605: Blogging in a Post-HCU World: The Savvy 7-Figure Online Business

23:09Got it. No, that's helpful to know. And that's a similar process over here. Typically better ROI, getting something from bottom of page one, move up to the middle or page two onto page one, rather than taking a swing, add something brand new that may not make it. So we're talking SEO and I know that's only one part of the game. What else is driving traffic for you guys these days? Yeah, so for the savvy couple, we don't really do any social media anymore. I still am on Instagram to try to connect with our audience, but we originally were gonna go heavy social media influencer route. And then SEO started to take off, so we doubled down on that and kind of lost that connection with the audience going so heavy into SEO.

23:47Other than SEO traffic, we definitely use our email lists to drive traffic to new articles and kind of send Google a good signal of, hey, this article was just published and now it just got a thousand page views by the email list coming from a direct line. So that's a really good signal and a really good tip that we've used to help newer articles rank. Do you send out every new article you post or kind of like a weekly digest? Usually I just pick one or two. So we send emails Tuesday and Thursday. Usually both days I'll have at least one new article that I want to help send some traffic and ranking signals to, to drive traffic.

24:19And our email list for the savvy couple, I would say is not ideal. It's good for driving traffic, but we've tried to do in course sales and affiliate launches and stuff, and it never really converts well. So I've really kind of come to the conclusion that it's just for driving traffic and building that relationship. We still get affiliate sales through it. And then other than that, we really have the YouTube strategy with The Savvy Couple, which drives traffic back and forth, and we can double dip. But for The Savvy Mama, which is our second brand that we kind of split our businesses into last year, I knew I wanted to diversify away from just being in Google so that, hey, if Google said The Savvy Couple, you're losing half your traffic, we are going to pick it up by diversifying with the Savvy Mama, which really does really well on Pinterest.

25:00And it also does well on Google. And then we have a pretty big list with that brand as well. So we're kind of hitting it from all angles with the Savvy Mama. How are people getting onto the email list for both sites? The Savvy Couple, we have a pop-up. It's basically a exit intent pop-up to find the perfect side hustle. We also have a financial freedom guide that pops up. We only have exit intent pop-ups on the Savvy Couple. We did originally, I turned it off this week, actually. We had one that popped up after 60 seconds. I might extend that and turn it back on to 90 seconds. I just don't want that to hurt user experience, but we found that to work really well.

25:38And then same thing with the Savvy Mama. We use a pop-up with ConvertBox to basically, it's a generic opt-in for moms to organize their time and money. All right. Now, I appreciate you dropping all these tools on us too, because that's always going to be the next question. Like, oh, we'll link up these different tools and shout outs. I remember a time when the Savvy Couple was like dominating on Pinterest. Is Pinterest still a thing? When we originally started the Savvy Couple, we were all about roundups and it was more of like a lifestyle blog. And then when we started to rank for make money online, side hustles, we really went down that route.

26:08So originally, yeah, we were probably with roundup articles, with meal plan, meal prep, frugal living type of articles. We were getting, I think, close to 300 ,000 pages per month from Pinterest back in Wow. 2016, 2017. The golden days of whatever, like group boards and stuff. Yeah. So now we've heard, and I haven't really done much strategy with the Savvy Mama yet, but with Pinterest, we've heard it's making a comeback and they're actually sending traffic to bloggers now again and creators. So we're definitely going to push into that. We actually acquired a blog and merged it into the Savvy Mama, which came with a hundred thousand follower Pinterest account.

26:46Oh, okay. So we basically converted that. And then it also came with an email list. So we're kind of leveraging that acquisition and trying to merge it and make it all kind of go together and work well together. Interesting. Did that site have a big library of content already? Yeah, it had 800 articles. So we had quite the job. We actually acquired it at the beginning of January. So my team had quite the job of kind of going through the articles. I think we up moving around 150 and then we redirected maybe to 250 for SEO juice and backlinks and whatnot. Interesting strategy. It was in a similar space.

