Matt Garrett Interview

Editor:

Joining us this time is an online entrepreneur who focuses a lot of his attention in the area of software solutions and tools. Matt Garrett is based in the UK and has released numerous WordPress plugins and software as a service products over the years. In fact, you may have already heard of some of these because they include well known solutions, such as WPtoolkit.com and Easypro Marketing. So let's dive right in. Matt, it's great to meet you.

Matt Garrett:

Hi, good to speak to you.

Editor:

Well, lots of people come on talking about information marketing. As I mentioned, though, your background is more about plugins and software, even though you do have info products yourself, but maybe you could start by telling us a little bit about some of the plugins and the software solutions that you've created.

Matt Garrett:

Well, first of all, I've got to give a lot of credit to my partners, because I work with several different business partners and I'm not really a software creation person. So I have these partners who come to me with brilliant bits of software. Sometimes I come up with the ideas, sometimes they come up with the ideas, but yes, the other people do the hard work of actually creating the products and they vary. So I've got one client, one partner called Tony Marriott where we work in the local marketing business. So we have a SAS app that helps local agencies find new clients and provide them with a roadmap of where they can go online, what they can do. So the kind of things that they should have in their business to help them market online, such as Google My Business, the YouTube channel, Twitter channel, et cetera, all these different things.

Matt Garrett:

We'll go through using the software, work out what they currently have and what they don't have and put a plan together for them so that when we get in touch or when someone on an agency gets in touch with them, instead of just going and saying, "Here I am, I can do work for you," you're actually giving them some value. You're saying, "Right, we can see what you've already done. Here's a plan for the bits that you're missing, and if you want, we can work with you on that basis." So the software prepares all that for you. So it's basically looking at potential problems and providing a solution that you can then go to the client with. So that's one business partner. That's I say, agency client finder, attorney Marriott. The other main guy that I do work with now, I have worked with previous partners in the past on different SAS apps, but main one now is WordPress plugins with John Merrick.

Matt Garrett:

He's been programming WordPress for well over a decade now, and we've got a suite of different plugins that cover different scenarios for website owners. My favourite amongst them is what we call WP Profiler, which basically load it up on your WordPress site, and it'll run a whole bunch of tests to work out if, for instance, your site's running slow, what's slowing it down because obviously speed or the speed with which your website or page loads is a big thing for Google nowadays. It can affect your ranking, and obviously it affects people visiting site as well because if a page is slow to load, they might not stick around. They'll just disappear and go somewhere else. So you've got to have a fast loading page. So this will actually look at your WordPress setup. One of the things that a lot of people tend to do is get too many plugins set up.

Matt Garrett:

They keep adding more and more plugins to their site and that's a big problem. It's a problem for speed, and it's a problem for security because the more plugins you have, the more potential holes, security holes that you have for people to get in. So this plugin will basically load the site and run through and show you visually how long it takes each plugin to load. So you've got a very clear visual profile of your site speed and what's slowing it down for loading speed. So that's one of my favourite ones, because it's just a simple way of visually working out what's causing your site a problem. Then we've got other plugins. So we've got a cash plugin, again, to speed things up. We've got optimization bits and pieces. We've got a plugin for your error pages so we can monetize those. So instead of just seeing a 404 page, you can put adverts on them.

Matt Garrett:

We've got a plugin for videos. So instead of having to use an expensive video host like Vimeo or something like that, you can actually pop them on some of the free services like Dropbox, but you can also pop them on Amazon S3, which is really, really cheap, and then the plugin allows you to deliver those three website very easily, because Amazon S3 can be an absolute nightmare to work out and learn how to use. So this makes it very easy, just upload videos to your S3 account and then the plugin links to that and puts them onto the page for you, so it simplifies the whole process. So that's one that's very popular at the moment. We just released it on AppSumo a couple months ago and that's selling very well. So we're looking at releasing some more of our plugins on AppSumo. So yeah, basically it's all down to ourselves creating websites and doing things like that, we come across problems.

