This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, Cytos School listeners. Thanks for tuning in today. It's Chris Guillebeau, your host. We're gonna jump into a question from Ethan in Toronto. Ethan is a loyal listener and a fan of personal finance, personal finance, interesting industry, lots of opportunities for profit, lots of opportunities for educating people and for creating tools and resources.
It's kind of like health and wellness, just a big area. And of course, the more you can specialize, the more successful you're going to be. We might get into some of that in the answer to the question. Now, if you've ever thought about turning financial savvy into a blog or perhaps a TikTok account, we're gonna talk about both of those. Join us as we outline the steps for launching and monetizing an expertise in budgeting or investing.
Again, Ethan, our listener caller today, keen on learning the essentials for launching both these projects, in his case, a blog and a TikTok. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Stay tuned. His questions coming up.
Quick shout out to our sponsor. I appreciate our sponsors. I appreciate you, our listener as well. Stay tuned. [Music]
Hi, Chris.
I'm Ethan from Toronto. As a long time finance enthusiast and a regular listener of your podcast for the past six months, I'm inspired to start my own personal finance blog. My goal is to share practical advice and tips for managing personal finances and such. What are the key steps to launching a successful finance blog? And how can I effectively monetize it while maintaining credibility and providing real value to my readers?
[Music]
Ethan, the key to having a successful personal finance blog is establishing a voice, a unique voice, like your own perspective. It's not just your own lifestyle and your own personal story. It's also the voice you use to bring to topics or other people's stories, whatever it is that you're trying to share through the blog and or the TikTok channel. And then you want to be helpful. I think the people who have succeeded the most in this world, they have established that voice.
They have been relentlessly helpful day after day, providing tips, advice, how-to, analyses, and then also they have monetized, okay? So that's the second part of the question, right? You establish the blog, you develop the voice, you share unhelpful topics, you reach people, you respond to comments and so on, and then don't forget the monetization. So for that, in personal finance, there are a lot of opportunities. That's why it's a good space to be in.
So affiliate marketing is huge in the personal finance world, especially with credit cards and other bank account bonuses. They often pay quite well. So that's why there's lots of people going into this world. Sponsored content, the same thing. I knew somebody who wrote a personal finance blog and would get very large offers for sponsored posts.
I was often surprised. And to his credit, he was very selective and didn't take many of them just because he had built so much trust and loyalty with his audience, but that is definitely a revenue source. TikTok has a creator fund. If you're going that route, as your views go up, you can make more money. And you kind of put these three things together, the voice that you develop, that storytelling style, the how-to, the helpfulness, and the monetization, which could also include selling digital products like eBooks or online courses, right?
Lots of ways to do that. And you just kind of do that over and over, right? And you get better at each part of it. Some people are better at one part than the other, of course, but you really need some version of all three to succeed in this world. So Ethan, wishing you well.
Let us know how it goes, especially being from Canada. I know a number of personal finance bloggers focused on the Canadian market or who are based in Canada, but right. Pretty deliberately for a broad North American market, including a majority of readers in the United States. Lots of ways to do it. Best of luck.
Listeners, let me know what you're working on this year. www.sidehustleschool.com/questions. I'm on social media every day as well. 193 countries on Instagram, Chris Gillibo everywhere else. And of course we have a new episode of the podcast every single day, seven days a week.
That's it for now though. Once again, I'm Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
