It wasn’t long ago (1 year ago) where I thought making $3k/month from 1 personal finance website I worked on part time would be too hard to achieve. I had always enjoyed reading personal finance sites and had been making smaller niche websites for a while but my plan was to combine these passions and make a larger website discussing the problems recent graduates were having paying off their student loans.
Building the site has been a lot of fun especially when the limited time I had (full time job) got cut to even less when my first son was born 5 months into the process.
In this post I am going to go through what I have done over the last year(10 months to be precise) to build up my website and hopefully include some tips along the way that other personal finance website owners may find useful.
Plus, at the bottom I include the number 1 reason why I believe people fail to make more money with a personal finance blog.
This Post Includes…
- Picking My Idea (Blue Ocean Strategy Tip)
- Creating the Website (No Magic Sauce Here – Just WordPress Best Practices)
- Creating the Content (Using Writers on ODesk)
- Promoting the Site (The 5 Strategies I Used To Promote My Site)
- Monetizing The Site (How Email and AdSense failed and another strategy worked)
Picking My Idea:
When I was coming up with my idea I had recently finished listening to the book Blue Ocean Strategy again which talks about identifying opportunities where overlapping markets leave opportunities to leverage.
Because I had recently paid off my student loans I was interested in helping others with my story and some helpful resources.
Using the Blue Ocean Strategy thinking I decided I would sit between the PF blogs I enjoyed reading and the Banks/Government/University financial aid websites.
Once I knew the audience I wanted to serve I defined the key overriding problem the site would be dedicated to resolving…
“How to pay off your student loans quickly without giving up living”
Creating the Website:
Having built many websites in the past and having a few VA’s working for me this step was relatively easy.
I picked a great premium theme from StudioPress (Education Theme), had my VA install it and set it up following fairly standard WordPress best practices.
The logo I had created was done on Fiverr and looks better than a lot I have created for a lot more than $5!
Initially I hosted the website on HostGator but then later moved it to the much much faster WPEngine host.
More details on setting up the site – here
Creating the Content:
I wrote a lot of content at the start but then also used oDesk to have writers create articles for the site. All the articles were reviewed and edited as needed before they went on the site.
Without outsourcing the content creation there is NO WAY I would have had time to grow my site the way I did.
For all the articles I created the title of the article based on some keyword research (Using Long Tail Pro) just to identify that there are some people searching for it. I did not give myself any restrictive rules about the number of search terms per month I was going after.
My 5-Part Promoting Strategy:
If I had done no promotion I believe my site would have died a very quiet death. For competitive niches like the personal finance/student loan niche without promoting my site it would have been difficult to get any attention.
The number one rule I have for all my promotion strategy is that it must pass the following question…
“Does this add value to a human?”
If the answer is no – I don’t do it!
Part 1 – Blog Commenting + Guest Posting:
When I started my site I had already been a reader of a lot of personal finance sites and knew I wanted to be active in the comments to introduce myself to the great community of sites.
Through blog commenting and natural email outreach I was able to secure some guest posts on top personal finance blogs.
These guest posts resulted in even more opportunities for guest posting, and also helped with my SEO efforts.
More details on how I systematize my guest posting campaign – here
Part 2 – YouTube Videos (With my VA’s Help):
YouTube, as a lot of people know, is the second largest search engine in the world. I used simple videos to drive traffic to my site, backlinks to my site and make my site more engaging.
These videos were quick to produce by having my VA turn an article into a PowerPoint presentation I then used Camtasia and did a voice-over. Once the video was created I uploaded it to DropBox and my VA did the rest…uploading the video to YouTube, MetaCafe, Vimeo and the slideshow to SlideShare. MetaCafe, Vimeo and SlideShare all built links back to the YouTube video to help it gain exposure in Google.
With only about 5 to 10 minutes of work on my end I was able to get some quality content created!
Part 3 – Expired Domains:
This is an advanced SEO technique but let me give you a quick overview of how I used it…
Imagine if a company used to sponsor a scholarship and had a website dedicated for it. Then for whatever reason they no longer offered the scholarship and the domain expired.
My strategy is to then buy that domain and put on it an article talking about what happened to the Scholarship, a list of other related scholarships and some links back to my website. By doing this I get highly relevant authoritative backlinks going back to my site along with some traffic. These links help my site rank higher and provide value to the person visiting the site.
