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How she built her 6-figure freelance writing biz š¤
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
How She Built Her 6-Figure Freelance Writing Biz
$20 Million Newsletter Formula
His Coding Experiment Turned Into a $30K/Month Business
$100K/Year From Hobby Projects
Get On That Treadmill And Keep Going
1 Year After Starting His Agency = $20,000/Month
3-Year-Old Canadian Newsletter Business Sold for $5 Million
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How She Built Her 6-Figure Freelance Writing Biz
Alli Hill is a freelance writer, content marketer, and the founder of Fleurish Freelance, where she teaches others how to build a freelance biz.
š Alli writes about her journey in a recent interview, starting in 2016ā¦
I went from $0 to a steady six-figure salary in less than three years.
She was working a day job (as a mom of 2) andā¦
My boss asked me to level up my marketing skills so I could handle more duties for his business (with no discussion of a pay increase).
Insteadā¦
I put my new marketing skills to work for myself.
I landed a few content writing clients after about two weeks of prospecting. This helped me build a real portfolio, which helped me continue to get clientsā¦
Good old-fashioned job boards led me to my first few clients. Without a website, blog, or any other online presence.
š¬ She addsā¦
The first year was a struggle in terms of time management, simply because I was still working my full-time job while trying to build my business.
I wanted to ensure my success was sustainable and not just beginnerās luck.
š How Alli got tractionā¦
I prioritized online reviews and referrals from previous clients and industry connections. To start collecting reviews, I joined Fiverr as a seller, which allowed me to shift to an inbound marketing approach.
I also focused on agency relationshipsā¦ Agencies handle the day-to-day efforts of generating leadsā¦ which leaves me more time to create the content without wasting time on non-billable activities.
She didnāt quit her day job untilā¦
I was spending more time on my side hustle than my day job. It was a natural progression, and Iām glad I waited because it gave me the confidence I needed to keep going.
Check out Alliās Fiverr profile here, with 1200 five-star ratings š¤Æ
Breaking down Alli's steps to successā¦
Try selling your services via marketplace sites like Fiverr
Build up reviews
Utilize those reviews to find more clients and partner with agencies
Alliās advice for others š
Just start. You donāt have to have all the answers, a foolproof plan, or thousands of dollars in savings. Motivation follows action, so take the first step and get things moving.
šĀ freelance writing | permalink
Today's email is brought to you by Scott Delong's Million Dollar Newsletter Playbook š°
Ever heard of Viral Nova?Ā
Scott started that site and grew it to $439K per month before selling. He's since built 6 separate newsletters that have earned him a combined $20 million š¤Æ
Scott recently launched Million Dollar Newsletter Playbook, a step-by-step course revealing his formula for building profitable newsletters, starting from scratch.
I got early access to the training and skimmed through it. The content is excellent, and it has me buzzing to shake things up with my own newsletter and take it to the next level š
The course is available here with a 50% discount until March 3rd (Sunday).
Give it a look if you're serious about building a profitable newsletter š
ā¹ļø full disclosure | sponsorship info
His Coding Experiment Turned Into a $30K/Month Business
šŖšø Alvaro Trigo is the Spaniard behind fullPage.js, a JavaScript plugin that helps you "create beautiful fullscreen scrolling websites"
Alvaro wrote in a recent interviewā¦
fullPage.js alone makes around $12K/month nowadays, and its maximum was $20K in one month.
He has built multiple similar plugins and saysā¦
The whole business makes around $30K/month.
š How Alvaro got startedā¦
When I was working as a web developer, I had to create a simple site, and I was suggested to mimic a PowerPoint style.
So, looking for inspiration, I came up with the idea of making a full-screen scrollable site.
I was surprised to find out there were no components for web developers to speed up this process, so after building the page, I thought it would be a great idea to create my first plugin.
That first plugin took him a couple of weeks to build with ~300 lines of codeā¦
That was when my first product came out. In fact, it wasn't even a product, as I didn't charge anything for it. The component was fully free for about 3 years.
Soon after launchā¦
some people sent me emails asking for specific customizationsā¦ I would deal with them one by one by email and provide them with a quote to create a custom version of the component for them.
Then š
I started to notice some people were asking for exactly the same changes or features as others.
So I thought I could probably create those as extensions to the main component. This way they could just purchase and use them right away without any direct contact with me.
He addsā¦
In the first month, I released about 3 extensions and made more than $1K. I was impressed! I didn't expect it to work out that well!
I'm sure it helped that the main plugin was free for people to use, so it could gain popularity š and send more potential customers Alvaro's way.
His plugin is still freely available on GitHub for open-source projects. For commercial projects, people have to pay for a license, with prices ranging from $15/month to $477 one-time.
3 years after Alvaro released the first version of his plugin ā "with no experience and as an experiment to improve my skills" ā he was able to quit his day job and now runs his own business with a small team šŖ
I love how he got the idea for his plugin while working as a web developer.
Keep an eye out for problems and pain points you encounter in your daily work š
Could you come up with a solution for one of those and turn it into a business?
šĀ permalink
š $100K/Year From Hobby Projects
From the archive, published October 2022ā¦
Thatās the best way I can describe the projects of Rob Hope, interviewed here.