27:22So it was kind of a natural space. Yep. It was a similar space and it was a friend of ours that just wanted to get rid of it. She was starting a different business and we scooped it up really cheap and it's panned out very, very well. It helped us get into Mediavine within like a month. And this was back when it was 50 ,000. Now it's down to 10 ,000 sessions, but it's been an incredible investment. All right. Growth by acquisition. Now I'm going to turn it a little bit. I haven't really considered that seriously. So that's interesting. Okay. So a little bit of Pinterest, mainly through acquisition and more on the savvy mama side, it sounds like today, the email list, the exit through exit intent pop-ups with ConvertBox, side hustle guide, financial freedom guide, like that type of opt-in offer, anything on like, I guess, Facebook or paid traffic?

28:07Not for traffic, but we do use Facebook ads very heavily for the Savvy Mama for basically promoting our chaos to control bundle, which is just a bundle of digital products and planners for moms organize their life. And then that basically leads them into our paid membership that we started two Octobers ago. So the chaos to control bundle is a freebie opt in or this is a paid product. That's a paid product. We're still trying to figure out the core opt in for that site and what that looks like. So we've actually been sending traffic directly through paid traffic on Facebook directly to our$27 low ticket bundle.

28:39And then there's upsells and downsells to get into our membership. Yeah. And trying to break even or make some money on the Facebook. Yeah. Like this is kind of, I've never really attempted to do it myself, but like, you're driving traffic to this low ticket offer. If we make a little bit of money, great. If we lose a little money, I'm confident we'll make it up on the backend because we got an email subscriber and all that stuff. Yeah. So I believe I heard through the grapevine that you're in 2X right now. Yes. Okay. So through their value chain dashboard, we basically set it up with our coach, Brian.

29:07I don't know if he's your coach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian's awesome. Yeah. So we set up the value dashboard that basically said we get our subscriber LTV. So we know exactly how long people are staying in the membership, how much our average order value. So we have the whole dashboard that tells us, all right, this is our breakeven point. If we can get leads for less than this amount, we're making money because there's a certain amount of percentage that's going into the membership. There's a certain percentage that's getting the annual membership. Here's the churn rate. It basically does the entire value chain for us.

29:35So I know exactly how much we can spend on ads. Very cool. So for the sake of context, 2X is a business coaching program designed to help quote unquote six figure hustlers transition into seven figure CEOs. Kellen is one of several friends and colleagues who've been through it and have seen great results. So I decided to give it a shot as well. If you're in that six figure hustler stage, you can check out some of their material at 2X.co. Tell them I sent you and they'll take good care of you. What's a qualified lead cost you these days from Facebook? So to sell our bundle, right around Christmas time, we were at like$25 per sale.

30:11Our bundle is$27 and then we have a bump. So our average order value is like$35 and then people into the membership. So we were making incredible money the first of the year into December into the first year. But now we're kind of breaking even on the selling of the initial product and kind of just growing the membership through selling the initial product, which isn't the best. We're trying to find a freebie that we can give, then do like a one-time offer thank you page and then upsell, downsell. So we're trying to figure out the funnel there. But yeah, for a qualified sale for our product, it's right around like$30.

30:45Okay, got it. So talk to me about this membership. So this is targeting busy moms who want to go from chaos to control. What's behind the paywall? What's the price point on this? Over the last year, we learned a lot. We basically got the idea from Liz Wilcox. Oh, yeah. She was just on the show. Yeah. Episode 600 was with Liz. Yeah. Survivor Liz Wilcox. That's right. It's amazing. We love that show. So we got the idea of like what would look like a low cost membership for moms. And we're talking$9 a month. So we started the membership and it was basically just a button that said, do you want more printables for$9 a month?

31:16And people were like clicking it. We're like, all right, people are interested in that. So basically what the membership is, and we kind of played with the price last year. We went all the way up to$27 a month and we had a bunch of people joining. but way less than$9. We brought it back down to nine, which is good for us because it's very low effort. It's basically monthly meal plans. It's a monthly calendar with challenges with a certain area in your life. So marriage, money, finances, organization, productivity. And then there's a Facebook community aspect of it. There's a premium email newsletter that Brittany sends out.

