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š© Pain & Numbness Led Her to a $30K/Month Business
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
Pain & Numbness Led Her to a $30K/Month Business
How To Monetize Your Travel Content
Google Shutting Down 25 Million Websites = Business Opportunity
Designer Earns $520,366 In 1 Year
The 20-Email Funnel They Used to Sell $3 Million in Courses
Read This If You're Struggling To Get Started
Automated IG Account: 100K Followers
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Pain & Numbness Led Her to a $30K/Month Business
Addison LaBonte runs the food blog Organically Addison, where she shares āeasy healthy gluten-free and paleo recipesā š„
Addison started the site in 2018, but earned very little money from it the first few years.
š¬ She revealed in an interview a few months backā¦
In March 2021, my website made about $300.
By December 2021, it made over $7K just from advertisements.
Since then, it has continued to climb into the mid 5 figures per month.
Let's be conservative and assume "mid 5 figures per month" = $30,000 per month š°
How Addison got startedā¦
In 2016, I was diagnosed with Compartment Syndrome. Essentially, I was experiencing debilitating pain and numbness while runningā¦
Thankfully, my aunt is a fellow marathon runner and gluten free eater. She recommended becoming gluten free to feel better.
I quit cold turkey. Within 7 days, my life was changed.
I had no more pain or numbness. I didnāt get weekly headaches or daily brain fog. I knew right then and there that I wanted to share my story.
Butā¦
I knew nothing about websites, coding, SEO, or how to monetize an online business. Itās been incredibly rewarding to learn everything.
š Addison was slow to monetizeā¦
I didnāt start making money from my website until late 2020, early 2021.
Leading up to this, I had posted every single day on Instagram and Facebook to build an audience.
Finallyā¦
My website exploded in 2020 when everyone was home cooking and looking for wholesome options. At the same time, I went from working 40 hours in finance to working from home.
That's when she decided to treat her website like a business rather than a hobby šŖ
Thenā¦
I listened to a podcast about buying websites. I was skeptical but intrigued. In 2023 thus far, I have purchased 3 websites. This has forced me to outsource and build a team.
Today, I have a virtual assistant, two food photographers, and a content writer.
Sounds like that investment helped her get to $30,000 per month.
š But then came a setbackā¦
In September 2023, three of my sites [out of 4] were negatively impacted by the Google Helpful Content Update (HCU).
Overnight, two of my sites lost 50% of organic traffic and one of my sites lost 30%.
It is very unsettling to lose that much revenue overnight. Seeing my revenue and page views go down so dramatically was sickening.
It reminded me that I need to diversify my income streams and not solely rely on traffic from Google.
So I'm guessing her revenue dropped to around $15,000 per month after that.
Which is still awesome, and I expect her traffic and revenue will grow again given time š
A good takeaway from Addison's story: you don't need to be super-knowledgeable starting out ā you can pick up the necessary skills and experience as you go.
She saysā¦
Starting a blog has taught me many, many things that I never thought Iād be doing.
Food photography is one of them! I had never picked up a DSLR camera before 2020, but I taught myself how to use one. One of my favorite parts about being a business owner is the constant and continuous learning.
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How To Monetize Your Travel Content
Today's email is brought to you by Travelpayouts.
They help travel bloggers monetize their content, to the tune of $63M+ since 2011 š¤
Travelpayouts partners with big travel brands like Booking.com, Tripadvisor and Agoda, giving you access to 100+ affiliate programs all in one place.
Plus a single wallet for withdrawing your earnings š
Travelpayouts have tons of positive reviews online, like this one from Rose Mundayā¦
I have been working with Travelpayouts for 6 months and Iām already earning more than with any other affiliate company. Iām really happy with the affiliate tools and the help from the team. Theyāre speedy to reply, offer personalized suggestions and help me boost my income even further!
If you're ready to monetize your travel content, check out Travelpayouts š
ā¹ļø full disclosure | sponsorship info
Google Shutting Down 25 Million Websites = Business Opportunity
š¬ Fery Kaszoni tweetsā¦
Google is shutting down tens of millions of small business sites from March.
All subdomains hosted on their . business . site domain will be removed next month.
If youāre not aware, this is Googleās free service used by over 25M sites (from search results).
š Official announcement about the shutdown.
Fery lays down a āmultimillion dollar idea,ā based on the assumption that these businesses will be eager for a new website solutionā¦
Use scrapers to extract all [.business.site] websites from Google search resultsā¦
Now use new scraper rules to visit each website, and create a perfect clone of the current website on your serverā¦
Now buy a domain name such as business . inc or something genericā¦
Rent this clone under a subdomain for $5 a monthā¦
He addsā¦
If you sell this to 20K website owners, youāll make $100,000 per month just by hosting their website.
Remember, there will be 20 million desperate website owners next month with their website shut down, who will need a solution.
Fery's idea is ambitious šŖ
But you could also do something on a much smaller scale here and earn good money.
For example, you could find .business.site websites in an industry you're familiar with and reach out to those site owners š§
Start by putting this in Google searchā¦
site:*.business.site [industry or keyword]
I see more than 30,000 results when I use this searchā¦
Try that for a niche or industry you're interested in, then check out the sites and find their contact info.Ā
Next: reach out and ask them if they need help moving their site elsewhere. If yes, you could build it on a service like Carrd, which costs only ~$50/year to host 25 sites š
Charge nothing for the setup but then a few $$ per month/year for hosting and maintenance.
With that, you could have a thriving business on your hands š
Another idea here: scrape the contact info for these sites and sell access to local agencies or web developers.
Let me know if you give any of those ideas a try. I'd love to hear how it turns out.
