This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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How does a family blog on personal finance grow from zero dollars in income to a grand total of $50 in nine months, then to $2,000 a month, and then to well over $10,000 a month? That's quite a range, of course. Note zero income to $50 in nine months. Took a minute to get started, but then of course it's doing very, very well now. So in this story, we will look at the journey of the savvy couple, a blog operated by a couple who began their journey with a lot of debt and have now, as you might imagine, moved well beyond those days.
Welcome to CIDUS Old School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I am so excited to bring you these daily stories, questions and answers, tips, case studies, all kinds of things that you can use in the new economy to create personal freedom for yourself. Now, one of the things I wanna do with today's story, after I tell you the story, I do a little bit of analysis sometimes or some quick commentary, and I just wanna talk about what works and what doesn't work in these projects, because a lot of them don't work. Like there are a lot of people who have tried to do what the couple in this story have done, and most of those people haven't succeeded.
So what's the difference there? As I said, a bit of analysis after the story, but for now, shout out to our sponsor and then Savvy Couple grows finance blog into six-figure business. [Music]
Keelan and Brittany Klein left college with over $40,000 worth of student loan debt. Brittany's job teaching and Keelan's job in law enforcement only brought in so much money, so they wanted another way to get ahead financially. In 2016, they started a blog called The Savvy Couple.
The blog's mission was to help families like theirs put more money in their pockets so they can spend more time doing the things they love. Sounds good, right? But they weren't the first to try this, so it took some time to get going. Startup costs were less than $100. They didn't have kids at the time, so they gave up watching TV and spent weekends, weeknights, and holidays working to grow the blog.
Nine months in, they made their first $50 from a sponsored post. Keelan says it was the most impactful money they ever made because it represented a tipping point of knowing their hard work was paying off. And by the way, yes, he is a little optimistic. So much so that two weeks later, he told Brittany he needed to quit his job and run the site full-time. Jumping in with both feet that quickly isn't for everyone.
$50 after nine months, I'm ready to go. But in his case, it did pay off. He had a backup plan to become a home inspector if blogging didn't work out, but he was determined to make it work out. While he scaled up the blog, he also found some freelance work teaching English to Chinese students for $20 an hour. But within two months, the blog was making between $2,000 to $3,000 a month.
And he was able to focus fully on that. How? Well, fortunately, Keelan broke down his revenue streams for us, which is what we always like to see inside of social school. I like to get specific, tell you exactly how things work. And for them, in a normal year, 20% comes from advertising.
When a blogger gets into a premium ad network, one of these companies that runs banner ads, one of them is called Mediavine, one's called Adthrive, there's a few others. It can be a real game changer. So as soon as the clients met the qualifications for Mediavine, which at the time was 25,000 visitors in a single month, they applied and were accepted. And once they were in, they started making that $2,000 a month, just with display ads. Another 20% comes from affiliate marketing, where they partner with other companies and earn a commission on sales that come from their blog.
Another 50% comes from products and courses, right? Now we're getting into the real money. The clients began selling their own digital products like budgeting templates and courses through a Shopify shop and teachable. After creating the product, there's almost no overhead. So the return on investment is excellent.
And the remaining 10%, hopefully that all adds up to 100, is from sponsored marketing campaigns for brands. After Heelyn quit his job, they had their first daughter and he became a stay-at-home dad while Brittany continued teaching. He would wake up before 5 a.m. and get in a few hours of productive work before taking on dad duty all day. That year, they grew the site to six figures and paid off their remaining student loans.
Once they became debt-free, they had a month where they made over $43,000 because, in his words, they were hitting on all cylinders and landed a big sponsorship. $43,000 was more than Brittany's entire year's salary as a teacher. So it was a clear sign it's time for her to quit teaching and join Heelyn full-time. The savvy couple is now one of the most popular family finance blogs, reaching millions of readers and profiting over $10,000 a month. While these numbers are impressive, they have adjusted their strategy over time to keep up.
For example, early on, they focused most of their attention on Pinterest, but then they switched, realizing the importance of search engine optimization. So Heelyn says if he had to do it all over again, he would have focused more on SEO from the start. They also try to create content that solves people's problems. They listened to questions from family and friends and wrote posts around that. Some of their most popular articles include frugal living tips that can save thousands of dollars as well as posts about passive income.
Family now has two daughters, ages two and three months. Heelyn still wakes up early to get in his focused work. Then they all have breakfast together and might go for a family walk before Heelyn works for several more hours until lunch. In the afternoon, they switch roles. Heelyn watches the girls while Brittany does her work.
He averages about 25 hours a week while Brittany puts in 15. Their goal is to grow the blog into a household name in the family finance space and generate seven figures a year. They're well on their way. So keep an eye on this savvy couple. [Music]
All right, so great story, inspiring.
I liked it, I hope you did too. Why doesn't it work? In other words, why doesn't it work for every person who tries to create this kind of blog, right? Because with every one of these profiles, especially anything in the lifestyle or influencer space, broadly speaking, I try to approach it with just a bit of careful skepticism because I know so many people haven't been able to achieve what Heelyn and Brittany have. And that's no critique of them.
They have done an amazing job. But for everybody else, I think there are three elements that you can control. Like there is this element of luck, like to be fair. And I think this is true in my life, in my career, in everybody's life, in the world, some things you can't control. But within the elements you can control, there are three elements, story, helpfulness, and consistency.
These are the three elements. And all three of these kind of come through with this particular case study. So Heelyn and Brittany have really focused on their own personal story, like their kind of working class background, their desire to get out of debt, telling that story, sharing their journey very transparently and honestly with their readers. It's building this relationship. But it doesn't stop there.
And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. They think, oh, I'm inspiring. People will want to follow me. But then there's not that core element of helpfulness of like, ultimately, people want to read someone's posts, watch their videos, listen to the podcast, hello podcast, not just because they like that person or that voice, that story, but because it's going to be helpful to them. So it's always good to ask yourself this why question?
Why am I creating this post? Or how is this going to help somebody? Like, what is someone going to take away from it? If they follow a link or they just hear about it, they stumble upon this thing. We don't have a relationship.
How am I going to impact their life in a small yet meaningful way so that they want more? So you got story, helpfulness. Number three, consistency. Just doing that over and over. Nine months to get to $50.
But then now, as you heard, $10,000 a month plus, they had this huge month of $40,000 consistency, just doing it over and over. And a lot of people give up along the way. So you need a compelling story. Above all, you need to be helpful. And then you need to just do that over and over and over.
As I said, luck plays a role too, but you can't change that. So worry about the first three. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to the Savvy couple, those ad networks, anything else I mentioned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/1620. One, six, two, zero.
We are cruising along. I hope you will subscribe and follow and come back tomorrow. Much more is on the way. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
