At MonetizePros, we’re interviewing Web monetization experts as part of a running article series. This interview is with one of the MonetizePros co-founders, Jimmy Atkinson. As a bit of background, Jimmy has co-founded multiple successful affiliate marketing / lead generation businesses. He currently “lives the dream” in Pasadena, California.
Jimmy Atkinson with wife Natalie and daughter Julia
MonetizePros [Andy Hagans]: Tell us a bit about your “monetization education”. When you founded your first affiliate marketing / lead-gen business, you were a monetization n00b. Within two years, you were learning what “capital gains tax” was (in a nice way). How did you get so good at monetization, so quickly?
Jimmy: My monetization education began in 1998. That’s when I created my first real website, BruinFootball.com, a UCLA football fan site. I remember I got my first check from that site in either ’98 or ’99 when I managed to sign an advertiser, a baseball cap company that I ran some banner ads for. I think the check was only for $20, but I thought it was pretty sweet. (I was only in high school at the time.) And with that, I was well on my way to a successful web monetization career.
My first foray into lead gen was in 2006, when you and I launched the Nursing Degree Guide, which we sold roughly 18 months later. Prior to that, I had only ever monetized websites with AdSense and other display advertising. So it’s true that I may have been a lead gen n00b, but at this point I was already eight years removed from starting my first real website, so I had some experience under my belt. I would attribute my monetization success to two things: 1) being driven to succeed; this was easy because making websites is just a lot of fun for me (especially when they start making money!); and 2) having a smart partner who helped craft our monetization strategies.
MonetizePros: You’ve worked in darn near every large, liquid lead-gen niche (credit cards, edu, matchmaking, insurance, etc.) Sometimes a niche will “click” with a person and sometimes, well, it doesn’t. What’s your *least favorite* lead-gen niche you’ve ever worked in?
Jimmy: You forgot payday loans. That has to be my least favorite niche. I only dabbled in it for a very short time; it was a small section on a much larger site. But that vertical is just so spammy and the advertiser practices are so predatory, it’s just a really demoralizing vertical to work in. Not to mention, the payouts are really low.
MonetizePros: Tell us about the pro’s and con’s of starting a business with your college roommate as a partner. (Andy’s note: we were college roommates.)
Jimmy: That was my last semester of college when we started the business, and you lived with me that following summer too. So I was within 50 feet of my business partner close to 24 hours a day for about six months straight. The pro to that was that I always knew where you were if I needed you for something. The con was that you knew the same about me! 
Despite our occasional desires to kill each other (especially in those first few months when we lived in tight quarters), I think our business relationship has been quite successful. One of the nice things about being friends is that we don’t have to BS each other or play nice. We aren’t afraid to call each other out without beating around the bush, and at the end of the day, I think that helps productivity.
MonetizePros: In businesses where you’ve run the monetization department, you’re famous for your monthly “juicing sessions” (tweaking sites and their monetization to improve overall revenue yield). How exactly does the “juicing” process work? (And why do you call it “juicing”? I hope you’re not a steroid user…)
Jimmy: I equate the process to squeezing juice from an orange. You can cut up the orange and squeeze it for 10 seconds or so and get most of the juice out. But there’s always a little juice that you left behind, right? If you squeeze it really hard again, or perhaps at a different angle, or perhaps if you use a tool (e.g. a juicer), you should be able to get a little more juice out of that orange. The same goes for websites. You can make an awesome website. But maybe you’ve only reached 50% of your revenue potential. (That’s a lot of juice you left in that orange!) Squeeze a little more juice out of that website by tweaking the layout, the calls to action, the font size, etc. and you may be able to double your revenue without needing to generate any additional traffic. Simply put, you don’t always need more oranges to make more orange juice. Simply give your existing oranges a little extra squeeze.
MonetizePros: I’ve observed you don’t just “juice” sites to make more money, though. I’ve seen you spend a lot of time and care tweaking Web sites as a “labor of love”. (E.g., it’s rare that Jimmy will launch a site without a favicon.) Why do you just LOVE websites so much?
Jimmy: It’s true; I do love websites. I’m not a musician or an artist. Making websites is really the only “creative” thing I do on a day-to-day basis. So for me, making websites is my creative outlet, where I can express myself, so to speak. Rembrandt had oil and canvas. I have a HTML/PHP/CSS code and a Web server.
MonetizePros: What are your favorite “rules of thumb” to increase a lead-gen site’s monetization? (Besides “Green is for go” on form buttons; everyone knows that one already!)
Jimmy: Hey, I like orange buttons too! I’d say the one main rule I like to follow is to constantly tweak the website based on performance. If you’re not looking at your performance and tweaking your website on at least a quarterly basis, you’re not serious about improving your site’s monetization.
MonetizePros: The “comparison table” is a tried and true monetization format in many lead-gen niches. Any tips you can share, to anyone monetizing via a comparison table?
Jimmy: Constantly reorder the table. Check your stats regularly (whether it be weekly, monthly, or quarterly), and reorder your offers in the table according by revenue. You don’t want your top earner sitting in the #4 spot in your top 20 comparison table. Re-ordering alone can have a 10% or greater positive impact on revenue.
MonetizePros: Jimmy, you’re a “tool guy”. I imagine your browser is tricked out with all kinds of gizmo’s and add-ons and you have hundreds of keyboard shortcuts (for OS’s, tools, and softwares) hardwired to your brain. What Web tools could you simply *not live without*?
Jimmy: This may surprise you, but I only have two Chrome extensions in use at the moment: MeasureIt!, which allows me to measure any area on my browser screen in pixels, and Eye Dropper, which shows me exactly what color a certain pixel on my browser screen is. I actually don’t even use those two that often. My favorite tool, the one I cannot live without, comes standard in Chrome. It’s the “Inspect Element” Developer Tool. I can right-click on any element within my browser window, select “Inspect Element”, and that will instantly load the HTML and any CSS styling associated with that element. For a guy like me who makes a living off of making 100 tiny CSS changes every day (okay, most days), this is essential.
MonetizePros: I heard a rumor you like college football. Please give us some “stats” on that: How many college football games have you attended in person? How many stadiums have you been to? How far can you throw a football?
Jimmy: I love college football. And I believe you are referring to my college football Excel spreadsheet, which tracks every college football game I have ever attended. I attended my first game at the Rose Bowl on October 5, 1985, a 40-17 UCLA win over Arizona State. I have attended 37 different stadiums. My top two most attended are the Rose Bowl (110 times) and Notre Dame Stadium (54 times). I have witnessed nine different Heisman Trophy winners and seen nine national championships won. My most recent college football game was Alabama’s 42-14 win over Notre Dame (dang!) in the BCS National Championship Game on January 7, 2013 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami. That was my 250th college football game. At this pace, I’ll get to my 1,000th game by age 111. I can throw a football about 40 yards or so.
MonetizePros: Last question. I think I can guess what your least favorite part of monetization is (hacking CSS to solve rendering issues in inferior Web browsers). What’s your *favorite* part of the website monetization process?
Jimmy: Tangible results, which in this case are big fat checks.
About the Author: Andy Hagans