I advise, grow, and invest in digital businesses.
For the past two decades, I've worked at the intersection of SEO , affiliate marketing, and digital asset investing by building communities, operating niche internet businesses, and helping companies in hosting, domains, WordPress, and tech turn distribution into durable revenue.
Today I spend most of my attention on a newer question:
How do digital businesses stay visible, trusted, and defensible in an internet that's being rebuilt around AI?
That question is where Competico starts, where MonetizeBetter points, and where most of the interesting work in our industry is heading over the next five years.
What I'm building
Competico — Advisory on SEO, AI Visibility and Growth
A boutique advisory practice for operators who take competitive positioning seriously. I work with a small number of clients at a time across SEO, AI Visibility, and Competitive Intelligence.
Typical engagements:
- premium audits
- strategy retainers, and
- affiliate program setup
for operators who want to get positioned the first time correctly, rather than rebuilding in year two.
Current and past clients include AdultSiteBroker, Mondiad, and a short list of boutique operators across Central & Eastern Europe, MENA, and Southeast Asia.
MonetizeBetter — Digital Asset Intelligence
A newsletter-first publication tracking the deals, multiples, operators, and macro forces shaping small-cap internet businesses. Built for the people who actually buy, sell, and run websites for a living.
ALT Media Brands - Independent Media Network
ALT Media Brands is the strategic media and intelligence network I've built over the past decade. It sits at the intersection of eSports, WEB3, digital assets, and AI, surfacing early market signals, covering emerging operators, and connecting global audiences to the people shaping online economies.
It operates as an official media partner for a rotation of major industry events, including SiGMA, European Blockchain Convention, ICE, Affiliate World Dubai, TES, Domain Days Dubai, Domain Summit, AW Summit, MAC Affiliate Conference, and SERPconf.
Premium Domain Investments
Alongside the advisory and media work, I maintain a portfolio of premium .com domains, acquired over the past decade as long-term digital assets.
The approach is collector-first, not flipper. I buy category-defining names in verticals I understand —digital assets, crypto, alternative finance, and emerging internet categories—and hold them until the right operator or acquirer shows up.
This is also the reason you'll find me at Domain Days Dubai, Nordic Domain Days, and Domain Summit every year. The domain industry is small enough that interesting deals happen in private rooms, not just on marketplace listings.
Templately — Enterprise Partnerships
I serve as Head of Enterprise Partnerships, leading distribution strategy for one of the larger independent companies in the WordPress ecosystem.
Track record
Twenty years in this industry means you've shipped, sold, and shut down more than you've kept. The projects below are chapters I've either already closed, handed to new ownership, or that are currently in transition.
Listing them publicly matters to me. The internet has short memory and long receipts; I'd rather be honest about what I've built than curate a highlight reel.
Exits
- TopGold.Forum (2006 — present) — Independent community covering crypto, forex, online money-making, and alternative finance. Built and run for nearly two decades, grown to 23,000+ ACTIVE members, and now one of the longest-standing communities of its kind on the open web. A transition to new ownership is currently in progress.
- InvestOpen.com (sold 2018) — Independent community covering forex, offshore companies, online investments, and crypto. I operated it for 8+ years before selling it to Oliver Kenyon, who later resold it.
- ExchangeSimple.com (sold 2014) — A multi-currency exchange platform I designed and built from the ground up, bridging fiat, e-currencies, and early-era cryptocurrencies. I operated the business for several years before I sold it to a larger group in 2014.
Sunset
- Niche Content Network (2018 — 2024)— I operated a sponsored content distribution network for years, a small portfolio of niche publications that included DailyMoneySaving.com (personal finance), Monetize.info , and TEN.info (education and rankings, mentioned in the BBC and the New York Times)—combined peak audience in the tens of thousands of monthly readers before I wound it down to focus upstream.
- Outreach.Buzz (2022 — closed) — Outreach platform helping operators in investing, finance, startups, and digital marketing connect with bloggers and influencers to distribute content. Peak traffic was around 5,500 monthly unique visitors.
- MediaDigi.ro — My early Romanian web development services practice. Closed when I decided to move upstream, out of execution work and into advisory.
How I work
I'm not an operator by temperament. I'm an architect.
My best work happens when I'm defining frameworks and standards (how a category should be measured, what good looks like, which benchmarks matter). I've built my career on creating frameworks, naming things clearly, and helping others execute against that clarity.
In practice, that means:
- I don't take on high-volume agency work.
- I don't run teams of twenty.
- I don't sell cold.
- I pick a small number of problems I find genuinely interesting (usually at the frontier of search, AI, and internet-native business models), and I go deep on them.
If you're looking for more hands, I'm the wrong hire.
If you're trying to figure out what the next five years of your category look like, and you want someone who's been in the weeds of this industry for 20 years, we should talk.
Background
I came up through PHP and SEO in the early 2000s, back when the internet still rewarded people who were willing to read the documentation. I've built software, plugins, run content operations, managed affiliate programs, written about monetization, and invested in a long list of niche digital assets, some of which worked, several of which taught me more than the ones that did.
My long-term ambition is specific: to become a standard-setter for AI Visibility and Digital Trust, the benchmarks, certifications, and reference material that serious operators use to measure themselves.
Where you'll find me
I travel most months. My professional network lives across Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and most of the relationships that matter to my work get maintained face-to-face at a small rotation of industry events:
- CloudFest — Europa-Park, Germany
- Domain Days Dubai — UAE
- Domain Summit — UK, Germany
- Nordic Domain Days — Stockholm, Sweden
- SiGMA — Malta, Dubai, Cyprus
- Affiliate World - Dubai, Budapest, Bangkok
- TES Affiliate Conference — Europe
- WordCamp Europe
If you're at any of these events , reach out. Most of the deals and partnerships worth doing start over coffee at events like these, not in cold inboxes.
Personal
I'm based in Bucharest, Romania, the eastern edge of the EU and NATO, which turns out to be a useful perch from which to read the world right now. I travel enough to consider myself nomadic, and I keep a quiet preference for cities where the coffee is strong, things happen 24/7, and the wifi is reliable.
Outside work: cycling, geopolitics, eSports, and food that's worth the flight.
I support two causes that matter to me: children's education in countries where it's hardest to access, and rescue dog welfare. If we work together long enough, one of them will probably come up.
Working with me
I run a short list. Most engagements start with a paid audit or a single advisory call before either side commits to more.
I take on two to three new clients per quarter, typically in:
- SEO and AI Visibility strategy for digital-first brands
- Competitive intelligence and positioning for operators in hosting, domains, WordPress, affiliate, and adult-tech
- Affiliate program design, audit, and certification
- Digital asset advisory on buy-side diligence, valuation framing, and exit preparation
If you've read this far and think there might be a fit, get in touch .
I answer everything personally.