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Learn more at QuickBooks.com. Again, that's QuickBooks dot com slash bill pay. In terms of money, money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Our very first episode, long, long ago, way back in January 2017, it was on a topic of blogging about fish tanks.
I wanted to start this podcast where I was sharing interesting, creative stories of all kinds of ways people were making money that no one had ever heard of before, and so I thought, well, let me start with an episode where there's this guy in the UK who writes a blog about fish tanks, not fish, mind you, fish tanks, aquariums, and the blogger in question was making money month after month. In fact, he had kind of stopped working on it and was still making money. He pretty much had the market to himself, not a very competitive market, fish tank blogging. Well, fast forward, 1732 episodes.
Today's story features a blog about going grey, as in grey hair. And this blog about going grey brings in $6,000 a month. You heard me right. I am still finding bloggers and lots of other people too, it's not just blogging, who are making money in what seems like a very small market or a focused niche.
But that's actually the key. So let's look at it in the story. When this aerospace manager decides to embrace her grey hair, she starts a blog to help others in similar situations. And it becomes wildly profitable.
Going grey blog brings in $6,000 a month. That's the story. It's coming right up. In 2015, Katie Emery's world turned upside down.
Her husband lost his job, and her son nearly lost his life. She says that those traumatic events led her to a period of brain fog. She didn't feel like herself and was constantly stressed. But she had always loved being creative.
And so, facing the uncertainty of her husband's career, she decided to find her way out by starting a new project. One day around that time, she was listening to the audiobook of You Are a Badass by Jensen Sero. When the book covered the art of getting paid through blogging. Katie was interested, so she began to learn more about WordPress.
And get this, instead of learning on her own, she found a WordPress tutor. Yes, those exist. We should probably profile one on the show at some point. And she spent $300 to gain as much confidence as she could.
It was rough going. She soon discovered that blogging, at least doing it well, was a lot of work. Sure, it was an opportunity, but she already had a full-time job, and was a mom to two kids. Thankfully, her husband showed up offering to take on all the cooking, cleaning, and school duties, so she would have time to blog.
And then, she got to work. Her first blog, and then her second, failed to take off. But she had an idea for something different. You see, Katie was in her 50s, and was beginning to embrace going grey, rather than dying her hair to its original chocolate brown.
However, she found that a lot of information online about going grey was negative. Posts were titled How to Stop the Grey, for example. Inspired, she decided to start a new blog, Katie Goes Platinum, to document her journey of going grey, and perhaps encourage others along the way. She spent about $100 on the hair necessities, that would be $50 on a blog theme, $15 on a domain, and $35 for web hosting.
And in July of 2018, the blog officially launched with a few posts. Now, in an ideal world, Katie wanted to wait to launch until she had several in-depth, well-written articles. But in the end, she decided not to overthink it. Good choice.
To generate traffic, she used social media. Pinterest drove so much to her blog that within a few months, she was already up to 25,000 pages a month. It helped that there was a little competition. Almost no one was writing posts about the beauty of grey hair, even though plenty of people were searching for them.
This was enough traffic for her to apply to Mediavine. Mediavine is an admin work that could help her generate profit from the blog. After being accepted into the program, Katie made $500 in the first month, and was thrilled. But she wasn't ready to stop there, because her goal was to make at least $1,000 a month from Katie Goes Platinum.
With that goal in mind, she focused on continuing to build up content however she could. She started publishing two posts a week. She also made YouTube videos, and tried to release as many as she could. Katie also pushed hard to increase her social traffic.
She knew that she needed more page views to make more money from ads, so she worked tirelessly on marketing. And one of the best tools she used to grow her audience was to communicate with her readers directly. Twice a year, she sends out a Google survey to everyone on her email list, which by the way, she has one of those two. Another good choice.
Through that survey, she gets a better sense of how she can continue to make her content valuable. Three years in, about 50% of her traffic is organic, and she has far exceeded her goal of $1,000 a month. In fact, Katie now makes more than $6,000 a month from this blog. She's also still working her day job as an aerospace marketing manager.
She recently hired her first employee, a virtual assistant, to help with social media scheduling. The $900 a month she pays is worth every penny, and has helped her to grow her Instagram traffic by 247%. Katie says that above all, she's grateful that her side hustle has eased her family's financial strain. Living in Los Angeles, the extra income has been critical.
She's also glad that this is a blog that took off, rather than one of her first two attempts. She hopes it will inspire others in their 50s to think outside the box. Coming up next, a line of ebooks, and maybe even a podcast. So, fish tanks is taken, and so is going grey.
What's next? What story are we going to hear about? Somebody making money through some sort of market or niche that most of us have never considered. At least never considered in a money-making fashion.
Maybe I should ask, what will you come up with? What's your idea? What are you working on? What are you thinking about?
If you'd like to learn more about marketing your ideas, I'm happy to recommend to you a new book from John Chance. John is the author of The Referral Engine, duct tape marketing, lots of great books. His new book is called The Ultimate Marketing Engine, Five Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. I love John's work.
That book is now available wherever books are sold. Getting back to your ideas, I really do hope you'll take action on them. Maybe not all your ideas, but at least some of them. The reason I make this show, the reason our team works on it so hard is because we don't want you to just say, oh, that's a cool story.
Our hope is that you say, well, that's a cool story and it gets me thinking and maybe it nudges me along or encourages me. So, that is my hope and my encouragement for you today. The show notes for today's episode, including links to Katie Goes Platinum, go be at www.sideusleschool.com slash 1732. 1-7-3-2.
Thank you for tuning in today. I hope you'll subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts and come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Gillabow. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project.