- Jubril Agoro brings in about $1 million a year from his online companies, which he runs remotely.
- He got his start on eBay, skipped college, and now works as a digital marketer while traveling.
- To get started, he says you must understand your audience, utilize affiliate marketing, and jump on opportunities.
What’s better than a college education? Teaching yourself the secrets of digital marketing. At least that’s how it worked for Jubril Agoro who brings in about $1 million a year from his online companies, which he runs remotely as he travels from one exotic location to the next.
But before all this happened, his income tanked, and he had to move back in with his mom. Here’s how he went from broke to seven figures of income.
Agoro was born in London but grew up in Chicago. In high school in the early 2000s, he discovered the money-making potential of selling on eBay. He began with some hedgehog toys that he’d bought for $1 each and was selling for $15 to $20. Then he ran out.
“I needed something that was going to enable me to re-up and continue to sell. That’s how I came across weight loss supplements,” he said. By his senior year of high school, he sometimes made more than $10,000 a month.
When he graduated, he decided to skip college and continue selling online.
His mother was not pleased with this plan.
"My mom, she never made more than about $25,000 a year. We lived in a small apartment, but she did all she could to give us opportunities," Agoro said.
She worked 16-hour shifts so that they could live in the right district for James B. Conant High School, one of the best in Illinois. Her plan was for Agoro to attend college and build a better life. So she gave him an ultimatum: Go to college or move out.
Agoro was easily earning enough to afford a place of his own, so he moved out.
He started working in direct sales, and although he said he learned a lot about marketing that way, it wasn't the right fit for him. So he quit and went back to selling on eBay, but the lucrative career he'd had before was no longer there.
"The algorithms had changed," he said. Inexpensive ways of marketing products, such as buying space on the homepage, were either dramatically more expensive or didn't exist anymore.
There was also much more competition. "Now I could barely break even with what before was so profitable," he said.
Without an income, Agoro had no choice but to give up his home and move back in with his Mom.
"I told you the internet was a fad!" she scolded him. He didn't fight back, he said.
"When you have no money, you have no voice - especially when your Mom is paying the bills." Today, Agoro describes this experience as his "aha moment."
"I knew it wasn't the internet that failed, I failed by not having enough skills to navigate it." He began learning all he could about online marketing so he would never be caught without an income again. Meanwhile, he took a job at a call center for $15 an hour.
It took less than three years for him to quit that call center job and build up an income of around $200,000.
That income brought freedom to travel, so Agoro became a digital nomad, working online while visiting exotic locations. He eventually started his own travel site for other digital nomads, Passport Heavy.
Meanwhile, his income continued to grow. By 2020 he was earning just over $1 million a year doing digital marketing.
Here's his advice on getting into digital marketing.
1. Understand your audience
After failing on eBay, Agoro began teaching himself digital marketing, studying Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising.
Some of the tools he used to learn the trade aren't around these days, but here's his advice for aspiring digital marketers: "Today, the most important element is not the technical know-how, but the storytelling and how to relate to customers."
This can directly affect the price and thus the profitability of your ad campaigns, he explained.
For example, Facebook might charge one advertiser $3 per click for a target keyword, and a different advertiser might pay only 30 cents per click. That's because the algorithm notices how often users click on an ad. If only one out of 100 users click it, Facebook will charge more than if 20 out of 100 users click it.
Not only does Facebook earn more when more users click, it also assumes that users like the ad more so it's providing a better experience. All of this is why, he likes to say, "Understanding your audience will lead you to the promised land."
He put this knowledge to use the day after Barack Obama was elected the first Black president in US history. That day, the Chicago Sun-Times devoted its entire front page to a photo of Obama. On telvision, Oprah Winfrey held up the paper and said that the moment would go down in history. Agoro quickly put up a Google ad saying, "Own a piece of history" that would come up if people searched for the paper, offering it for sale at $14.99 plus $4 shipping.
He bought 100 copies at 50 cents each and sold out in less than 24 hours.
2. Learn affiliate marketing
In affiliate marketing, you create online content and offer links to sponsored products. If someone buys the product, you earn a commission.
Agoro began creating content to promote marketing courses, earning a $1,000 commission on a $3,000 course, for example. At the beginning, profits were small - he might spend $800 in ads to drive people to his website and content to earn that $1,000 commission, a profit of only $200.
But as time went on he got more knowledgeable about how to bring in traffic and was able to spend less, increasing his profits. He also reinvested much of his earnings in the business, allowing him to scale his operation and earn more, since every affiliate sale brought in more profits.
Eventually, he built up that income to about $300,000 a year.
What's the secret to success in affiliate marketing? Begin with an industry you know well, he said.
"Whether you're doing SEO or paid traffic, typically the best way to do affiliate marketing is to give knowledge or advice to customers and then after they get that advice or knowledge, they get an affiliate link to purchase the product you're offering. So get knowledgeable about your subject, whatever you're passionate about."
But your passion is only part of the equation, he added. The other part is to learn about affiliate marketing in your preferred industry. Make sure to pick an industry that's affiliate-friendly, and offers big enough commissions that you can earn well.
3. When you find something real, jump on it
Agoro continued earning well from affiliate marketing and as a digital marketer, working with brands like Airbnb and the NBA, and offering his own online marketing courses. But his greatest income and biggest passion came from connecting with personal finance expert Tiffany Aliche, "The Budgetnista," in 2015.
Aliche and Agoro first met in an online travel group and she asked him for some marketing advice. She said she couldn't afford to hire him. He said, "No, I want to partner with you. I can see you actually care about people. You have an amazing product and service. I can help you scale this in ways that you don't see."
At the time, he said, there were no personal finance education products targeted to women, never mind Black women. And few financial education products of any kind were advertised on Facebook.
"I did the research and in the US alone there were over 100 million women that we could reach," he said. "I knew we could make millions doing this because I understood the size of the market."
Aliche agreed. At the time she had about 10,000 Facebook fans and an email list of about 10,000 after four years of building her brand online with no advertising. Agoro used his Facebook ad smarts to increase her fans to 80,000 in just one month.
The pair spent the next few months growing her brand, and then in March of 2016, they launched Aliche's Live Richer Academy, inviting those who wanted to learn to manage their budgets to join for $10 a month, with discounts for those willing to pay for six months or a year up front.
They created a video in which Aliche told her own story of growing up with budgeting expertise and still having to deal with and recover from a financial downfall.
"We made $27,000 in the first hour," Agoro said. Within a week, they had made $70,000, at which point they stopped accepting new members because they didn't want the site to be overwhelmed.
Four years later, with much more content available, membership costs $30 a month. The Live Richer Academy now offers webinars and budget challenges, as well as affiliate links that help generate more revenue. Its gross revenue for 2020 was $8.77 million.
"We believe in win-win-win-win," Agoro said. "Our consumers win by having a good product and service that they tell their friends about, so we do a lot by word of mouth. The advertising platforms such as Google and Facebook win, they're getting more money and getting a good advertiser. Our affiliate partners such as Credit Sesame are getting a good result and good customers. And we are also winning in this game of life and business. A lot of people assume that if you are making this kind of money, then someone has to be losing because of that. And it's not true. We've been able to prove it."
