Marc Norris was born and raised in Saskatoon and learned about business from an early age around the dinner table. His parents were accountants and would talk about the businesses that they had been working with each day which cultivated an entrepreneurial spirit within him. As a child, he dreamed of running a business that would provide jobs to people in his community.
He had his first real taste of being an entrepreneur in 2002 when he bought his first three websites off of eBay. At the time, he ran 2% of the world’s pay-per-click search engines and discovered that he could make money off of the internet. He added a few more paid directories at the time, a Canadian business blog, and started to publish a number of e-books that helped online marketers get free paid advertising for their businesses.
As his business grew, he tried a number of different sites and niches including providing advice on home plumbing repairs, a network of paid to click websites, and hundreds of sites selling products through eBay and Amazon. He spent time learning ways to make money online, and testing out methods to see what worked. Whether it was working to create automatic systems to build affiliate websites, or working to rank any one of his many sites, he enjoyed every moment working on his own business from home.
It wasn’t until he started his first proxy website back in 2007 that he saw significant growth in his business. He built a small network of proxy sites as a test and within the first year, his sites were providing a safe and easy way to surf anonymously online to more than 250,000 users per month. By 2012, more than half a million users were using his free proxy service each and every month.
Marc worked in other areas as well, and he became known for being able to create quality blog content. Writing had always been one of his passions and he took the opportunity to monetize it. He started a small writing firm that wrote for private clients as well as doing contract work for some of the major SEO firms online. It provided his a way for the first time in his business career to provide jobs to others and his small firm was putting out tents of thousands of words of content each and every day.
In 2016 Marc continues to provide content and marketing services to select clients and has changed much of his story-telling to video. But he still loves to write and provides content here and other properties across the internet. He is always keeping an eye open for opportunities to monetize and he is hustling every day.
Family Life
Marc’s greatest love is his wife and children. He loves to spend time with his four kids and you can see him laying on the living room floor playing a board game, flying a kite outside with the kids, and if you are lucky, might see him sliding down a hill on his crazy carpet. He is a big kid at heart, and loves to play with his children whenever he can.
Municipal Politics
In 2012, Marc became the mayor of Conquest, Saskatchewan. He wanted to participate in making his community a place where you would be happy to raise his children, and over the years he has done that. He loves the challenges associated with his role and the opportunities to engage with the residents to make their village a wonderful place to live.
Other Interests
While Marc spends most of his time on his entrepreneurial journey, with his family and as the mayor, he has other interests as well. He loves computers and spends time fixing them (as a side business), loves watching movies, and can’t help but smile while playing DDR (Dance, Dance Revolution).