AFFILIATE MARKETING
This 44-Year-Old is Earning +$140k/Month Selling Agency and Marketplace SEO Services
For Chris Walker, one thing was very clear from the beginning: he wanted to have complete autonomy over his life. That meant what he was going to do, the decisions he was going to be making, how he would be making money, and how he was going to live.
Although he started out with a regular day job, a chance encounter with an affiliate marketing blog changed his life entirely. Eventually, when he felt he had outgrown his 9 to 5, he took the plunge and focused all of his energy on his own businesses.
Today he runs the agency Superstar SEO, the online marketplace Legiit, and has several other income streams, bringing in +$140k/month. While Chris has found the financial and professional freedom he was looking for, he’s most proud of the positive ways that his businesses have impacted other people.
Keep reading to find out:
- How he discovered SEO and affiliate marketing
- What his breakthrough moment was
- How he’s developed his presence on multiple platforms
- Why and how he created Legiit
- How much he’s earning
- His main marketing strategy
- His (ironic) views on SEO
- How he builds links
- The content creation strategy that gets him results
- His favorite resources and tools
- The biggest challenge he’s faced
- His most notable accomplishment
- His greatest mistake
- The advice he would give to other entrepreneurs
Meet Chris Walker
I grew up in Myrtle Beach, SC. I was raised by a single mother who worked hard and set a great example for me, and supported me in everything I did. Even though we didn’t have a lot I never felt like I went without anything.
I started working various jobs starting at the age of 12. I eventually went to college for computer technology with the goal to be a computer programmer.
That never developed the way I wanted it to, though I did eventually work in the field.
Why He Created Superstar SEO
After college, I did ok but never had the kind of money that I wanted to make, and not enough to pay off the debt that my degrees got me.
One day I decided to check out a blog that I used to read to see what happened to it and found it had been replaced by a 1-page website from the owner talking about how he didn’t keep up with it anymore and that he was now making a full-time living doing affiliate marketing.
This was around 2013. I’d never heard of it before, but I was intrigued. I started reading Warrior Forum, Blackhat World, and whatever else I could find.
That eventually led me to a course called Bring The Fresh, which taught me how to make affiliate sites, and I launched my first site, not even knowing that what I was doing was called “SEO” but having success at it nonetheless and started making money from it. The site is still around but no longer ranks for anything and has been neglected for years.
I was hooked at this point… until Penguin 3.0 made me lose the rankings for that site.
After that, I got on to another course called Source Phoenix. This was very expensive for me at the time, which was important because it forced me to have to make it work.
I launched more affiliate sites and did ok with them, but I also got into client SEO for the first time.
As time went on, the SEO business grew between client and affiliate, but the big breakthrough came in 2015 when I made my first freelance SEO service sale.
This was on a marketplace site and was a $10 service that I resold from Fiverr. This was pretty much the moment everything changed for me.
That business quickly blew up for me, making me hundreds, then thousands, then 10s of thousands of dollars a month.
Between this and my clients and affiliate sites, I was able to quit my job and focus on Superstar SEO full time.
Unfortunately, the marketplace site I was working on started having many problems, crashing, getting hacked, etc…
Fortunately, I had the foresight to build a customer list. Both a Facebook group (which now has around 80k members), an email list, and a YouTube channel.
I used that list to start making sales through my own website. Then I had freelancers from the site I had been making sales from asking if they too, could list their services on my site.
That’s when I partnered with a customer who owned a development agency to launch Legiit, which has been my focus for the last 5 years and has led me to be able to grow SEO training, software, and consulting.
Legiit is the #1 SEO marketplace now, and it all started with Superstar SEO.
How Legiit Works
The easiest answer is that it started as a 2-way marketplace for customers to find B2B services they need that are provided by freelancers. Now it has expanded into a complete ecosystem/platform for online business, providing a suite of interactive tools that use AI and other technology to make running an online business push button simple.
It also has built-in course hosting and separate SaaS tools for lead generation like Legiit Leads and others under development.
How Much Chris is Making
For complete transparency, Superstar SEO is no longer my main business and Legiit is the focus… but it still does very well, largely on autopilot.
I have several income streams from it that include:
- Freelance services on Legiit. I’ve sold over 2 million dollars lifetime there, with $730,000 coming in 2022 alone.
This is what I make as a freelancer on Legiit, not as the platform owner.
