How Kevin Espiritu Became the Face of Global Advertising Campaigns With His Authority Site

Kevin Espiritu’s Story…

They say that the point of a journey is not to arrive.

I agree.

Sometimes you have to look back to truly appreciate how far you’ve come.

That goes double in the world of online marketing.

Today, I’m going to share part of Kevin Espiritu’s authority site journey with you.

For those of you who don’t know him, Kevin is the brains behind Epic Gardening.

That site now generates a full-time income for him, and then some.

But it wasn’t always like that.

In fact, 3 years ago Kevin was living a very different life.

Where it all Started

When Kevin became part of our community he’s already been running his Epic Gardening site for a few years.

He was a pretty rare exception in that his site was making $500 – $700 per month without any real outside help.

Now, most people would look at that figure and go, “Yeah…that’s a nice chunk of change.”

And it is.

But the thing is Kevin – by his own admission – had been floundering since 2013 to get to that point.

He was three years into his journey and his site had plateaued.

That’s something we see all the time – Kevin was far from unique.

In early 2016 he decided his site needed help to get it to the next level.

So he turned to the Authority Hacker training and community for guidance.

As Kevin puts it himself, “I really didn’t know how to focus or where to focus”.

This was also the year Kevin decided to quit his job at a company called Book In A Box, founded by Tucker Max.

The same Tucker Max made famous in the movie “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.”

At this point in his life, Kevin needed to replace his 9-5 income..

So he sank his teeth into both Epic Gardening and the Authority Hacker’s Training.

And I mean he really went hardcore mode.

The guy sat in his apartment and wrote content for Epic Gardening all day. Every day.

In fact, the only time he took a break was to stretch his legs in a nearby park just so his body didn’t seize up.

By September 2016 (3 months later) he’d reached his income goal of $2,500 per month.

I still remember how excited he was when that happened.

So does Kevin.

Building Processes & Systems

But it wasn’t just about applying brute effort and hoping for a positive outcome.

How so, I hear you ask.

Well, because he took our blueprints and actually applied them.

Kevin isn’t one of those guys that does things by halves. We see people all the time talking about taking action, but Kevin actually did take action. Lots of it.

The first thing he did was use our content blueprint to systematize everything he published.

So he had a structured way of creating each page and then promote it, but without having to reinvent the wheel every time.

Just rinse and repeat as we show inside Authority Hacker’s Training.

That’s also how he set off a nuke under his Pinterest traffic after following our blueprint.

Within two weeks his Pinterest traffic had grown from 7,000 monthly viewers to a projected 50,000 monthly viewers.

Two and a bit years later and 1.8 million people see his pins on Pinterest each month.

That’s an enormous amount of potential traffic to monetize or funnel elsewhere.

His approach is also why Epic Gardening’s YouTube channel is very successful.

Success as in videos with almost 1 million views:

Success like 10,000,000 total video views and 160,000 subscribers:

Kevin has made a pretty big impact with his social channels as you can see, and created other revenue streams in the process.

And as he correctly points out, the benefits of the flow-through traffic are huge for his business.

For example, somebody could find him on Pinterest, follow him to his blog and then buy his book.

Or they might find one of his many excellent blog posts, follow that to his YouTube and subscribe to his channel.

It’s allowed him to monetize his content across multiple platforms.

His presence on social platforms has also resulted in him becoming the face of the “Nature Needs Heroes” national advertising campaign in the United States by Timberland.

From hobbyist hydroponics blogger, to authority site owner, to “celebrity” status.

Kevin now has fun taking selfies of himself in front of his signs in the street.

And that’s just what he achieved in the first 36 months of working with a single-minded purpose and the right guidance.

Using the Authority Hacker Community

Something that’s important to point out here is that Kevin was and is an important part of the Authority Hacker’s community.

He’s so popular he was interviewed on our podcast- check it out when you get a chance.

In his newbie days, he asked tons of questions and still admits to feeling like he bugged people a lot.

But again what set Kevin apart from most people was how he applied what he learned.

He might pick up a tip from Gary or Mark (you know who you are) and he’d just run with it.

No questions.

No doubts.

No trying to find fault.

Just “Yeah, cool. I’ll go do this”.

He got that it’s just as important to participate in the Authority Hacker Community as it is to implement any of our blueprints.

Becoming a real-life authority

In 2016 Epic Gardening was making side hustle cash.

In 2019 that same site earns 5-figures per month.

Sometimes it even tips over into 6 figures per month – that’s $100,000 per month, just to put a number on it.

That’s life-changing income, no matter who you are.

Kevin hasn’t just sat around on his laurels though – he’s always busy working to take his business (not just a site) to the next level.

He recently released his first book and is also slowly moving towards selling physical products.

So what started out as a hobby site has grown into a very profitable online and offline business.

Kevin has always described Epic Gardening as something of a hybrid site.

That might sound like a bit of a vague description at first.

But when you look at how he’s transformed a hobby into a multi-platform business, you can see direction and purpose.

And that’s how Kevin has moved beyond making bank just with display ads, but from his brand as a whole.

Doing It All Again

I caught up with Kevin recently for a chat and asked him a simple question: “Would you do it all again?”

He just nodded and smiled and said, “100% I would. I know people with authority sites that are making little or no money. They’ve floundered for years because they don’t have any direction. Authority Hacker gave me the direction I needed, when I needed it”.

“So for me investing in Authority Hacker was, in hindsight, a no-brainer. It ROI’d itself in a few months. For sure I’d do it again – I’ve loved learning from you guys.”

Part of the reason I love what I do is because I get to meet people like Kevin Espiritu.

I get to witness how completely different their lives can be within a few years.

That never gets old.

Learn More About Authority Hacker’s Premium Training