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What It's About
A personal finance junkie builds a blog to half a million in annual income, all while managing a Target store.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
Committing to posting three times per week on the blog, Robert decided to use his first year as a blogger to learn the trade. He didn’t know anything about marketing or writing and creating headlines, but since nobody was really reading the site anyway, he could afford to make mistakes and learn what the people who did read the site responded to.
Any new endeavor you may embark on is going to require a little trial and error. Create your own trials and A/B Testing in order to determine what your audience is looking for.
Fun Fact
When Robert first got to college, he was hoping to find some of his peers and share his great ideas by joining their investment club. But when he finally turned up, he was disappointed to find out that all of the advice they were giving—on penny stocks and active trading—was advice he not only disagreed with but also felt was outright bad for students.
So, he set about starting his own blog, The College Investor, to be a transparent voice and share the strategies he felt were more honest and viable for students.
Notes from Chris
Episode 247
For Target Store Manager Robert Farrington, investing has been a lifelong obsession. From when he first sat down at thirteen years old to help his dad with his taxes, to a few years later when he received $1,000 from his Grandfather to invest, he became hooked. When Robert first got to college, he was hoping to find some of his peers and share his great ideas by joining their investment club. But when he finally turned up, he was disappointed to find out that all of the advice they were giving—on penny stocks and active trading—was advice he not only disagreed with but also felt was outright bad for students. So, he set about starting his own blog, The College Investor, to be a transparent voice and share the strategies he felt were more honest and viable for students. In January 2011—almost a year and a half of writing later—his blog finally made its first $25 of income through an affiliate product sale. When he told his wife she said, “You’ve invested all of this time and only made $25?”, but Robert couldn’t have been prouder. He knew his site was no longer just a passion, but a business. These days, Robert's side hustle is now averaging a remarkable $45,000 per month in revenue, and we think it’s safe to say that Robert knows what he’s doing. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:- The College Investor: Learn how to crunch the numbers over on Robert's resource blog
- Wordpress: Robert used Wordpress to create The College Investor, and here you can learn how to install your own Wordpress site in 5 minutes!
- Drip: The free email marketing automation integration Robert used in order to streamline his day to day processes
- 279 Days to Overnight Success: In my free manifesto, I explain the steps I took to start my own blog, The Art of Non-Conformity and gain attention from readers
- Queer Punk Artist Starts Personal Finance Workshop: A manager for a non-profit organization who describes herself as a queer punk artist creates a series of personal finance classes
- Indian Personal Finance Blogger Rings Up $4,000/Month: Tired of the guilt associated with consuming coffee while pregnant and breastfeeding, a biomechanical engineer creates a line of coffee bean options that keep Mom happy and baby healthy
