This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello. What's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau. I've got a great story for you today.
It is about a sales agency manager who transforms his frustration with online golf advice into a thriving website generating $5,000 in monthly income through multiple sources of revenue. I often talk about creating your own security. Well, that's exactly what this guy's doing. And at the end of the episode, I'll share a few tips on SEO. Search engine optimization.
And none of these tips are technical. They're all simple, basic things you can do to bring more organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic comes from Google results and other search engines when people go and type in something and then your site appears in the listings. Why is this kind of traffic so important? Well, because it's free, first of all.
And also because if you do it right, it can be consistent. And that's what this guy has seen. It's been a big part of his success. And it's all built on providing something that is genuinely useful. So let's say thanks to today's sponsor.
And then I'll tell you exactly how he does it. [Music]
As an avid golfer, John Sherman spent many hours on golf-related websites and forums. He enjoyed the online community he discovered, but he was disappointed by the advice he found in forums, blogs, and videos. After a couple of years of digging through posts, he realized why. The majority of the advice was being given by swing instructors looking to boost their authority, not by actual golfers.
John wasn't just a golfer, he was a high-level amateur player. He also liked to write. So he knew he could write better, more valuable content than what he was seeing elsewhere. After being inspired by other stories he heard of online businesses, he started his own WordPress blog, practical-golf.com. Since January 2015, he's been a sales manager by day and a golf writer by night.
His initial goal was to create insightful content that would outvalue everything else out there, but he didn't focus on SEO at all. In fact, he didn't really know anything about how to rank pages in search engines. Practical golf received most of its visitors through social media for that first year, but John noticed that traffic from Google was starting to become more and more significant. So he began reading up on SEO. Then he started playing with a few keyword tools.
Before long, he was an SEO fanatic. His primary objective was still to write amazing, actionable content, but now he was doing it through a keyword-enlightened approach. He learned how to optimize his content for searchers. He also tried a few other strategies, including quizzes and giveaways, but nothing worked as well as creating content that spoke to his audience and was centered around high-search keywords. As he continued to focus on that, the traffic soared.
John soon began using Google Ads and Amazon affiliate links throughout the site. Once he had several thousand monthly visitors, it was a simple way to monetize, and it quickly began earning him a few hundred dollars a month. Hoping to create another revenue source, John wrote a 30-page e-book called "The Complete Guide to Course Management," and published it on Amazon Kindle for $2.99. This was two years ago, and at the time, there weren't a lot of other golf e-books on Kindle, so it quickly began producing another couple hundred dollars a month. Six months later, John would publish his second e-book, "101 Mistakes All Golfers Make," and "How to Fix Them." He priced that one at $5.99, and because of his growing authority, it would go on to become a Kindle bestseller for several weeks.
A little over a year into the hustle, John started working on a premium membership program. He was enjoying the income from the affiliate links, ads, and e-books, but he believed he could create another income source if he produced some exclusive content. It took nearly six months to put together. He wanted to include videos from 10 other high-level golfers that he'd met through social media, and coordinating them was the biggest challenge. Some of them knew how to edit their own videos, and John offered to do that part himself for a few that didn't.
It was a lot of work, but John eventually created professional-quality tutorial videos a few dozen training games to make practicing fun, and a series of audio recordings with successful golfers. There was nothing like it on the internet, at least nothing of that quality. He wrote up a landing page, set the lifetime access price at a low $50, and then created the members-only area of his site. Sales didn't skyrocket overnight, but the premium membership did grow and continue to sell over the course of a few months. Just as John hoped, income from his premium content eventually surpassed the income from ads and affiliate links.
And as he continued to create better and more targeted content, the higher the income went from month to month from all sources. In any given month over the next year and a half, John would see his earnings range from $500 to $6,000, depending on the shopping season and any media coverage he received for his premium membership. It's a pretty great situation, especially when you take into account the fact that his startup costs were around $100, but John wanted it to become more. Fast forward one more year of steady organic growth through intentional SEO. Practical Golf now averages 40 to 50,000 unique monthly visitors, and generates an incredible $5,000 to $8,000 a month of pure profit.
