Mike Jelinek Email & Phone Number

United States

I started Minted Vine to launch new projects and ideas because I love to work on different things and I'm always open to build. The company evolves with my interests and focus.Minted Vine operates in a few different capacities:•Strategic Partnership Facilitation: Bringing together two or more companies via joint ventures or large-scale strategic partnerships, usually with the aim of revenue growth.•Growth Consulting: Growing websites, building sites, solving problems, driving revenue, increasing leads, creating strategies, and breaking into new channels.•Marketing & Content: SEO, PPC, creative work, branding, podcasting, YouTube, Twitter, and more.•Small Business: Operations, marketing, growth, and scaling.•Investments & Acquisitions: Acquiring assets and investing in companies.

After exiting Soda and Reviews.com, I started Rejoin Media with a business partner and was the majority owner. Rejoin owned and operated a few websites, most notably, CareerCloud.com (which I acquired myself in 2017 and brought into Rejoin). We sold one website for a significant profit and grew CareerCloud to a valuation of well over $1M. I sold all of my majority stake in Rejoin and exited in June 2023.

I acquired CareerCloud.com in 2017 on Flippa for $30k. The site wasn't really making any money at the time I bought it, but I recognized that there was some really solid authority within some key categories. It also had a really successful podcast established by Chris Russell and was charting well on iTunes in the career podcast space at the time.My thesis was that I could rank for online job board content, which was monetizing well at the time, but all of the payouts pretty much disappeared. So, I hustled to put up high-quality content across a variety of career-related categories to try to see what would rank and drive traffic. I found some key categories that did not have a ton of competition and the site started moving up to page 1 in the SERPs.I made the decision to move the management of the site under Rejoin Media where I had formed a partnership with a colleague to give it more attention. The site continued to grow year over year under Rejoin. Based on the landscape and trends with Google and AI, I chose to exit in 2023 and sell my stake in CareerCloud after growing the site's valuation into the 7 figures.

Puerto Rico

I made the leap and moved out to Puerto Rico to join what was called Ad Practitioners at the time. After a year or so, we acquired Money.com (Money Magazine) from Meredith, which ended up being a huge success. I played a key role in the acquisition and merger of two large teams as well as contributing to the diligence process. After the Money.com acquisition, I created and implemented an SEO growth strategy that generated tens of millions in revenue on the site. I managed the NYC team of journalists who joined our company post-acquisition in addition to managing and hiring many of our teams in Puerto Rico.During my time at the company, I built a large content, marketing, and operations team, including an editorial department, outreach, data harvesting, design, and research.

Seattle

We sat in a room in 2012 staring at a blank white board trying to figure out what Reviews.com should be. With just two of us at the time, we opted to go away from the trend of big data and instead focus on very detailed editorial reviews backed by research and experience. We built the site from nothing into a powerhouse that was ranking #1 in Google for some of the highest value terms on the internet. We were just starting to ramp up and growing our team closer to 100 people. Ultimately, our grand vision was cut short when Soda was acquired by Red Ventures. Unfortunately, the site is no longer what it once was because it has been neglected for years.

Greater Seattle Area

Soda was the parent company that included Reviews.com, TheSimpleDollar.com, Rankings.com, Freshome.com and other sites. It was acquired in October, 2016 by Red Ventures. I stayed on for a year after and then transitioned away from the company. During my time at Soda, I managed Reviews.com, TheSimpleDollar.com, played several other roles (Head of Content and Head of Marketing), and helped build many of our new content and outreach strategies.

Http://Www.Thesimpledollar.Com

I was in charge of growing TheSimpleDollar.com when it was put in our possession. I helped grow the site from $1000/month to over $1m/month.

Delray Beach, Fl

I ran the newsletter content for one of the natural health publications and was in charge of all the content.

Fort Lauderdale, Fl

I started my first company that actually made some money :). I had a few SEO clients and built websites for people. It died off when I got a job offer I couldn't turn down.

Chicago

I traded financial markets out of college. It was a great learning experience but not the career for me.