This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, welcome back to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and today is Labor Day. Or at least if you're listening in real time, today is the first Monday of September. Labor Day in the U.S. and Canada, a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of the country.
As I said, that's in the U.S. and Canada. I think some other countries also observe Labor Day on different dates during the year. And I guess wherever you are, the question is still relevant. What are you laboring for?
Like, what are you hoping to create for yourself? Like, why do you go to work every day? Or let's say you go to work because you have a job, you have to do it, that's fine. What are you trying to create for yourself? What is the freedom and security that you want to see in your life?
What are your goals? What do you hope to achieve for yourself, for your family if you have one? For six months from now, for a year from now, for your long-term future. That's what a side hustle is all about. That's what I'm trying to teach you on this daily show.
And today's story is pretty fantastic. I chose a good one for Labor Day. It is about a target store employee who starts a blog that goes on to make $45,000 a month. I'll just repeat that for emphasis. A target store employee starts a blog that goes on to make more than $45,000 a month, half a million dollars a year.
He's actually a target store manager now, but nevertheless, you might still have the same question I did. Why is he still working at Target? Well, I think he's planning on quitting soon, but more important for our purposes, what was that blog about? How did he get the idea? How did he develop it?
Could there be something like that that you could do? That story's coming up in just a moment. And also, by the way, it's 15 days until the side hustle book comes out. I am busy laboring away to get ready for that. And I can't wait to share it with you.
So more about that soon, but first our story after a quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
For Target store manager Robert Farrington, investing has been a lifelong obsession. From when he first sat down at 13 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 was hooked. And even at the young age of 16, Robert was using that money to invest and grow his long-term wealth, or what would become his long-term wealth, let's say. When he first got to college, Robert was hoping to find some of his peers and share his great ideas and learn from them as well by joining their investment club.
But when he turned up, he was disappointed to find that all the advice they were giving on penny stocks and day trading was advice he not only disagreed with, but also felt was outright bad for students. So in September 2009, he set about starting his blog, The College Investor, to be a transparent voice and share the strategies he felt were more honest and more viable for students. Using a free WordPress theme and less than $100 on a domain name and hosting, Robert published his first blog post and then another and then another. Now, just to be clear, because you probably heard the headline $45,000 a month, this is not a blogs-to-riches story. This took a long time.
He started this in 2009, and he committed to posting three times per week. He realized in the beginning he didn't know much about marketing or writing and creating headlines, but he also thought, well, nobody's really paying attention just yet. So I'll use that time to make mistakes and learn what the people who do read the site respond to. Then if we fast forward a bit over a year later, in January 2011, The College Investor finally made its first $25 of income through an affiliate product sale. Robert had gotten married by that point.
And when he told his wife, she said, "You've invested all this time and only made $25." But he says, honestly, he couldn't have been prouder because he knew his site was no longer just a passion. It was a business or at least a potential one. In all this time, Robert was working full-time. He started working part-time at Target just as a team member. Then he became an hourly supervisor.
And after he graduated, he became an assistant manager and finally a full store manager. So every day he's focused on running the store. And then at night he comes home and works on the blog. And speaking of affiliate sales, that is the main source of income for The College Investor. In blog posts and guides on the site, Robert will recommend a product or a service like an online broker, a real estate investment firm or student loan refinancing.
And if a customer chooses to buy through his link, he receives a commission, sometimes a flat fee and sometimes a percentage of the sale. This requires Robert to consistently create good content and position himself as an authority so that people trust and believe his recommendations. These relationships with the reader can take months or years to build. But once you get the right kind of content with the right recommendation in front of the right reader, well, at that point they're ready to buy. The site went on to make a lot more than $25.
Three years ago, it turned into a six-figure site income and it's now averaging, just as I said, $45,000 a month in income. So it's safe to say he's got something figured out. One of the things that worked especially well for Robert was networking more with people in his niche. For the first couple of years, he worked on his own, didn't make a lot of connections. Then he realized the only way to get his business to more people was to collaborate with people who had larger audiences than him.
So he joined a group where other finance bloggers go to help each other. And he also began attending conferences where he could meet new people. He'd reach out by email to people he wanted to know. He'd share posts and give advice and critique. And only when he'd invested enough value in the other person would he ask for something in return.
He says this strategy has been the most effective way to grow the college investor. He's also focused on a strategy of automation. Because this is a side hustle despite its large income, Robert has focused a lot on trying to use his time more effectively. So for example, he set up email automations and auto responder campaigns. That allows him to send emails and direct people to products and articles even while he's not on the site or when he's not working at all.
Which in turn allows him to generate income while he sleeps. And now in fact, a lot of income. As the founder of the college investor, Robert has always been frugal. That's why he didn't quit his job for a long time even after this huge success. But he says he is finally going to quit his job at Target this month in fact.
Transition himself into focusing on this project full time. And he hopes that this blog he started as a college student in 2009 will go on to become the go to site for student investing in America. [Music]
Well, what an amazing story. Since Robert has been able to create such a success just working part time while going to school full time and working and then working full time as a store manager. I can't imagine what will become of it now that he's giving it his full time attention or at least will be soon.
So first of all, that's amazing. And second, I just want to highlight that he started this in 2009. So a huge success like $45,000 a month doesn't come right away. He built this up week after week, month after month, year after year. In fact, I have a quote from him in our notes.
It said, I found if you commit to publishing an article three times per week for an entire year you have an excellent chance of being successful and making money. I've noticed that 95% of bloggers don't make it past that first year. So if you can just keep going, you can make money. He also says, honestly, sometimes I didn't want to work on it but I would sit next to my wife on the couch and just write while she watched Real Housewives. Now back to me, I'm not sure I completely agree with all that advice or at least let's put some disclaimers on it.
I think it's really important to have the right topic for your blog. So he chose the topic investing which naturally lends itself to some very lucrative affiliate programs. Without the right topic, I think you could write three times a week for years and you wouldn't come anywhere close to making half a million dollars. So having the right topic is essential. And I also think having the right tone and voice, the right means of engaging with those readers and truly connecting with them, I think that's also essential.
But for this, I very much identify with Robert's experience because that's something that comes along with time. And the only way you figure out what your voice is, what the right thing to say to people like how to kind of guide them and help them and truly understand their needs is through practice, is through doing those things three times a week or whatever schedule you commit to. Like in his story, that first year, nothing happened at all except, well, a lot of things happened because he learned. He made mistakes and he learned, didn't make any money. But then more than a year after starting, he made his first $25.
Obviously, that eventually grew to much, much more. And I do agree. It's because of the practice and the refining and just focusing on exactly what his readers wanted. So let that be an inspiration to you on this Labor Day or whenever it is you're listening. You can always labor on your side hustle even if it's not a holiday.
But as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action, so much better. If you wanna find the show notes for today's episode, those are at sidehustleschool.com/247. I'll link up Robert's blog. I'll also link up a manifesto I wrote a long time ago called 279 Days to Overnight Success. That's a bit of my story of becoming a full-time blogger.
I don't know, maybe five or six, seven, eight years ago, whenever that was. I actually wrote a 70-page document kind of outlining my process along with my mistakes and what worked for me. That is totally free on the show notes page. I want to encourage you. I want to support you.
I want to cheer you on as you create your side hustle success story. And in pursuit of those goals, I'll be back with you tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