Matt Garrett:

When we come across a problem, once we've worked out what the solution is, if it's something we can create a plugin to fix the solution for ourselves, then we sell it as well. So the practical idea is that we use ourselves. There was another one released last year where Google making changes that if you have affiliate links on your site, they can potentially penalise your rankings for that. So what we did was set up a plugin that will go through those, all the affiliate links on your site and add the different tags to the end of the link to make it no follow and things like that and to tag it correctly so that Google recognise it and don't penalise you for it. So again, we just keep an eye on what's going on in business and what we are experiencing ourselves, and when we come across a problem, create something that will fix it and then offer it to other people.

Editor:

Got you. Now, when it comes to info products, people always want to know how successful you've been. Is it the same with software and plugins or is it people just want to know, will this thing work?

Matt Garrett:

Will this thing work? It's one of the things I love about it, is when you're selling info products, you've got to have a lot of social proof as to how much money you've made and things like that. With a plugin, the sales page is really down to a demo. This is how it works. This is what it does. So all you're then doing as a sales process is getting that potential solution in front of people that have the problem or are about to have the problem, and that's it. So it's an easier, in some ways cleaner sales process because you're providing solution.

Editor:

What made you move towards this area yourself though, Matt? I mean, was there a catalyst? Was there something that happened that made you go, Actually, this is the area that I want to pursue more"?

Matt Garrett:

Again, as I said, it was having these problems myself and needing a solution. My first plugin, I actually got someone else to write it for me. It was WP Link Fix. No, not Link Fix. It was Blog Link Magic, it was called and it's a link cloaker, which cloaks affiliate links, but it would also change any keywords on any of your blog pages and posts into affiliate links automatically across the whole of your blog, and it just seemed like a really smart way of taking blogs where I had lots of content that wasn't monetized and monetizing it. So I got someone to develop it and write it for me.

Matt Garrett:

I launched that, and at some point along the way, I have different friends, obviously in the marketing business, and John Merrick, who I now work with, he ended up splitting up for his existing partnership. They went in different ways for all sorts of different reasons, so John became free and I was like, "Well how about we get together and do some more plugins?" Simple as that, a conversation over a beer or two in Portugal, I think it was. So we just started rolling out more plugins.

Editor:

Got you. I mean, I guess a lot of people would maybe be put off from working in this area because it sounds like it's a lot of work to get a plugin created and coded. Did it put you off at first or did you actually kind of think, "No, this is something I can do quite easily"?

Matt Garrett:

If there's a problem, there's a solution. So if it's a problem for me, then I will find out how to get through that to a solution and then in the process, I'll normally come up with an idea of something that I can sell based on that. So yeah, I don't view problems in the same way as some people do. A problem is genuinely or generally an opportunity if you reframe it. So yeah, it was largely, again, because I do this myself, I have websites of my own that I run in different niches, so I need these tools myself. As long as you're working on that basis that if it's a problem I face other people are going to face it, it's a great way of coming up with ideas for products. I must admit, not all of the ideas have been mine.

Matt Garrett:

John has come to me with ideas. Tony's come to me with ideas. Other business partners come to me. One of the reasons why I keep ending up doing more and more work and more products, I've been trying over the last few years to slim down what I do because I have a fiance now and I like to have a social life with her, and I've made a rule that I no longer work on weekends because I like spending my time generally with her. I have these business partners who keep coming up with great ideas and they'll come to me with a product and go, "How about this?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's a good one. We're going to have to do that as well." So it just keeps happening. I think that's partly sort of being in the industry for a long while and knowing a lot of people, I believe people know that I can get things done. So they come to me and I help them get it done.

Editor:

You talk a lot about JVs, joint ventures and so on. How important is that to your business?

Matt Garrett:

Very. The partnerships that I've built up with different people over the years, a lot of the sales that we make come through affiliates. So having healthy relationships with those people when a heck a lot of those people now are really good friends. I'm having an internet marketing weekend, get together here and Chamberlain in the start of October, and the people coming are all internet marketers, but they're all friends. It's not a sort of networking event. It's a bunch of friends getting together for a few drinks and some nice food and a chat. So over the years, those people who started off as affiliates have turned into very good friends and those relationships bloom from that.

