This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome to Sadosville School, and guess what? Guess what today is? It is, in fact, episode 1600. 1,600, thank you so much for being out there. Thank you for making Sadosville School what it is.
I'm so grateful for you. If you are enjoying the podcast, leave us a quick rating and review. Really appreciate that and tell your friends about the program. That's how it has spread all these years. And of course, as you know, if you've been listening, everything is completely free.
So I'm very happy to reach this milestone together with you. All right, now enough about that. Let's dive into our listener question. We have a listener here with a product review site and their review site is starting off well, which is great. Congratulations on a good start.
But every day they also see how dependent it is on the whims of Google and specifically Google search results. If Google changes its algorithm, they're kind of screwed basically. And that's how these things work, right? That's how product review sites or any website that's highly dependent on Google. You always have that concern in the back of your mind.
So how can you create a revenue stream that's not affected by Google or at least minimize your dependence, which almost sounds kind of like relationship counseling, but I don't usually do that, at least not on Side Hustle School. So we'll talk more specifically about this business in today's question, right after this quick message from our sponsor. Thank you, sponsor. And thank you again, listeners. You're awesome.
[Music]
Hi, Chris. This is Jay Daniel from Charlotte, North Carolina. I've been listening to your podcast for a few years now and reading "The Money Tree" inspired me to start a new side hustle after a few previous attempts failed. I co-founded a product review website and we see a few grand in revenue every month. We would like to continue growing, but every day it becomes more obvious that we are at the mercy of Google algorithm updates and merchant affiliate programs.
We are interested in selling our own digital product like a course or a guide, so that we have a little more direct control over our revenue, but we don't know how to integrate such a product into our existing review site. What is the most efficient way to make a shift like this? Should we start a new site or is there a way to leverage our existing site to develop a revenue stream we have more control over? Thanks for all you do. I look forward to continuing the side hustle journey with all of your other listeners.
- Jay, what's up? Thank you for the question. And hey, first things first, pretty amazing that you've been able to build this product review site to whatever you said, a couple grand, a few grand a month. I mean, that's just awesome. So many of our listeners would love to have accomplished that.
So Jay is ahead of the curve, but like any good side hustle school listener, he wants to go above and beyond, which I respect. And he's thinking ahead, he's like, how can we grow? How can we reduce our dependence? Because he is, as he said, at the mercy of Google algorithms. And what he has identified here is not a unique problem.
This is the challenge faced by any kind of review site. So if you've got a website that's, you know, reviewing certain products and you're making money from affiliate commissions or advertising, that site is going to rise or fall or both based on the whims of a not so small company in Mountain View, California. Of course, that company is Google. So the thing is, even if you're selling a digital guide through this model, it doesn't really address the main issue, which is the source of traffic. So, you know, yes, absolutely increase your revenue streams.
And I do think as Jay mentions, you know, leverage the existing audience for sure. I mean, if you know who those people are, if you understand what they're looking for, and you can provide a guide that meets their needs, then definitely sell it to them. But if Google cuts you off, you still have the same problem because nobody is then buying the guide. So to grow in the field of product reviews, you know, you need to attract followers, not one-time visitors. I think that is the key.
So think about sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Yelp, which are kind of the ultimate review sites, maybe TripAdvisor as well. You know, what if Google cut them off? Like it would be a huge problem for them too, but they also have dedicated followings that go directly to their sites. And so your whole goal is to attract loyal followers. Your whole goal is to give people not just the one-off answer, you know, for what they're searching for.
And that's how they stumble upon your product review site, but a reason to click a bunch of other pages and to keep coming back and to bookmark your site and perhaps even join some kind of email list. Like that's what you want. And, you know, it doesn't always work this way, but in theory, the loyalty also improves your search rankings because ultimately Google wants people who use its service to be happy. They want people to be happy with the information they find. So if visitors are staying longer, if they're visiting more pages and then returning, then it generally means those visitors are happy, okay?
In other words, if you focus more attention on serving your audience and less worrying about the latest algorithm tweaks, then by doing that, you'll be building a backup plan as you go along. But I also don't want to mislead you, Jay or anybody else, because it is a lot of work to do this right. There's a reason why some review sites stand tall above all the others. Lots of review sites out there. Most of them are not successful.
Some are successful at a small level, but there's only a few that are really, really successful. So it is a long road, but that's the general process. And of course, you know, here we are, episode 1600. It's a long road here, but it's filled with all kinds of stories and tips and examples and again, I'm so grateful to share it with you. So thank you listeners.
Thank you, Jay. Thanks to everybody else who's called in or has told somebody about the show. And listeners, if you have a question of your own, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. I'd love to know what you're working on, what you're struggling with and how I can help you or how this community can help you. So I'll be back tomorrow.
I hope you will as well. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
