The $55,000 Tech Debt That Built a Million-Dollar Empire

I’m Igor Kheifets and this is The List Building Lifestyle, the podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best-selling book, The List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com.

Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now, it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[0:53]

Welcome back to The List Building Lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets, and today I’m hosting Eran Bucai. Eran is an affiliate marketer, a super affiliate marketer, if you will. He makes a full-time living with affiliate marketing, and it took him a while to get there, but the story is quite amazing. He actually had to dig himself out of a $55,000 debt that he acquired through just trying to figure out how to make money online. He calls it a tech debt, and he believes that a tech debt is a real problem and a menace in the online marketing community, which I think he has a good point.

We’ll talk about that in a moment. He, since then, not only built an incredible income as an affiliate marketer, but also built a thriving membership site in the community that specializes in helping people overcome the technical hurdles that they experience when they’re trying to build their online business, things like building landing pages, setting up their membership site, and all the other, I wouldn’t call it small stuff, but definitely kind of nuisance, you know, that you have to get through in order to set up your online business. The kind of stuff that most of us get stuck on, it’s when Zapier won’t communicate to your ClickMagic and when your opt-in page won’t load, you know, a gradient or a footer or something, or the form won’t connect, and you can spend hours upon hours trying to deal with all the tech stuff until it drives you mad. And so, Eran built a business in addition to his affiliate business that helps people deal with that, and it became, in its own right, a huge, huge project for him.

So overall, we’re going to talk about his journey going from 55k in debt to freeing himself up from that debt to building freedom online to then moving out of Australia to Dubai to start a new chapter of his life, and more recently, to join the software as a service game by producing several software programs. So all in all, really, really incredible journey, the sort of rags to riches that anyone who ever gets online dreams of going through. So we’re going to take a firsthand look into that.

So Eran, welcome to the List Building Lifestyle.

[Eran Bucai] 

[3:28]

Thank you so much. Really appreciate that beautiful intro. Couldn’t have done it better.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[3:32]

Awesome. You’re welcome to steal it and give it to, you know, send it to Joe Rogan. All right.

Well, welcome to the show. It’s finally happening. And I want to start off with tech debt.

It’s the term that I believe you coined. I’ve never heard anyone else mention it. So what is it exactly?

[Eran Bucai] 

[3:56]

Yeah. So the aspect of the tech things is when you are starting a business, like you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into. Even though you may have mentors, you may watch YouTube videos, until you’re in the trenches, you just don’t really know.

And there’s overheads, number one. There is the overheads that come with it. If you want to build a list, you need an email autoresponder.

You need a domain name. You need a professional email address. You need all that stuff.

And it’s not just the financial debt. It’s also the skills debt aspect because you don’t realize how many skills you actually have to acquire to be an online business owner that affect you, essentially. And that’s something that it doesn’t matter how many videos you watch unless you’ve got to start.

And until you start, you just don’t know how deep that hole is, you know? And that’s why it’s kind of a debt up front because you don’t know how deep that hole is because some people are a little bit more savvy. Some people are a little bit more in tune with technology.

Some people grew up with a phone, but some people just are not. And so you start from a minus almost, no matter who you are almost.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[5:02]

Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s definitely a rabbit hole with lots of different directions. And as I’m putting some finishing touches on my second book, I actually just wrote a whole section of a chapter about misconceptions.

And one of the misconceptions is that when you get into this industry because of how much you don’t know you don’t know, everything seems important. Everything seems shiny. Everything seems exciting. Everything seems like it’s as groundbreaking as putting butter on a toast. And you end up opening 57 tabs with your browser. And here you’re trying to build a landing page.

Over here, you’re trying to learn about crypto arbitrage. Over there, you’re writing a blog post. And over here, you’re setting up your fan page or whatever.

And there’s so many things you’re trying to do at once that you end up doing nothing at all. And at the same time, you just don’t have enough sense, enough experience, I guess, to determine like, OK, what’s the 80-20? Like, what’s important?

Should I be building my landing page or should I be setting up my fan page? Yeah, 100 percent. 100 percent.

[Eran Bucai] 

[6:20]

And I’ll tell you what, this is a little bit of a full circle for me a little bit, because when I first found out about you, this was I was actually just having a look on my email. And I subscribed to your email back in 2018, right? And early, early, like this is like eight years ago now, like very early when I was still, I just discovered that there’s such a thing as email autoresponder, right?

I just discovered webinars. It was just I was that guy that was like, oh, my God, a gift. You know, it was like ridiculous.

Like it was really like everything was exciting at that moment. Everything was shiny, you know, just like you said. And it just rolls me back because you were actually one of the people that I was actually looking at at that time.

You know what I mean? So I just know exactly what that is. And you actually you were there.