- Client SEO – This makes me around $20,000 per month, sometimes more, sometimes less
- Affiliate SEO/deals – This makes around $5,000 per month… sometimes more if I promote something
- Audiit.io and SEO software I own, which makes around $3,500 per month
- Superstar SEO Academy, which makes around $5,000 though it had been as high as 30k per month at points
- Misc. things make around $1,000 – $2,000
Chris’s Top Marketing Strategy
I call it the celebrity method. Make as much content as possible, and run paid ads to it to make yourself into an authority or “celebrity” that people come to for whatever you sell, SEO in my case.
Most people just email, DM, etc… or wait for people to find their website. I find that by making myself into an authority I’ve managed to stand out.
His Views on SEO
Honestly, the only SEO I focus on for Superstar SEO/”Chris M. Walker” is branded search and some blogging. It’s honestly pretty low down the priority list for Superstar SEO and only brings in top-of-funnel traffic usually…
Ironically, I just don’t find SEO a great way to promote an SEO business. It is very important for Legiit though… but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this piece.
Link Building
Link building is the #1 ranking factor. There are two types of people on this… people that agree and people that are wrong.
Lately, I have been using many extremely high-authority PR links… placements in Maxim, Men’s Journal, Hackernoon, and so on. That, combined with HARO, guest posts, niche edits, and PBNs can really move the needle. For clients, I like to build a link foundation with social profiles and web 2.0 before going to those.
As for what hasn’t worked… it’s hard to say. There are things that used to work really well like blog comments, that are less effective now, so it’s hard to classify something as “hasn’t worked” when I’ve seen various times when things worked and then later didn’t.
His Email List
I ask all my customers on Legiit for their email when I deliver their order. I make offers to my Facebook group, I have a pop-up on my site, and I run ads to lead magnets… that still works very well. The email list is like a push-button money machine when used right.
Chris’s Content Creation Process
These days I focus on ranking YouTube videos. I can rank pretty much any term I want in YouTube search, so I just make good videos, and they drive me a ton of traffic.
Here’s an example. This video is ranking #1 in YouTube search for SEO 101:
When it comes to keyword research, I pick the hardest keyword that a site would benefit from and rank that. It usually pulls the others along with it when done right.
Achieving Current Revenue Levels
With Superstar SEO, my current level of revenue is not my peak level of revenue, so this is tough to answer, but I think I got to 100k months in 2-3 years.
His Top Resources
I don’t watch much SEO content anymore, but I like Niche Pursuits a lot, and Buildapreneur is great for affiliates also.
Overall though, I find it better to watch what someone does. rather than the content itself. I find that to be where you get the best information.
His Favorite Tools
The most underrated tool in the world is Freedcamp. My Director of Operations and I have been using it since 2016 and it just does not get the love it deserves. It manages our tasks, lets us know who is working on what, where they are in the process, communicates about issues or questions, etc.
Beyond that, the staples:
We’ve also gotten very good at Pitchbox.
His Main Challenge
Legiit has been far more challenging than Superstar SEO, but overall the biggest challenge in business, I think, is the uncertainty. I always say that I am one bad day away from losing everything and having to go back to a job. That’s a fear, but it’s a real one, and it keeps me motivated.
His Greatest Accomplishment
The number of people who have achieved financial independence through Legiit, whether as a freelancer or as a customer helping their clients or themselves. I literally get choked up when I think about it. It’s the best thing I’ve done in my life.
What He Wishes He Knew When He Started
I wish I had known about the importance of personal branding/content. If I had started that day 1, rather than day 500 or so, I’d be years further along.
His Biggest Mistake
My main mistake has been trusting the wrong people.
His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
Keep your personal expenses as low as possible so that you can invest in your business, take more chances, and not be in trouble in lean periods.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
McDonald’s CFO: Bigger Burgers, More Meat Testing This Year
After months of testing and teasing dozens of modifications to its original burger, McDonald’s is now revealing one massive change that customers will notice — the size.
In a Tuesday call with analysts, McDonald’s Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden announced that the chain will be testing a larger burger this year in select markets.
“As we look to further build on our leadership in beef, our team of chefs from around the world have created a larger satiating burger,” Borden said during the call. “We’ll be testing this burger in a few markets later this year ensuring that it has universal appeal before scaling it across the globe.”
Related: McDonald’s Is Completely Changing Its Burgers in 2024
This isn’t surprising news for McDonald’s, as Borden hinted at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference last month that he believed there was a “significant” opportunity to create a larger-sized offering and noted the chain has attempted to do so in the past.
In the mid-90s, McDonald’s attempted to create “premium” burgers with different toppings and offerings (such as the Arch Deluxe, for example), instead of simply making a larger patty.
