Interview With Mark McDonald – Copywriter, Middleman and Product Creator

By: Michael Dunlop     Topics: Entrepreneur Interviews

Mark offers some real solid advice to anyone who wants to get online and start making money. Mark has had multiple success stories online and shares some of them with us! At just 13 he started one of his first internet ventures where he became a middle man between programmers and the customer, he calls this International Outsourcing Arbitrage.First off – can we have a little background information on you Mark – Where you live? How old you are? (if you don’t mind answering) What motivates you? What inspires you?

Well basically I’m from Melbourne, Australia. I’m 16 and have been marketing online since I was thirteen. I first got started with a Blog. I read some web design books and from there learnt about internet marketing, direct response tactics and business and it’s been a wild ride.

I guess it’s hard to say exactly what motivates me but I guess I love the thought of taking an idea and then turning it into reality in such a way that it can improve people’s lives and at the same time make money.

I guess entrepreneurs don’t want average normal lives – but instead want the crazy thrill of building something themselves.

My biggest inspiration would be the awesome people who I can proudly call friends, mentors and customers.  The smartest, weirdest, funniest and most motivating people in the world are business owners, and owning a business lets you join that community.

1) I understand at just 13 you made your first $1000 online in a weekend with what you call “International Outsourcing Arbitrage” tell us how you achieved this.

Basically this is similar to the middle man strategy.

I figured that if I was going to make money, I was going to do it using my brain not doing manual labor.

If I know one thing about money it’s that the rich don’t get rich getting their hands dirty and actually doing the work. They spend their time doing high leverage tasks like marketing and strategy.

With this method you need to get in front of local businesses and offer them services such as web design, search engine optimization and things like that. You can then go and outsource this work to places like India.

Big name law firms do this all the time. They get a $50,000 contract – outsource it over to India for $5,000, fix a few things up and then make the cash in the middle.

2) What advice would you give a young entrepreneur who wants to start “International Outsourcing Arbitrage”? What are the benefits of using this system?

Well, I would say that this business model is pretty amazing because anybody can get started with it. It’s dead simple.

It represents about 47% of my income and other people do all the work.

I started by advertising in Craigslist, today I have many different areas that I use including Direct Mail, Personal Referrals and mostly offline. I don’t even have a website for it – yet I’m making a killing. It’s mostly offline.

The key to this is being a really good marketer. I’ve been studying persuasion, selling and marketing for years now and when you get good at marketing there will be an endless amount of people who will give you money.

Another important point is finding the right people to outsource jobs to. If you can’t get work done quickly, cheaply and on time then you’re not going to last long in this business.

3) You once described Copywriting to be like “Having a salesman working for you 24/7 that never calls in sick” Why do you believe copywriting is so important?

I see so many people going hypo about web 2.0 or the latest fad that comes out every few months – but at the end of the day success on the internet comes down to kick butt marketing, and in many cases that means being able to write a killer sales letter.

When I say copywriting I’m not referring to just normal content writing – but instead influential copywriting.

Basically if you know how to trigger certain emotional hot buttons you can sell out whatever you’re selling over and over again

I can’t really teach everyone what I know – because it would literally take months. But my advice is that you should learn it! Study from the masters the payoff is huge.

When you understand what makes people tick you can persuade people to do some amazing things like send you money, buy your product, buy advertising on your site and so on.

You’ll be able to write your own paychecks, get out of parking fines, tell when people are lying to you, persuade your friends to see the movie you want and see straight through other people’s attempts at persuading you.

I call it a 24/7 salesmen because if you have good traffic you’re site will always convert at the same amount. For instance let’s say you have a $197 course.

Your site converts at 1.4% and you’re getting 10,000 unique visitors a month to your site. That means if you will make 140 sales – or $27,580 a month.

Now if you can continue to get that much traffic every month you’ll continue to get the same amount of income. I hope that explains it.

4) I understand that you have several successful niche products, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur creating and promoting niche products they don’t have any experience in?

Absolutely. This another key element of my income. Information is one of the hottest sellers online and if you create your very own product and team it up with killer marketing you’ll do great.

If I give you one tip it would be to forget what the big name gurus tell you about finding little niches. That’s complete B.S – The real money is made in mega competitive markets like make money, self development, health and so on.