31:47We have giveaways. So they're getting a ton of value for$9 a month, which the whole premise of that is let's get as many people in there as possible and keep them as long as possible where it's kind of like a Netflix for moms. Yeah, exactly. I think we use that Netflix analogy with Liz as well. Like it's a low enough price point where you're like, yeah, I'm getting, even if I didn't use it this month, like I'm confident I'll use it again next month. Like it just, once you're in, hopefully you're in for good. She'd mentioned there, the churn was higher than she'd like. Same. That's always the case.

32:17We're trying to fix it. Yep. Anything worked on that front to keep people in longer? We did some consulting. I think the biggest thing is we need better onboarding where when someone joins and they get the email, like the first two or three emails needs to give them a quick win and they need to get the product in front of their face that they're using, mostly the meal plans so that they say, wow, this is actually really, really helpful. And for nine bucks a month, why would I not stay? And then it's just building up the community aspect around it so that the moms can support each other and they can control the chaos together.

32:46But yeah, it's, I mean, almost all due to fulfillment and onboarding is the turn rate issue we have. And the community element is through the Facebook group right now? Yep. Okay. That's the continuity program here, like recurring revenue. That's the holy grail. That's the dream. 100%. Trying to provide that value upfront, the meal plans, the monthly challenges. And what was somewhat common in the membership space is, okay, people will join for the content. they'll join for these printables, the meal, like all of this stuff. And then hopefully they'll stick around for the community aspect. Like they make friends, they build connections in this space, but it's maybe easier said than done with people from all around the country who don't even know each other.

33:29Yeah, it's tough. Liz does an excellent job in her community with kind of that community feel. So ours is pretty good, but it's nowhere near hers. So we're definitely trying to work on it. More with Kellen in just a moment, including how many savvy mamas have joined the membership so far, what it was like spending$10 ,000 a day on Facebook ads, the single tool tech stack that runs the membership, and how he lost a$60 ,000 a year income stream overnight, right after this. Did you know there's a disease running rampant alongside hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right and struggling to let go of certain tasks.

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34:43There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Just go to Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash side hustle show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. How many members are in there at this point? So we have right around 2000 members right now, which is incredible. And it's been such a blessing to take the stress off of owning the savvy couple and being so reliant on Google is having this reoccurring monthly membership that we can rely on.

35:25Last year, right around Christmas time, we were spending for almost two weeks, right? I think it was about 10 days. We had the ads just absolutely cranking, we turned up the ad spend to$10 ,000 per day. Wow. And we added, so$100 ,000 in ad spend, we added over 500 members within that 10 day span to our membership. And it was right around that Christmas to new year kind of week. Okay. Now I'm trying to bring out the calculator because I have learned my lesson of trying to do like live math on air. But if I'm doing 500 members times$9 a month times 12 months in a year, so I just spent a hundred grand on ads to make$54 ,000 in annual revenue, but hopefully they stick around and...

36:04Right. And that's only part of... Yeah. They're buying the bundle up front. They're buying the chaos bundle ahead of time. So there's another$34 for each person. I think for those 10 days that we spent$10 ,000, we made like$10 ,000 or$15 ,000 in profit, not including the membership. Okay. We were spending an absurd amount and it was scary. Like, oh my gosh, I need to be on this every single hour of the day. Yeah. How is this performing in real time? Exactly. As soon as it started to die off, I'm like, all right, we got to close it down. I think we ended up losing like, I don't know, two or$3 ,000 at the tail end of it when it started to die off.

36:37Okay. Is that typical with, is it just a product of the seasonality or like the timing of the offer? Was it just like the algorithm wears out? We reached all the people that we could. Like, what do you think that is with Facebook? Yeah. All the above. So we've had, that was the biggest wave. 100%. We've never spent that much. We're usually right around spending almost a thousand dollars a day consistently with Facebook ads to grow the membership and sell the chaos bundle. But yeah, it comes in waves. Sometimes it'll optimize like crazy and you put the ad spend up and then the next day it dies and you're like, dang it, I got to start over again.

