Hello, and a warm welcome back. I’m still reeling from the shock Of Brian Dean selling his Backlinko website to competitor Semrush.
Who would have thought that would happen?
Can you imagine building out an authority website for nearly 10 years getting onto Google page 1 position 1 for many thousands of keywords and backlinks then selling?
This could be many people’s aim when starting blogging!
Brian started Backlinko in 2012 and built the blog out by creating monster skyscraper content that people mainly read every word of.
His net worth before the sale of Backlinko came mostly from his courses and youtube revenue.
What is Brian’s Networth Now? Is it 5 million, 10 million, or more?
Let’s do a deep dive into:
1. How Backlinko got to being a 7 figure business?
2. About Brian Dean The Creator Of Backlinko.
3. Brian Deans Net Worth before and after the sale of Backlinko to Semrush.
4. Semrush traffic figures before and after the purchase of Backlinko.
5. Brian Dean working with Semrush.
6. Conclusion.
How Did Backlinko Grow To 7 Figures?
Brian Dean was the CEO and founder of Backlinko from 2012 until 19th January 2022.
He started the site in 2013 and made amazing strides in the SEO field as well as explaining backlink strategies.
What made his site so different from the competition?
1. He was not much into affiliate marketing unlike the majority of other blogs.
This is not surprising after what happened in his earlier years with blog building!
2. The content Brian produced concentrated on 2 main things.
- The posts he wrote were thousands of words long containing links to authority sites and tons of amazing images.
- Every post written was a well-researched quality over quantity piece.
3. Having only 50 blog posts that covered every subject he tackled from A-Z made Backlinko a force to be reconned with.
The posts took on average 50 hrs to complete!
Brian called them “Power Posts” and powerful they certainly are!
How long does it take you to complete one of your posts?
4. Money was made on the blog by Brian creating courses based on in-depth Case Studies about SEO and content marketing strategies.
5. The 80-20 rule. Spend 80% of your time promoting your content and 20% of the time researching and compiling it using Keyword research.
That right there is a very valuable lesson to take notice of.
6. Another approach that Brian took was to send emails out to get backlinks from authority websites and influencers.
7. Blogging is part of the long game process it is no good thinking you are going to hit it big in a few months.
If you think that then there is no point in starting!
About Brian Dean
Brian Dean may be everywhere you look but he is a pretty private guy and not that much is really known about his personal life.
- He is married, name of spouse unknown and was born in America.
- Approximate age 33.
- Lives In Boston, Massachusettes.
- Education: A Master’s degree in Nutrition from Tufts.
After finishing his studies he decided to become a dietician, but in 2008 when everything was crashing that was not an easy thing to do.
Reading “The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss” was the deciding factor that changed Brian’s career path and life forever.
He started writing for the clientele on Elance ( now called Upwork).
Doing this he managed to quit the dietician job that he had found.
By 2009-2010 he was writing 12 posts a day as a freelancer for Livestrong and also posts for his own lifestyle business.
Building up to 150 websites consisting of only 1 page that sent traffic to services and products.
Google did an update in 2010 called “Panda” and destroyed everything that Brian had built overnight. Gone!
Watching a YouTube video about this time in his life he said that he researched a lot online but what he is was reading did not answer his questions.
Fast forward to 2012 after 5 failures online Brian finds success with a site in the personal finance space.
Then Backlinko is born and its main focus is to answer questions in such a way that people and search engines sit up and take notice.
Brian has been mentioned by problogger.net, Forbes in 2017, Success magazine and inc.com. He was recognized as a blogger, expert in SEO and an entrepreneur to watch.
They all got everything right in their predictions!
What Is Brian Dean’s Net Worth?
That is really hard to answer because publishing his figures is not really something Brian has ever done!
Looking at the YouTube channel with 475k subscribers and videos going back for 9 years with views ranging from 2.7 Million down to 30K.
The channel has had over 13.8 million views from 45 videos. Wow!
An awful lot of revenue was generated from ads here.
Then there are his courses which were a massive success gaining thousands of subscribers.
You had to join a waiting list to get on one of his courses as they only opened once or twice a year.
Course 1. SEO That Works, is a premium SEO training program that teaches you how to get higher rankings in search from Google.
Course 2. Grow Your Blog Fast; is another premium training program where he teaches beginners how to get more traffic and subscribers fast.
Before the sale of Backlinko estimates of his net worth was around the figure of $669,000 per month according to Ahrefs. (that figure could be totally wrong though)
Since Semrush Bought Backlinko the estimate is Semrush paid a 7- 8 figure sum to Mr Dean.
Imagine being in your 30s and having a sale like that!
Semrush Traffic Figures Before And After Buying Backlinko
Semrush was already a major player when it came to ranking content based on search engine optimization, keywords and backlinks.
Here are the figures before the buyout for Semrush:
Those are very impressive stats for Semrush.
Now let us compare those to the stats of Backlinko which is not 10 years old yet!
These figures have boosted Semrush’s total traffic value to be more than Ahrefs, Moz, and other direct competitors in the space.
None of this takes into account any of the traffic that is generated by the Youtube channel, brand name and other belongings such as The Hub owned by Brian.
The Hub was created around 2 years ago and ranks on 75k keywords worth about $285k in monthly traffic value alone.
In my opinion, this was an extremely smart move by Semrush and whatever they paid whether 7 or 8 figures it was probably the buy of the century.
Brian Dean Working With Semrush
Is Brian Dean going to retire?
No. Part of the deal with Semrush will see Brian and his team still working on the Backlinko website and the Semrush Academy.
They will be creating content on a part-time basis.
When asked why Brian decided to sell his site he said “he and his team had taken it as far as they could go and felt they could not scale it any further without making big changes”
The email to Brian came from Max Roslyakov SVP of marketing at Semrush and was totally out of the blue!
Brian emailed his subscribers to tell them the sad news.
This link is a copy of the email on Twitter to one of his subscribers.
Conclusion
Brian Dean went from getting a master’s degree in Nutrition to creating a well-known website and training platform that sold for an undisclosed sum to Semrush.
This goes to prove a point that creating and writing blogs can be achieved by anyone if following the right guidelines.
Would you give 10 years of your time to be in this sort of situation where you could be earning half a million dollars per month?
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Lisa. CEO and founder of mistakesbloggersmake.com
