Greetings from the UK! I could do with some advice...
Quick bit of context: Took an opportunity to open a gym 4 years ago (managed to get it fully funded by external investors). Worst decision of my life. Miserable. Working 100+ hour weeks. Having to work a full-time job alongside it to support my young family as was unable to take a salary from the business. It resulted in essentially a 'break down', the business dissolving, me unable to work for a little while, and thus myself, my partner and our baby having to move in with my mother-in-law to make ends meet.
Anyway, things settled after a few months, but my confidence had taken a huge knock and we were in a difficult financial situation (terrible credit ratings, no savings, car about to pack in). I didn't want this life for my baby. My [long-term] girlfriend is an 'influencer' with a large social media following in the food niche. She doesn't make a lot of money from sponsored content, certainly not enough to live off, but I always saw potential in her website. So I agreed with her that I'd use my SEO skills and look to start earning some money from her website (alongside my new full time job).
Fast forwards 12 months and we've gone from 2000 monthly visits to 150k+ and we're making around £2000-2500 a month from the site relatively passively via ad networks (no other monetisation strategies currently). Probably, between us, we're spending around 5 hours a week of work on it. I managed to do this in 4 months. From £10-15 a month to £2000-2500 a month in 4 months using SEO strategies only. We didn't use her social media platform to push traffic (we are developing a strategy to do this currently). But there's also still lots of upside potential, newsletters to get going, affiliate links to insert, youtube to start, online cooking courses to consider, and I have a strategy in place to continue building it towards an exit in 2-3 years.
Now here's the dilemma...
As I noted, we're still living at my mother-in-law's house (which she is planning to sell in the next 5-6 months to downsize - meaning we wont be able to go with her), we've still got poor credit ratings, and on paper, we're not a great bet for a potential landlord. Our 'salaried' income is around £34,000 a year, with her adding a little with sponsored content, and the website (which obviously hasn't had a year's worth of 'good' books yet). So our 'affordability' in terms of rentals is pretty low (because they will only take the salaried job in to account), and most landlords don't want to touch us due to the poor credit rating.
The one saving grace is that we now have some savings and our debt is manageable and reducing consistently. In terms of savings, I think we're going to need enough to pay 6 months upfront for a rental to give the landlord some confidence. We're at around 3 months saved currently, but with the website earning a solid amount now, with little expenditure on it, we can probably save enough in the next 5-6 months to reach that 6 month upfront number. Perhaps more.
Anyway, I've come across another opportunity. It's another website that is very old, already has a reasonable domain authority, and it's an absolute steal. In fact, it's in a much better starting position that the one I've managed to transform in 4 months). I'm very confident I can replicate what I did for my current website with the new one. However, if I was to take the opportunity, it does pretty much wipe out our savings and puts us potentially in a very difficult position in 5-6 months if I'm wrong and I can't replicate my SEO strategy with it. However, if I'm right, it could significantly improve our financial lives in the short term and again lead to a good 'exit' in 2-3 years time.
Given what has happened over the last few years, I'm leaning towards taking the safe route here, getting my family settled in our own place, some more money saved up, and taking the risk (should one arise) in the next 12-18 months. But on the other hand, I'm itching to take this one and change our lives quicker.
Apologies for the essay!
Quick bit of context: Took an opportunity to open a gym 4 years ago (managed to get it fully funded by external investors). Worst decision of my life. Miserable. Working 100+ hour weeks. Having to work a full-time job alongside it to support my young family as was unable to take a salary from the business. It resulted in essentially a 'break down', the business dissolving, me unable to work for a little while, and thus myself, my partner and our baby having to move in with my mother-in-law to make ends meet.
Anyway, things settled after a few months, but my confidence had taken a huge knock and we were in a difficult financial situation (terrible credit ratings, no savings, car about to pack in). I didn't want this life for my baby. My [long-term] girlfriend is an 'influencer' with a large social media following in the food niche. She doesn't make a lot of money from sponsored content, certainly not enough to live off, but I always saw potential in her website. So I agreed with her that I'd use my SEO skills and look to start earning some money from her website (alongside my new full time job).
Fast forwards 12 months and we've gone from 2000 monthly visits to 150k+ and we're making around £2000-2500 a month from the site relatively passively via ad networks (no other monetisation strategies currently). Probably, between us, we're spending around 5 hours a week of work on it. I managed to do this in 4 months. From £10-15 a month to £2000-2500 a month in 4 months using SEO strategies only. We didn't use her social media platform to push traffic (we are developing a strategy to do this currently). But there's also still lots of upside potential, newsletters to get going, affiliate links to insert, youtube to start, online cooking courses to consider, and I have a strategy in place to continue building it towards an exit in 2-3 years.
Now here's the dilemma...
As I noted, we're still living at my mother-in-law's house (which she is planning to sell in the next 5-6 months to downsize - meaning we wont be able to go with her), we've still got poor credit ratings, and on paper, we're not a great bet for a potential landlord. Our 'salaried' income is around £34,000 a year, with her adding a little with sponsored content, and the website (which obviously hasn't had a year's worth of 'good' books yet). So our 'affordability' in terms of rentals is pretty low (because they will only take the salaried job in to account), and most landlords don't want to touch us due to the poor credit rating.
The one saving grace is that we now have some savings and our debt is manageable and reducing consistently. In terms of savings, I think we're going to need enough to pay 6 months upfront for a rental to give the landlord some confidence. We're at around 3 months saved currently, but with the website earning a solid amount now, with little expenditure on it, we can probably save enough in the next 5-6 months to reach that 6 month upfront number. Perhaps more.
Anyway, I've come across another opportunity. It's another website that is very old, already has a reasonable domain authority, and it's an absolute steal. In fact, it's in a much better starting position that the one I've managed to transform in 4 months). I'm very confident I can replicate what I did for my current website with the new one. However, if I was to take the opportunity, it does pretty much wipe out our savings and puts us potentially in a very difficult position in 5-6 months if I'm wrong and I can't replicate my SEO strategy with it. However, if I'm right, it could significantly improve our financial lives in the short term and again lead to a good 'exit' in 2-3 years time.
Given what has happened over the last few years, I'm leaning towards taking the safe route here, getting my family settled in our own place, some more money saved up, and taking the risk (should one arise) in the next 12-18 months. But on the other hand, I'm itching to take this one and change our lives quicker.
Apologies for the essay!
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