37:08When you're saying optimize, like, is that swapping out different ad images, ad copy, that kind of thing? No, that's just Facebook found like it found like a new section of the audience and it's expanding and it's just kind of exploding. I love being able to spend money profitably and just rack up the credit card points and you just keep it rolling. There's nothing like it. Then last forever. It sounds like, or it's like maybe the steady state is this thousand dollars a day. Like this is what we're comfortable with. This is growing. This is profitable. But then every now and again, there's like, we found some new moms to go out and target here.

37:40Totally. Yep. Wow. Super cool. Okay. So we've got the digital product, this chaos to control bundle, which leads people into this membership. What like in terms of the transition email, like, hey, hopefully you like this. You found some value in it. Come over here. There's more. If you like that, there's more. What's the transition sequence to get people from paying you one time to paying you recurring? It goes back to provide value first. I can't remember the course we took that gave us the swipe copies that we're still using. I believe it was Crate & Go's six-figure blogger. But we basically give them the product right away, help them use it in the first email, introduce ourselves.

38:15And then it's straight into value. Why are you a hot mess? And agitating the problem. Because a lot of people that come to us, they are moms that say they're hot messes and they're so unorganized and disorganized. So it's like, we have three value emails that Brittany's given the best tips and tricks away. And then it's like a surprise of like, pause, like there's no shame in that. Like, I feel like that's gotta be every house in the country. It's a fantastic market to go after. It's ours. Everybody feels like that. Yeah. 100%. Ours feels chaotic. So yeah, those keywords that we really dove deep into the avatar and who it is and how to talk to them.

38:47And then we do like a pause day and we say, hey, something really special is coming up. And then it's a five day sequence into launching and showing the value and testimonials of the membership. And it's an evergreen launch though. Correct. Yep. It's open all the time. Okay. What drives the scarcity there is like limited time discount or what talked me through that? The people that don't buy the chaos bundle, we basically include that within the membership. If they join, that's the bonus, which is a really big bonus. And then there's some other bonus, But yeah, there's a bonus that goes away is the biggest scarcity.

39:21And then originally we started saying that the price is going to go up, which I mean, it did. And we tried it and we said we're better off doing$9 a month. So we took that out. But the biggest thing is the bonus. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Some, something with some time limited scarcity to get people off the fence for anything evergreen. That makes sense. Totally. Yeah. And if you can open close is a great model too. If you can say like, this is your last chance to join. I don't know when I'm going to open up again. there's nothing that beats that scarcity with just FOMO. But you obviously have to be honest with it.

39:52So I think bonuses for us, since we're keeping evergreens the most effective way. Is that a deadline funnel thing that allows you to take those away or deliver them as somebody does order? The bonuses? Yeah, or the five-day countdown. If someone does purchase, like, do we take them out of it? Yeah, just like, what's to stop them from like going in and ordering, just the mechanics of it. So we use Thrivecart. So anyone that purchases through that link, they'll get tagged with, they bought through the Evergreen funnel. So then that once they get into the membership portal, that product that we promised as the bonus will be in their portal versus other people that didn't purchase through that link.

40:26Got it, got it. And what's the software that's running the membership side? It's all on Thrivecart. So that's our checkout and membership. Okay, I didn't realize they had that functionality. Okay. Yeah, it's definitely limited, but for what we do is like delivering printables and there's no like course or anything yet, which we will add, it's free. So we paid$500 to get it for life and it's better than paying$300 for Kajabi or whatever Alpodia for now for us. It works really well. Yeah. It's simple. Like I don't need video hosting. I just need a place where people can log in and grab their digital downloads that they requested.

40:59And then every month you're uploading the new stuff to that portal and then just sending out an email that says, Hey, this month's meal plan is up or whatever. Exactly. Yep. And then also in the Facebook group. So we give them multiple touch points to try and continue to use the membership. Got it. Got it. All right. So there's the membership side of things. There's the affiliate partnerships through SEO website content. There's ads. This is Mediavine on the display ad side. Yep. Yep. For both sites. Okay. And then digital product side, I guess the printables, any other digital product sales to speak of courses, anything else as part of the revenue pie?

