This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to Side Hustle School. It is a brand new week. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Thrilled to welcome you here. We're all about helping people make extra money.
And not just extra money, although that's good too, but something that perhaps signifies something greater in your life. Something greater that gives you an option, a possibility, a potential, an opportunity to do something different, to live the life that you want. We do that in the form of case studies stories, telling you a different story every day of somebody out there, perhaps someone just like you, who is finding a way to create that freedom for themselves. All right, so last week we had a story just a couple of days ago, actually, about a blog that was just getting started. So that was fun to look at something that's kind of new and say, okay, this just started.
What can we learn from it? And I believe she was doing something like $1,500 a month. So now let's flip it. Let's kind of flip that whole process and look at a more established money-making blog that is doing very well. And this one has been running for 10 years, so long trajectory, lots of work, of course, but the person running it has earned an annual six-figure income every year for the past four.
And yes, this is, again, from a blog. The topic that she writes about, which we'll get into in the story, is budget weddings. This is something that has a large recurring target market, lots of people getting married, lots of people want to do it without spending a ton of money. And by working on it so diligently for so long, its owner has built an asset that isn't likely going away for a very, very long time, if ever. I know for a lot of our listeners, that is the goal, to create that kind of asset, that passive income that you can go to sleep and wake up the next morning and see that you made some money.
Talked about that a little bit in the weekly recap yesterday of somebody who had built that kind of success for themselves, wasn't sure if they should feel guilty about it or not. In my opinion is not only do you not have to feel guilty, this is the aspiration of many people. So if we can get some of our listeners closer to that aspiration, then we're doing a good job and I want to do an even better job. So with that set up in mind, stay tuned. I got a quick little thank you to our sponsor and I'll tell you about the savvy bride who turns budget weddings into a six-figure success.
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Jessica Bishop had just become engaged and was excited to walk down the aisle. She also fretted over the expense of it all. She didn't want one of the biggest moments of her life to be financially crippling. So from the beginning, she looked for ways to cut corners and save money, yet still had the wedding she'd always dreamed of. There was no other choice.
She was working as a graphic designer, earning entry-level pay. She was gonna have to get married on a budget or not at all. And the latter was not an appealing option. So during the planning process, Jessica became completely consumed by all things wedding related. Almost every waking moment, she was thinking of something she had to plan, actually planning it or making sure the plan already set was coming together.
She often found herself venting to family and friends and anyone who'd listened about her upcoming nuptials. It became so regular that she started to feel self-conscious that it was all she could talk about. So rather than risk gaining a reputation as a bridezilla, Jessica came up with another way to get out the thoughts inside her head. She chose to start a blog, a place where she could write about her trials and tribulations around planning a wedding as a frugal bride to be. Though she didn't realize it at the time, she was about to tie a side hustle knot and make another long-term commitment.
Unlike the wedding itself, where every intricate detail was planned, the blog had very little thought put into it, at least at first. Jessica simply wanted a space to share what she had learned with other people on the same journey to create their perfect wedding. And to keep things simple, she decided to launch on WordPress.com, the free hosting platform. She called it the Budget Savvy Bride. What can you say?
It had a nice ring to it. Many people start blogs but fail to be consistent with posting content. Jessica didn't want to leave an empty site jilted at the altar. So she began creating content straight away. Her first few articles were detailed around wedding planning and how to save money.
And since she was her own target market, her advice instantly resonated with people. She began attracting an audience of brides and engaged couples. But it would take six months of writing before having her first win in the form of free swag. A bridal company offered her a veil and headpiece to use in her own wedding. It was a nice money-saving perk and proof that maybe, just maybe, the Budget Savvy Bride could become something more than just a hobby.
So she kept at it. After one year of writing, the site was receiving 1,000 visitors a day and 50,000 page views per month, mostly through Google. For Jessica, it was like a celebrity wedding full of guests visiting her every single day. It was an incredible feeling to know that many people were interested in what she had to say. She never thought the blog would have such a good reception.