I won’t get into the complex details of finding, evaluating, setting up and benefiting from these expired domains, I go into a lot of detail (8000 words worth) at my site – guide to using expired domains.
Part 4 – Web 2.0 Properties:
Because I only want the best quality articles on my website not all the articles I outsource make the cut. For the ones that don’t make the cut I put them on a WordPress.com site or on one of my expired domain sites.
I have a document I share with my VA to make sure that these Web 2.0 sites are created the way I want and simply send them the handful of articles to build the site and they take care of the rest.
Part 5 – Resource Pages + Outreach:
This is my favorite part of my overall strategy! It revolves around creating an incredibly useful resource and then letting people know about it. Here is how I systematize the very labor intensive process…
- Identify a resource that is needed (example – list of grants for single moms)
- I have my VA create a giant spreadsheet of all the grants that meet my criteria
- I have a writer create a useful article talking about tips to apply and the most popular ones
- Then my VA combines the article and the table into a giant resource post
- Using a script I give to my VA she sends emails to every grant on the page asking to help promote the resource by sharing it on social media and linking to it
The end result is several high quality links and some traffic from social media resulting in ranking well for that given term.
Making Money from The Traffic:
Knowing how to make money with a website is somewhat of an art. It takes a lot of trial and error as you will see here.
Attempt 1 – Email List – Fail!
My monetization strategy went through several iterations! Initially I wanted to get people onto my email list and provide offers to them that way. However, after many attempts I was unable to convert people onto my list until much later in the age of the site. This initial attempt was a failure.
Attempt 2 – AdSense – Moderate Success.
The next strategy was to use Google AdSense. Although I was making some money with AdSense it was not very much for the amount of traffic I was getting.
Attempt 3 – Cost Per Action Affiliate Program – Success!
This showed early signs that it was a more profitable and less invasive monetization strategy. Running with this strategy and incrementally improving the calls to action resulted in a step change in earnings per visitor over AdSense.
Current Strategy – Email + CPA – Success!
I have now finally got some email opt ins occurring due to the great tool at LeadPages . Using this tool and testing my call to actions I have found what I hope is a good balance between making money from the site and treating my readers to a good user experience all while providing value.
The Result?
After 10 months of work, my site is generating over $3,000 per month!
You read that right – $3,000 per month!
Below is the income and expenses from the site over the first 10 months of its existence!
My Next Site and the All Too Common Mistake:
My next site was a more general and not as targeted site at https://ourinsurancecanada.com/ and as a result has struggled to find traction. The SEO strategy is working well but the monetization is not and referral traffic is very low.
The Number 1 Reason Personal Finance Sites Don’t Make More Money:
We Are Not Focused on a Very Specific Problem
The number one reason (in my opinion, and it may or may not be right!) that a lot of personal finance bloggers (including myself with my recent one) DON’T know how to make money with a website is because they are not focused on a specific problem. When you can focus on a specific problem (paying off student loans) it makes delivering a solution to your audience much easier!
Again this is just my opinion but in the future I will only be building sites when I can clearly define the problem my audience is having and how I am going to solve it.
What can I or other bloggers do to focus on a specific problem…survey your audience see what their needs are and begin focusing on a specific area that you can be the expert at. Then provide value on that given topic and genuinely recommend products/services that can help them while making a commission for each sale.
Your Thoughts?
I would love to hear from other personal finance bloggers what they think of my strategy? How could I have done it better? How can we all improve the probability of success for our new websites?
There is no doubt I am extremely fortunate to have had success with this site and I hope sharing how I did it offers some insights to anyone who reads this site!
MMD, thanks for giving me the opportunity!
Jon Haver is a proud new father, full time engineer and part time online entrepreneur who talks about his goal of making $15k/month by the age of 35 through online income and be in a position to “retire” at his site Authority Website Income.
Another great post Jon! The sad part though is that many may read but very few will take action or asked for help. You always lay it out and go into detail. Like I always state you are working to exactly what I am looking to accomplish, $15k online and spending time with family. Great to see another post from you.
Definitely agree that action is the key to having any amount of success online – best of luck on your journey to $15k/month!