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š Designer Earns $520,366 In 1 Year
From the archive, published June 2022ā¦
Rich Webster shares on Instagram that he earned a cool half mil as a designer in 2021 š
He offers six tips that āmatter more than design if you want to make money.ā
One I hadnāt heard beforeā¦
Brand yourself as an agency.
The day you stop calling yourself a freelancer is the day youāll double your rates. The term freelancer implies commodity pricing. Agencies can charge 2-5x rates of freelancers for the same work.
The only difference? Positioning.Ā
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The 20-Email Funnel They Used to Sell $3 Million in Courses
Ship 30 for 30 is a writing cohort course run by Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush.
In a recent tweet, Nicolas writesā¦
After 19 cohorts of Ship 30, over 10,000 students enrolled, and millions of dollars generated in revenue, we've learned something about email marketing.
Looks like the course was initially priced at $199-$249 back in 2021. and has since increased to $750.
If we take the average price as $300, at 10K students that = $3 million in revenue.
Nicolas shared in that tweet "how many emails it takes for someone to buy" the courseā¦
On average, itās nearly 20 emails!
Sometimes more.
This is something we REALLY didnāt understand when we first launched Ship 30 for 30, and we fell into the same trap a lot of creators do:
āIf I send too many emails, people are going to see it as spammy. Theyāll unsubscribe. Theyāll never buy anything from me!ā
He goes on to break down their ā20-Email Strategyāā¦
If you are about to launch a digital product, a cohort-based course, a book, a consulting or group coaching offerā¦
Or, if you have a product/service for sale and want to know how to increase salesā¦
Hereās a 2-part strategy anyone can implement.
ā The first part is 100% education.
ā And the second part is 100% sales.
The first part = 10 emails aimed to educateā¦
ā Show the customer you are the right person to help them.
ā Remind them you have a product/service for sale.
These emails should be 99% free value + 1% āOh, by the way, you can sign up hereā CTA at the end.
Except for the very first emailāwhich sets the frame for what your offer is.
The second part = 10 emails aimed to sellā¦
The second part of this 20-email sequence are emails intended to do the opposite of the first 10 emails.
Youāve given them a TON of free value. So here, you SHOULD hard pitch people on your list.
And the goal should be:
ā Buy
ā Or Unsubscribe
You do not want people sitting on your list doing nothing.
Check out the tweet for a breakdown of each email in the sequence.Ā
Last words from Nicolasā¦
Thatās a lot of emails!
But thatās the point. (One of our favorite quotes, I think Hormozi said it, is āPeople need to be reminded more than they need to be told.ā)
If you arenāt willing to go through the effort to build a 20-email sequence educating and empowering customers to take action with you, then donāt be surprised when your sales are what they are.
However, it's worth noting that they were using a 6-email sequence before, and that was apparently good enough to earn them 7 figures.
So don't feel like you need to create a 20-email funnel right out of the gate.Ā
Start simple and evolve over time.
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Read This If You're Struggling To Get Started
A recent post on Redditā¦
Excerpts š
I have a friend who's been at a job that he dislikes for a while. He's planned to go out on his own and has talked about it often.
Last fall the plan was to be out of there by December. It's now the end of January and he's basically done nothing to make that plan a realityā¦
Every week goes by where I suggest to him that he do something to take a step towards independence and having his own business.
And with every week he's got some excuse why he couldn't get to it.
Excuses likeā¦
He doesn't want to put any personal info online
He hasn't had time
He doesn't think a particular idea will work
It's very easy to get caught up in that kind of excuse-making, especially the last one.
But here's the thing: most of your ideas will fail.
And that's okay š
I earn a good living online nowadays, but most of my ideas have failed.
Over the years I've triedā¦
Writing and selling ebooks (never earned much from that)Ā
Building crappy niche sites (made $0)
Making coding tutorials for YouTube (never monetized)
Starting a language learning YouTube channel (never monetized)
Selling web design services to Irish pubs (no takers)
Offering a WordPress setup service (earned a few $100)
Building a SaaS (had lots of discovery calls but never launched anything)
Creating and selling my own course (did okay but the ROI wasnāt great)
Coaching (made some money but didnāt enjoy it)
But through each of those "failures" I gained experienceā¦ experience which led me to eventually achieve success š„³
Back to that Reddit postā¦
If you're the type of person who's had an idea for a business, but never quite got around to it, yet always talks about it - Let today be the day.
Do something.
Rest assured, that something probably won't work.
But it will 100% move you closer to success š
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š Automated IG Account: 100K Followers
From the archive, published March 2022ā¦
The @mindofastoic account on Instagram was created 3 years ago and is nothing more than nicely styled quotes from famous philosophers and historical figures.
Bryan Maniotakis owns the account and recently shared how he has grown it to 100K followers with some clever automation š¤
The tools he uses:
Placid.app (image generation)
Airtable (content)
Integromat (scheduling)
Bryan monetizes the account by linking followers to his website, where he sells books, prints, t-shirts and wallpapers.
Another (and likely much faster) way you could monetize this is by offering to create and maintain a similar setup for established businesses that have a weak or non-existent presence on Instagram š¤
I mentioned something like this a few weeks back, pointing out that James Clear has amassed 770K+ followers on Instagram with content that could be created using a setup similar to Bryanās.
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ā¦
Thanks to Fardeen Khan for helping me write and research today's newsletter.
Hasta la prĆ³xima, rock on with your legendary self šŖ
Niall Doherty ā Canillo, Andorra
eBiz Facts (follow on twitter)
P.S.Ā If you're ready to monetize your travel content, check out Travelpayouts š
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