Dmitry Davidov is an internet marketer and adsense guru (although he probably doesn’t agree with that label) that has achieved the dream of self-sufficiency by making money on the internet. In this interview I ask him about the means by which he has achieved his success and the kind of lifestyle this affords him. We also explore in depth some of the philosophic and ethical issues that concern the science of marketing. This is a must read for anyone looking to earn a living on the internet. As anyone who reads this blog might know, I don’t see eye to eye with Dmitry on many things (which makes for a great interview), but his answers are thoughtful, well considered, and insightful. My thanks to Dmitry for the time taken to give me this interview.

Having looked through quite a few of your sites, and from reading the short bio you posted on: Best Free Documentaries - my first impression is that you’re a very difficult fellow to pin down. You have a network of content based blogs, ranging from topics such as infotainment to online marketing. But you’ve also made money from shareware at your site deprice and a domain selection service: PickyDomains. What label do you think best describes what you do online? Or do you think no such label could be applied?

Well, I am a weird in a sense that making money online for me is a real interest. Like a hobby, you know. I don’t make money online as a way to make a living. For me it’s part of my life, not a ‘job’. It’s sort of an adventure, only in the cyberspace. Find a new niche. Find a way to monetize it. I am a ‘tester’. I like to try new things.

What sort of income does your activities online net you annually? Is it reliable, steady income? Or does it fluctuate considerably? Have you achieved complete independence from “working for the man”?

Yes, I have managed to become 100% “boss-free”. And it wasn’t a struggle at all. I guess I just got lucky. You are supposed to try and try and try, almost give up and then “be delivered” by a hand of money-making cybergod. But I tried selling shareware online and it worked. I am not rich, but I make just a little under six figures. I guess it puts me in the upper middle-class category. I am sure I’ll cross the $100,000 line this year

How much time would you spend a week working on your online activities?

I work about three hours a day. But I work every day - including Saturdays and Sundays. I spend more time watching online documentaries or reading something. I found myself addicted to documentaries. I used to work for a TV station as a news reporter, so I know a bit about production. And when I watch a documentary I really like - I ask myself a question - what made this documentary so interesting. How are they trying to “convert” me into a believer. As a marketer I find documentaries a great learning tool. First, you’ve never heard about the issue, but then you watch Outfoxed or some 9/11 documentary or David Icke or some movie about Illuminati, and one hour later you are totally outraged. Why did it happen? How did it happen? Why am I, former junior scientist, suddenly believing that there is a global conspiracy, reptilian shape-shifters, etc?

Given that you seem to employ a variety of methods in making money online - would you say there have been some standout successes that have brought you a large percentage of your revenues; if so which ones, and what kind of revenues do they net? Or has it been a process of investing in a large range of sites, each of which contributing their own small portion?

50% comes from deprice. It’s my site that sells shareware. It peaked at $6,000 a month but now the income is down, because anyone can do what I do and competition is getting bigger.

All other income sources aren’t all that big, but they add up. This coming year I would like to turn PickyDomains into a money making machine. With the right marketing it could become a multimillion dollar enterprise. LogoWorks became very successful and we are basically LogoWorks for domain names.

And my blog network - NicheGeek, , BadCyclopedia, they make $30-$50 a day from AdSense and affiliate marketing.

The success of deprice is quite remarkable. Given the admitted element of luck involved and the fact it delivers you 50 percent of your income - are you disappointed with your other ventures? To expand the question a little: you use the term ‘tester’ to describe the process you engage in to make money online. On the one hand this just sounds like a process of trial and error until you hit upon an idea that works. But in many of your blogs you describe the set of skills you have mastered in the arts of affiliate marketing, professional blogging and the like. You provide quite a lot of insight into the nature of these skills in your marketing related blogs. If 50 percent of your income comes back to the luck you had with Deprice.com - what value do you place on these skills which have only netted another 50 percent combined? Are you pursuing the further development of these skills? Or waiting for the next lucky break to come along?

Well, I got lucky with Deprice.Com in the following way. Affiliate marketing is when you get paid percentage of the sale, most of the times (with CPA networks you get paid “per action”, which is even better). So when you sell a piece of software, you get 20% or 30% of 50%, whatever the arrangement. The luck part was that I found a network that allowed me to give discount to my customer out of my own affiliate commission. This is something that 99% affiliate networks don’t do. Now, I could lower the price of software by lowering my commission - and that worked like crazy. If you think of it, this technique made it to offline world as well. Real estate, for example. There are now companies that take 2-3% commission instead of 5-6%. And
they used to grow like crazy, until the whole subprime fiasco.