Matt Garrett:

Yes, the business does rely quite heavily on affiliates promoting our products. It's something that I'm now spending a bit of time trying to move towards more paid traffic because get the paid traffic right and you've got basically another income stream for your business, and it means you have to rely less on affiliates because the kind of markets that I work in are very busy. So there's launches going on all the while and not everybody can promote every launch. So there is competition for who can promote your launch and having a separate source of traffic takes some of the pressure off there as well. Yeah, affiliates are very important, and as I say, I've worked with so many people over the years. I have good relationships with a lot of people.

Editor:

The partners you work with as well, I mean, is that about accountability for you as well, would you say, Matt?

Matt Garrett:

It's partly accountability because it always works better if you're working with someone else because you know what each of you've got to do and you've got timescale to work on, but it's also partly skillsets. We each have our own skillset and our own area of expertise. So we fill in the bits that the other person doesn't have. So you make it a more rounded individual between you, as it were.

Editor:

Got you. In terms of working with other people and also the process of creating, let's say a WordPress plugin or a SAS solution, what kind of process do you have to go through? What is the brainstorming? How does it all kind of work from that initial idea?

Matt Garrett:

It depends often on where the initial idea comes from. It can be I'm reading an article about something and an idea pops into my head that obviously the article has some sort of problem in it and I'm like, oh, I know how I could fix that. Then I'll speak to John about whether it's possible as a plugin and how we could do it, or if it's something I'm doing myself on my website, I'm having some sort of problem, some sort of issue or I need something done, and again, I'll sort of just sit down and work out how I would go about doing it the best way possible from my experience, and then I'll go to John or Tony or whoever I'm working with to actually see if they say yes, I can do that, or no, that's not possible. This bit is, this bit isn't, et cetera.

Matt Garrett:

So the process starts with the idea and writing down what I think will make a solution for it. Then it's talking with the partner to work out what's potentially possible from a coding point of view. Then once we've got something up and running, it's taking it back to the problem itself and making sure it does actually fix the problem because you got to test the stuff and make sure it works. Sometimes that's when you realise, no, that's not actually the right way of doing it. There's a different way of doing it. So sometimes things change. This is one of the reasons why launches will often get delayed because what you've created, doesn't do what you want in the right way and you have to go back to the drawing board and fix it and make sure the problem is actually fixed correctly, so you push the launch back and do it a different date. Then there's always so many ideas coming through on the board that I've always got another launch to run with anyway.

Editor:

You're quite prolific in terms of launching anyway, aren't you Matt?

Matt Garrett:

Yes.

Editor:

I mean, is it is an average of one a month?

Matt Garrett:

Roughly. I mean it probably averages more than one a month. I think I've slimmed it down again a bit, but I was at one point doing one every two to three weeks, which is just too many, but they're not all brand new launches. A lot of what I'll do is because it's software, you can add new features and you release a new version. Because I work with different platforms, I sell on JBZ, WarriorPlus, ClickBank, AppSumo, you can roll the same product out on multiple platforms. So it's not that I'm creating a brand new product every month. That would be way beyond what I want to do work-wise. It's a way of working smart with each product and creating.

Matt Garrett:

Again, we listen to our customers and improve those plugins based on the feedback we get from people. The easiest thing in the world to do is improve something when you've got customers using it, because they'll tell you what you need to do to it, and you listen to them, get those new bits put into the software, launch a new version, have a new release, roll that across several different platforms, and yet that's how you end up doing a launch every month. In fact, I think in the last seven years I've done over 150 digital product launches of my own and with partners, which prolific's probably the right word.

Editor:

That's quite some going. How much of your time is taken up with support for something like this?

Matt Garrett:

Not that much because I make most of the partners do most of the support because it depends on the product and who knows it the best. A lot of support will be technical stuff, which then comes down to the person who's created the product, because they'll know it better than me. I also do all the training videos and things like that for the products to make sure that I cover everything I can think of to make it really easy to get things up and running and to find solutions if you get stuck on something. So it's partly about having all the right tutorials and training in place, but then yeah, I do have my own support desk as well, and I probably spend half an hour a day on support averaging out over the week. I don't tend to do it every day. I'll tend to sort of log in every other day to my support desk because I don't get that many support tickets fortunately, but we each have our own support desks for the different products. So yeah, it varies.

