Interview with Jon Waraas from JonWaraas.com

Today’s interview is with Jon Waraas - a well-known internet marketer in the community. He just got back from a road-trip on his Harley, and was kind enough to answer some questions about his SEO/marketing background, how he does what he does, and what blogs you all should be reading.
So read on - and get to know Jon a little better!

Real name: Jon Waraas
Known on forums as: Waraas
Age: 21
Location: Idaho
Blog / website: www.jonwaraas.com
Year you started in this business: 2005
Has made the majority of online income from: SEO

Current monthly revenue: Somewhere around 10k
Tell us briefly about your background before internet marketing
Worked at Home depot for 9 months before I started working on SEO full time. Before that I went to high school and worked at Wendy’s. Fun times

What particular sites, forums, blogs or individuals played a role early on in getting you into in this business?
I’m really not into forums too much. But I was on Sitepoint a lot back in the day. Mostly in the marketplace area. But as of now I am banned from sitepoint and digitalpoint. Which is a good thing because I get a lot more work done. I do read a ton of blogs and I am in ICQ a lot. I also network through AIM and MSN a lot too, thats how I stay on top of whats going on in the industry.

Tell us about some of the failures you had to experience before you finally started seeing some success
Oh boy, I have failed a lot. Some of them being BuzzBums.com which I was wanting to make into a blog community, that took to much work and I failed at that. Recently I have been failing big time at affiliate marketing, its a pain in the ass but I will get it someday. Right now Im at like -$5000 haha.

What is the most important lesson you have learned with regards to dealing with internet marketing as a full-time business?
Expect a lot of work. People don’t realize that I work a lot. I do a lot of bitch work and it sucks, but the money is good so I’m not complaining.

Do you work alone or do you have a virtual team of other people who assist you with things like article writing, landing pages, ad copy, coding, etc.?
I outsource mostly everything except link building. I have content writers for my websites’ content. I have blog comment writers for BuyBlogComments.com. My roommate is a designer so I use him for my designs and coding. I have people who I hire to program my scripts. I just manage everything, that was I can get more work done instead of doing all the small bitch work. Someday soon I would like to hire someone in-house to manage support and sales for my e-commerce sites, Its a pain in the ass to do that stuff so it would be great to finally outsource that.

What industry conferences do you usually attend (or not) and why?
Affiliate Summit is the only one I have been to so far. I’m not even a big affiliate at all, I’m a SEO guy. But all my friends in the industry are affiliate people so I go to Affiliate Summit to hang out with them.

When friends and family ask what you do - what do you tell them?
I work at Home Depot. Its a pain in the ass to explain to them what I do so I still tell a bunch of people I still work at Home Depot LOL.

What areas of this industry (if any) do you see yourself expanding into as internet marketing becomes more competitive?
Ill probably be in the SEO industry for a while.

Do you re-invest some of your earnings into things like stocks, mutual funds or gold?
Yep, I got stocks, mutual funds, and real estate so far. Soon I will be investing in an offline business and a rental house.

What is your long term financial goal? Some people dream of saving up for their own beach house in the Seychelles, while others want that Lamborghini Gallardo in their collection. Or to put it differently; where do you see yourself 5 or 10 years from now?
Actually, I dont really care too much about money. Its about freedom for me. I like to not work for someone else. I also like to wake up and just not work somedays. I just make sure I make more than 10k a month. If I sat inside for 80 hours a week and worked my ass off I could probably make 50k a month, but I dont really see the point since I have everything I ever wanted. I rather live life and hang out with my buddies and have a fun time than work 24/7. You only live once.

In your opinion, what is the most overrated tool/website/service out there?
Ebooks

In your opinion, what is the most underrated tool/website/service out there?
Windows/Linux Calculator. I use it all the time.

Most overrated affiliate network?
Not sure :-s

Most underrated affiliate network?
Firelead.com

What is one of the biggest mistakes a newbie can make as an aspiring internet marketer?
Thinking that this shit is easy and you can make money over night. It takes months and sometimes years.
If you were starting over from scratch with internet marking today, and had $1000 to spend, how would you invest that money?

• 15$ a month hosting
• 10$ domain
• 50$ for links
• 100$ worth of mt dew
• Put the rest of the money in a CD and work my ass off on a quality adsense site. I would be making at least 10$ a day by the end of the month off that adsense site. The next month it would be 20$ a day. The third month it would be 30$ a day. I would work my ass off on it till I made enough money to enjoy life.

What are your hobbies / interests? What’s “your thing” outside the online world?
I like to ride my harley, camping, and having a few drinks with my buddies.

Shameless plug. Do you have a product/service/ebook/course/webinar/whatever that you would like to tell readers about?
If you need backlinks check out BuyBlogComments.com. If you want to learn SEO check out WhoisSEO.com

Lastly, anything else you would like to say? Shout outs to anyone? Hi mom?
Thanks for reading mine and Eskil’s blog

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And thanks again to you, Jon for doing the interview.