Jacob Hagberg

Jacob jump started his internet marketing career in 2007 when he launched his first website about saltwater fish aquariums. With help and guidance from his mentor Curtis Nelson, former COO of Carson Companies, Jacob began deep research into the digital world of online marketing.

While most of the tactics have changed since then, there are 3 strategies that still work. Pay for traffic to your website, build a list that you can email and remarket to and capture brand and discovery traffic by optimizing your website for the search engines. Of all the get rich quick books and guides, these are the only things that still work.

One of his very first successes was creating a website related to saltwater fish tanks. Just so you know, this whole digital marketing was only about one thing – freedom. The freedom to do whatever, whenever, within reason. This doesn’t mean go buy a Ferrari or be irresponsible. It means working hard at what you enjoy, so you don’t have to do something you hate. More on that later.

The Pursuit of Passive Income

Ahh, the dream of earning for doing nothing. This is almost entirely a lie for most people. It is nearly impossible to sustain passive income without doing hard work upfront. It’s like how financial planners tell you to save for retirement so you can live off the annual gains from the market. Well first you actually need to save.

Heading into this whole thing, my original goal was to make $4,000 per month. That was all I thought I needed or wanted. I can recall a time when I was 16 working at Petsmart for $7.00 per hour. I remember calculating that if I avoided becoming a manager and just took my 5% raise every year for doing exceptional work cleaning fish tanks; it would only take me 22 years to make $20 per hour. At this time I really didn’t understand the time value of money.

The best thing I learned from Petsmart was how to sell and provide customer service. We use the same approach today. Greet the customer, ask them about their pet, determine their needs, show them a solution and thank them for their business.

Then, one day someone hired me to come clean their in-home aquarium for $30 per hour. I thought that was a lot of money. I remember thinking this is like working at Petsmart for 4 hours and only doing 1 hours’ worth of work. At this point in time I also wasn’t calculating gas, drive time or equipment expenses. Silly me.

Getting Entrepreneurial

There are different levels of entrepreneurs. There are some that push themselves so hard because they need to be successful. Chances are if you are reading this, these are the rockstar entrepreneurs we look up. There are also mom and pop businesses just trying to survive. Until I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad I didn’t realize there was a difference between being an entrepreneur and being a business owner.

The first time I really got my feet wet was when we a buddy of mine named Jerry would important corals from overseas. Then I would go over to his house and cherry pick the best pieces. Then I would take pictures of them, post them online in a forum that had monthly meet ups and would double the price. Making a couple hundred dollars extra per month as a high school is pretty cool. I even launched my first ecommerce website selling corals online. That crashed and burned because shipping an insulated box FedEx next day air was about $70.00 for a tiny little box.

Business School

Believe it or not, I actually have a degree in business. I went to the University of St. Thomas where I learned a ton of great things. I still give back at least once a semester. The one thing I got from college was a great network. I was fortunate enough to go on nearly a full ride because I completed my two-year degree while I was still in high school. My parents and I ended up splitting what was left over and one of the first big checks I wrote was to pay off my student loan debt. The feeling was awesome.

This is the time of my life where I met Curtis Nelson. Until this time, I didn’t know what it meant to really be wealthy, this is more than just being rich. I am also fortunate to have learned from him this lesson. One day he called me into his office and told me. “Jacob, money doesn’t buy happiness. I have all of these things, but my relationships aren’t good.” This is coming from one of the wealthiest people in America. During this time, I observed as a person cleaning his fish tank, get fired by his mother and also file for bankruptcy. I know all of this is behind him now, Curtis is one of the smartest people I have ever met and has taught me so much. I am so thankful for learning these lessons that most people only have thoughts inside of their head about.

Corporate Life

College graduation was coming. I also clearly wasn’t going to be working at Carlson. What did I do? Well, I thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread with my fancy four year degree. Thanks to Curtis, I was able to get a job at SuperValu corporate. I remember how excited I was making $20 per hour. Go to school, get the job, buy a house, get married, have kids, get a promotion, buy a bigger house… ahh the American dream. Oh, but did I hate life. This had nothing to do with SuperValu and had everything to do with me. I was miserable, so I took what I had saved, put in my two-weeks notice and did what I knew how to do.

Discovery Aquatics

I built a website and started a brick and mortar saltwater fish store. I did exactly what they tell you to do in the books and at school. Follow your passion! I did that and I am so thankful I did it when I was 20 and not when I am 50. I can see myself regret blowing my life savings because “I never followed my passion”. When something that is your hobby becomes a job, you no longer enjoy it.

Early that year in school I also launched my senior entrepreneurial marketing project. My professor gave me a B and said it would never work. More on that later.

I grew that fish store using guerrilla marketing tactics by posting on Craigslist to build my email list so I send pictures of the new fish and coral that had just arrived. I also leveraged a group called TCMAS that really supported this young entrepreneur. Thank you so much for everyone that helped.

At some point I realized that running a fish store wasn’t going to be the thing that made me happy. As the only person in the company, I could never take a vacation and risk letting all of the fish die. I just didn’t do enough in sales to hire someone, nor did they have the knowledge. The business just wasn’t scalable. Realizing this I started to look for an exit.

Affiliate Marketing

I started running hard at a lot of things. Yet, the one thing I knew was saltwater fish. I started crafting informational tutorials and guides related to my niche and putting them online for other people. Everyone loved them.