Some great tips here – I especially found it interesting to read further about using expired domains to build back links. This is a strategy I had never considered however if you’re able to identify suitable domains this seems like a great idea.
Focusing on a specific problem is great advice – it’s much easier to become an authority in a niche area than be the jack-of-all-trades.
Glad you liked the article, yes expired domains can be effective but definitely a big time and marginal financial investment is required to make the most of it. Let me know if you are diving into it if you have any questions.
Jon, very interesting stuff here! I especially like your tip about buying expired domains – that one sounds like a real winner. Thanks for sharing your wisdom here.
Hi Laurie, yah the expired domain tactic is great but not for anyone just starting out. It can definitely be overwhelming!
Jon,
At some point I plan to read your 8,000 word tutorial and give it a try.
My biggest fear is buying one that has phony PageRank. In all the reading I’ve done about this strategy, it seems like that is quite an issue that burns a lot of would-be newbies like myself.
MMD it depends on what you are looking for…if you are looking to use the site to benefit your own from an SEO persepective I wouldn’t worry about the PR of the site. The best thing to do is look at the backlinks in a tool like majesticseo.com to determine if the backlinks look legitimate or not.
Impressive growth! I really like the idea of leveraging YouTube using a ppt deck and a voice over, so simple!
Its such an easy thing to systematize and for people that like consuming content by video they appreciate it.
I’m really inspired with your writing abilities and also with the layout
on your weblog. Is that this a paid subject or did you customize it yourself?
Anyway keep up the nice high quality writing, it is rare to look a great blog like this one nowadays..
Thank you for the detailed review. If you are planning on running your blog as a business a VA is awesome, saves a lot of your time to be good at what you are good at and jump start your blog from the start.
Hi Pauline, yes VA’s are key. Especially for those of us that still have full time jobs and a family – without my VA’s I wouldn’t be able to get 1/5 of the work I get done.
I can second that, Pauline. Using VA’s has certainly helped me gain a lot of my personal time back, and for cheap too!
Thank you Jon for this great article. There is definitely a lot to take out of it.
Quick question, where do you get your VAs from?
I get all my VA’s from ODesk. Never used any other website and have 20,000+ hrs managed through ODesk.
I use oDesk and eLance. Each one has certain things that tend to be a little better. For example I outsource all my link-building on oDesk and use eLance for writing because I find it be a little bit better. But really it all boils down to who ever you hire. Plus a lot of the same freelancers work on both sites.
For SEO, I can see how having one particular topic would be the way to go. Outsourcing all the tedious parts would make it easier to get started. Congratulations on your success.
Thanks Kim, I use ODesk for my outsourcing needs…where have you had the best luck getting VA’s to help with your site?
Love this post! Just bookmarked it. I really want to get into niche sites and hopefully will have time to do so soon.
Hi Michelle, it can be a great model. I like to think of my sites as larger niche sites (or authority sites). The days of 5page small niche sites in my mind is gone. Congrats on your success and paying off your student loans!!
Hey Jon, I loved this detailed outline! I take advantage of expired domains quite a bit. I think the most interesting point you make is about the audience that should be targeted. I love the little graphic you put up for that! Thanks for the great read!
Thanks Josh, yah the graphics are always fun to include – helps me understand the point I am trying to make better than just words.
I don’t think the points you make in your posts would be half as good without the graphics. That’s one of the things I absolutely love on Authority Website Income.
Thanks for the tips. Lots of things I never thought of here. Monetization is a tricky process that I’m struggling to navigate at the moment.
Hi Stefanie, monetization is definitely tricky. I would suggest just testing a bunch of different approaches and always making sure you are adding value to the visitor. Once you test through the different approaches you will get a feel for what is working and what isn’t.
Hi Jon,
First of all I’ve got to say thank you for reaching out to me and providing such a great and enthusiastic post. I think there’s a lot of good nuggets of practical advice in here that the readers (and myself) can really dig into and apply to their own efforts with making money with their blogs.
I do really like that your site started off with a genuine need that people legitimately have. One of the great mistakes in this SEO game is that we as bloggers sometimes focus on keyword phrases or content structure that is not relevant to a human or in no way entertaining to read. And then it’s no coincidence that our attempts to sell products, build traffic, or make conversions ends up falling flat.
