This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome, welcome, what's up? So glad you're here. This is Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Answering your questions about starting a side hustle.
Well, that's because it's called Side Hustle School, but a side hustle really is an income generating project that you start apart from your day job. It's all about creating more freedom and opportunity for yourself. Financial security is a great thing. It allows you to do more of what's important to you, which is the ultimate goal. Now, I got a great listener question today about how to market and grow a blog focused on information for couples where one of them is living outside the country.
So it's an immigration issue. And this longtime listener is an immigration attorney. And she's starting a series of courses for these couples who are separated by borders, trying to help people come to the United States in this example on a fiance visa or a spousal visa. And so the blog is going to support the business, but she's struggling a bit with it. Now, I love this question, as I said, because I always get excited, first of all, when I hear about listener projects.
I'm so glad to know that people out there are taking action, moving forward, starting things. I also feel good when I have a good answer for their question. Like, I feel like I can actually be helpful, which I don't always have a good answer. And I try to be clear, you know, about how strong I feel about my opinion. And I also think, lastly, that this is helpful for a lot of other listeners because we have like the trifecta here.
A lot of people out there who are starting content-based projects, anything to do with a blog or a video series or a podcast or just anything where you're trying to establish yourself as an authority in a specific topic. Well, that's what this is all about. And this is a wonderful example. So we're going to dive in. The question is how to grow a blog for couples separated by borders.
And it's coming up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]
Hi, Chris, this is Katie from Boulder, Colorado. And I've been listening to the show since the beginning. I'm a self-employed immigration lawyer and my side hustle is Honey Visa School, which is a series of online courses to help people bring their partner to the United States on either a fiance or a spousal visa without hiring a lawyer. My question is, I know there's a market for this service, but how do I get the word out and grow my following?
I created a blog for Honey Visa School, but I'm struggling to promote it. How does a blog become popular, especially when the topic is personal and not something a lot of readers are going to repost on social media? Also, I've previously marketed my firm through informative talks to community organizations, but I'm not sure how to adapt this for my side hustle because of the pandemic. Have you heard of anyone doing this successfully? Thanks, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
[Music]
Awesome, very cool idea here. Thank you so much, Katie, for calling in and good work on this project. I think it's pretty cool. Let's all go check out the Honey Visa School. Great name, honeyvisa.com.
Also great website, right? Good name, good website. The fact that Katie is an immigration lawyer is important. I think it's actually vital, especially to the whole promise of her message and the courses that she's developing. She's not just somebody who has looked online for some answers like she has a background in this.
So she has authority, there's a clear market need, and I think it's also the kind of thing that people will definitely pay for if she can demonstrate that value proposition. So she has to find the right people and then demonstrate the value proposition, which is a fancy way of just saying like, convince them that it's actually helpful, that it's worth exchanging money for. Now, I actually don't think the pandemic is a hindrance to any of that. In fact, it might give her perhaps an opportunity to refocus because giving talks to community organizations can be helpful in some ways. It can be helpful in terms of the relationship building, can be helpful in terms of just getting some experience and maybe understanding more of what questions people have, what exactly they're looking for and how she can provide it, et cetera.
But the much larger audience is online, right? So I think that's actually where her focus needs to be. So where can she find those people? Now, she's approaching this question from the lens of looking at the blog, right? How can I grow my blog?
And the blog might be the answer. But I think overall what she needs to do is create some really detailed, informative pages that could be blog posts or just long form articles. Probably a lot that she could write just by making a list of topics and common problems. And this is not just for people to post them on social media. Like she mentioned, like people don't share this kind of stuff.
I think the word still spreads, whether they're posting it on their Instagram or not, but also for SEO. Because if for Katie, it's her goal to become the authority in this space. It's not just about getting traffic to my blog, it's about becoming the authority in this space. So when I say long form, like I took a look at the Honey Visa site and most of those blog posts are really kind of short. Just really short, they're all accurate, they're providing good information.
But I think like the long form article needs to be really, really helpful on its own. Then of course it can also promote the course that is for sale. But just providing really detailed information on the front end is good. Now there are forums and groups where people go to search for these answers. Like I don't know exactly where they are, but they those exist.
And think about that TV show 90 day fiance, which I've never actually seen, but I've heard about it. So maybe even posting in some of the fan forums for that or the subreddit or anything like that. So I honestly think there's a lot of potential to keep working on this and building it out over the next year and probably beyond. So I look forward to hearing what Katie does with it. Overall, I just think like the more you can present yourself as the authority, the more you can provide detailed answers, whether it is through the blog or the articles, or it could be a whole other medium.
You know, it could be YouTube or a podcast or something else. Anything you can do to grow your authority there is going to help. So good luck and listeners, if you got a question, come to sodasylskull.com/questions. We're gonna keep featuring them for the rest of the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a good day, good day, morning, afternoon, evening, whatever it is.
I'll be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
