Imagine building a million-dollar business in your spare time, only to be fired from your 9-to-5 the moment your boss discovers your side hustle. For Matt Giovanisci, founder of Swim University, this wasn't a catastrophe—it was the catalyst. By shifting from a simple affiliate marketing strategy to a high-margin ecosystem of digital courses and physical books, Matt transformed a "boring" niche like pool care into a seven-figure media empire. This roadmap explores how to leverage tools like Lasso and Klaviyo to de-risk your business and maximize your earnings.
The Logic of 'Media First, Product Second'
Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of building a product before they have an audience. Matt’s approach was the opposite: build the media machine first, then let the audience tell you what to sell. By focusing on WordPress-based SEO and a YouTube channel that now boasts over 225,000 subscribers, he created a reliable distribution engine before ever launching a course.
This "media-first" mindset ensures that by the time you launch a digital product, you already have a warm list of leads. Matt’s strategy involves creating "long-form anchors"—usually a comprehensive YouTube video or a deep-dive blog post—and then atomizing that content across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. This creates a monetization funnel where every piece of free content serves as an entry point into his ecosystem.
"Every time I make content, whether that's a blog post or a video or an email, the business moves. When I don't, it suffers."
Optimizing Affiliate Revenue Using Lasso
Before jumping into digital products, Matt spent years mastering the affiliate marketing strategy. Affiliate revenue is the perfect "bridge" because it allows you to monetize your traffic without the overhead of customer support or inventory. However, managing hundreds of Amazon links manually is a recipe for broken links and lost commissions.
To solve this, Matt utilizes Lasso, a specialized affiliate management tool. Lasso allows creators to create high-converting product displays that look like custom-coded elements but are easily manageable from a central dashboard. By using data-driven displays, you can increase your Click-Through Rate (CTR) significantly compared to standard text links. This optimization ensures that your site is squeezed for every penny of profit while you work on your higher-margin offerings.
| Feature | Standard Text Links | Lasso Product Displays |
|---|---|---|
| Visual Appeal | Low (often ignored) | High (custom cards/boxes) |
| CTR Performance | Baseline | Typically 2x - 5x higher |
| Link Management | Manual/Tedious | Centralized Dashboard |
| Revenue Potential | Passive | Optimized |
The Price-Testing Methodology for Digital Products
When Matt transitioned to selling digital products, he didn't guess the price. He used a iterative testing methodology to find the "sweet spot." His first product, a pool care PDF, started at $50. The result? Zero sales. Instead of giving up, he treated pricing as a variable to be optimized.
He systematically dropped the price in increments: $40, $30, $29, and finally $24. He discovered that while $30 saw some movement, $24 to $29 was the psychological threshold where his audience stopped thinking and started buying. This rigorous testing allowed him to maximize his total volume, which eventually led to over $100,000 in monthly revenue.
Building an Automated Funnel in Klaviyo
Traffic is vanity; an email list is sanity. Matt’s million-dollar business relies heavily on email marketing automation to convert casual blog readers into loyal customers. Once a visitor lands on a pool care article, the goal is to get them onto the newsletter, which currently has over 100,000 subscribers.
Using Klaviyo, he builds automated sequences that deliver value first. A typical funnel might look like this:
- The Lead Magnet: A free cheat sheet or pool chemistry guide.
- The Indoctrination: A series of 2-3 emails solving immediate problems (e.g., "How to fix green water").
- The Soft Pitch: Introducing the Pool Care Handbook as the ultimate solution to the problems discussed.
- The Scarcity/Urgency: A limited-time discount or a bundle offer for his video courses.
By automating this process, Matt ensures that his business makes money while he sleeps—or while he's recording his next YouTube video. For those looking to scale their outreach to creators or manage partnerships to drive more traffic to these funnels, platforms like Stormy AI provide the tools to find and vet influencers who can amplify your reach.
"The majority of how we make money now is through our course material and our books. It’s about taking the same information and delivering it in the format people want to pay for."
The 'Boring Niche' Advantage
Matt intentionally chose a niche that wasn't "sexy." Why? Because no one wants to be an amateur expert at pool maintenance; they just want a clean pool so they can swim. This creates a utilitarian demand that is recession-proof. Boring niches often have less competition from high-level creators, making it easier to dominate the SEO landscape using tools like SEMrush and Rank Math.
In a boring niche, your job isn't just to inform—it's to be punchy, entertaining, and fast. Matt’s success comes from his ability to take complex chemistry and turn it into simple, actionable steps. He treats his content like a service: "Your pool is gross, let's fix it in 5 minutes."
Scaling with a Lean Tech Stack
Despite making over $1M a year, Matt’s team is tiny: just himself, his wife, and his brother. They manage the entire operation using a lean tech stack that prioritizes lifestyle over complexity. This is a critical lesson for founders: more employees often equals more headaches, not necessarily more profit.
| Tool Category | Matt's Choice | Primary Function |
|---|---|---|
| Project Management | Asana | Tracking every task from content to chores. |
| SEO & Research | SEMrush | Finding keywords with high buyer intent. |
| Storage/Cloud | Google Drive | Keeping the family business's files synced. |
| AI Partner | ChatGPT | Decision-making and brainstorming. |
By keeping the team small and the margins high, Matt can focus on what actually moves the needle: content. If he needs to expand his distribution through UGC creators or TikTok affiliates, he can use Stormy AI to discover and outreach to creators who fit his brand's specific "helpful neighbor" aesthetic without needing a massive marketing department.
The Final Roadmap to $1M
Transitioning from affiliate marketing strategy to digital product ownership is not an overnight feat. It is the result of consistent content creation and relentless optimization. Matt’s journey from being fired to building a $1M family business proves that if you own the audience, you own the market.
To recap the playbook:
- Start with content (SEO and Video) to build a de-risked audience.
- Optimize your current earnings with Lasso to fund your growth.
- Aggressively price-test your digital products to find the volume sweet spot.
- Use email marketing automation via Klaviyo to turn traffic into a recurring asset.
Stop overcomplicating your business model. Focus on the life you want to lead, pick a niche you actually like, and never stop making content. The money will follow the attention.