CEO Who Carved A Success Story Through Website Sales
Jeff Taylor, the CEO of Devise – a company he co-founded with Evan Lisabeth – started his career with web designing and internet marketing, and expanded to marketing services and digital exposure soon after. He had extensive experience building profitable online businesses. However, juggling several balls in digital space made him realize that client work was something akin to reporting to 100 different bosses, and the returns weren’t exactly worth the effort. That’s when he decided to take a leap of faith and try his hands at a business model that hadn’t really been tried and tested so far – creating digital assets.
Founding A Dream Venture
It was his quest to do something different yet rewarding in terms of revenue generation that led Taylor to the idea of creating and selling digital assets. So, what does his business model really entail? Well, Taylor collaborated with niche experts to design and build websites across a wide spectrum of categories and then sold them to customers with very deep pockets. In doing so, he raised a million dollar turn over, with some of the deals earning him a six figure sum.
Speaking of his success story from a digital marketer next door to a young CEO with an aspirational value, Taylor says it all boils down to three things – passion, personal drive and the determination to work hard. He has been popularly quoted as saying: “I’ve had thousands of ideas, but unless you put action behind them, nothing will come of the idea. There’s no reason to wait for the perfect time to start a project. Start working on it today.”
The Business Model
Taylor’s venture specializes in creating, monetizing and transacting digital media. These sales transactions take place through a variety of platforms, ranging from online sites such as Flippa, brokers, forums or even direct buyers. Devise has sold more than 30 web-based businesses so far. He has put together a team of specialists for managing digital media properties and building a portfolio of assets that garners over one billion page-views.
Secret to Success
Taylor and his partner at Devise have put together a specific two-step process for determining whether a new concept, project or website would be financially viable. First, they try to ascertain how passionate the target audience is about a particular niche,for an enthusiastic audience base means greater chances of people lapping up the content-heavy websites Taylor’s company designs. The next important aspect is looking for gaps in the existing digital landscape and then modeling a service to cater to that gap. This model is best elucidated in the fitness-centric website that fetched Devise a six-figure deal. Taylor and his team evolved the website on two premises – that people were extremely passionate about fitness and that there was no humor-based web portal providing high quality content in a relatable form. They tapped on this gap and watched their traffic multiply rapidly. This automatically translated to an elephantine sale price on the website.
Taylor firmly backs the oft-repeated adage – content is king. Gauging from his success story, it is safe to conclude that focusing on quality, consistency and high-end user experience are the keys to success in the digital space.
