Our Team

Aaron and Tristan established its predecessor, Studio 56 in 2014. Based in Melbourne, this digital marketing agency offered strategies and solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. Its results were mixed, to say the least, as technological limitations and lack of safeguards undermined clients’ campaigns.

The brothers’ struggles continued for two years, but at least they were getting somewhere. Slowly but surely, they began to uncover the root causes of their SEO problems. One example was that they couldn’t review the quality of their client’s links, especially before placing an order.

It became clear to them that outsourcing some of their services were no longer an option. As a result, they created their own outreach team, personally trained in the art of ethical link building. The company also changed its name to NO-BS Marketplace to represent its newfound ethos: no-nonsense link building.

Its first clients came from BlackHatWorld, an online forum for SEO professionals and enthusiasts. In the first month, the team generated AUD$50,000 worth of backlinks. Things were looking up for the then-startup.

Despite initial successes, the company’s link building service still had severe limitations. Demand swelled to the point that it took the team an average of three months to complete an order. Delays risked clients’ off-page SEO being obsolete by the time they go live, if at all.

The solution: develop a more efficient system using the technology available at the time. It led to the creation of the NO-BS Marketplace platform, a place where users could control their SEO campaigns down to the smallest detail. One year into its operation, the platform generated AUD$500,000 in sales and helped grow the company by 10% monthly.

The platform saw much success over the next two years, but it also cranked demand up to 11. Even a later expansion of the team wasn’t enough to handle the rush of orders coming in. Because of this, the platform underwent the first of several rebuilds, costing more than AUD$100,000 and taking six months to complete.

Meanwhile, as part of the rollout of its account-managed services, NO-BS Marketplace opened its first office in Geelong, south of Melbourne.

Between the COVID pandemic and widespread social unrest, few would ever doubt that 2020 was the worst year of this generation. Nevertheless, lockdowns weren’t enough to stop NO-BS Marketplace from doubling its growth. It even managed to establish a second office in Melbourne itself in preparation for the next wave of new services.

The company added content and SEO to its growing list of solutions, augmenting its link building capabilities. In addition, it decided to close its offices in Geelong and Melbourne to go fully remote, better coordinating with its worldwide staff.

Another major overhaul of the platform followed two years later, introducing new features such as PR links and a more accessible publisher database. The pricing model was also improved to offer discounts for clients buying in bulk.

Having achieved a market value of eight figures at this point, NO-BS Marketplace was ready to proceed with the next stage of its business development. It set up digital hubs (like this one) in several U.S. cities. Look forward to more hubs in the coming years.