This week we were lucky enough to catch up with Tyler Cruz!
What started as an assignment at school now earns Tyler Cruz 6 figures a year. He runs over a dozen websites, and has sold domains for as much as $200,000!
Adam: You started on this enterprise at a very young age, how long would you say it actually took you to establish your business in its current format?
Tyler: I actually wasn’t all that young when I started. I started making my living from the web at around the age 21 which these days isn’t very young. Then again, it’s far easier to make money online now than it was back then. Once I moved out and started to truly rely on my web income for a living, it only took around a year to a year-and-a-half to where I was making $100,000 a year.
Adam: The niches that you enter would appear to be subjects that you actually take a keen interest in, do you think that this is important?
Tyler: Absolutely. Not only will you naturally know more about subjects that interest you which in turn helps you build your niche, but you will actually enjoy working. It’s like that saying goes: find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Adam: You have an extensive network of sites, what tips can you share about keeping them all fresh?
Tyler: I’d be lying if I claimed to keep them all up-to-date and growing, but I do try to spread my work around them as best I can. Personally, I find it helps if I concentrate on working on one site at a time. Once I put a lot of time and effort into growing the site, I’ll move onto the next one and concentrate only on it. Trying to juggle all my sites at the same time just doesn’t work for me.
Adam: What is your position on outsourcing, and if you do have you learned any lessons along the way that you can share?
Tyler: For me, outsourcing is often essential. For programmers especially, there just simply aren’t that many freelancers and companies in the West… at least, none that are affordable. There used to be a lot more in the late 90s, but I believe all the good ones got hired up by big companies and new dot com startups. I use the popular outsourcing websites such as elance.com, odesk.com and guru.com to outsource programmers. You have to be extremely careful though as there are hordes of programmers in India, China, and Russia that will promise the world but will often fail to deliver on their promise. My best advice is to be extremely selective when choosing a provider, hiring only those who have very good feedback.
Adam: How do you see the Twitter explosion panning out, is it sustainable in your view?
Tyler: I absolutely think it’s sustainable, and it will no doubt continue to be amongst the most popular social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. It’s amazing how such simple ideas are so often the most successful.
Adam: Obviously the global economy is not good at the moment, many people are saying that internet based business have not been hit as hard as more traditional bricks and mortar businesses. Have you found this to be the case?
Tyler: I couldn’t agree more. Personally, I haven’t seen any effect from the “economic slowdown”, and none of my colleagues have either. If anything, business is booming for us.
Adam: Are you planning any major launches for 2009 or do you see this as a time for consolidation?
Tyler: I already have more sites that I should 
For the second half of 2009 I plan on returning to affiliate marketing and getting back into that game.
Adam: I have noticed that you like to read horror/fantasy fiction, do you also read business writing and if so which one resonates best with you?
Tyler: I haven’t read that many business books. In fact, the only one that I’ve really read has been the famous Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. While I believe that reading such “motivational business” books is important, I also feel it important not to take it too seriously and always read such books with a grain of salt. I actually find reading blogs to be much more useful in terms of practical knowledge you can actually use.
Adam: There are so many “Internet Gurus” out there are there any out there that you keep an eye on?
Tyler: I read John Chow’s blog for interest, Jonathan Volk’s blog for inspiration, Zac Johnson’s blog for knowledge, and Shoemoney’s blog for industry news. There are so many people out there you can learn from it’s scary.
Adam: What is it that you think has made you a success in this market where so many others fail?
Tyler: I actually try stuff. It seems that most people tend to get so caught up in reading that they never actually do anything. Reading is important, but you could read for a thousand years straight and still have never accomplished anything. I also think many people are scared of failing. So what if your first site doesn’t take off, or you lose $300 on your first affiliate marketing campaign? Everyone fails. If you don’t try, you can’t succeed.
Adam Toren