Back then, because there was no competition and the algorithm was far less complex, I was able to build a passive income with a little keyword research and some well placed advertisements.
I had just discovered affiliate marketing. This is where a website drives traffic to another website and gets paid a commission for a sale. This isn’t anything different than what I do today. In fact, the best marketers are usually affiliates because you are forced to measure ROI, don’t have the benefit of leveraging a major brand, don’t get credit for cross-attribution sales or the repeat business. Honestly, if you can make it as an affiliate marketer you can do anything in marketing.

My First 4-Figure Exit

This nothing glamourous or sexy. I sold my first business for about $8,000. I just wanted out. It was a terrible, yet important experience. The first buyer I had lined up wrote me a bad check and just wanted to use my credentials to get access to vendors. I was crushed and desperate. I sold it to another person, but we agreed on payment terms. I unfortunately, only saw one more payment. That was when my baby was closing its doors for the first time. I collected what I could. I was so frustrated, but I remember writing that person a letter telling him that I forgave him of all his debts. Why I did it, I don’t know. Maybe it was because my internet marketing career was about to take off.

Full-Time Marketer

The goal was always to become full-time. This is what a lot of internet marketers do. They work part-time at their day job until they can quit and start their own business. Little do they know what they are getting into.

I started working day and night from my parent’s basement. I remember buying a few sites on just to learn how they worked. I even managed to make some of my own and flip them for a profit. Yes, even for more than my entire fish store sold for.

Living in Minnesota, it snows in the winter. I remember one day my parents came home and they were so upset. They were also business owners too and honestly, I had no interest in running the family business. They just couldn’t understand why the driveway wasn’t shoveled. See we didn’t have a snowblower, shoveling built good character. What they didn’t realize is their son was making more money than both of them combined.

Super Affiliate Status

In 2010, I hit what the industry calls Super Affiliate status. This is when you are making $10,000 month or are a six-figure internet marketer. This isn’t even what I sent out to do when I started. But later in 2010, my saltwater fish merchant pulled their affiliate program. I was so upset. I tried switching over to another merchant that sold the same products but only made about 20% of what I was making. I had diversified, but a large chunk of my income was gone.

Shovels

At some point in time, I realized I knew more than most people online and that most people were just faking their success. This is when the student becomes the teacher, but keeps on doing. I come from a family of teachers and whenever I see a marketer switch from doing to teaching it is like they are waving the white flag. The best marketer you can hire is learning, teaching and doing even outside of their job. The truth is that there are some teachers that do it because you need to educate in order to attract buyers.

Essentially, I had so many tricks up my sleeve, I couldn’t possible deploy thousands of websites and own every niche. No, this was a gold rush and I sold shovels and the knowledge of how the average person could be successful and easily make money online.

I worked hard at this model and we kept growing. I was making good money, so much that I opened an office in the Philippines. We hired staff and trained the team to handle projects. Unfotunately, we had to close the office not because our accountant took our money as people warned us would happen, but because the roof of the building we were in leaked. This was an expensive lesson learned.

By now, I had moved out of my parent’s basement into a pretty nice apartment. I paid for it all in cash and was pretty proud of myself. I am confident that I helped at least 5 people become millionaires during this time. My affiliate sites also continued to make money.

Keep on Growing

So what is the next thing? I opened up an office and hired staff. We were crushing it! However, what I didn’t realize is how easy we had it. The Google algorithm was just too easy.
Then Google made some aggressive changes and what happened? We had to let a lot of our staff go. As a business owner, this was one of the hardest choices I ever had to make. Honestly, I think we were lucky to survive. By my estimates, 65%+ of the industry went out of business because it just got to hard.

What happened? Well during the depression starting in 2007, a ton of people who were laid off suddenly decided they would earn some extra incoming by working online from home. We literally hit the internet marketing bubble, just like the real estate bubble. There were a bunch of people that had no business being in the industry and today, there is actually a lack of talent. Let me explain.

Some of those marketers made the decision to exit for lifestyle. Maybe they were great marketers, but bad business owners. We have a saying in our office that most digital marketers are .8 (point 8) marketers. Meaning that they lose money for the companies they work for.

Companies see them as a necessary evil and they will just make it up but operating more effectively in other areas of their business or the company they are working for isn’t measuring performance.

There are actually very few digital marketers that can consistently get a company ROI. The best way to get a company ROI as a marketer working inhouse is to be working at a large company because you have scale and brand equity working in your favor.

Why Orange Fox Can’t Work With Mom and Pop Businesses

This is the main reason why we can’t work with most local businesses, like a plumber or chiropractor. For the same amount of effort as I can apply to a large company, I might be able to only get that plumber a 20% lift in traffic. Going from 500 visitors a month to 600 visitors a month isn’t going to justify what we need to charge even at a severely discounted rate. It just doesn’t make sense, no one will be happy. This is why our best clients are doing millions in sales.

If you are a small business you don’t really need a full-time SEO. And by small I mean a 10 person roofing company. You do however, probably need a full-time marketing person doing both your online and offline. Or a digital marketing agency to help. Local SEO is not a full-time job and is worth about $20-30 per hour inhouse or $60-100 with an agency.

You would not want to hire me as your local SEO because I would fail you miserable. There are many principles in SEO and it doesn’t require someone of my level of expertise. For you as a business you need a person that can do a lot of things OK. This includes SEO, email blasts, content creation, ad management and basic web design.

So I hope that you’ve enjoyed learning a little bit more about me and how I got started.
– Jacob