You just didn’t know it.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[7:11]

No, I really didn’t. And I can appreciate what you’re saying. To 2018, I just moved to Canada.

Bitcoin was roughly $10,000. So it was an interesting time. And, you know, let’s take a moment to to just appreciate the fact just appreciate whoever came up with the email autoresponder, because I think there’s no other tool besides maybe a webinar platform that has made me as much money, you know?

[Eran Bucai] 

[7:45 – 8:35]

Yeah, absolutely. Like appreciating the whole aspect of the automation and email autoresponder and the communication, because that’s when you own your channel of communication to your people. And, you know, at the time of recording, I’ve got 21,000 people on my list.

Right. And I can tell you, I know it’s with certainty. Every time you send an email, it sounds so cliche, but you’re printing money, essentially.

It may be a few bucks. It might not be a lot. But if you do it right, you can obviously your skill set and your offers and, you know, your relationship and your consistency, it can become much better.

So it’s not just a few bucks, but it really is magical like that. You know, it’s really like after you’ve done it a few times, it’s kind of you forget that at the beginning that was like the fairy tale, you know?

[Igor Kheifets] 

[8:36]

Yeah, you sometimes you got to pinch yourself and remind yourself that, you know, oftentimes it’s really this business is really about the basics, which is kind of hard to keep track of because of how many new things, you know, come out all the time. Right. It’s easy to get swayed into AI, you know, like I’m watching some of my friends in the industry and they’re releasing a program like today in two months, they’re doing a different AI thing in three weeks.

They do something else. So they’re hopping all the time. There’s no continuity.

But if you study the people who stuck around through the ages, right, you study the, I mean, especially Frank Kern. Frank Kern, what he’s doing today, the only difference to what he’s doing today, and I’m still on his list. I’ve now been on his list like for close to 20 years.

It’s funny enough. He’s just mailing these really simple conversational emails, usually with one link telling you how there’s this cool thing that he’s working on and you got to check it out. And that hasn’t changed.

The only thing that changes is every now and again, he will switch the autoresponder. You know, he’ll go from Infusionsoft to like ActiveCampaign or something. Yeah, but the strategy is always the same.

And he’s always been running these minimalistic kind of setups, which I’ve always appreciated, especially, you know, appreciating the fact that, you know, he’s got a lot of bills to pay. I mean, he’s got two families. I think he got divorced over the years.

And right now he’s got four children, you know, and it’s like making a lot of money doing something that’s fairly, fairly simple. So I always like have tremendous respect for Frank, and I’ve always appreciated his style. You know, he always that homeboy sort of, you know, you know what I mean, like small town kind of vibe.

So his communication is incredible, and he’s always done it over email, even when he ran ads on, you know, Meta, even when he did YouTube videos, etc. Still, he always drove people to the list. And speaking of the list, I still want to, you know, explore how do you end up 55k dead.

But speaking of your list, I’ve been now on your list for at least a good month, I’d say. I’ve been watching how you email. And what I’m noticing is that you lead with value, like a lot of value up front.

And I only saw you pitch once. Most of the stuff you send to your list is free stuff. Most recently, you released a software tool.

So you pitch that. But even then, it wasn’t like a launch campaign. It wasn’t like, you know, a seven day push with five emails on the last day.

It was just a very low key. So can you talk us through the thinking there?

[Eran Bucai] 

[11:42]

Totally. Absolutely. So this is very different.

And I think there is an aspect that when you’re starting a business online, one of the things that you’re going to always search for naturally is you’re going to look for a mentor, right? And I honestly, I have very strongly struggled with that. I find myself, even though people consider me as a coach, I find myself very uncoachable.

I’m the type of person who likes to just figure things out on my own and figure out what works and learn from people. And I probably would say, but I probably have 50 different mentors that I would have taken a piece, even from your emails that I would have seen and your landing pages. I bet you, I probably have a PDF screenshot of one of your long sales pages saved on my computer just because I was studying it, you know, and that’s how I like to learn.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[12:30]

And you should, as you should. I mean, I got a whole swipe file of everyone’s pages and I keep adding more and more to it.

[Eran Bucai] 

[12:37]

Yeah, exactly. And so that’s how I like to study and implement. And I found that I like that style of just really no pitch almost.

And it’s very, very soft and it keeps people around number one. And also, I think that because my strategy in my business specifically, which kind of ties into the 55k debt you’re talking about, I acquired that debt because I signed up to a bunch of high ticket stuff. Now, that’s not to say that high ticket is always bad.

I mean, you know, if you buy a property and it’s a great investment, well, that’s a high ticket. You know, it’s not that all high ticket is bad. It’s just that the high ticket I invested in online for beginners make money online, I ended up getting basically burned.

