Interview with Tom De Spiegelaere – Family Life as a Digital Entrepreneur

Hey Tom,

First off thank you for taking the time to get involved in this interview for my readers.

We first met on the digital marketing circuit at both the Chiang Mai SEO and Affiliate World Asia events in Thailand in 2018. Since then I have been following your blog (link) with interest.

You’re one of the few online marketing guys I know that has a family. So, I was intrigued by how your life compares to mine in juggling family life with the fluid world of internet marketing.

So, thanks again for Tom for spending time with me today, and let’s jump straight into this with our first question.

It would be great to get some background on where you’re from, your early life, studying, and career.

I grew up in Belgium, I have a Bachelor in Graphical & Digital Media, with a specialization in Multimedia production. Basically, anything from basic drawing, to design (both web and print), to 3D animation, special effects, video editing, and coding. Very broad.

My first real job was as a consultant in a global consultancy company, mainly doing flash animations and graphic design for the web. Figured I needed more of a human connection, so moved into sales, I earned a lot less money, but was a lot happier.

Then moved to Australia in 2011.

You used to work with client SEO and have agency (is this right?) but moved towards your own affiliate projects. What triggered the move?

So, to back up a bit. In 2012 I found this course on creating micro-niche sites with WordPress, rank them, and monetize them… I made so many that year and learned so much (even though most were smashed by Google updates, I was way too aggressive), that in 2013 I started a web design agency, ranked locally very quickly for all terms related to web design and SEO, got a lot of leads, used my sales experience to convert them, and grew from there.

But after a while, I found that agency life wasn’t really my thing, I probably had the wrong SOPs in place (if I even had any back then), or maybe I was charging too little.

But constantly having to re-educate every client, the constant emails and calls about their ranks dropping 1 position, the scope creep on web projects, etc.
I really wanted something else, I knew I could do more with my skills, work on my own stuff, instead of growing everybody else’s and barely getting anything back for it… but by that time it was 2014, I just had my first child, and we had bills to pay, so I really couldn’t find a quick way out, or didn’t know yet how to shift to something more passive.

That changed in 2016, so 2 years later, when I made another go of creating an affiliate site, I’ve had enough SEO experience now because of the client-work, I was way more confident that I could make it work. The big break came at the end of 2016 when I went to Chiang Mai, where Matt and a few others where speaking… this was before it even was a conference. I went with one of my best mates, Alex, to really just hear this Diggity dude talk, to chill, to network, etc.

Turns out the domain I was working on was way more powerful than I thought… people had to point it out to me… and then they gave me some tips, which I implemented immediately.

My earnings went from $500/mo before Chiang Mai, to $3k/mo when I got back from Chiang Mai… That really kicked me in the ass, so I built on that success, and grew it to around 30k/mo within 7 months.

Are you a solo affiliate or do you have a team? Do you see this changing in the future?

I’ve got 2 full-time writers at the moment (both of which mainly write for JV projects), and 1 full-time VA (who’s really really good). The rest are all contractors and services I tap into when needed.

I definitely want to add more full-timers as it forces me to come up with tasks for them… Can’t have them doing anything… sort of forces you to grow, otherwise you’re just throwing money away.

During your journey what resources (books, podcasts, blogs) have been a huge influence on the way?

Oh man, there are honestly so many.

Blogs/people:

• Diggity of course, keeps stuff up to date, def in his course the affiliate lab
• Charles Floate, until a year ago or so, wrote some really good posts, but he has gone a bit off the radar for a while I think
• Lionzeal way back in the day
• Daniel Cuttridge has good stuff on medium
• Kyle roof for on-page stuff
• The authority hacker crew
• The Traffic Think Tank community is super useful
• Glen Allsopp
• The ahrefs blog
• John Dykstra for how he does his kw research is pretty interesting
• James Dooley more for mindset stuff

And I’m probably missing a bunch.

Books:

• 4-hour work week (see Amazon)
• Company of one (see Amazon)

Podcasts:

In no specific order.

• Authority Hacker podcast
• The Doug Show
• Experts on the wire is ok
• The tropical MBA
• The side hustle show
• Noah Kagan presents is ok too
• Empire Flippers podcast
• Building online empires podcast
• Niche pursuits

Craig Campbell ones I haven’t really listened to yet but it’s on the to-do list.

[Adam – Nice, a few on there that I haven't checked out so thanks for that!]

