I run content experiments here on the Amp blog, and I’m also the Head of Content for Zero To Mastery – a site that teaches people to go from no experience to being hired as Software Developers, Engineers and more, with over 480,000 members.

My main focus with Amp My Content is to teach you how to scale your content results, without always having to scale your efforts. i.e how to have more impact from every article you create vs thinking that you need to write 1,000 of them that do nothing.

For example

When this blog was only a few months old, I wanted to promote an article to help make it rank. Promotion would get it in front of people, and promoting it on other sites would mean backlinks and rankings in Google.

I’m a one man operation, so time is short, and I need results.

So, rather than take the approach most people would, I decided to go onto podcasts and talk about the article topic in depth. This would not only help me get links on competitive sites that would normally say no, but I would also get put in front of their audience, add value, and build links to my post and topic.

The result?

I took a brand new site with 3 articles from DA0 to DA50 in 90 days – all from that one experiment.

You can read all about it here, and see how to do it for yourself.

There’s nothing wrong with more output when you’re focused on the right things, and are able to tick all the boxes to do it correctly. But let’s be honest here – most sites are one person blogs, and even if you are running content for a larger company, budget is normally tight so you need to know where to apply it for the best impact.

You might be thinking you need to churn out 1,000 AI posts but even if Google doesn’t immediately punish you in the rankings for duplicate content, what makes you think you’re going to rank for it, if you never do promotion or link building?

Is that AI content good enough to rank if you reached out to people, or would you be ashamed to even email them with it?

Food for thought eh?…

That’s why most of my content is focused on:

• Content Creation methods such as research, templates, drafts, AI assistance and editing (if needed, so that your content is the best in field
• How to convert traffic into customers with that content. Too many people think content marketing is just about getting traffic, but it should also sell for you
• Content Promotion techniques across multiple platforms and method, and how to use each of them – often with case study examples
• SEO to help that content show up in Google and then get free traffic. Like I said, it’s pointless writing this content if it does nothing for you
• And then other parallel content, such as how to capture emails or plan out a content calendar, etc

There’s no reason why you can’t see results and grow with a small team – as long as you’re doing the most important actions, so let me show you how. Either via the blog, the YouTube channel, or via my premium training program – the Amplify Content Academy (updated for 2024).

Get to know me a little better – the Amp My Content Timeline

Alright so, enough about the content and what I create here. Here’s how I got into all of this, and how I figured it out.

If I ever seem smart, it’s simply because I made a lot of mistakes to figure out what not to do. In theory though, that’s the spirit of experimentation so I wouldn’t change a thing.

The clothing company and Visa’s

I’m originally from the UK but live permanently in New Zealand as a proud NZ citizen.

However, the path to that visa wasn’t easy. I had originally arrived on a working holiday permit for 2 years, and was at the point where I would have to leave as I was too old to apply for an extension.

I didn’t want to leave so I started looking for options to get around this, and saw that I could apply for an ‘Entrepreneurship Visa’, and stay – as long as the company was performing to a certain standard.

I had nothing to lose and so I decided to start a clothing company.

I lived in a very popular beach town, and had years of experience in retail, so I figured I could create a surf styled company, that would appeal to tourists and locals, without being a crazy price point.

Within 2 months I was in 5 retail stores, and the one design was the most popular selling shirt that year.

(Most companies will send a ‘size break’ of shirts. Usually something like 2 small, 4 medium, 4 larger, 2 XL etc. However, we sold hundreds of each size.)

I didn’t want to just sell via retail, so I set up a site and learned SEO from Glen Allsopp, back when he was running Viperchill. (Glen is an OG SEO, who used to run SEO for huge companies while still a teenager).

I’m a big believer in action and experimentation to find what works, and so got results almost immediately online also.

Helping others and early consulting

After people saw this success, they started asking advice on how I was getting into stores and marketing.

I would give them advice on what to do, and would take on small clients – helping to optimize their sites and build links, etc. I also noticed that although they had traffic, most of these sites couldn’t convert it at all, so I dived deep into conversion rate optimization and direct response marketing.

All of this meant that I started to learn the techniques and psychology that could help get people to become customers, on automation. (Years later I would be chatting about this to a team lead at Ogilvy who ran their psychology department).

Anyways, I would get more and more results for this people, and realized that although my clothing company was doing great, there was a lot of cash locked up in clothing, and a lot of shipping and handling etc, while consulting was as easy as a Skype call (no zoom back then), and with much higher profit margins.