So I chose to brand myself as the low ticket guy. And I decided to play the volume game and the longevity game. And when you play the longevity game, then the reality is that you can’t pitch them hard all the time because you want to keep them around.

You do want to care that people do stick around for two, three, four, five years. Now, that’s not to say you’re always going to get unsubscribers. That’s part of life as an email marketer.

And that’s OK. And I also email frequently when I have different sequences. So people will naturally unsubscribe.

And that’s OK. But I chose to play the game for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think it’s an important branding.

So if you see my emails, I sometimes have a little message. It says a little bit about me. I have no high-ticket products.

I have no high-ticket courses. I have no high ticket coaching.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[14:13]

And I do a lot of coaching.

[Eran Bucai] 

[14:15]

Yeah. And it’s an immediate like, OK, maybe I could trust this guy. And it’s funny because in some cases, I’ve really shot myself in the foot from a financial standpoint because then it’s difficult to scale paid ads.

It is difficult to do those things. But I think with my personality type, when I like to have a mixture of projects, then I can monetize affiliates. I can monetize little mini courses.

I can monetize software. I can monetize YouTube ads. I can monetize various campaigns and have a lot of different income streams.

And so even though I sell low ticket, but I’ve got one person paying me or making money from one person on various streams at the same time. And when you get when you hit scale, it makes sense. And it works well, basically.

And I’ve kind of hit that on multiple income streams. So full time income of affiliates, which is mostly passive, obviously full time income for membership, which is double my affiliate income. And that’s recurring, not necessarily passive, but still very chill.

And the courses are they really just fund the customer acquisition. And that’s the other point is that I have retargeting and ads campaigns. And that’s where I do the selling more so.

So all that selling is kind of automated. I do the value on the organic side and then the ads do the conversions. That’s the other part of the strategy as well.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[15:43]

Right, right. That makes sense. You drive a lot of traffic through YouTube tutorials.

[Eran Bucai] 

[15:50]

Yeah, that’s right. YouTube and Facebook ads as well.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[15:53]

Oh, and ads as well. But that’s retargeting only.

[Eran Bucai] 

[15:57]

Retargeting also cold. But I’d say about maybe 30% retargeting, 70% cold, give or take.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[16:03]

1. And the cold traffic just straight to the course.

[Eran Bucai] 

[16:07]

Straight to course. $5 course, $19 order bump, $97 upsell, $97 upsell, $77 subscription downsell. That’s it.

That’s the flow. And I always have some sort of a freebie at the end, which is another like a video series, which takes them through another funnel to drive them into my community and into my membership.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[16:33]

Right, right.

[Eran Bucai] 

[16:34]

Break even on the front end on Facebook ads, bring it to the community and monetize my affiliates. So essentially, the affiliate income and the community income is always profitable because my courses, my SLOs, self-liquidating offers is what covers my ad costs basically, which varies anywhere between $150 to $300 a day, give or take.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[16:56]

So let’s talk about the $55k debt. So how do you end up like so much in debt?

[Eran Bucai] 

[17:03]

Yeah, it’s funny because I think your audience will actually appreciate it. I will say the name if that’s OK. I’ll mention the name of the company that it was in.

Yeah, I usually don’t mention it, but I think people will relate.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[17:13]

I mean, I think that company has already been sued by the FTC and sued and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eran Bucai] 

[17:19]

So this was my introduction to the affiliate marketing world was Mo and Matt Lloyd and so on. And that was kind of where I started my journey. And after I went through their 21 steps, it’s so funny.

I don’t think I’ve ever said this on a podcast. By the way, this is the first time I’ve ever talked about this like in a public setting, by the way. But yeah, I went through at the time I was on the just to give you context.

I was 30-ish, 30, 31, going through a divorce, unemployed, don’t have a job, didn’t go to high school. So I couldn’t get a job. Right.

Like it was just very difficult.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[17:59]

You couldn’t get a job if you didn’t go to high school?

[Eran Bucai] 

[18:02]

No, I mean, they always ask for a resume. And, you know, like, what’s your what’s there was always a criteria. Any, any applications online, they always had a drop down for high school.

And I was like, I didn’t go to high school. So there wasn’t any drop down option.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[18:15]

Could you? I mean, I mean, just the question. Could you lie and say that you did?

But how come you didn’t go to high school?

[Eran Bucai] 

[18:23]

Just wasn’t for me, man. Just I just was not.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[18:27]

What did you do instead?

[Eran Bucai] 

[18:29]

I moved to Australia. I didn’t want to do the military in Israel. And I left school and I just decided to move to Australia and do volunteer work, basically.

And that’s all I did.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[18:39]

So you worked?

[Eran Bucai] 

[18:41]

Yeah, as a volunteer, as a volunteer.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[18:43]

I mean, that’s that’s I think that’s a great thing for a resume. No?