Editor:

Got you. Because I guess in many people's minds, that could be the one thing that puts them off getting started maybe kind of creating plugins of their own because you feel you will be overwhelmed by the support that's required, but in your experience that's not been the case?

Matt Garrett:

No, and the thing to do is to have a support desk rather than support email because what I've discovered is that if you give people support email and they email you, they will expect a response very, very quickly. Whereas if you have a support desk, once they've logged their support ticket, they're quite happy to wait because they know they've got the support ticket in and obviously they will assume that you're going to work through them on a logical basis on the order in which they came in, which is the right way of doing things. So they know that someone will get back to them sooner or later.

Matt Garrett:

So I try to get all support tickets answered within 24 to 36 hours, and generally that's the case. So it's not a massive issue. If you get something that you really get stuck on and you can't sort of solve that problem for the client, then always remember that you've got a fallback, that you can refund them and say, "Sorry, I don't know how to fix that." As long as you're open and honest with people and communicate with them, that's the big thing. People mostly get upset if they feel you're not listening to them or you're not hearing them and you're not looking at what their problem is. If you talk to them, if you communicate with them, they're generally going to be happy and will work with you to get whatever is sorted, and if not, then just be honest and say, "Look, here's a refund. I can't fix it. I don't know what it is or how to fix it," and just go that way.

Editor:

Whenever these new WordPress versions are released, I guess that can also break things a little bit.

Matt Garrett:

Yes.

Editor:

Is that something that has challenged you over the years?

Matt Garrett:

Yeah, WordPress is such joy at times. Yeah, the updates. Obviously nowadays the amount of attacks that go on against WordPress sites is incredible. So yeah, part of the training that I do, in fact, I had a product called Blog Defender specifically on how to secure a WordPress site using free plugins. It's one of the products I've recently sold off to someone else who's now a coaching client cause I've helped them launch it and redo some launches and redo the product to a degree, but yeah, having security to keep your site up to date and then dealing with the kind of fixes that you need when for some reason they change something and word pressed and it breaks your plug in.

Matt Garrett:

That can be a problem, but again, it's about communicating with the clients. Let them know as soon as you know there's a problem, reach out to them via email, say, "Look, yeah, we're aware of this, we're working on it," and normally it's something that you can fix within 24 hours and get back up and running through just a plugin upgrade. So again, it's just been about response, being responsive and communicating with clients and customers.

Editor:

I guess the million dollar question here, Matt, is do you think this is something that anybody could do realistically?

Matt Garrett:

Yes. Yes, because you don't need to be a coder. I'm not a coder. My first plugin, I just got someone on Fiverr to develop it for me. I think it'd probably be better going somewhere like Upwork nowadays, but yeah, you can get someone else to actually do the work of creating the plugin for you. You just need a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how it should work. Then pay someone else to do the work of actually programming it, and they will be happy to work with you on an ongoing basis to fix problems as, and when they arise, because you'll be able to pay them for it because you are selling that as a product.

Matt Garrett:

So yeah, the biggest problem most people normally have is coming up with an idea in the first place, and for that, I would always say look at what's going on in your life, around you, what sort of problems you're having, because if you have a problem and you come up with a solution, that's potentially a product. If you can turn that into software, if you can think of a way of it being an application or a plugin, then there's someone out there who will create it for you and it will probably be a lot less expensive to get that done than you think.

Editor:

What are some of the successes and perhaps some of the setbacks that you've had along the way? Is there anything that you can highlight as being a real success and perhaps something as well that you think, yeah, if that had actually happened differently, would've made my life so much easier?

Matt Garrett:

So many, so many. Yeah, there's always ups and downs in life and in business. I think probably one of my favourites is a software called Niche Reaper, which is a keyword discovery tool that I created with a guy called Gary Prendergast back in 2011, I think it was or 2010. So quite a while, it's been around for a while, but when we first launched that, we sold over a hundred... Was it a hundred or thousand? We sold an awful lot of monthly recurring membership. I think we sold about a 120 recurring memberships on a monthly basis at $67 a month in less than a week flat, and suddenly we were both going, "Well, that went quite well," but then we got a bit lazy and we did make improvements to the software, but we didn't push it as much as we should have.