I decided to go into the consulting more and created a blog called Inbound Ascension, mainly because I thought the name was cool.

Top #10 post of all time on Inbound.org

I wanted to grow this new blog, and so I came up with an idea. I would run some small campaigns for people, with the ‘payment’ being that I could share all the details of the campaign in a blog post. That way I could share what worked and what didn’t.

I ran a retargeting campaign with a local surf company called BodyGlove wetsuits.

They had stock they needed to sell, they didn’t have a huge budget for ads, and wanted to sell as many wetsuits as possible.

The result?

By the end of day 1 and for just $114 NZD, they had sold out of 90% of their sale stock…

I wrote up the post and shared it with a friend who was a moderator on Inbound.org. At the time, this used to be a HUGE forum for content marketers. Basically we would share content there with each other, and learn different topics.

I woke up the day after this first blog post on my new site, and everything had gone bananas. It had 50,000 views in the first day, and was being shared by people like Ryan Deiss, Neil Patel, and many more.

It got even crazier.

You see, I had been consulting for a while and did full service campaigns for around $10,000 USD. This would involve site optimization, content planning, and creation of X number of assets for both conversion and traffic. It was a very bespoke service.

Within that first week, I had so many request that if I had said yes to all of them, it was around $3 Million USD…

Consulting Part #1 and pivot

I did consulting for a while but it wasn’t for me.

My problem is that I like to over deliver so would often answer calls at 4am about random things. It turns out, I needed to be less of a ‘helicopter’ consultant and learn to handle clients better, but I wouldn’t figure that out for a while.

During this time, I kept sharing new content on different case studies or techniques, and people we’re asking me how I was achieving all this. It was all in the guides, but I still had other techniques I hadn’t wrote about yet, or didn’t think to create for the blog. Operating procedures etc.

I couldn’t help everyone one on one, so I decided to create a course sharing all my techniques and strategy.

I launched it in a BETA version at first to small audience, and then added in content as the members had more questions, tweaking and improving until it become the current version of the Amplify Content Academy.

I launched that to my audience and quickly outpaced my consulting income, and so pivoted to just creating the course and updating, and then growing the blog.

This did great up until COVID hit.

Pivot part #2 and back to consulting

Prior to the pandemic, I was diving heavily into paid content promotion.

Basically, I would run adverts to get people to click through and read my articles. The articles would then convert readers into subscribers, and then some of those people would become customers of the academy.

This did so well that I was making around $22 for every $1 spent on ads, over time, and that’s the key thing here. This was based on the average value of a customer and how long they would stay.

Churn rate was low and some customers would stay for months, so I decided to go all in and spent everything I earned from those ads, back into the ad budget, because at those margins it meant I could scale like crazy.

It was great for all of 3 weeks until everything went crazy in the world.

This meant that when the pandemic hit, new customers would suddenly refund, meaning the new pumped up ad budget was blown, with no money to show for it. Worse still, current customers would pause accounts, so I went from around $10,000 a month to $400 a month, while still having to create content for the program and help the current customers. (Like I said up top – I’ve made a lot of mistakes to figure out what not to do!).

I couldn’t survive on just $100 a week though, so I started taking on clients again to help cover costs, and went back into consulting.

From multiple clients to a singular role

I worked with clients for a while but it was a lot of no one wanting anything, then everyone wanting deadlines at the same time.

I could deliver but it was a lot of juggling, and very little time to work on the Amp blog or the academy, other than answering questions.

I then saw the position available at ZTM for their head of content role, and it was more money, free time, and ‘easier’ work, in that it was a single point of focus vs multiple clients. Not only that, but their business model was similar to mine in that its an online education space and I could test out techniques at scale, so I took the position and am helping them scale up with a relatively small team and huge impact.

Amp My Content Today

I still work at Zero To Mastery, mainly because I love the work and people, and I’m a big believer in sharing what you’re doing and learning as you go. This way I can still test out campaigns on smaller sites such as Amp, and on larger sites with ZTM, and share what works.

It also means that I can continue to help you and your content marketing efforts, regardless of your current operating level. I have content that works, even if you’re an SMB, a one person business, or a larger start up.

I’ve also overhauled the academy for the new year with the latest information, and will release it again soon, so be sure to sign up for the waitlist if you want to check it out.

Otherwise, that’s me. I’ve cut out a lot of background nerdy stuff, but you get the general idea :D.