Ep. 242: Evolving Your Side Hustle to 7-Figures with Chris Parker of WhatIsMyIPAddress.com

July 17, 2019
| Archive, Pep Talks for Side Hustlers Podcast

Shannon Mattern is a pricing expert and creator of The Package Matrix™ Method that helps freelancers, fractional execs, consultants, agencies and service providers stop undercharging, overdelivering and overworking by using pricing, proposal and sales strategies backed by behavioral economics and sales psychology.

My guest today is Chris Parker, creator of WhatIsMyIPAddress.com.

It’s a website that Chris created as a hobby to help internet users with privacy and security – and it has evolved over the years to bring in over a million dollars in revenue and is one of the top 3000 most popular websites in the U.S.

What’s so cool to me about having Chris on the show is that I’ve literally used his website for my entire professional career.

Before I quit my day job to take my web design training business full time, I worked in marketing and IT for a non-profit and for the IT part of my job I’d go to his site to grab our IP address for vendors, for troubleshooting, for all kinds of things.

Yes, I’m a secret nerd.

And in case you’re wondering what the heck an IP address is, it’s a number that identifies whatever network or wifi your computer or phone is connected to.

The router you got from your cable company has an IP address, and anything you do from home online is attached to that address. When you connect to wifi at Starbucks, anything you do from there is attached to Starbucks IP address.

I’ve actually sent over 10,000 people to Chris’s website from inside my free web design training to go find out their IP address so that they can enter it into the website security plugin I recommend in the training and whitelist it so that the security plugin doesn’t block them from doing certain things.

But anyway, this episode isn’t about the tech, it’s about the person behind the tech, and how a simple website that solved a problem evolved into a 7-figure business.

Today we’re talking about:

The story behind WhatIsMyIPAddress.com and how it started as a hobby.
Exactly how Chris earns income from providing a free service.
The amount of traffic you need to be able to make a significant amount of money from display ads.
Chris’s discovery of affiliate marketing, advice for finding affiliate programs for your niche, and things to avoid with affiliate programs.
What the decision to take the business full time looked like.
How Chris strategized to meet his 3, 6 and 9 month revenue goals once he took his side hustle full time.
What a typical work day looks like for Chris as a 7-figure business owner.
How to be more productive.
The one belief Chris had to change about himself to get where he is today.

My favorite quotes from Chris:

“You’re the guide to their story, not the hero to their story.”
“I wanted to maintain quality of life in the process [of building my business].”
“I don’t have to figure it all out tomorrow.”

Resources Mentioned in this episode:

More About Chris and WhatIsMyIPAddress.com

Chris Parker is the founder of WhatIsMyIPAddress.com, a tech-friendly website attracting a remarkable 6,000,000 IP-seeking visitors a month.

In 2000, Chris Parker created WhatIsMyIPAddress.com as a solution to a seemingly simple problem he faced at the time— finding his employer’s office IP address. When Chris launched his website—initially as a hobby—it attracted thousands of users. As a result, Chris explored ways to grow it as a side-hustle.

In 2014, Chris was laid off at his full-time corporate job. Rather than panic and lose focus, he seized the opportunity to devote himself full-time to his website. Today, WhatIsMyIPAddress.com is among the top 3,000 websites in the U.S.

Chris enjoys the fruits of his success, generating close to seven figures annually and living the dream of traveling the world with his wife. Chris is currently shaping WhatIsMyIPAddress.com into a resource for those concerned about online privacy, security and freedom.

Connect with Chris:

WhatIsMyIPAddress.com

Chris Parker

Pricing, Proposal & Sales Strategy For Freelancers, Fractional Execs & Consultants

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ABOUT SHANNON MATTERN

Shannon Mattern is a pricing expert who helps Freelancers, Fractional Execs, Consultants and Creative & Professional Service Providers stop undercharging, overdelivering and overworking by using pricing, proposal and sales strategies backed by behavioral economics and sales psychology.

She helps other business coaches and consultants integrate her pricing and sales methodologies into their coaching, group programs and consultancies so they can help their clients make more without burning out.

She’s also the founder of Web Designer Academy, where she has spent a decade helping women web designers move from undercharging to premium pricing, and where she developed the offer framework now used by service providers across industries.

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Pricing

Marketing

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