Name: Dean Hunt

Web site: DeanHunt.com

Please introduce yourself: I am a young internet marketing and SEO webmaster and consultant. I am from the UK but moved to sunny Madrid (Spain) a few years ago with my Spanish Senorita.

I sold a network of sites in 2006 that I had built-up from scratch, and now I work alongside a major player in the site flipping industry. ( Midascode Ltd )

Tell us about your main project : At the moment my main project is site flipping (Buying and selling websites for profit). I have a budget of around $60,000 and I am looking to spend it wisely.

With my SEO and marketing knowledge we aim to buy sites, build them up and then sell them on for a large profit.

I also am really getting into social media. I offered consulting on getting huge amounts of traffic to websites via social media. Those services and my SEO services are currently booked until well into 2008.

How did you start off on the net? : I started with an idea for a sports gambling forum in 2002. At the time I knew nothing about creating or running websites, but that forum was sold in 2006 and also launched numerous other successful sites.

When I arrived in Madrid I spoke zero Spanish, and so I had the choice of bar work or find something online. I chose the latter and spent 12 hours per day, 360 days per year learning as much as I could about all aspects of running and creating websites.

What was your first project? : I suppose I accidentally answered this already. Whoops.

What advice do you have for someone who is starting web design/ web development? : For any future web developers/webmasters I would tell them to learn new skills by doing them. Throwing yourself in at the deep end is the best way to learn in this game. You can read books and forums all day, but you will learn ten times faster by trying yourself.

I once contacted a mega web marketing superstar. I am not going to mention his name on here, but this guy was making 6 figure sums from niche websites. I spoke to him and was keen to find the super tricks that he knew. But instead of knowing any tricks, he simply had an amazing learning ethic. For example, at his peak he was making one niche site PER DAY. I thought this was incredible, so I aimed to do the same. I asked him, What are the tricks to create a site like yours so quickly?, he sent me 500 pages of tutorials from About.com and said learn all that.

I was shocked at the time, I had come to find a quick way to make millions, but I went away and started practicing techniques that I would normally have just avoided or paid someone else to do. I learned from him that there are no magic methods to instant riches, anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. What you need is a good work ethic and the ability to learn by doing.


What would you do differently? : I would have liked to have made more sites earlier. Link and site age are big factors in the search engines, so it would have been nice to have ten sites made in 2003 instead of one. To be honest though, my main regret was not getting into this sooner. I trained to be a pro golfer for a few years, and although that was great fun, I would have loved to have gotten into this in 1997.

Tools of the trade? Yikes, where to start? Arelis and SEOelite are powerful tools, especially if you are creative. I am a Wordpress junkie as well. I am currently testing Joomla, but I think Wordpress is in my blood.

At the moment I am really getting into the social media as well. DeanHunt.com was on the Digg.com main page twice in a row, and that crashed my server both times. Wordpress and high traffic can be an issue. Even with the cache plugin and an expensive re-seller account. I also have been on the Slashdot.org main page, Netscape main page, Reddit main page, and many of the buzz pages of Stumbeupon. I actually have had over 60,000 unique visitors from Stumbleupon in the past two weeks, so that is pretty cool.


What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? : I used to like playing golf, but it is too expensive in Madrid. The course near us is almost $300 per round. I could go and play some of the worlds best courses for less. I also got an xbox360 recently, I am more of a PC gamer to be honest, but I am improving.

To be honest though, I have been a bit of a net addict these past few years. The downside is that I wear glasses whilst online now, but I have learned tons from it. Oh, I like watching football (soccer) as well.

What are your current Projects? : I have a lot going on at the moment, and it is only going to get busier. Some of the projects I cannot discuss, but I do some writing for streetlessons.com, midascode.co.uk/blog and retiredat21.com. It is great to share my tips and advice via those sites.

Thanks for taking your time to take do a interview with us, anything else you would like to add? Yes, where is my cheque? Seriously though, I am working on something very exciting at the moment. I should have it ready by the end of May, but it is still very secretive. People can subscribe to my blog feed at http://deanhunt.com/feed and I will reveal all in good time.