“We tried to get after this opportunity for a number of years because we thought the opportunity was about premium burger,” Borden said last month. “We weren’t successful.”
It’s been a long time coming for the chain, which laid out a massive growth plan in December that included creating a new version of its burgers with an estimated 50 modifications. The changes were first tested in Australia and select West Coast and Midwest markets in 2023.
Other changes included swapping the Big Mac’s sesame seed bun with “buttery brioche” and each burger coming with more of the cult-favorite “special sauce.”
McDonald’s reported positive Q1 2024 earnings on Tuesday, a 2% quarterly jump in global comparable sales growth, which marks the chain’s 13th consecutive quarter of comparable sales growth.
Related: McDonald’s in Connecticut Goes Viral For Astronomical Prices
“As consumers are more discriminating with every dollar that they spend, we will continue to earn their visits by delivering leading, reliable, everyday value and outstanding execution in our restaurants,” said CEO Chris Kempczinski.
McDonald’s was down just over 8% as of Tuesday afternoon.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Gen Z Is Choosing Trade Schools as a Fast Track to Business
It’s no secret that Gen Z is entrepreneurial, with research showing that the majority would take a social media creator job over a standard 9-to-5. Nearly half are going the extra mile by starting a side hustle to be able to afford “the normal stuff.”
Now, new research shows that trade school could also play into Gen Z’s entrepreneurial aspirations, especially with rising AI capabilities and growing education costs.
According to a January National Student Clearinghouse report, vocational community college enrollment has grown 16% since 2018. Growth was concentrated mainly in cities and suburbs, which recorded 3.5% and 3.7% respective increases in students opting for trade programs.
Last year’s version of the report found that enrollment in programs across the construction, culinary, and mechanic trades increased 19.3%, 12.7%, and 11.5% respectively from 2021 to 2022.
“We’re seeing that 75% of Gen Z is saying they are interested in being an entrepreneur,” career coach and The Ramsey Show co-host Ken Coleman told Fox Business. “They want to work for themselves… trades offer a quicker, cheaper path to being able to work for themselves, create jobs for other people, and plug into—which is the real backbone of our economy—small business.”
While students were choosing trade schools in higher numbers, fewer were deciding to go for a four-year undergraduate degree.
A separate April report from the National Student Clearinghouse detailed that the number of students completing undergraduate degrees dropped by nearly 3% in the 2022 to 2023 school year — continuing an overall decline from the previous year.
In an NPR article published last week, Sy Kirby, a 32-year-old who owns a construction company, said he knew early that he was going to choose a trade school — and he has no regrets.
Kirby chose to work at a local water department when he was 19 years old rather than go to college, he told NPR. He calls Gen Z the “toolbelt generation,” a term also used by The Wall Street Journal.
“I was facing a lot of pressure for a guy that knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to college,” Kirby told NPR. “I knew I wasn’t going to sit in a classroom, especially since I knew I wasn’t going to pay for it.”
AFFILIATE MARKETING
This Set of Chef’s Knives Is Nearly $300 Off
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.
Cooking at home can be great for busy professionals because it’s budget-friendly, easier to stay healthy, and meditative. Whether you’re a home cook or an entrepreneur on the hunt for a unique gift that could stand out to a colleague, potential business partner, or friend, this limited-time deal is well worth checking out.
This Seido Japanese Master Chef’s 8-Piece Knife Set comes with a gift box and is on sale for $109.97 (reg. $429). These high-quality knives are made with very durable and strong high-carbon stainless steel. Their forged construction incorporates a sloped bolster and acute 15° angles (compared to the typical 25° seen more commonly with Western knives).
This set includes the following knives:
- 8″ chef’s knife
- 8″ slicing knife
- 8″ bread knife
- 7″ cleaver
- 7″ Santoku knife
- 5″ Santoku knife
- 6″ boning knife
- 3.5″ paring knife
To add an air of high-class presentation to this deal, it also comes with a stylish gift box that can securely store the knives for travel or passing on to a business partner.
This set has an impressive 4.6/5 star average rating among verified purchasers. One recent perfect five-out-of-five star review reads, “Affordable price. Excellent workmanship. Fast shipment. Overall, great product that’s hard to beat.”
Discover the quality of a high-end set of knives to improve your home cooking, or gift them to someone you work with.
This Seido™ Japanese Master Chef’s 8-Piece Knife Set comes with a gift box and is on sale for $109.97 (reg. $429).
StackSocial prices subject to change.
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