campaign with 20 links in big publications such as the Sun Express Mirror, Wells online and still landing. Um, and you know, hopefully the site comes back. And, yeah, I mean, as far as like revenue's perspective, we sell mostly products these days, which I'm sure we'll get into. So launching the podcast and launching YouTube, it was easy to market because I, I just looked at my top 50 pages and made videos and podcast episodes about those and embedded it in those pages. Um, and then it'll show up at their door, they'll unload it and they'll slap all the labels on it cuz it was ready in box. Uh, but for us, you know, with the raised beds, we, we distribute still from our main supplier, um, there's a seedling tray that a friend of mine actually invented, brought it down to my house and I, and I was like, this is for sure the best as a gardener. It was just kinda looking at a different format and, and trying to find something easy to do. No, I was almost like a kindergartner in the world of commerce. And by grown, we mean a half-million people follow the Epic Gardening Instagram, where Espiritu shares tips and products to help his followers learn to garden no matter where they live. Making the content and developing the team, the operational side of like running finance and like, what's your cash conversion cycle and your inventory, you know, what's your inventory planning? Mm-hmm. Uh, and I was, I had no experience doing anything in business back then, so it just felt all it, it sort of felt fake. Yeah. Before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to let you know that today's episode is sponsored by Search Intelligence. I'm so curious to hear what you're doing. The, the, the blog, the affiliate, the, the brands, like all that stuff is just supplemental to the main business, at least in the garden space. It's less, um, it's less dense. I think, um, where can, uh, where can people fall everywhere, it sounds like, but where can people, where do you wanna direct people to follow along? That's crazy. They're paying you to have access to an audience that you have full access to. That's not a company. We're, we're tracking towards somewhere around 15 to 20 this year. Um, I had been on YouTube long enough that I was getting some comments, like we had a real community, right? And that is functionally more valuable than my tips on how to grow tomatoes. The physical products in the garden space specifically, the world is vast, right? Um, and, and there you go. You know what I mean? Right. I don't know. It just, it just doesn't work. Epic Gardening: Simple, Practical Gardening Tips, Kevin Espiritu (Plant Daddy) (@KevinEspiritu) / Twitter, Botanical Interests High Quality Seeds and Garden Products, The Authority Site System by Authority Hacker, How 7 Niche Site Owners Are Using Link Whisper To Grow Their Sites. I don't like the term, but that's sort of what you become. At that point I was like, you know what the bottleneck is now me in writing. If you want similar link building PR campaigns for your website, head to search dash intelligence. Right? Uh, so it's like, why, why would I hamper myself? So my hot take that I think I've tweeted out maybe a couple times that a lot of the. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Niche Pursuits is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. There's, there's an incredible amount of luck there. Kevin has many family members and associates who include Lisa Espiritu, Michael Espiritu, Bryan Espiritu, Gustaf Rooth and Mark Judd. But, you know, in 2021 as a standalone business, like before raising, we did seven point something million in, in revenue, uh, with a team of me and four contractors. Like there's all, when you get to certain levels, there's just operational things you just have to do. Now, Kevin has grown this brand into something that now he has investors and he's had to really adapt his role over the years from being. Um, because I had the audience and I had the ability to communicate about the product, and, and he, he had the product itself and the manufacturing capabilities. Uh, so that's my hot take and I know some people don't agree with that. I love growing peppers in my raised beds and plants like tomatoes that prefer more irregular watering. Yeah. I'm sure that a lot of people who know your website and know your brand will have maybe gotten some insights along the way of what you've done and what you've built. What was. Kevin: say to that person? Right. He decided to repurpose some of his best content onto YouTube and social channels to diversify his traffic sources. So at least I had two versions of the same thing going that aren't dependent on one another. Um, and so what I did is I, I found these raised beds, which is like a gardening, just a way to garden, um, to contain soil. Um, I like the teaching aspect of it. Uh, and then when I bought the, the container, so I bought a shipping container, like I said, for 35 grand. Hey Kevin, welcome onboard. Like, it just so happens to have blown up. Niche sites.com offers a full range of services to help your content site grow. Yeah, . What a masterpieces PR link building campaign with 20 links in big publications such as the Sun Express Mirror, Wells online and still landing. Yeah. First came the website, Um, but that was 2017, I think I bought the site for like a thousand dollars and, um, I penciled out the RPM math and I was like, I think this pays itself off in like three months. Hey, I've got this topic. So YouTube podcast, um, I, I think I got a book deal at the end of 2018 and then that launched in 2019 or something like that. And so, you know, there was some, there was some links and, and this and that, and I had created a subreddit. You know, so I remember back in college, I forgot what these guys' names were, but they were like some of the first guys teaching you how to, to like source and sell product online. Planning is key to starting a garden, Espiritu says you have full access to an that! He is a serious green thumb and associates who include Lisa Espiritu, and this is why this campaign so. Some interesting plays that we 'll be making, um, the next years! 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