Just find a niche in those categories.

If you don’t know about a topic then it’s important to hire a competent ghost writer. You may notice that I didn’t give you any URLS. That’s because this isn’t about me getting famous, I make real money from those sites and on the internets it’s easy for people to knock off your hard work.

If you ever hit it big in a niche. Don’t tell anyone except your closest business partners.

5) Have you had to make any changes because of the credit crunch? What should young entrepreneurs be doing to prevent a drop of income because of it?

I’ll tell you a secret. I’m getting Rich in this recession. Alright maybe not “RICH” but the moment those stock markets started dropping my income went up around 50% overnight.

As internet marketers we can leverage what currency we charge our customers – I get paid in American which is worth A LOT more then the Australian dollar right now.

Another thing is that you need to understand that if you are a student of history you’ll know that in times of economic uncertainty people don’t stop buying. They usually go and try and save money. Naturally that means people coming online for bargains.

More and more people will be coming online – that means more sales, more traffic and more wealth will be created then ever before.

There’s a bright side to everything. Advertising is cheaper at the moment because offline companies are tightening their advertising purse strings; I doubt I need to point out what that means for us.

This is something I talk about extensively in my newsletter – I suggest your readers take a look at http://markmcdonald.name   right away and they’ll eventually get a recording of me talking about how the recession is making me heaps of money.

How’s that for a shameless plug. =)

6) You have achieved so much as such a young age, how do you manage your time between school and business?

I used to use this as an excuse. I can’t make much money because I went to school – then I found out one of my close online buddies had made $250,000 in his first year online while still studying economics at university. That was kind of a motivator for me.

Outsourcing becomes more important and I have a virtual assistant that I literally couldn’t live without. He goes through my emails, looks after customers, managers other freelancers who work for me and even finished off some homework for me once, but don’t tell my teachers that =)

Also using downtime productively with a laptop also helps.

7) Do you have any suggestions for coping with set-backs, negative experiences?

I think that everybody has set backs and disadvantages – that’s not really a problem because everybody has them so it’s an even playing field.

But the problem is when people start using it as an excuse not to achieve their goals. I try to think on the bright side of everything bad that happens.

How can I use this to my advantage? A few months ago I lost my hard drive and I hadn’t backed it up – I lost literally tens of thousands worth of intellectual property. I was angry as hell at first, but then I talked to a designer buddy of mine. He said that it had happened to him and it was a good way to start afresh and get more clarity with projects.

Being Positive helps save hair.

8) How do you keep your business focus – Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs who are experiencing challenging times?

I think that everyone to some degree suffers from this. If someone says they have perfect focus they’re lying or flat out delusional.

Lately I’ve been focusing on a theory I’ve dubbed Empowered Entrepreneurism – basically you need to support a charity or something that has a big emotional attachment to you.

You’ll work harder to not just make money for yourself but to have the satisfaction of helping others. You kind of have a higher purpose for making money and it’ll keep you working harder, smarter and faster.

Other then that I would shy away from the idea of having one project at a time.

That’s what lots of people teach but as Dan Kennedy says rules are for lesser mortals. I have 6 or more projects going at one time, you can do this through outsourcing and taking more of a manager position then doing it all yourself.

Watching while others are executing your evil plans is more fun then doing all the hard work yourself.

9) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one person)

Well in different areas of my life I have plenty of good role models.

I would say my marketing role models are Gary Halbert, Vince James and John Carlton. They have so much talent its ridiculous. I once got told my copywriting sounded like a bit like Gary Halbert’s – I’m still blushing.

As an entrepreneur I respect people like Donald Trump and Richard Branson. They truly have mastered the art of starting with nothing, thinking big and going for broke.

As an internet marketer I would have to say people like John Reese and Mike Filsaime. They work hard just like me, but they also work smart.

10) Do you have any favorite business related or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

Wow. I could literally go on for hours about all the different books I love but I’ll narrow it down to just two

The E-Myth Revisited – One thing I love about this book is it’s everything that you should have been taught about business at school but never were.

It’s all about taking your business from being something dependant on you to show up everyday and work to make it run to a business like McDonalds with comprehensive systems that allow you to add employees and consistently get the same results every time. It’s amazing.