Matt Garrett:

Obviously over time, not everybody stuck with using the software and it slowly sort of decreased the amount of money that was coming in, and it was like a year or two years later when we suddenly realised we'd dropped the ball and we had a really good bit of software that we should have been pushing harder. The end result now is that unfortunately software no longer works. It stopped working last year and I've had to retire the product. So I'm actually stopping selling that because what I've actually done is take, it's a database of keywords where all the research is done for you to give you keyword ideas, and it can no longer get live data in because where we source that data they've changed their API and we can't get at the information we need. So what I did was bundled up the whole database, so at the moment I've just been selling it as a static database to people who want to buy the whole thing can, but I'm going to have to close that down and it's a bit like my baby's gone sort of thing.

Matt Garrett:

It's the same as like I mentioned that WordPress security site that I had, Blog Defender, I've sold that. I've sold Client Defender, which was another one, and it's hard to let these things go because they've been part of your life for quite a while and made you an awful lot of money. Blog Defender sold over seven and a half thousand units, so fairly successful product, but sometimes you have to let things go so you can let someone else run with it and move on to other things because there is so much that I want to do in my business. I've now started working towards doing some stuff in cryptocurrency world. So having a stakeholder token and a Dow and we're building an NFT game. So there's other things that I want to do that are new, so I have to find a way of releasing the old stuff and letting other people run with it or just closing it down if it's not working anymore. That's life, isn't it? Everything old is new and you've just got to move on and look at new things.

Editor:

As you say, now your priorities have changed a little because you have your fiance.

Matt Garrett:

Yes.

Editor:

Have you got a date in mind at all, can we ask?

Matt Garrett:

We have a date, just not a year. We're looking at old October though because we both have hay fever. So we are planning on doing an October wedding, but it probably won't be until 2024 because we're going to buy a house together first. So that's what we're doing at the moment. We're looking at properties and working out what we can both go for for living together and taking that next big step.

Editor:

Great. How important is the support that you receive from your other half in terms of what you do?

Matt Garrett:

Massive. Massive. I do enjoy the work that I do, but I also enjoy living life. I think you've got to have something outside of work that you enjoy doing that helps you keep passionate about your work because you've got something outside the work as well. Yes, be passionate about your work, but have something outside that you enjoy doing. [inaudible 00:22:51], we both play Pokemon. So we spend a lot of time wandering around in the fresh air and we both like eating nice food, so we go to a lot of different restaurants in different towns across the country and just try out all sorts of different food, street food, nice posh restaurants, all sorts of things. Having that time is really important because it keeps you charged for when you do want to actually get on and do the work. If you don't have the down time, the work that you do will decrease in value and quality over time.

Editor:

Absolutely. I mean I think the thing is a lot of people look at the internet lifestyle as being a laptop on a beach somewhere, whereas what you are saying is actually close the laptop, go out and enjoy yourself.

Matt Garrett:

Yes. Have you ever tried working on a laptop on the beach?

Editor:

It's not the easiest thing in the world, is it?

Matt Garrett:

No, because if it's sunny, you can't see the screen and if it's windy, you're going to get sand in your laptop. It's not really a good idea. By the pool maybe, but again, you're risking your laptop. I keep my work in my office at my desk. That's my place for work. Once I step outside, I'm away from work and everything gets switched off apart from my phone for Pokemon.

Editor:

That's good advice. Good advice. How long have you been online for, Matt, and when did you get started?

Matt Garrett:

2000. I think I actually bought my first domain name back in 1999 when it was like 200 or 300 pounds for domain and bought foolishly, instead of buying something like business.com, I bought Mattgarrett.com, which I regret because even buying garrett.com rather than Mattgarrett.com would've probably been a smarter move business-wise, but yeah, I started off with affiliate marketing by accident as much as anything because I was one of the first amongst my friends to get online. When they start getting online, they came to me to ask about security issues, how to stop yourself getting a virus on a computer, and back then there was a bit of software called Zone Alarm, which was a firewall. I was using that, so I started recommending that to friends. One day I was on their site and noticed the link at the bottom of the site saying affiliates.