41:36No, we've tried probably five or six courses with the savvy couple and we've had decent launches and decent sales, but it's never, we've never stuck with it to make it work. We kind of just say, Hey, I'd rather optimize an article and make an extra$500 this month by optimizing the article versus like selling courses and launches and stuff that takes up a lot of energy and time. Yeah. That makes sense. Is there a direction you want to go? Like if we could make the membership 50%, 75 % as a piece of the pie, like where do you want to go? So we basically split the businesses so that we could better serve the audiences.

42:08Our goal is, and I think we're almost there already, is like if the savvy couple went to zero tomorrow, could we survive off the savvy mama? And that just takes diversification on not relying all on Google and not relying all on affiliate marketing. It's this own separate business that's really taken off and done well. But it is stressful still, and it does take up a lot of time and energy. So we're trying to optimize it and outsource more and more. Where does the time go these days between, I mean, we've talked about a lot of different responsibilities, creating new monthly printables and meal plans, creating new content or overseeing that process, updating the old stuff.

42:44Like what's a day or a week in the life these days? Brittany and I both work together full time. She left two years after I quit and we kind of split our time. I work in the morning between like nine to noon or eight to noon. So three to four hours a day. After that, my brain is complete mush. And I don't know how people work eight hours a day, to be honest. I just become so less productive after four hours of deep work. But yeah, we have an incredible team. We have an ops manager that basically runs our team, which is just the content team. And we have really good systems in place there. I go in once a month and look at our top 20 articles and just optimize those.

43:17And they do everything else with the audits, the new creation of content, all that stuff. And then we have a VA that helps Brittany create all the printables. And so she's really just email marketing and kind of strategy giveaways and stuff like that. She maybe works 10 hours a week. Yeah, I think we're very similar in terms of businesses, in terms of just ways of thinking about a lot of things, but very different in another important way, because it's true you quit your job after the site made its first 50 bucks. Yeah, I think I was in a spot, though, that I didn't care about risk. I love risk anyways.

43:49I'm pretty risk, not adverse, the opposite of that. Yeah, risk seeking or risk comfortable. I don't know. Yeah. Risk lover. We made 50 bucks and I was at this point where I was depressed and hated every job I ever had and knew that if I stayed there, I would just be miserable the rest of my life. Our marriage was struggling because of it. And Brittany was sick and tired of me complaining. So I said, Hey, we didn't just jump without having our finances ordered. We still had a lot of student loan debt, but we had at least six months of nest egg where we could live off of that and Brittany's salary so that I'm not having to make horrible decisions based on where's the income coming from and trying to make money quick.

44:24So that was a huge blessing to have that income saved up. And then I just had confidence in myself. I've had a bunch of businesses. I did drop shipping in college. And so I've made money online, but that$50 was like, it's just a signal of like, go all in and you can find freelance work with digital marketing because you've been doing it. And within two months, I replaced my income with freelancing in our blog. Okay. So starting out like, okay, I'm going to provide some service to other people in the space and that while I continue to grow up the blog side of things, because now I got an extra 40, 50 hours a week to dedicate to this stuff.

44:57Exactly. Yeah. That makes sense. But yeah, I'm always like, that makes me super nervous. I want to see a little bit of longer track record of revenue, but we've heard from other guests too. Like, look, if you can make 50 bucks, you can make 5 ,000. If you can make 5 ,000, you can make 50 ,000. Like it's just a matter of scale and putting the pieces in place to make that happen. Now, over the course of the last seven, eight years of running this thing, what has surprised you the most? The biggest one for me that I think we both went through is we were both doing really well with the Steady app.