So you have to hone your skills but it’s essential that you get lucky early on. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get discouraged.

To continue for a moment with the issue of luck in the online game. One reads the blog posts of people like Markus Frind, Jason Calacanis or Paul Graham and the like and they egg on the young-would-be-internet-entreprenuer to throw caution to the wind and pursue the dream of internet success. They then very often use their own success as a clever self-branding and marketing tool for their newer projects, while dispensing the pearl of wisdoms they think will see the next generation to similar levels of success. Do you think a similar level of luck is/was involved in all such examples of internet fame as you admit in your case? And if so, should we really be too concerned in reading all these tips and tricks style blogs? Would such luck suggest that our best chance of success would be to implement as many ideas as possible with as little investment as possible until we find one which just ‘works’?

I think that those guys would say the same thing. You have to learn some skills, you have to be brave somewhat, and the rest is “just do it”. The luck will follow. And then something magic happens. It’s natural for people to get pumped up and motivated after reading a book how someone did something (here is a case of synchronicity - I just posted this).

But when it’s YOU who are the success story, it works tenfold. People don’t believe something completely until it becomes personal experience. So yes, it’s absolutely essential to do a lot of things and fail as fast as you can with as little monetary damage as possible, finding the one that works. And after that I guarantee you, you’ll develop your method for finding new niches, ideas and opportunities.

In many ways you seem to really represent the dream of what many are trying to achieve by making money online. Working 3 hours a day while spending the rest of it watching documentaries or reading interesting stuff sounds to me like heaven. While you might not be an adsense millionaire like we hear about, plenty would like to trade shoes with you nonetheless. Indeed, it precisely your kind of story that attracts so many to the online world. Yet like a gold rush, many (if not most) infected by the gold fever are left disappointed. Do you feel concerned that your example might be encouraging people toward this kind of disappointment?

Most people who try making money online - never will. And it’s not their fault at all. It’s not that they did try hard enough or long enough. Because it’s still a game of chance somewhat.

But it’s essential to have fun along the way. Making money online shouldn’t be just a way to make a living. There is so much cool stuff you learn when you enter this niche. When you say ‘Gary Halbert’ or ‘John Carlton’, most people have no clue, who these people are. Yet they are legends among internet marketers, even though they both predate Internet.

And when you get drawn into this “making money online” scene, there are a lot of things you learn becides making money. You learn a lot about human psychology. Not the textbook Freud crap, the real psychology of human behavior. You learn to love language and words. Copywriting is a real craft. You start questioning things, like society and common sense. Is a job really more safe then starting a business?

80% of all new businesses supposedly fail withing first year or first five years, I don’t recall the details. I am sure you’ve heard this statistic. But what about getting a job. If you get a job is that 100% success. What if it’s a job you hate? Or the job that’s absolutely meaniningless to you. Forget the financial difference between salary and income that business generates. Isn’t it weird that someone decides for you what you should or should not be doing eight hours each and every day.

Why should someone decide the location that you have to be tomorrow at 9 A.M.? Why shouldn’t you decide this? I never thought of these things when I had a job. I think that switch from a job to self-employment and then business is an important life changing event that has really nothing to do with money. The reason why people who own businesses generally have more money is because they decide what they should do and how they should do it.

Sometime I feel that having employees (I don’t have any luckily) is in a way like slave ownership. What right do I (as business owner) have to tell other people what they should be doing 40 hours each week. I am not God. Corporations and business owners generally don’t have employees interest in mind, at least it’s not a priority. Business surely can be liberating but also corporations is a soft-prison arrangement the way I see it. The only difference is that you get paid for the time you serve.

Ok, let’s move on to the issue of marketing and copy-writing. You’ve spoken of your fascination with the topic, particularly how it leads into the esoteric disciplines of psychology and the like. I won’t make a secret of the fact that I’m fairly critical of the practice. I wrote a satiric piece: The Secret to Writing Fantastic Copy. I’d like to quote one sentence from that post and get your reaction:

“And so we come to the true secret of fantastic copy - precisely as I�ve just stated it: a cynical view of human nature and a desire to exploit it. That is it�s heart and soul - as it�s the heart and soul of all marketing.”