[Eran Bucai] 

[18:46]

Yeah. But it was still like the high school thing. Like there was no like unofficial qualifications, you know.

And, you know, on the flip side, I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t trying that hard. You know what I mean? Like I was like, man, getting a job was not my thing.

You know, it just led me to this path of online stuff.

[Igor Kheifets]

[19:04]

No, that’s just perfectly fine. Like when I when I when I was applying for jobs, I lied through my teeth on everything. Yeah, but they I mean, didn’t matter.

They still didn’t call.

[Eran Bucai] 

[19:15]

So yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it led me to the path of figuring stuff online. And I was I was sitting in McDonald’s using their free Wi-Fi, watching videos and stuff.

And I came across an ad how to start an online business with no money down. And I was like, what’s an online business? You know, that was like new to me, you know.

And I signed up to a guy called Giovanni something. Some Italian marketer who was doing a lot of marketing on ClickBank. You probably would know the name.

Anyway, I was doing a lot of marketing on ClickBank. And I signed up for this coaching program for this thing. And they offered me a $5,000 coaching program.

And I was like, I don’t have $5,000 unemployment benefit. And I was like, let me Google affiliate marketing. And that’s how I came across Moog.

I went through their 21 steps. I signed up for their program and stuff. And I applied to be a coach because I was like, I saw what they’re doing, the model with the coaches and stuff.

And I was like, you know what? I’ll sign up to be a coach. I could do that.

I could do this coach job as well, you know, and I applied. When I applied, I also upgraded to their programs. And then I went all the way to the top with their programs, basically, which was, I think, total of $80,000 total or $70,000 total, give or take.

That was the max, right?

[Igor Kheifets] 

[20:28]

Wait, how can you do that if you were unemployed?

[Eran Bucai] 

[20:32]

I borrowed the money from a friend. Wow. I literally went to a friend and I’ll say, look, give me the money.

I’ll pay it back in a year. I’ll pay 20% interest. That was literally my pitch to him.

Wow. And he trusted me to hand over his money. Like, it was ballsy.

It was ballsy. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so I did that.

And then I was making money as a coach. I was making money as an affiliate. I was paying for their version of solo ads and CPA buyers as well.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[20:59]

Oh, I remember that program.

[Eran Bucai] 

[21:00]

Yeah. So I did that and I’ve had success. I probably made, in the 14 months I was with Moab, I probably made about $145,000 at that time, which for the first 14 months, I mean, that’s respectable.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[21:13]

That’s incredible.

[Eran Bucai] 

[21:15]

Yeah. On the other hand, I went to Mexico to the masterminds. I did all those trips that they did.

I did pay for ads. And I paid back out of the $70,000 or $80,000 that I borrowed, I only paid down to $55,000. Wow.

You see? And so then I woke up one morning and they were shut down. And I was like, oh my God, what the heck, right?

I’ve never heard of the FTC in my life. That was the first time I even heard of the acronym. Like, I’m like, what is going on?

And so I went back to the drawing boards. I ended up getting a nine to five job, sales job in a software company in Sydney. I was in Perth at the time, Perth, Australia.

And Sydney is five hours flight. A friend of mine hooked me up, got me a job, a sales position. I just jumped on a flight and went and got a job.

And while I was evenings and weekends, I was just trying my luck doing dropshipping, learning affiliate marketing, reading books, doing blogging. I bought some domains, tried to flip them, started a print on demand. I mean, all the things, these are the usuals.

Did a little bit of JVZoo marketing, ClickBank, you name it, all the stuff, basically. And this was just to give you context on timelines. So I first made my money with Moeb around March 2017.

Then June 2018, they shut down. I got the job pretty much straightaway within a week. And then I was there for eight months with that company.

And I remember the decision I made to quit. This was around November, around my birthday. And I remember the decision, I got my paycheck.

And the way it worked, by the way, I got $3,900 paycheck. That was my money. I took $2,000, I put it to the debt.

I took $1,200, paid for rent. And I stretched this $500 to $700 for the month, for food, this and that, whatever. And I tried to actually buy solo ads, $100 a month, something, to be able to build my list.

That was literally what I did, right? And that was how I was kind of trying to do things, basically. And then I’d stay up till 3 a.m. in the morning, blogging or writing emails to my list or whatever, doing blog reviews or whatever, doing all this stuff. And that was basically eight months of my life, like morning to night, seven days a week. And that was it. I decided to quit my job because I remember getting my salary because it was very tight, you know, in around November.

And I felt the addiction, the addiction of a salary. And I could just feel it, that this is a comfort. And I was like, I do not…

This could either turn into an addiction, when I’m going to be addicted to this comfort of getting a salary, or I could cut it right here and right now. And I was like, no, I just do not want that addiction. You know, I mean, it works for some people.