45:26And it was an awesome partner for us. And it was a great affiliate program. And all of a sudden, the program shut down. And I was spending a lot of time optimizing videos and articles to promote them. And I think at our peak, we were making close to$5 ,000 per month. And if you extrapolate that out 12 months, that's$60 ,000. And then all of a sudden, they come over and say, Hey, program's closed. Yeah. It's like losing a full-time salary for a lot of people. For sure. I just remember kind of feeling helpless and devastated and like, Oh my gosh, I just spent all like the last three months optimizing to make this one of our core affiliates.

45:57So that was definitely surprising. And it definitely made me realize any core affiliate that you have, you need to have an alternative in the waiting for if they were to shut down the program, change their payout, you can quickly swap it in and not lose that much money. So that was definitely a wake up call for me. Did you find a good alternative? Not really, not with study. It was kind of a unique app. Yeah. They were so in line with you and me with making money online and being a good side hustle app. So yeah, we kind of just switched back to kind of some survey companies and then some courses that teach side hustles and whatnot.

46:31And then other than that, I think diversifying is huge. I think it is important to go all in and kind of find success in one thing. And then once you do, and you've doubled down on that and you've kind of pushed it as far as you can, I think it's really important to diversify. So whether that's start another blog or grow the YouTube channel or email list, invest passively in other ways with cash from your business. I think that's super important. And not only for the business sake, but also mental health and just not having to stress about your online income coming in because it does fluctuate a lot and you got to have some risk tolerance being an online business owner.

47:06And it's how quickly you get accustomed. We had a guest who was talking about this, how quickly you get accustomed to a certain level. And even if it dips back down, you're like, now I'm depressed because I was used to making whatever, a thousand dollars a day or something. And now it's only 500. You're like, but I still made 500. Like I'm still better off than I was six months ago, but it's just like this weird human nature there. Yeah. I think as entrepreneurs, we're always trying to have that growth mindset and trying to beat the last month, beat the last month. We used to do income reports and I'd stress out about them because if I had a month where I made 14 ,000, then the next month there's only 10, I felt like I was a failure to my audience that I was trying to teach how to blog.

47:44So we stopped doing those a long time ago. But yeah, that is interesting that any entrepreneur I've ever talked to has the same mindset of those rollercoaster setbacks and kind of questioning things. And I think it's important to always take that step back. And I try every morning to spend some time with God and just be grateful for what he's created and helped us with and super important. You mentioned this, get while the getting is good, right? Simplify first, diversify second. It's like trying to find that balance of what if the rug gets pulled out while I was still doing the simplify thing before I had a chance to diversify.

48:15It's really tough, but I think the business model is set up in such a way that there's a lot of built-in leverage where if I can do this work right, and hopefully I can reach a lot of people with the work that I do once creating digital products, creating online content. I mean, that's the nature of the affiliate game. It's like commission rates can change at any time. It can cut you from the program. The program can shut down at any point. I was doing really well with Udemy and still like over the lifetime of this post, it's probably still made 40, 50 grand, but at a time we're paying like 40 or 50 % commissions.

48:49And now it's like 10%. Well, it's like, okay, I'll just prioritize something else. We're like, not, it's not worthwhile to go and update this as often as it once was, but it's just, there's this constant ebb and flow. And I think you guys have done well of, yeah, we'll take it. We'll optimize for that. But on the side, we're also going to be building our own thing. And we're going to be building it with our own audience, with our own traffic sources, with our own recurring revenue model, and just try and wean the reliance off of Google and ads and affiliates a little bit. I think that makes a lot of sense.

49:20Well, what's next for you? What's the rest of this year gotten sore? Our goal is to continue to grow the membership. I have a goal written on the whiteboard here to my right of reaching 10 ,000 members, which is a very lofty goal. And I don't think I wrote that goal when we were spending$10 ,000 a day and the membership was growing absurdly quick. So they're like, Oh, we'll get there in a couple of weeks. This will be good. Yeah. Right. I wish. So that's the big goal. I think if we can get the half that I'd be super happy. So it's really optimizing the membership, reducing the churn rate and fulfillment and all that stuff.

