How Human Proof Designs CEO Bryon Brewer grew Human Proof Designs to $2M revenue and 500 customers in 2020.

hello everyone my guest today is brian 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 has now grown to 16 full-time employees and over 300 contractors he also owns and manages several affiliate marketing and e-commerce sites brian you ready to take us to the top absolutely we'll get there so 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 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 um 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 uh and then we also buy and sell sites usually that are making between zero to a thousand dollars a month uh kind of starter sites and we help companies our individuals entrepreneurs purchase those sites and then grow them tell us maybe the story of one of those so we can dive deeper what maybe maybe the one that you you know sold for the most over the past 10 years yeah so you know 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 uh selling for uh ten thousand it's a revenue producing site that has made earned about four thousand dollars in revenue so far this year using affiliate marketing model mostly from amazon affiliate links uh so that site right there is really ripe for for growth we've spent a little bit of work in building it getting that site to where it is currently a new owner is going to pick it up earning you know a few hundred bucks a month and then with our help and their knowledge they'll be able to grow that um you know much bigger than what it is today so then that investment is you know we 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 uh that's really what we cater to brian it seems like a lot of work though i mean you buy this site for four grand you put a bunch of work into it now you're gonna sell it for 10 grand you're getting you're gonna make a six grand profit if you sell it at that price that feels like a ton of work to make six thousand dollars um well it it is a lot of work i mean obviously we what we do is we have a staff of writers you know affiliate marketing is really based around content so you want to build really high quality especially with google today there are logarithms there's not really another way around it but to just build really high quality content and 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 you know build these uh get these generating some revenue and 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 are you know we're not focused on just one business we've got you know at any time we may have 50 or 60 of these sites that are in our inventory that we're building and working and trying to sell so brian in 20 in 2019 how many total sites did you did you sell to somebody else um we sell probably about 50 sites a month so so how many did you sell into all of 2019 when you add them all together um it'd be somewhere in the 500 to 600 range 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 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 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're 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 a customer so we do get some sites back as well that we um you know purchase back from customers after one year if they're not interested in anymore so in 2019 on 500 or 600 sites sold total how much revenue do that mean for human proof um sorry what was that last part how much total revenue did you do in 2019 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 okay and again the majority of that revenue is coming in 2019 the 1.5 million came from you selling those 600 sites correct yeah we well and you know part of that revenue is also we provide uh seo and growth services to our customers how much of the revenue came from that um it's it's growing um you know 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 um it's probably about forty percent of our revenue now this year so call like six hundred seven hundred thousand dollars is what you'll do on your seo growth services correct yeah and is that product ties are they buying software or is that you getting on a coaching call once a once a month with a group of people uh it's somewhat productized i mean we do things like uh video production so um we kind of have a format 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 um we do backlink services guest posts um all these types of outreach efforts to help grow their site on page and off-page seo services so it's it's more of a service and less of a productized type of offering because it is custom to each site so how many here in 2020 you think you'll do about 2 million revenue 40 will be those seo services how many unique customers we work with in 2020 uh gosh it'll be it'll be in the hundreds um you know we probably in in in a year's time we'll have 500 500 customers we work with 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 um it's it's probably going to be similar um you know back in uh so 500 when you say similar sorry 500 to 600 sites this year yeah 500 to 600 i mean you know 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 uh likely for the first six months so you 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 it you know you're really looking at six months before you're going to start any revenues on the site because if you buy one of our revenue generating our age sites then you you've got revenue potentially coming in right away of the 500 600 sites you'll sell this year how many are aged versus brand new yeah so most of them are going to be brand new um we sell you know maybe 20 to 30 of those are going to be revenue generating sites got it are older revenue generating okay interesting and how many i mean do you make money if you do two million this year will you make money oh yeah yeah we're profitable okay and can you break me down like obviously you have people expenses you had 16 people on the team it sounds like yeah that's right and and what how many are engineers um so we have a techno technology team that is four uh engineers and then um we have a content team account manages our um you know our writing production video production keyword research all those activities um we have an investment how many people are on the content team so the content team um it varies you know we have about 300 contractors and most of them are on that team uh doing writing services um video services all sorts of creative services um and but we do have a full-time staff as well that kind of manages that contract team is uh and then we also have an investment services team which they uh they kind of manage the overall due diligence on sites that come into us that we look at purchasing and then growing...