Of course, they’re in corporate, they go through the corporate ladder, and they do well, and they’ve got their safety net. And I was like, that is not my life. There’s no way.

And then I ended up quitting around February, February 2019. And at the time, I was like, I wasn’t quite making enough money to live on. But I was like, I had a little stash from my safe, that I could survive for a couple of months.

I also went to visit my family in Israel. I stayed with them for a couple of months, so that I didn’t have to pay rent. So that kind of helped.

But essentially, I wasn’t making any money until October, when I was trying to do dropshipping while I was in Israel. And it just didn’t work. But because I was trying dropshipping, I learned how to build Shopify store.

And so I got my first Shopify store clients around give or take August, September 2019. And that went well, I made $200. And then I got another client for $500.

And then I got another client for $1,500. And that’s when I was like, I’m on the right track. This is gonna work with the service provider.

But that’s where I had the brilliant idea on affiliate marketing. Let me combine affiliate marketing and service providing, where instead of building Shopify, which has a terrible affiliate program, let me go to ClickFunnels or New Zandler or Podia. At the time, I actually started with Podia.

And let me build websites on software companies that have recurrent subscriptions. So I get paid upfront, $500 to $1,500 per build. And I get the affiliate commission.

And so what I did is I did free… My lead magnet was free consults. And I was consulting people which software to use.

They would use my affiliate link regardless because they appreciated the call. So I’d make the affiliate income straight away. And some of them converted to a down for you project.

And that was my business for about until June 2020. And that’s how long I needed to pay off the entire 55K debt. And I was debt-free by June 2020, basically.

That’s crazy. Yeah. So that was kind of the journey from zero to 55K debt, back to zero, basically.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[26:14]

Yeah, it just confirmed something that I’ve always felt to be true, that the fastest way to money online is a service business. It’s an agency of some kind doing things for people, being a freelancer. It might not be super huge money.

And there’s a scaling issue because you’re selling your time, essentially. Still beats having a job. Still, you’ll make more than a job.

And you can do it from your computer. And you can probably structure it around something you like to do. You said it yourself.

You like to figure things out. You like a challenge. So you basically…

You know, your journey is an incredible testament to another principle that goes something like this. I think one time I heard Eben Pagan said it. He said something to the tune of, on your way to trying to become successful or to building something, you will learn something that will make you successful.

Right? So on your way to try to build an online business with affiliate marketing or dropshipping, this or that, you acquired a skill that helped you pay off your debt.

[Eran Bucai] 

[27:30]

Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And you don’t know what that’s going to be at the beginning.

No mentor can tell you. You can only start and figure that out as you go.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[27:41]

I think people really miss that one point where you have to go and throw yourself into it and be able to figure things out. Still, having a mentor does help. I want to counter…

To inject a little bit of a counter argument as to mentoring, high ticket. I do believe in both. I both charge high ticket and paid high ticket and continue to do both.

And my first high ticket investment actually resulted in an incredible ROI. I had to beg the guy to put me on a ridiculous payment plan. I was late on every single payment.

But eventually I paid off the whole $2,700. But that resulted in literally boosting me to my first 10K. And then after that, there was another high ticket coaching investment that I’ve made.

I was paying a guy $3,500 a month for four hours of copywriting coaching where he would get on Zoom with me and share screen and write copy together. Kind of like what you’re doing for your clients now with the tech stuff. But high ticket and only a couple of times a month.

And this guy was like an incredible… Still is an incredible copywriter. Still, I do believe I owe a lot to him as far as my skill set to sell.

And I think I went for eight months paying him that every month. So in a total of like 30 grand, maybe a little bit more than 30 grand. But still I look back on it and I’m like, you know, this is one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

[Eran Bucai] 

[29:27]

Yeah, yeah. And no doubt you’ve got… That’s the point.

Not every high ticket is bad. It’s just, you just got to know.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[29:35]

But a lot of them are. Let’s, I mean, let’s say a lot of them are. A lot of them are.

And especially these days where… Ever since I’d say COVID. And then it got even worse with Chad GPT release.

Everyone became a high ticket coach. Like every single person out there is now a high ticket coach. There’s a high ticket coaching for doing a handstand.

There’s a high ticket coaching for sitting upright in a chair. There’s a high ticket coaching for wiping your ass. There’s now a high ticket coaching for everything.

And it’s, I mean, it’s just too much. It’s too much, too much, you know?

[Eran Bucai] 

[30:15]

Yeah, totally, totally.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[30:17]

So now you started this community where you’re like the tech superman. And you’re helping people by sitting down with them. And you’re building stuff out as they watch you.

[Eran Bucai] 

[30:33]

Yeah, yeah. So it’s actually almost the exact point of the progression of the journey that I explained. 2017, 2008, we’ve moved.