Do you agree with this assessment? If not, why not? Do you resent it as a description of your online business practice?

Yes, I do agree with you in a sense. A lot of human motivations that actually work and produce results are very primitive at their core. Greed. Sex. Fame. I don’t believe that good copywriter would ever lie to sell the product, but he or she would certainly take advantage of the darker side of human desires.

You mention marketing gurus like ‘Gary Halbert and ‘John Carlton’. Gary Halbert claims on his site that he is the person who invented spam. Irrespective of whether or not this is true (a quick google will yield competing accounts) - is he really someone you’d like to cite as a mentor given the almost universal hatred of spam?

I don’t think that Gary had anything to do with spam. The poor bastard is dead anyway. But he was excellent direct mail copywriter. The earlier issues of his newsletter are pure gold. People actually paid him $2000 for the lifetime subscription to his newsletter. Imagine how pissed they were when Gary decided to put it up on the web.

These marketing gurus form part of an industry that trades the secrets of marketing and copy-writing (sometimes for enormously exorbitant fees). You have taken your place amongst these gurus with your sites like Nichegeek and Madconomist which often give out marketing tips and the like. Do you think there is an approaching end point for this industry - given that there are now so many gurus out there and the secrets are becoming common knowledge? Do you think these secrets will remain effective once their knowledge reaches this saturation point? If so, do you have a contingency plan?

The secret is that there is no secret. Yes, there are techniques that one should now, but they are widely available in books and online. I am lucky that I am 100% guru-proof. I don’t sell my services. I don’t have an e-book. I don’t do seminars. So I have nothing to be afraid of. From early on I decided not to take the guru path, because it’s all bullshit, even when you are for real. A person can give me money, but there is no way I can teach him or her how to make money online with 100% results. It’s not gonna happen. Nobody taught me. I taught myself. This is why I give away everything for free. If you want to learn - go ahead, and learn.

Okay, I’d like to finish up with one final question that addresses the ethical side of the marketing issue. The science of marketing is an all pervasive force in our contemporary lives. At its core is a quest to harness our innermost desires and emotions to make us want to purchase things, or click a link - or whatever. The motif here is one of control - control over our fellow man in order to further our own position. Yet interestingly, your own motivation is one of freedom. Indeed, most people drawn to making money online are motivated out of a desire for freedom from the ’soft prison’ of coporate life (as you call it). Yet if we recognise that freedom is the end we all seek - how do we resolve the ethical conflict that necessarily arises when we use such tools of control in order to liberate ourselves? It seems as though our own liberation can come at the expense of the control and manipulation of others. Do you personally feel the force of this conflict? And if so, how do you reconcile this issue for yourself?

Yes, the conflict is real, but it’s resolvable (I think I just made up a word). I love John Carlton. I think that his blog (john-carlton.com) is a great read even for people who are not interested in copywriting or marketing. I follow his work and how he resolved the conflict that you just mentioned. It’s like learning karate. When you learn martial arts, you become a professional “killing machine”. But you don’t go around picking fights and beating crap out of people. At least if you are mature enough.

Marketing is just like that. It may look like there is a huge conflict. But is there realy? If you spend 10 years learning karate,
which is essentially the art of beating your opponent, why don’t you just go and beat the shit out of everybody? It seems logical, yet it doesn’t happen. Really, mature people learn martial arts for themselves. It’s good excercise and it’s good for psychological
learning, overcoming fear, etc.

If you become a good marketer, the LAST thing you’ll want to do is cheat and lie to other people. Or control and manipulate them, for that matter. If you wanted to learn marketing to stop working 9-5, get better lifestyle, make more money - you’ll get all of that. And you won’t want to use your skills to manipulate people into joining Amway or some other multi-level marketing crap scheme.

You can actually tell if a ‘guru’ is good or bad by what he or she thinks about MLM. Gary Halbert absolutely HATED MLM. He used to say that MLM is for sleazeballs and he’ll never do any work for MLM companies. And he never did.

I think that a good marketer should push himself to the ethical boundries, may be even cross it on a few occasions and then feel
really, really bad about doing that. And after that a person just says to himself - never again will I do that just to get money. That’s how the conflict resolves itself, at least that’s my personal experience.