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This turbulence forecaster earns $15,000/month ✈️
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
This Turbulence Forecaster Earns $15,000/Month
The Best Affiliate Marketing Course
His Resurrected Project Now Makes $1000/Month
He Made $800,000 Freelancing on Upwork
1 Percent Better Each Day
$4,000/Month After Getting Laid Off From His 9-to-5
This California Ghost Town Earns $30K a Month
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This Turbulence Forecaster Earns $15,000/Month
Peter Murray is the founder of Turbulence Forecast ✈️
I first came across Peter's website a few years ago, specifically this page…
I assume it's mainly a service for nervous fliers, so they know how bumpy their next flight might be 🙈
This text was on the page back in 2020…
My name is Peter, the founder of Turbulence Forecast. I've been forecasting turbulence for over 15 years, and I will personally give you a one on one briefing of what you might expect on your upcoming flight via email. I write each and every forecast personally, with about 12,000 written so far. Where else can you talk to the founder of a website every time? No questions asked refund policy!
The minimum price for a forecast in 2020 was $40, and the price was only $15 back in 2013.
Let's be conservative and say the average price over the years has been $25, including upsells.
$25 x 12,000 = $300,000
Over 15 years, that's an average of $20,000 per year 🤑
So Peter was likely earning at least $20k/year by writing personalized turbulence forecasts for nervous fliers.
(Btw, to have written 12,000 such forecasts in 15 years, he'd be fulfilling about 15 orders each week.)
Best I can tell, for a long time the email service was the main way Peter's site made money 🧐
But now they also offer a Turbulence Forecast iOS app, free to download, with lots of in-app purchases.
SensorTower (free account required) estimates that app to be earning $10K/month 💰
The site also makes money nowadays via subscriptions and donations.
They get about 100k visitors per month and rank #1-2 on Google for terms like…
turbulence forecast
turbulence map
flight turbulence
Oh, and it's no longer a one-man show: Peter has been hiring help along the way.
All told, I expect Turbulence Forecast is earning at least $15,000 per month nowadays, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually double that 😎
Such a weird little niche business.
Gotta love it 😍
The Best Affiliate Marketing Course
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It's the training I've followed more than any other to build my own site to about $25,000 per month in revenue.
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His Resurrected Project Now Makes $1000/Month
Franco Valdes is the founder of Carta Maps, software that lets you build custom maps and embed them anywhere 🗺️
For example, you could upload a list of all parks in your country/region and Carta Maps would create a visual representation of them.
In a recent tweet, Franco shares that the tool has been making ~$1k/month for several months now 🤑
Elsewhere he shares…
About 4 years ago… we had a client with a pretty complex requirement for their new website. They were a nationwide service-based company that offered commercial cleaning services.
They wanted to dynamically show coverage areas based on a list of zip codes or counties onto a Google map.
🎯 He helped achieve the goal and…
I figured other companies would want to display their footprint similarly so I bought a domain and planned on monetizing the API.
While he did build it…
As many other ideas I have had, this one too, fell short… I never really finished the project.
But then…
[In] 2022, a friend of mine was asking me about how he could plot postal codes on a map. Took me a minute but then realized I had already built this!
This reenergized Franco and he re-built Carta Maps as a complete no-code solution 💪
Based on another write up, it looks like he's mainly been finding customers via search ads.
Also…
Churn is high but expected since I really haven't found [Product-Market Fit].
He's sticking with the project though and I can see him achieving much greater success with it down the line.
Two takeaways from Franco's story 👇
First, he came up with the idea while working on a client project, which is a common theme among the stories we cover in this newsletter.
So if you're not sure what idea to pursue, consider taking on some freelance work. A client project is likely to spark something ⚡️
Second, think about the projects you worked on in the past, perhaps some you even abandoned.
Could you resurrect one and give it another shot? 🤔
🗂 He Made $800,000 Freelancing on Upwork
From the archive, published January 2023…
A short video from Josh Burns: How I Made $800,000 Freelancing on Upwork 🤑
Check out his Upwork profile here.
Josh's first tip from the video is to choose and learn a high-paying skill. He researched high-paying skills and picked the one he liked the most: database administration.
He now charges $150/hour on Upwork and has billed for almost 10,000 hours on there 💪
Browse these lists of high-paying freelance skills and see if any resonate with you…
Another tip from Josh…
Never give up. It actually took me around 3 months to win my first job on Upwork. However, the more jobs that you complete successfully, the more you get noticed and the more jobs that you get invited to. Upwork is a marathon, not a sprint.
Josh also has a 50-minute Upwork beginner's tutorial that you might find useful.
🔎 freelancing | permalink
1 Percent Better Each Day
📖 From the book Atomic Habits by James Clear…
The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.
A mistake we often make at the start of a new year: taking on too many habit changes at once.
Try to avoid that trap.
Think about the one habit you could improve that would make everything else in your life easier.
What would that be? 🤔
What if you focused every day this year on getting just 1 percent better at that habit?
Back to the book 👇
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.
It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.
I quit my last job back in 2010, which means this is my 14th year working for myself 🥳
Earnings my first year: $10,044
Earnings my last year: $306,840
That's the effect of my habits multiplying over time 📈
You can do similar.