Matt Garrett:

I was like, "Oh, what's that?" So I had a look and found out what affiliate Martin was, grabbed my link, put it on my own website so that when friends were asking me what to do, I sent them to my website, got them to click on a link and I started making some affiliate commissions. So then I thought, well actually I should probably set up a site for this. So I set up a site, Four Zone Alarm. I actually got in touch with and asked whether I could register zone-alarm.code@uk, and they said yes. So I got a few variations of their name, registered those domains and set up one or two page simple affiliate sites, and they took off, and within three or four years I was earning so much that I sacked my boss because I was earning so much, there was no point in me having a normal job.

Matt Garrett:

So I actually had that pleasure of going into the boss one day and saying, "Sorry, I'm out of here," and they actually asked me how much they could pay me to get me to stay. I said, "No, you can't. You afford me on that basis." What actually told them was that they should take on, because at the time they were paying me a high basic and a low commission, and I just got lazy because I had all this other stuff going on. I wasn't doing a particularly good job for them, I have to admit. So I advised them that what they should do is take on a young hungry salesman, give them a low, basic and a high commission and that would probably make a hell of a difference. They called me up about six months later and said, "Yes, that did. That worked. Thank you very much." I was like, "Great. That's good to hear." So 22 years I've been doing it online. Full-time professionally since 2005, I think it was, so 17 years, but I've been making money since 2000.

Editor:

Fantastic. Now, if anybody who's perhaps listening to this or reading this and thinks, "I'd like, like to do this," have you got any tips for anyone who would like to dip their toe in the water?

Matt Garrett:

So many. So one of the problems is there are so many different things you can do. What you need to work out is what you're comfortable doing, and that may take a little while of playing around with different things because everybody's different. So one of the easiest ways, for instance, is just set up a YouTube channel and start creating videos, but if you're going to do that, you need to be consistent and there are some things you need to know about setting up a channel to get it right and to do the videos in the right way. Another way is to set up a blog and just start writing articles about whatever it is that you are interested in. Those are the sort of things where you can start without very much knowledge or without very much tools and build up over time. The biggest thing I think is to be patient and be consistent because going into it on the basis that you want thousands coming in this week, it's not likely to happen.

Matt Garrett:

It can because you could, for instance, come up with an idea for a product, create a product in a few days and have it out there and launched within seven days and yes, make a load of money, but it's unusual. That's not generally how it works. In my experience, the best thing to do is play around with a few different things and find what you like, and then stick with that consistently to start building. It's about building an audience, often called the building a tribe. So if you can build an audience that are interested in the same thing that you are, then you can reach out to them with offers. So you can start with affiliate marketing where you're basically recommending other products, other people's products, and you're getting a commission when someone buys.

Matt Garrett:

Over time, you can generate your own products, whether it's an info course or training videos or software, whatever it is that solves the problems for your marketplace, for your audience. So whatever problems they're experiencing, you need to address those problems with a solution and then work out what format that product should be for you. How would you like to do it? Do you want to write a PDF? Do you want to record videos? Whatever's going to work for you. Again, as I say, just be consistent and persistent.

Editor:

If anyone who's interested in finding out more about you, Matt, or your product, where's the best place to go and look?

Matt Garrett:

Mattgarrett.com. Yeah, Matt garrett.com, M-AT-T-G-A-R-R-E-T-T dot com is my main site. It's one of my main blogs. The other one where I sort of do a lot of teaching about what I do is Mat1 that's M-A-T and the number one, dot com, which we've branded it as marketing and affiliate training one, but it was simply because I had the domain Mat1.com, so I thought I'll use that. It's nice and short and easy for people to remember. So yeah, that's where I do weekly training and where I offer my coaching and things like that. So again, it depends on what people are looking for, but if they want to reach out, they can find me through Mattgarrett.com or Mat1 or on Facebook.

Editor:

Excellent. It's been absolutely fascinating chatting with you, Matt. Thank you for your insights and also your background and also some of those setbacks as well as the successes that you've achieved as well.

Matt Garrett:

Life is ups and downs. You've got to embrace it all and get on with it.

Editor:

It's true. Well, thank you so much for your time again today, Matt. It's been a pleasure.

Matt Garrett:

Thank you for the chat.