Financial Blog Sprouts into $35,000/Month Money Tree

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

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In today's story, two friends start an investment blog and it doesn't work very well. Then they ask themselves, what might be better? What is a smarter approach? How can we change it up? And so after making a not so subtle shift to focus more on what their generation needs, they start seeing improved results.

How much improved? We'll get this after earning a grand total of $29 in their first year. They're now making $35,000 a month. Seems like a pretty good improvement to me. How do they do this?

Well, in short, they do it through affiliate commissions and selling guides. But let's look at the strategy, how they made that choice, how they figured out. Okay, we have a good idea, but we're not exactly executing well. We're not seeing the results we want. How do we make a change?

And it's a great example of how making some of those tweaks can help you see much better results. So a registered nurse and financial manager start a blog about money for millennials. They figure out their audience, go on to earn tens of thousands of dollars a month. That's today's story. Stay tuned.

I'm gonna bring you the detailed case study along with some comments and analysis. Coming right up. [Music]

Ben Huber, a registered nurse from Virginia was worried about money. He began to invest into stocks and poured over everything he could to learn about assets, liquidity, and other investment topics in between shifts at the hospital. He knew he wasn't the only millennial who was concerned about finances.

And more specifically, one friend Jeff felt the same way. And from these worries, a business idea sprouted. That business idea became Dollar Sprout. That's why it sprouted, get it? Dollar Sprout is a blog that gave them a platform to share their analysis and perspective on the stock market in a more accessible way.

They wanted to experiment with monetizing content. So they first set it up as a membership site where readers could pay a monthly fee to access and learn more about specific stocks, stock market commentary, anything else they could think of that might be relevant. Well, this first iteration was not a hit. They found themselves competing with large banks and advisory services with lots of money to spend on ads. So it wasn't exactly feasible for them to present themselves as competition.

They knew they could offer value to their readers, but it would be an uphill battle. Now, unfortunately, they didn't learn this right away. It took them the better part of 12 months. But when they did learn, they doubled down on a new blog format that focused more on personal finance. This new iteration of Dollar Sprout would allow them to reach many more people with their content and importantly, their target audience of millennials.

Because as they had learned, a lot of traditional investment advice doesn't apply if you don't have much money. With that refocus in mind, they began churning out content that appealed to that group with posts like 10 ways to make extra money or 20 ways to save money. And once they did that, they soon started seeing consistent monthly traffic rolling into their website. It had been tempting for Ben and Jeff to give up after not seeing results after a few months, but they both knew that success wouldn't happen overnight. It helped that they loved what they were writing about and that they kept a laser focus on their traffic experiments.

So they could ramp up what was working and quit what wasn't. The more time they invested into their side hustle, the more it started to pay off. So how did they go from earning a grand total of $29 in their first year to, as I mentioned in the introduction, earning $35,000 a month? Well, first of all, they invested $200 into web hosting. That was simple.

Then they sat back and waited for their bank accounts to grow. Just kidding. No, they did some work. They focused on low-hanging fruit, as Ben put it, so they could build a base that catered to their strengths. And Jeff put it this way, find a way to build some kind of base income, and that gives you more flexibility and less stress when you move to the planning phase of things when you want to scale.

Now, when they first launched Dollar Sprout, they focused on a subscription-based model, which didn't bring in any revenue, at least not much. And once they switched business models and started to attract more traffic, they began to partner with advertisers that paid them a commission for every purchase or click that came from the Dollar Sprout website. They also bring in money through paid content, but Ben was careful to note that they only review things that they like and use. Otherwise, it's misleading to their audience. It actually lowers trust rather than raises it.

So they were careful about that. And their other main source of revenue comes from templates and worksheets that they have made. Hot sellers like the Ultimate Finance Workbook and Daily Expenses Tracker bring in a large percentage of revenue. And once these tools are made, the work is done since the sale and delivery is automated. Ben says that the key to success, especially since it took them a while, was avoiding shiny objects syndrome.

They held out for consistency as they put in work to watch their status escalate as their traffic grew. They're now cashing in on that consistency. They have both turned their side hustle into their full-time jobs. They're also hiring full-time employees to help them keep up with demand. After all, they've got to keep watering that money tree.

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So to me, it makes sense, especially for a product focused on millennials, that the switch from focusing on investing to focusing on earning/saving money was much more successful. And as they learned along the way, if you don't have a lot of money, if you're still in an earlier phase in your career, you need to make more money, you need to save money, you need to get savvy on that, rather than on where to spend the money that you don't have. And they also switched, in addition to the switch in focus, they switched to a better business model. Their site is really nice and clean, it's not cluttered. A lot of personal finance blogs are just super annoying to look at.

The visuals are just not impressive, at least to me, speaking for myself, but their site is nice and clean. So they have obvious links and lots of different ideas for readers. They do want people to click and go to those advertisers, but they do it in a way that just doesn't seem, I don't know, just super pushy or annoying or dumb to me. And I also like the advice of asking, how can we add even more value? And so they've done that in creating those guides, those tools, which once they are made, the work is done, they can collect the money.

So it seems like it's worked out very, very well. I think it's a great model for a lot of people to follow. Maybe you wanna do it in a different category or topic, but you can, in fact, still pursue this model. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. dollarsproud.com if you wanna learn more about this business.

And of course, many other businesses we have featured over the years. You can find links to all of them at sidehustleschool.com. Archives to the complete Side Hustle School Library, 3,400 plus episodes with new ones dropping every day. Wherever you get your podcasts always free. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.

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