Tumultuous Relationship Leads to Togetherness Blog

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In what shall be known as Relationship Week here on Side Hustle School, the day after tomorrow I've got a story coming up about a married couple who creates a new income livestream, like an income stream, but an income livestream, providing a service that livestreams weddings. And in an act of no doubt deliberate strategic intent, or perhaps coincidence, today we have a story about a young couple who figures out the secret to an improved relationship. And when they figure out the secret, or at least one of them, let's say, they start a blog, an online course, and a coaching service sharing their methods. So we're gonna look at the origin story of this, how they make it happen, how they're making money, how much money they're making, all that kind of stuff as part of the case study. Oh, and by the way, speaking of relationships, I have really missed the chance to host and speak at meetups for my readers and listeners over the past year.

I'm definitely hoping to get back to it soon, at least in a few cities. I'm also hoping to publish a new design and overall experience on my blog, which is greatly overdue. So I just mentioned those things. In case you're wondering, I have not forgotten. I hope to make more progress in both areas as I work on relationships.

So today's story, tumultuous relationship leads to togetherness blog. That story is coming right up. [Music]

Breaking up is hard to do. No one understood that better than Carolina Bartnick and Gabriel Brinner. During the early period of their relationship, they broke up and got back together no less than three times.

That kind of emotional back and forth takes its toll. So when they reunited a final time, they vowed to do things differently. They read relationship books and had measured conversations until one by one, they worked through many of their problems. What emerged from all that hard work were two people committed to each other. Without all the fighting and drama, they had more time to relax, reflect, and soon became closer than ever.

Am I reading the audio version of the notebook? What's happening here? Okay, this is side hustle school. Let's stay on track. When sharing their story with other couples they knew, they found they weren't alone in the conflict.

In fact, a lot of couples suffered from almost identical issues. That got Carolina and Gabriel thinking. How could they take the lessons they'd learned about building a loving, caring relationship, getting ready to pitch a rom-com pilot, and so on, and get paid? After all, relationship drama is all too common. Carolina was an architect and Gabriel a designer.

They liked their jobs, but also believed they had the skills to build a dating advice app. They envisioned a relationship counselor in your pocket, with tutorials and lessons accessible at all times in a user-friendly way. And in true side hustler fashion, they thought, how hard could it be? Well, it turns out making an app is about as hard as surviving a tumultuous relationship. It's possible, but difficult.

So they broke up with that idea, but renewed their commitment to start some sort of relationship advice side business. And that's when they learned how to make money from blogging. Carolina and Gabriel paid for a $15 hosting package and installed WordPress using a $90 theme. January 2019 rolled around and they launched that blog, simplytogether.co, with 10 articles. The process filled them with all the excitement and nervousness of a first date.

They'd taken a course on blogging that advised them to be selective. So rather than target couples, they focused their content on women who wanted to improve their relationships. Now that actually is an important point. I'll come back to that at the end. Accordingly, they decided to put their marketing efforts toward Pinterest, knowing that the site skewed to a female demographic.

Within a few months, they were receiving 15 to 20 visits per day to the site. Unfortunately, the honeymoon period wore off when Pinterest updated the algorithm, leaving simply together without any traffic from the site at all. Luckily, by that time, their Google rankings began to climb and they started receiving search traffic. They read up as much as they could on SEO and how to improve the site's rankings to gain even more traffic. They also started thinking about how they could make money and becoming affiliates for Amazon was the first recommendation they remembered from their course.

They signed up and started reviewing relationship-related products, such as date night games. Soon afterwards, they made their first money, a total of 50 cents. It showed them that the blogging dream was possible. Just like in their relationship, if they worked hard, the rewards would follow, and hopefully more than 50 cents. They didn't give up on each other and they weren't giving up on their business dream either.

The Amazon commissions climbed slowly, as did both their traffic and conviction. When their visitors hit 25,000 per month, they were able to register for an ad network that pays bloggers to display banner ads. Between that and Amazon commissions, they were now bringing in at least a few hundred dollars a month from the site. But they knew the real money was in creating their own products. So that's what Carolina and Gabriel did next with the Rebuild Your Relationship course.

It took six months to prepare and they released it around one and a half years into the journey. Since they'd been collecting emails on the site, they promoted it to their subscribers and lo and behold, made their first $57 sale shortly after. A huge milestone in their blogging relationship. Still, they didn't stop there. And along with the course, they began offering coaching services.

This opened up an additional revenue stream, which in case you've lost count, takes them up to four different sources. Between their ad revenue, Amazon affiliate income, course sales and coaching, Simply Together now earns the couple an extra $700 per month and counting. [Music]

Awesome. So when I take a look at the Simply Together website, simplytogether.co, the first thing that jumps out at me is something that I mentioned in the story. The headline, which is right at the top, conveniently, since it's a headline, says we help women restore love and connection in their relationship.

And the course is called Rebuild Your Relationship. And I thought it was interesting because I guess the first thought I had was, well, if it's a relationship, doesn't it take two? But because they did their research, what they discovered was at least for their market, which it could be different for lots of different relationships, but at least for their market, it was more important to target one side of that relationship. I do like the headline that appears a little bit lower about their story, A Normal Couple Who Wanted More. That seems very relatable and also kind of demonstrates aspiration.

Now next, let's look at the revenue sources. They've got these four sources, Ad, Revenue, Amazon, Affiliate Income, Course Sales, and Coaching, making about $700 a month. My suggestion, or my prediction, let's say, my prediction is that one of those, most likely the course sales or coaching, is going to be the breakout winner. And it's gonna make up a bulk of the revenue going forward. Once they start making a few thousand dollars a month, most of it's gonna come from one source.

And so I would say, once they figure out what that is, again, most likely it's gonna be course sales or coaching, that's what they should focus on. Instead of just trying to get from four income sources to seven or something, one of them is gonna do much better than the others. All right, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the story. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes, including links to Simply Together, anything else I mentioned in the episode, will be at sidehustleschool.com/1667. 1-6-6-7. Thank you for tuning in today. I hope you'll do something to invest in yourself, get closer to the freedom that's important to you. And I hope you'll subscribe or follow and come back tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]

from the Onward Project.