You are one of the few affiliate marketing guys I know with a family. With a family, you can often get disruptions with holidays and sickness. Do you have a flexible work routine? What’s your typical day like?

Not going to lie, it’s tricky at times. There are disruptions that happen, holidays to book, kids get sick, Jess (wife) might get sick, generally sleep is an issue, lots can get in the way of work.

So, you have to be flexible. I have multiple to-do lists based on how much focus/energy I have. So, if we had a bad night and my mind is fuzzy, I do the simple stuff like accounting, ordering some links, running surfer audits, etc.

If my energy levels are good, I go for the harder stuff, KW research, build briefs for more complex tasks for my VA or contractors to handle, do interlinking audits, etc.

The ideal day is I wake up at 5.30-ish, Jess goes exercising, either cardio or Pilates, I look after the kids until she gets back, then she takes them to school and kindergarten, I get to the office around 8.30 or so, and if nothing goes wrong that day, I can work until 5-5.30 before going home, helping with the kids evening routine, watch an episode of some series, currently it’s “Man in the High Castle”, in bed by 9, then do it all again.

Weekends are generally off-limits workwise unless something goes really wrong with one of the projects.

So that would be the ideal schedule, if I can get a full week of that routine w/o issues, it’s a really good week and I’m a happy man when it comes to productivity.

Also, because a lot can get in the way, I need to be flexible with project deadlines I set for myself, and every time I put a date on a given task, I usually have a second date sort of in my mind in case something happens and I can’t get it done by date 1.

That being said, as the kids get older, it’s getting a lot easier. Fewer things happen, they get sick a lot less, are more independent. The first few years are definitely the hardest.

What’s big your biggest challenge and success working as a digital entrepreneur?

I think the biggest challenge is to continue keeping an eye on the future and where your specific marketing strategy or strategies are going. In my case, it’s mainly SEO, so I try to look ahead and map out where Google could possibly go in the years ahead and adjust accordingly… as much as that’s possible.

For example: As we’re moving to fewer and fewer people actually clicking on search results because Google provides more and more answers on their pages, I try to combat that by partnering with more companies that are subscription-based and give – as affiliate commissions – a % of that subscription cost for the life-time of the sign-ups or clients that you send them. That way you can build a recurring rev stream, and even if Google ends up sending less and less traffic, you’re still getting that recurring rev of the clients as long as they use that specific service.

As for the biggest success. Actually, pulling off the switch to full-time affiliate while supporting a family… that, looking back, I honestly can’t believe I did.

The freedom this business model gives is just amazing. Like I’m sending my wife to Singapore for a girl’s trip at the end of Feb, and I’ll stay and look after the kids… because affiliate income will keep coming even if I’m not working.

We’re going to New Zealand mid-year on a fam snow holiday. I’m heading to Chiang Mai mid-year for a co-working/chill week, and then again at the end of the year for the conference. I’ll probably plan in another trip around august too…. maybe the Empire Retreat in Phuket as I missed it last year. That freedom never gets old and it’s the primary motivator to keep scaling.

I am recently got into small mastermind groups to brainstorm and share ideas. Do you actively get involved in Masterminds or prefer to be a lone wolf?

I love masterminds, the Empire Retreat I just mentioned is a mastermind, I also go to the CMSEO one. If you know of more around SE-Asia, def let me know, they’re so valuable.

I’m definitely not a lone wolf, I have more JVs in the work than my own personal projects.

8. What actionable strategy have you followed that’s been a game-changer for you?

Snippets, anyone that knows me knows I like snippets, even after the de-duplication update, they still rock. If you know how snippets work, it honestly feels a bit like cheating.

All you need to do is get on the first page… you can be #8 organically and grab the snippet… and the difference in traffic of #8 compared to the snippet is obviously insane.

You can go from almost 0 traffic to 100s of visitors per day the moment you grab that snippet, depending on the target keyword of course… and then you use the money you’re getting from having that snippet to re-invest in links and push up the organic ranks of the page… in case you lose the snippet later, at least you won’t be sitting at #8 anymore, but maybe #2 or 3.

How do you see your business evolving in the next few years? Rinse and repeat whilst it works or looking to move into another space?

As long as SEO remains a viable strategy for affiliate marketing, I’ll keep going.

But I did start pushing more profits into non-digital marketing-related investments like index funds to slowly build up a net worth I can live off and/or pass on to my kids when they grow up.

So yeah, def rinse and repeat as long as it’s working.