49:48And then, yeah, just going heavy on YouTube. I think that that's still a really good runway before AI takes over. And I think it's a really good, I don't think there's any better combination between a blog and a YouTube channel and kind of co-mingling them together to continue to build and grow. That's the one-two punch, especially if you can show your face, say, look here, this is the authority you're looking for, Google. I know what I'm talking about. Well, very good. TheSavvyCouple.com. You can find Kellen over there, TheSavvyMama.com as well. Let's see what they're up to. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation?

50:21My number one tip is action over perfection. I think that a lot of people that want to start a side hustle or they've already started one, they get caught up in trying to make sure they plan out every step of the process and plan out the vision and all that stuff. And I think the biggest tip that I've had, and I just got back from a real estate conference with multi multi-millionaires talking to them. I think the biggest thing that everyone kind of reiterated is you got to take action and the action is going to lead you in the right direction and you'll be able to pivot if you're making the wrong decision, but that's going to give you the swings at bat and the experience you need to be successful.

50:53You can go buy some real estate after hanging out with Dustin at, how does he pronounce it? Rubicon? Rubicon. Rubicon. Real Estate Wealth Builder Conference. Okay. Yeah, we're definitely busy with the two blogs here and the two brands, but it's definitely something that we want to figure out how to continue to diversify our assets and cashflow into real estate in the next few years, especially as our girls get older and get into school and we have a little more time on our hands. Yeah, we're playing the digital real estate game, but could definitely use some depreciation write-offs come tax time.

51:20So it's just some benefits of just taking some chips off the table. Like, oh, look, I'm going to go put this ones and zeros in the ether in a lot of ways. Like we could put it into something tangible as a, more as a preservation tactic rather than anything else. But I love that action over perfection. You heard it here on the Side Hustle Show. A couple of takeaways before we wrap up. How are you going to send those authority signals to Google? Think about that in every piece of content, like the days of trying to create an anonymous niche site about whatever random topic and trying to stay behind the scenes.

51:51Like that never worked for me. I don't think it's going to work anymore. You got to be kind of front and center and have an opinion, have some, and that authority can come over time. Like you just have to be willing to put in the time talking about a specific topic. The other thing that Kellen mentioned was really diversifying, diversifying traffic sources, diversifying income sources, and to the real estate thing, like taking some chips off the table as things work, but balancing that with the simplify first. If you get something work, you got to have one thing working before you can diversify.

52:19And then finally leverage. Like we're both fans of this business model where you create something once and it's like one to many. Like I can create it once and serve thousands and thousands of people and create something once and sell it to thousands and thousands of people, like looking for business models with some leverage built in. And it's one thing that maybe separates an online business like this from a freelancing or consulting business like that. How long is the lever kind of thing? So you might be thinking, hey, this is super cool. What to listen to next? I've got a couple of recommendations for you.

52:49First up, my episode with Shelly Marmer from TravelMexicoSolo.com. Fantastic interview on SEO, blogging, affiliate marketing. At the time we recorded, she was earning around 50 grand a month after just a few years of effort, like started a travel blog 2020. I would tell you, blogging, that ship has sailed, started relatively recently, was doing really well. that's episode 573 in your archives you can scroll that one down and add it to your list the other one i had in mind is andrew feebert andrew runs lasso like the affiliate display plugin software but also runs gift lab it's a really cool website and cool affiliate business where he just curates gift lists for really specific use cases really specific personalities and andrew at the time of that recording said that gift lab had earned 1.2 million dollars in its first five years of existence.

53:39And what was interesting was like year one, zero year two, 7 ,000 year three, 40 ,000. And it was like, kind of like the snowball effect of building up the authority and like the library of content in that space. And that is episode 537. So 573, Shelley's travel blog, 537 for Andrew's gift idea website, both really creative online business case studies. I think you'll get a ton of value from those. And if neither of those sound interesting, that's okay too. You can go build yourself a custom, side hustle show playlist at hustle.show. Thousands of listeners have already done it. All you got to do is answer a few short multiple choice questions and it'll generate a personalized playlist based on your answers.

54:18Hustle.show for that. Kellen, thanks so much for sharing your insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off a text message. Hey, you got to go check this out. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.

54:50Hustle on.