That's right, $5,000 to $8,000 a month. John is now nearing the point where he thinks he'll be able to quit his job and become a golf writer and consultant full-time within the next two years. To get there, he's mostly gonna continue his existing strategy of writing reader-focused content, creating articles and tips that are truly helpful, but he's also preparing to launch a few new tools. One development coming soon is an interactive map that enables golfers to find nearby courses and instructors. He thinks that a paid listing option for those courses and instructors may create another strong source of income.
John's thrilled to be earning so much from something he's so passionate about, and another big joy is in seeing the community he's created and the relationships he's built through this project. In fact, he says he's made a ton of friends from around the world, and he often meets up with them whenever he travels. We might say he's hit a hole in one with this project, and his driving ambition has served him well. Well, what a great story, $5,000 to $8,000 a month doing something you're passionate about. Does that count as a success to you?
I think it's a pretty tremendous success. And speaking of the subject of golf, we could also say, even though it wasn't a foregone conclusion, he decided to tee off and hope for the best. He wanted to drive a wedge between his job and his only source of income. Is he out of the woods yet? Is he out of the woods?
Is he out of the woods? Well, $5,000 to $8,000 a month is pretty great. He's effectively building 18 holes of security for himself. How's that, by the way? You're welcome.
All right, so I promised you some tips on SEO. Couple of things that John did really well. SEO doesn't have to be this super technical thing, by the way. If you get a couple of big picture things right, you're gonna be better off than 80% of people out there. And especially for a project like this where he's essentially building a blog.
Most important thing is to choose a focused topic. And something like golf instruction is huge. Like tons of people are searching for that topic. It is competitive, like there's a bunch of stuff out there. But again, his theory, going back a couple years, was that a lot of it was kind of biased.
It was mostly swing instructors trying to boost their authority, as opposed to actual golfers trying to help other actual golfers. So he noticed a gap there, and he really focused and honed in on that. And by the way, I think I've mentioned this before, but golf is also the kind of thing where to play golf, you have to spend money. So it very naturally lends itself to affiliate links, to ads, and then to eventually creating his own products like he did. Second tip is to make sure you choose the right keywords.
So all those people out there searching for golf instruction, what are they actually searching for? Like what are the words and phrases they use when they go to Google? And there are a couple of tools you can use to make this easy. This process can be like testing. What you think is true might not actually be true.
So it's really important to actually use one of these tools because you might realize there are a lot of people searching for a phrase that you wouldn't have considered. And speaking of tools, my last tip is to use a simple plugin. John had built a WordPress site, which is just like the Side Hustle School site, like a lot of people's sites out there, especially knowing who's doing a blog. Well, there are some really simple plugins you can get, which again, are either free or low cost. They tend to have a free version and then you can upgrade for the premium one.
And once you know what your keywords are, these tools are gonna help you optimize your pages. So basically they will do for you automatically what a lot of people spend a lot of time doing manually. So choose a focus topic, choose the right keywords and use a simple plugin. And last but not least, bonus tip number four, be consistent, be solid, keep coming out with more stuff. If you say you're gonna publish twice a week, publish twice a week.
That's my principle with the show every single day. It's gonna be here. It's a very simple thing, but I really do believe that over time, that consistency can give you an edge. So there are a lot of golf websites out there, of course, but John has been able to build a name for himself with practical golf because of all those things. But I think most of all, because he's truly helping people.
So I hope that is helpful to you today. I hope you do one thing today to get you closer to this kind of freedom where you have this reliable second source of income or third source of income, whatever it is. Maybe you can look toward quitting your job at some point, or maybe you just have that money coming in and you're saving that money for something, or it's just nice to have. Like it's your money, it's your freedom. You can do with it, whatever you want.
My goal with side hustle school is to help you make that happen so that you can then pursue your own goals, live your own dreams, whatever's important to you. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Those show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/409. If you're enjoying the show, do me a favor, tell your friends about it. Use the hashtag side hustle school online, send them to sidehustleschool.com, or just take their phone and show them how to subscribe.
It's free, it's every day, it's helpful. With that, I will sign off, but of course I'll be back tomorrow. I hope you'll join me for it. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