2018, they got shut down. I got the job, 2019. And now I’m debt-free.

It’s July 2020. And I’m just kind of like, now I’m like, okay, let me make some money. And maybe I have a bit of surplus.

I invested in the computer. I bought a chair, bought a table. I invested a little bit in the business.

I bought some software tools that I felt I needed and all that stuff. And then around December 2020, because I’m a bit of a workaholic, I knew what’s going to happen in December slash Christmas. Everything is going to slow down.

Everything is going to be, you know, everybody’s going to take their holidays. And I was like, I’m going to work all the time. I’ve got no friends.

I’ve got no family around me. I live in Australia in an apartment. And I just work.

And I have two ways. I can actually just write blogs and create content, which is going to make me not much money. Or I can make some money in December.

And so I decided to basically postpone my time. And I said, I will sell an hour of my time for $50 in the month of December to do whatever you want. I will build your website.

I’ll do coaching, consulting. I’ll write your emails for you. Whatever you want.

I don’t care. This is my skills. I’ll do whatever you want.

But we’ve got to do it on Zoom for the hour. And that’s it. Within five days, this is the beginning of December, I sold 100 hours.

Five grand in five days.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[32:00]

I mean, did you just mail it to your list? Or how did you?

[Eran Bucai]

[32:04]

Yeah, I mailed it to my list.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[32:05]

The list.

[Eran Bucai] 

[32:07]

Yeah, it goes back to the list. Yeah, exactly. I just mailed it to my list.

And by the way, I didn’t have 21,000 people there. I would not have had more than 2,000 people at the time, just to give context, right? It was definitely not over 2,000 people.

So it wasn’t like a big list by any means, right? I sent the mail. I got all the signups.

And I was like, okay, I’ve got 100 up. And so, but the requirement, this was the catch. You have to use the hour in the month of December.

Because I want to be busy in December. And so what I did is I hopped on the Zoom call. And I said, what do you want?

And most people said, I want to get my website done. I said, okay. And then I was like, give me the logins.

Let me start building. And then I said, I remember how it evolved. I was like, do you want to share my screen?

Like while you’re here? And he’s like, sure. And I started building.

And the feedback I received from people, they loved it. They absolutely loved it. They loved watching me build.

They loved watching me go through the process. They love seeing how I design. They like see just the whole thing.

It was just interesting for them. It was like them watching a TV show almost, but it was live. And what was beautiful is there was no delays in feedback.

So it wasn’t like I build a page. I give it to them with an email and they give me feedback on the colors and the change and move this here, move this there. It was all in real time.

And so all of a sudden I was finishing websites two, three times faster than what I did before because it was so focused. And that’s what I did. And when that happened, and by the way, that time I actually had two website builds working for me as well.

I wasn’t doing work on my own anymore. But as soon as I realized that model is such a winner, and again, who else does that? Who else builds websites on Zoom?

I mean, you cannot find that, you know, and it’s very unique. I told the two website builders I no longer need your services. And then I decided to go all in on this project.

I raised my prices to $300 for one session, $500 for two sessions, $900 for four sessions, and $1,500 for eight sessions. That was my pricing at the very, very beginning. And I was sold out in January straight away.

And I was booked out by around March, April. I literally was around the clock on Zoom calls. Like there was just no more time to sell.

I was on Zoom probably 15 to 16 hours a day. It was like crazy. And so I was like, A, it’s amazing.

I’m making about 20K a month, you know, comfortably. Fantastic. But like, I need to sleep.

And that’s not sustainable. And how do I grow? I want to grow beyond 20K.

20K is amazing, but irrespectable, but I want more. And that’s when I launched my community. Because this is what happened.

I worked with people on Zoom, but afterwards, they still have questions. So I was like, well, do you pay for another Zoom call? Or is it just a question that takes two minutes to answer?

So I was like, let me do a launch. And then I did a launch. This was April 2021.

This is when I launched my membership. And the launch was under 24 hour tech support. You send me an email with your tech question, and I’ll reply to you in under 24 hours.

That was the membership. Simple. $55 a month.

$99 order bump. And $497 upsell for additional two one-on-one sessions. That was the funnel, basically.

And I closed the membership launch within two months with 110 give or take members. 60% took the order bump, 10% took the upsell. And I still have members to this day, four or five years later, still in that same membership.

And I did the entire support membership at that time myself for an entire year. And people will just email me a question. And the way I built the membership service is instead of replying to you saying, hey Igor, thanks for your question.

Let’s say your question is, how do I change the background color of my page? Instead of replying with that support ticket, I would record a video that would say, in today’s video, I’m going to teach you how to change the color of the background of your web page. Let me share my screen and show you how it’s done.