His main project seems to be One Page Love, a collection of āone Page websites, templates and resources.ā
One of Robās first projects, way back in 2008, was CaseConverter.com. He built that āto help clean up my clientsā poorly formatted Word Docs of content.ā
He eventually sold the site for $805Ā š„³
Check out Robās project graveyard here.
As he describes itā¦
I hope this graveyard inspires you to take risks and work on those passion projects. Itās ok to fail. Every side project I launched provided lessons for the next and in turn helped me quit freelance.
šĀ permalink
Get On That Treadmill And Keep Going
From the book Grit by Angela Duckworthā¦
Many of us, it seems, quit what we start far too early and far too often. Even more than the effort a gritty person puts in on a single day, what matters is that they wake up the next day, and the next, ready to get on that treadmill and keep going.
Remember: it's rarely one big push that will get you where you want to go.
It's way more about showing up consistently, day after day, and putting in the work.
šĀ permalink
1 Year After Starting His Agency = $20,000/Month
Nikola Baldikov is the founder of InBound Blogging, which started off as an SEO blog but nowadays is more of an SEO services and link-building agency š
Nikola reveals in a recent interviewā¦
As of today, when my company recently turned one year old, our income is around $20,000 per month.
Sounds like he's been working on some kind of online business since 2012, having tried selling t-shirts online and then blogging and affiliate marketing.
And it's been about a year since he transitioned into the agency model š
How Nikola landed his first clientsā¦
What I was doing was advertising my business through LinkedIn and so-called word-of-mouth marketing.
I had already built a solid network of contacts, so the news spread quickly, and I was able to reach the right people. My efforts in this regard paid off six months laterāwe had three new clientsā¦
Although I am a digital marketing expert, ironically, my clients came along more traditional paths. One of our biggest clients, even at the moment, is my previous employer.
šÆ That's the most reliable way I've seen for agencies and freelancers to find clients: tapping their existing network.
Forget about paid ads and the like until you've tried that.
Also, you don't need a lot of clients to make a good income, as Nikola can attest toā¦
Currently, we have four clients. Around 50% of what we earn from them is distributed to cover operating costs, etc. The other half is our net profit.
š¬ Last words from Nikolaā¦
The best advice I can give to hesitant entrepreneurs is to trust their gut. It may sound like a clichƩ, but it's true. My intuition led me to the decision to quit my stable job at a major company and embark on my entrepreneurial journey. That was one of my best decisions ever.
My biggest takeaway here: don't underestimate starting a simple service business.
Nikola tried fancier online business models for years, the kind that promise passive income. But those businesses never really took off for him.
Things finally did take off when Nikola turned to the agency model and started providing SEO services for a handful of clients š
šĀ agency business | permalink
From the archive, published June 2023ā¦
The business is The Peak š
It started as a single newsletter in 2020 and is now a fully-fledged media company producing multiple newsletters, podcasts and events.
From a recent press releaseā¦
āāFounded in 2020, The Peak serves busy Canadian professionals and business leaders with the top global business, finance, and tech stories of the day packaged in a smart, fast, and easily digestible format. The aggregate purchase price of $5 million is comprised of $3.5 million cash on closing and a $1.5 million promissory note.
Co-founder Brett Chang shared on LinkedIn how the idea for The Peak came aboutā¦
the start of the pandemic and Taylor, Alex and I were figuring out what was next for us.
We loved Morning Brew and couldnāt figure out why nobody was writing a similar product for šØš¦ā¦
We consumed every article / podcast about their business, and developed our MVP (minimum viable product).
We brainstormed names and came up with The Peak. It was a business term (market peak) and also Canadian (mountain peaks). Our friends at August spun up the logo.
A week later, we started writingā¦
The first newsletter went out on July 16, 2020 and we got it out every weekday after that.
It took them 5 months to reach 8000 subscribersā¦
We got our first 1,000 subscribers through brute force. We posted on our personal LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts with a story on why we founded The Peak and what readers could expect.
But the real growth came from direct 1-to-1 messaging. We went through our contact list and individually messaged anyone who might be interested
They sold $4160 of ads in those first 5 months š¤
Hereās howā¦
Set pricing at $250 for one week of ads
Developed a media kit
Made a list of brands they thought would be a good fit
Found contact info
Sent out short emails (template shared here)
Out of 110 emails sent, they only got 20 responses (18%).
But that was enough to sell $4160 of ads.
Over the next several months, they sold $150,000 more š°
And Brett recently tweetedā¦
We were on track for $3 million this year with a 30% margin.
Flashback to something Brett wrote in December 2020ā¦
there are a number of profitable newsletters that are doing over $20 million in annual revenueā¦ But they all have one thing in commonā¦ Theyāre American. And when we looked for Canadian equivalents we couldnāt find them. So we said screw it and started our own and thatās how The Peak was born.
Thatās often a good jumping off point for building a successful business: whatās already working well in bigger markets? š¤
šĀ permalink
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. Want to start a profitable newsletter?
Then check out Scott Delong's Million Dollar Newsletter PlaybookĀ š¤
He's earned $20,000,000 from his own newsletters over the years, and shares his step-by-step formula in this new training.
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