Think Big and Kick Ass – Donald Trump – Amazing book that inspired me to get out of my shell are start thinking bigger then just making a few bucks online.

I love Donald’s attitude that were going to go home Rich or Broke there’s no in between.

11) What is the best advice you have ever been given?

Actually these are three quotes that literally shape every decision that I make – and they come from three of the brightest minds in each of their respective fields:

Thomas Edison was once questioned about when he was going to give up trying to invent the light bulb – after all he had tried 10,000 times before and each one had failed.

Edision replied: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”

That is one of the most powerful pieces of advice you’ll ever get. Because now success isn’t a maybe – it’s a mathematical probability, even a certainty.

You may fail a few times trying to build a business. You may make a few mistakes – but eventually if you keep learning from your mistakes you’ll get it right.

Don’t be afraid to screw up, everybody does. Just fail fast so you can get to your success.

Another piece of great advice was from Donald Trump. “Think Big and Kick Ass” I think that’s crucial in everything. It’s only the people who really think big and have a vision that have great success. Why be satisfied making $100 if you can make $1000? Why $1000 when you can make a million? And so on.

My final one is from Einstein. “Reality is but an illusion. Albeit a persistent one” I love this because everyone has their own interpretation of what he meant.

But to me what it means is that everyone sees and interprets events differently.

Everyone’s reality is but an illusion. Therefore they have no right to say that yours isn’t true. That your dreams aren’t realistic and so on. It may not be practical as much as it is philosophical, but it helps me when I doubt my abilities and it sounds smart. =)

12) You are one of the most famous Young Entrepreneurs in the world today – based on your experiences, what advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur starting their first business today?

Forget all the stereotypes about learning and it being not cool– Learning is crucial to success in this business.

I can honestly say that after reading over 100 business, psychology, persuasion, negotiation, sales, and copywriting, marketing and personal development books over the last few years, listening to thousands of hours of audio programs, pod casts and interviews and spending tens of thousands on my business education – it’s been worth every penny.

Even when you’re dead broke you should be buying books, home study courses, seminar tickets and listening to everything I could from people who where already successful in their business.

The second thing you must do is surround yourself by people who you want to be like, a mastermind group if you will.

Nobody ever takes this seriously, because I know I didn’t for a year or so. But the people you hang out with directly relate to who you become. If your core group of influence is a bunch of people on welfare then I can almost guarantee that you’ll end up like them.

Let me give you a better example. If you’ve ever been hyped up and excited about something, you’re literally bursting with energy and life. But then you meet a friend or someone who is one of those people that drains away your energy. They complain about their lives and you get the feeling if euthanasia was legal – they’d be first in line.

Suddenly your energy drops too. Just literally being around them kills it all. It’s the same with the people in your mastermind.

Choose carefully. You’ll become like them.

13) What do you like best about the Internet?

I get paid to learn cool stuff that I’m really passionate about, meet awesome inspiring people, help people out and work whatever hours I want – Plus the income is insane.

14) What do you like least about Business?

I would say that the thing I hate most about business is people who have no life vision or are so grounded in reality they must bring down budding and even successful entrepreneurs to feel good about themselves and their own mediocre lives.

They tell you to be realistic, go get a safe job, live a normal life, stop working so hard, forget your childish dreams that you’ll just grow out of and so on.

That’s kind of funny because just last night I was talking to a very successful client about throwing $10,000 off the largest skyscraper in Melbourne to get some publicity. They didn’t doubt it. In fact the response was: “That’s Genius!”

The fact is reality as we know it is just a loosely bound collection of stereotypes, customs and mindless rituals that are just waiting for an entrepreneur to come in think big and as Donald trump says kick ass!

Do something crazy, stupid, and weird. Just do something big.

15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans goals / lifetime goals? 

My main focus at the moment is hiring more people to run my business for me. I’m working more to systemize my businesses so I can grow and break my next hurdle 7 figures.

I’m also working on a book that should be published over the next 12 months about Internet Marketing – which is very exciting.

I guess I also am really looking forward to helping more people. I want to donate a lot more to charity in 2009 and beyond and possibly even start my own foundation in the near future.

I’ll continue to learn and do whatever I can to help out my customers.