I will then do a tutorial. And at the end, my call to action was, by the way, this question came from somebody in my membership. If you want to get this extra support under 24 hours, let me know or check the link below, whatever.

And that became evergreen content for my YouTube, basically. And that’s how I started building my YouTube channel because I didn’t have a YouTube channel yet, really, because I wasn’t doing anything. I now, at the time, I have about 13,000 people on the subscribers.

But I had maybe 50 people or something. And so all of a sudden, I’ve been building a massive library of content. I’ve got close to 1,000 videos on my channel with all this tech stuff, basically.

And so people find me there, go into my funnel, get into my membership, and I create more content. Now, the video from question to YouTube takes maybe two to six weeks. But the people that paid for the membership, they get the video straight away.

No editing, no nothing. That’s the support. And I did that for about a year, year and a half until I kind of ran out of questions to answer.

So now I just need the video link to answer because I’ve answered so many, you see? And it became really scalable.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[37:38]

So, yeah. So you built a self-feeding ecosystem, really.

[Eran Bucai] 

[37:41]

Yeah, exactly.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[37:42]

That’s very smart. And again, it wasn’t planned out. Like you sort of figured things out one step at a time.

[Eran Bucai] 

[37:49]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And a lot of that content naturally became online courses, some of them as well, right? And so I’ve evolved that and so on.

One of the ways I kept a lot of members, this is a little hack for some people who might be interested in that. One of the ways I kept a lot of members is I promised that every time I released a digital product, they will keep access to that as well. So it wasn’t just to support.

They, every month or two months when I released a new template, a new course, they kept getting it. So it’s like a little mini Netflix. There’s always new shows being added, you know, to keep people hooked from that perspective.

So now I’ve got probably 250 templates in my membership and about 20 courses and all that stuff. So now they’re like, well, you know, it’s a really good value for them. And I was able to create different tiers.

And end of last year, I launched an actual proper community for the first time, like an actual community. And I’m using school for that basically.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[38:47]

Interesting. Now, I know you have an opinion on how much software does one really need online?

[Eran Bucai]

[38:54]

Yeah.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[38:55]

So what’s your take on that?

[Eran Bucai] 

[38:58]

It’s a great question. Look, I think me and you both are biased toward email software. Like we definitely feel that that’s a necessary thing.

And I think if you really want to build a business, most people are going to, that’s going to be the answer. There is the exception of, let’s say you create a faceless AI generated video page that goes viral because you create viral content and it’s really controversial. And then you make money just for the ads and nobody knows you.

Okay, well, you can monetize that and you can make money online from that type of a business model, which really has no email list attached to it.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[39:36]

Until YouTube shuts down the channel.

[Eran Bucai] 

[39:38]

Exactly. But that’s the point. There’s inherent risks in these types of businesses like that.

And so ultimately to de-risk, you want to own the platform, you want to own the list, you want to own the relationship in some fashion or another, whether it’s faceless or not. And I think that’s key. I’ll tell you something that I think, you know, you mentioned a bunch of names earlier, Frank Hearn and all the guys, right?

I’m going to take it even a step beyond that. If anyone here has ever canceled Netflix subscription and didn’t resubscribe for let’s say a year, go to your inbox and see how many times they followed up on email. You get followed up on email by Netflix and every other company, Amazon, all these companies, they use email marketing way more aggressively than we do.

Way more aggressively. And it’s such an unnoticed little nuance but anybody here could probably go to their email inbox and actually search Amazon, search Netflix, go count. I’ve done that drill.

I’ve actually went and counted how many emails I got from Netflix per year. I mean, they email you aggressively, you know? And so when you look at that, it’s not just us open hours.

This is, everyone’s using it really, you know?

[Igor Kheifets] 

[41:01]

Yeah. No, but my question is, it’s a little bit different. So it kind of ties back to the tech debt.

I believe at one point you said something about how we get, like the beginner drowns in all the unnecessary software subscriptions.

[Eran Bucai] 

[41:20]

Yeah. So what the question is, what’s the minimums? I would say domain name, number one.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[41:23]

Yeah, like what do you need? Like, what do you need for real? Like strip all the marketing, you know?

Do you need ClickFunnels for 300 something dollars a month and whatever?

[Eran Bucai] 

[41:31]

Yeah, yeah. I would say domain name because you need a domain name to be able to send emails, a professional email address, a professional email address for Google Workspace and whatnot. And then an email software slash funnel software, which these days I really recommend System.io. That’s the one I personally use and love.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[41:49 – 41:50]

That’s pretty good, yeah.

[Eran Bucai] 

[41:50]

Yeah, that’s the best one for me. It’s $17 a month, incredibly affordable. And you’re allowed to have 5,000 email subscribers on that plane for $17 a month.

