Shane Dutka is an interesting guy.
He’s the kind of person who can take it on the chin when he loses US$38,000 on an online business.
And then dust himself off to try all over again, earning US$1,000,000 dollars as a result.
Before becoming a full-time digital entrepreneur Shane was an accountant, based in New Jersey.
But he was growing tired of the “normal grind” of his job.
So he decided to start an online business because it involved the least amount of risk for him.
Shane hates taking risks.
This is his story.
Bowtie Beginnings
His first venture into the realm of making money online took the form of an e-commerce site selling bowties.
Shane invested in a website and inventory, spending a total of US$38,000 and set about getting his site ranking for different terms.
“I actually made a lot of mistakes doing all that myself. I ended up wasting a lot of money on inventory I never really sold and a website I never really used.”
After two years of running his bowtie business, he found himself getting really frustrated with the path he was on.
So he started looking at other methods of making money online, and that’s when he discovered Authority Hacker.
Or as he tells it, “…and that’s when I came across Gael and Mark. And I was just kinda following what they were saying. Just seeing what they were doing with their site and the methodology the used.”
Methodology Matters
Shane didn’t mess around after that because he invested in Authority Hacker Pro and The Authority Site System.
This allowed him to take what he already knew about SEO, like being able to rank for terms like “How to wear a bowtie with a suit”, and take it to the next level with our training.
“I took what worked on my bowtie site and put it on steroids with Mark and Gael’s methodology. Part of that was I pivoted to start a home & garden niche blog because it had much more potential to grow than my previous site.”
It took Shane roughly a year to get to the point of earning US$1,000 per month, but that was all passive income because he was still working full-time as an accountant.
In his opinion the timeframe of 12 months is pretty typical of what to expect when building out a large affiliate site, “… you’re building more links but it still takes time for your domain to gain more authority.”
And it’s within this timeframe that Shane started to experience a serious surge in his income.
The Snowball Effect
By May 2018 the income from his site had jumped from $1,000 per month to $5,000 per month.
This is life-changing money for many people and Shane had the same experience, “My life started to change. And the decisions I was making started to change. Needless to say, I was carrying myself differently too.”
Shane watched as his life transitioned from living a low-risk lifestyle as an accountant to being a full-time digital entrepreneur, enhancing his skills in that area.
During the summer of 2018 he doubled down on the two things that had brought him all the success he’d been enjoying so far – building links and publishing content.
So he did lots of both.
“Mark and Gael kept launching more and more content which refined what was working for me. I basically used them as a sounding board for my ideas. And of course the Authority Hacker Pro and Authority Site System communities too – they’re probably the best parts of both products because I can use them to make sure what I’m doing makes sense.”
And what he did make sense.
Or more accurately, a whole pile of cents – by August 2018 Shane’s income surged again, this time crossing the $10,000 per month line.
We’ve seen that all too often new affiliates are looking for some kind of silver bullet to boost their earnings.
But Shane explains how things work in the real world, “…you keep doing the right things over and over again, and it just snowballs in the right direction. Those little incremental improvements ultimately result in big changes.”
By this stage, he was starting to focus on CRO and implemented the Authority Hacker Pro ConvertKit strategy on his site.
He estimated this would double his income.
He was wrong about that but in the best possible way.
Shane kept publishing content to his blog for the next several months, and as he crossed into January 2019 he saw another bump in traffic and income.
Except this time his income jumped to US$50,000 per month.
He quit his job in March 2019 and hasn’t looked back since.
Making His Exit
By the summer of 2019, Shane was looking to sell his site because as much as he enjoyed working on it he felt it was time to move on and start deploying his skills into new authority sites.
And it didn’t take him long to find a buyer…one willing to pay him 7-figures.
“So after the wire from the sale of my site hit my account, and it was in the 7-figure range, it’s actually a surreal feeling. I worked so hard to get there that I felt entitled to it. But I was also relieved because you think ‘…this isn’t going to happen’ until it actually does.”
So, by his own admission, he went from wasting 3 years of his life and almost $40,000 on doing the wrong thing, to following the TASS formula and implementing Authority Hacker Pro strategies to earn himself a 7-figure sum in around 24 months.
“When I found Mark and Gael things just shifted. It was paradigm shift type stuff. The way you look at the world kind of changes and that ultimately changes the way you live your life.”