I can agree that using oDesk and eLance has dramatically accelerated development. My first niche website was created entirely by me and it took forever to build and rank well. I have not messed around yet with YouTube, Web 2.0, or Expired Domains yet. These are foreign lands that are intriguing to me but I may explore another day. I like your Part 5 idea of building a resource page. Not only are you helping your readers, but also helping yourself by offering to promote the resources. Nice creation of a win-win situation.
I have yet to experience any real success with CPA advertising. Adsense has worked out okay for me, but I’d like to explore other PPC options. Have you came across any other good PPC programs out there that you or others have enjoyed?
MMD thanks for the opportunity. Your site is right at the intersection of the personal finance and make money online niches that I enjoy being a part of.
Regarding your question, I have not had much success with other PPC programs. AdSense definitely seems to be the best when it comes to PPC from my standpoint. I think there are some PPC networks in some specific niches which outperform adsense (but that’s just what I hear).
Thanks again and if you have any questions in the future just reach out and if I can help I will!
Great job! I love the no-nonsense systematic approach. You really killed us with logic on this one. I have used oDesk a bunch for stuff and loved it every time.
oDesk has been a huge time saver.
Amazing post Jon! I have been trying different things to generate money with my website. What was working yesterday doesn’t today. I am going to try new things…affiliates, newsletter. I feel like I am wasting some precious time!
Every time I read some else’s mega income report, I feel the same way. Until I make that much income myself, I’m just wasting my time trying to get it right. But I know that I have to put in the effort to get there eventually.
Another great post from Jon who really seems to be making a name for himself lately in the internet marketing arena. Makes me wonder about the name of his site…. I know he intended for it to reflect that he is making Income from Authority Websites. But I’m beginning to see it differently. I think Jon is becoming an Authority when it comes to Website Income!
Jon’s name is everywhere these days and he is getting a lot of praise over his epic tutorials. I think there is a lot to learn from someone is able to produce $3K in a month from one website. My hope for him is that he is able to keep it up consistently.
Great post Jon! This taught me a lot, I just have one question for you, how much money have you invested on your website before you reach $3000 per month? Thanks!
Hi Mark: If you study his graph near the bottom of the post, I believe Jon spends about $50-$100 per month in expenses, and he may have had as much as $500 in one of the months. Jon goes into much more detail about it on his website.
A great post – a real source of inspiration for someone like me who is just starting out in the blogging world
Well done on the 3k a month
Even for someone who has been blogging for a while like me I still find it to be incredibly inspiring.
I would be interested to know what numbers of visitors you get to your site that generates the 3k of income?
I believe Jon discloses that on his main website.
Wow, lots of great info here. It seems like a big takeaway here is to design a site around the goal of making money. I think a lot of bloggers, myself included, get into blogging for the fun of it or just to “help people” without thinking about making money. Though it’s certainly possible to transition, it definitely seems more effective to start from the standpoint of monetization and build it with that end goal in mind.
There’s nothing that says you can’t start another website with this goal in mind!
Great tips here Jon. With the glut of websites on the web most won’t make money. Good luck on your 15K journey.
Great post which give the overall idea on how to build a niche site from scratch and bring values to others.
Great post and very useful info! I’ll have to bookmark and I continue my own quest of making income through blogging!
“When you focus on a specific problem it makes delivering a solution to your audience much easier!”
This is solid advice. When doing something for your website, especially when covering the broad topic of finance, you should keep your goals in mind. Focus on what you want to offer to your readers. Finance is confusing enough without you cluttering your own website with non-specifics that can drown out what you’re trying to say. I use the same philosophy for my website that talks about financial planning and marketing ideas which as you can imagine can become confusing if I don’t focus on topic.
Wonderful post Jon. I recently started my own blog on managing finance and found your post to be very helpful. On looking for VA, do you have suggestions or tips on what to look for in a VA and how to work effectively with remote VAs? Thanks.
Great stuff Jon, just subscribed to your list. I really need some help with my site.
What a great collection of ideas – I feel like a lot of lists just rehash the same old thing, this was full of new ideas. I especially liked the YouTube idea – I feel like that’s something within my realm of accomplishing at this point. Thanks for the advice!
Thanks Mel! Hope some of these ideas help you out.