And so to me, that’s the best one to use because it also gives you funnels and blogs and all that stuff. And that’s also the best place to start, I think. And if in fact, it does cost $17 a month, Google Workspace, domain name, let’s say you pay for the annual plan.

You’re not looking at more than $200. You’re spending maybe $250 a year, let’s say. That’s your costs.

That’s basically the cost to start.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[42:29]

So that’s it. That’s it. A cheap funnel builder.

By the way, System.io is truly, truly a really cool software. We had the founder on our show. And it’s ridiculously cheap.

Although it’s Western because I think he’s, the owner is French. All of his competitors from the Western hemisphere, I mean, they charge a lot more money.

[Eran Bucai] 

[42:58]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. And they have investors to answer to, most of them, right?

And so the prices get raised and all that stuff. Whereas he’s just, he’s the sole founder. He’s got no co-founder.

He’s the sole CEO, sole decision maker. He’s also extremely pro-affiliate marketing. He’s a professional affiliate marketer.

He’s a marketer like me and you. And that’s many, many persons, by the way, we’re friends and he’s a cool dude. He hosted me in his house when I went to his hometown and stuff.

And he’s just a really focused individual who understands us solopreneurs. He really is kind of one of us kind of thing. We’re very pro-affiliate marketing.

When I joined System.io, they were paying 30% commission. Then they raised to 50% and now they’re paying 60% commission. And I’m on their top 10 leaderboard pretty much every month for the last year and a half.

But they do an amazing job. They’re doing an amazing job. They keep adding features.

And they reduced the price. It was not 17, it was 27 months ago. So they reduced the prices to make it more affordable on the entry fees.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[44:20]

That’s really cool. Wow. That’s amazing.Yeah. All right. Well, so what are you up to now?Where can we find out more about you? Maybe some of our members want to join your community.

[Eran Bucai] 

[44:14 – 44:46]

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Number one, I’m really approachable. 

So if anybody is listening, shoot me an email. [email protected]. You’re welcome.

Just come say hi. And then join my list. I probably have a pop-up on every website or blog you may have seen if you just Google Eran Bucai.

I bet you there’s going to be a pop-up with a place to enter your email and so on. And also, like social media, I’m very approachable. But yeah, email is great.

I respond to a lot of emails. Every time I send an email to my list, by the way, I get like 100 responses. And I reply to every one of them personally.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[44:46 – 44:50]

I love that. I actually love the game. That’s got to be time-consuming, isn’t it?

[Eran Bucai] 

[44:50 – 45:31]

I’m really efficient about that, number one. And also, I have text shortcuts, which I use, which is why I launched my Chrome extension, Typing Helper. I launched a Chrome extension to help me with my email marketing so I can actually speed up my email responses, basically.

So the Chrome extension helps you with text shortcuts. So a lot of those replies sometimes can be repetitive. And so they’re really easy to answer really quickly.

And I can chop them up, 100 replies in 20 minutes very, very quickly, basically, or half an hour. It’s really efficient. And I got a whole system using that Chrome extension, which I launched, basically.

That’s one thing that I’m up to. But that’s probably the best way to connect with me is just literally shoot me an email and say hi, basically.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[45:32 – 45:36]

Wow. But seriously, maybe they want to join your community or buy one of your courses.

[Eran Bucai] 

[45:36 – 45:54]

Yeah, definitely. So probably the best place to go, let me just think. If you go to a run.link forward slash DCT, that’s probably the best place to go in terms of like an actual website to put.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[45:55 – 45:56]

Okay, got it.

[Eran Bucai] 

[45:57 – 46:00]

Yeah. It’s a pretty link. It’s a redirect.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[46:00 – 46:04]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that link is a mouthful. Okay.

[Eran Bucai] 

[46:04 – 46:26]

This has to be mentioned. I have to mention this because this is so critical to affiliate marketers. If you don’t know what a pretty link strategy is, this is the best place to find me.

Go to a eran.link/prettylink and go learn about that as an affiliate marketer. That is going to be a freaking lifesaver for you as an affiliate marketer. So that’s a great way to start your getting to know me, actually.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[46:27 – 46:40]

All right. So we got two links. We got eran.link/dtc or eran.link/prettylink.

[Eran Bucai] 

[46:41 – 46:41]

Yes.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[46:45 – 46:47]

All right. We’ll make sure to put it in the show notes.

[Eran Bucai] 

[46:47 – 46:47]

Yeah.

[Igor Kheifets] 

[46:47 – 47:43]

All right. Well, I guess that’s about that’s a wrap for the list building lifestyle. Eran, thank you for taking the time to share your story.

I bet you inspired a few entrepreneurial souls in the crowd. And until next time we chat, have a good one.  

[47:05]

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle.

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