Around the same time, she received her first advertising request and the money started to flow. Not a lot at first, but then more arrived. In fact, two years into the journey, Jessica was earning as much from her blog as she did at her day job. But instead of quitting to go full-time, she reinvested her profits into learning, attending conferences and educating herself through courses. A couple more years down the line, a big life change occurred.
Jessica and her husband, which by the way they got married, decided to move to New York City. By now she'd been blogging for four years and it was time to take this side hustle relationship more seriously. Instead of looking for work when they hit the ground in the Big Apple, Jessica put all her efforts into the budget savvy bride. At this stage, the blog was on its own domain name and had a large bank of content, along with regular streams of income through advertising deals and sponsored posts. With extra time at her disposal, Jessica created more and better content.
She updated the articles she'd written in the past, making them invaluable resources. She also spent countless hours coming through message boards and forums to come up with new content ideas. She realized she was no longer her target market, now that she was married, so she had to make sure she was thinking like her ideal audience. Soon, she was receiving over 500,000 visitors per month and reaching couples all over the world. She'd built relationships and arranged deals with big name brands in the wedding space.
This brought about new revenue streams in the form of affiliate commissions, along with more branded sponsored posts. By working hard, the blog had its first six-figure year in 2015, earning over $100,000 in net income. It was a huge moment for Jessica, and it also hasn't stopped with similar success coming in every year since. Then in 2017, a new opportunity came knocking when Jessica was offered a deal to write her own book. The topic was planning a wedding on a budget, surprise.
It was released in 2018 and went on to sell over 50,000 copies in its first year. Quick side note as an author, that's really great. 50,000 copies in year one is a pretty amazing number. Lots of books out there, even from authors that you've heard of, don't sell nearly that well. Through hard work and consistent effort, Jessica has built an exhaustive resource for couples wanting to save money on their wedding.
Although the path hasn't always been romantic, she has no regrets about enthusiastically saying I do to this opportunity. [Music]
Awesome, big congratulations to Jessica. I always love these stories of six-figure blog successes, or just any significant success with a blog, since that's kind of how I got started doing stuff, at least the second phase of my career that began about 10 years ago. I started blogging and had no aspirations of really making money with blogging. It was more just like, got a message to share, we'll figure it out as we go.
But of course it turned into a lot of stuff for me as well. So really cool. I also was reminded, kind of a contrast here, just a comparison, with episode 184. And that episode was called "Wedding Bells Ring Brighter" if the bride's not broke. That story is actually gonna be featured in the upcoming "100 Side Hustles" book.
It's a really fun story of a woman who's also kind of working in the frugal bride space. It's a pretty significant space, like I said, large market. And her business isn't content per se. She has like a product-based business. It's like a service business that's renting a product, like headpieces, like tiaras, like, I don't know, a bunch of other stuff, whatever brides need.
And she's also built that to a pretty significant level with obviously just a very different strategy and approach. And so, here you've got one project that is product-based, the other one that is a content business, and they provide different kinds of passive income. So actually both really strong businesses in the sense that you built this asset, it'd be hard for somebody else to come along and take it away. It can earn for you for a long period of time, especially if you look after it. But they're a little different because with the product-based business, she's still gotta do a lot of work or at least oversee, make sure that a lot of work takes place in terms of shipping out the different items, receiving them, customer service, and so forth.
But on the other hand, with a content-based business, that's kind of dependent on Google, on search rankings, or some other factor. So neither one of them are going away, but just like everything, there are pros and cons. So to find businesses, this one in episode 184, which we will link up in the show notes. Those notes are at sidehustleschool.com/849. Episode 850 coming up tomorrow.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Go and do something for yourself today. Invest in yourself, even for just a few minutes. Maybe take one small step towards something that you believe in. I hope you'll do that today.
Until next time, my name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
