Hi, I’m Ryan Cruz, an ER nurse turned digital marketer and online entrepreneur. Jesus-follower, husband, father to 4 lovely kids and a frustrated Rock Star(Yes, I joined a band in high school). I have a knack for computers and digital marketing.
In short, I’m a geek.
Ryan Cruz
Co-founder @TRAFFICSALAD
Who is Ryan Cruz?
I’m a former ER nurse and college nursing professor turned digital marketer and entrepreneur by accident.
10 years ago, I was working as a nursing professor in a university in the Philippines.
One day, one of my students asked if they could download and have a copy of my slide presentations so that they could refer to it.
Since there were many students that were asking for it, I decided to launch a free blog on blogspot.com and posted the slide presentation there so anyone could access it anytime they wanted.
I really didn’t know why I started and how I started that blog, but I just kept posting relevant content and information about different nursing subjects.
I put a website traffic widget on the sidebar of that blog and noticed that one day, I was getting more than 500 visits per day.
I thought to myself, that couldn’t be my students, because first, I don’t have 500 students.
And even if I have 500 students, they couldn’t possible visit the site all at the same time.
I started reading more about “website tracking” and that’s when I installed Google Analytics (which is free) to start tracking my website visitors.
Later on I found out that people where visiting my site because they’ve found it when searching on Google.com.
They were typing in several keywords like “nursing lectures”, “nursing topics”, “nursing subjects” and my FREE blogspot was on top of the results.
As I dive deeper, I’ve learned that I’ve accidentally discovered “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO.
I started monetizing it and added my first Google Adsense ads to my “tiny blogs” and made my first passive income from those “nursing blogs”.
Life was good until…
My wife was 5 months pregnant with our first child when we both decided to move and immigrate to Canada.
Having no Canadian experience, I found it very hard to land a decent paying job.
Everything changed.
We had no direct relatives or family to support us financially. We had our “pocket-money” to sustain us for a few months, but that was dwindling fast as the cost of living here in Ontario, Canada was high.
I’m not really sure how we can adapt to our new environment and the pressure was really intense, especially that our first baby is on his way.
Anyone who have immigrated to a NEW country can probably relate to this.
The first 3-6 months were the toughest!
And although, I’m a Registered Nurse by profession, it’s not that easy to get a nursing job in Canada right away.
There are specific and additional requirements that I needed to complete first before I could take the board exams for registered nurses here in Ontario.
So while applying for different jobs within Ontario, I kept working on our “tiny blogs” and those sites started to provide a decent source of income for us until I found a job and received a job offer.
Remember the saying that “when God closes a door, another one opens”.
That’s what He really did for us.
But here’s what totally amazed me of God’s provision.
The job offer that I’ve received had nothing to do with Nursing. I got a job offer to work as an “SEO Coordinator” for a local digital marketing here in Ontario, Canada.
The employer was impressed on how I got “TOP rankings on Google” for various keywords in the first page of the search engines in very competitive “nursing keywords”.
My geeky-ness really paid off.
From being an E.R. nurse to blogger/entrepreneur
I started to improve my skills in the digital marketing world and have realized that I’ve found a new career.
I didn’t stop being employed as a digital marketer.
I continued building my own “assets” and together with my wife we’ve been building valuable websites and sales funnels, earning income with affiliate marketing, courses and ecommerce products.
Slowly, I realized that I’m becoming a digital entrepreneur and I love it!
The best part in all of this is being able to spend time with my wife and kids.
To this day, I’m really happy and thankful to GOD and all the people I’ve met along the way in this wonderful journey.
It has provided for us and have been a great help in building a family here in Canada.
I’ve also helped countless individuals and business owners serve their customers and build profitable businesses online.
Digital Marketing is my passion and I will never stop exploring.
Please feel free to download the free resources on my website, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
I’ve also shared lots of FREE video tutorials on Youtube, including how to use tools and resources that I often use. Feel free to check out those videos on Youtube.
Finally, I would like to share that I’ve learned that when you stick to your God-given talents and combine that with hard work to continuously improve yourself, success is never far behind.
There are no easy way nor shortcuts.
Never stop learning, be honest to others (and to yourself) and ALWAYS give value to others.
Looking forward to hear from you!
Cheers,
Ryan