Growing My Side Hustles To 30k/M

[Andy Bell]

Hey everyone, I got the idea for this journey thread from @GuitarManDan and his thread here; thanks for a great read, guitar man.

First, some quick background. I am 34, had my first AdSense site at 19. At 22, I was already making a profit of 10k/m, and I lost track of myself; I got lazy and lost hunger, and I started traveling/partying.

My first affiliate site made 3k/m. My next got to 10,000/m profit. My biggest site was an Ecom site that got to $300,000 a month in revenue(10% profit) at its peak (3 years ago) and was then hit with an algo update. I can go on like this for five more projects, big successes, then algo hits killing them. I am the biggest example of what violating control looks like. When I got hit by google algo updates, I had three different businesses wiped out on a scale that would cause some people to kill themselves; luckily, I have a strong will and always know I can recover.

This year I decided to refocus myself completely. I have finally matured and realized I'm not getting any younger, and I don't want to go back to a 9-5.

After all the losses, I still have blogging side hustles, including seven sites and an e-commerce site that pays me $5k a month. In this journey, I'm going to start a B2B business I have been thinking about with massive scale possibility in a niche I found that covers all the CENTS. I will slowly grow the rest of my blogs by selling them and reinvesting in my business.

This year's goal is to get to $15000 a month by the end of December 31st, 2023. I will do this by focusing on my two businesses - My blogs to $9000 a month and my B2b Business to $6000 a month. Eventually, the b2b will scale and take over.

For the sake of brevity, I will only be updating the b2b business site process in detail. I will supply the blogging numbers just for milestone's sake.

I will cover detail of the tools I use, cold calling tactics, and more to help some people learn with me. I will update either every two weeks or every month.

 

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[sujit1717]

That's really cool. Wish you lots of success Andy.

 

[Robdavis]

My first affiliate site made 3k/m. My next got to 10,000/m profit. My biggest site was an Ecom site that got to $300,000 a month in revenue(10% profit) at its peak (3 years ago) and was then hit with an algo update. I can go on like this for five more projects, big successes, then algo hits killing them. I am the biggest example of what violating control looks like. When I got hit by google algo updates, I had three different businesses wiped out on a scale that would cause some people to kill themselves; luckily, I have a strong will and always know I can recover.

Well done on your past success. Best wishes for the future.
But reading your post got me thinking... Why did you keep getting hammered by algo updates? Why didn't you learn from the first couple of occasions? I assume that by now you are an SEO expert?

 

[dvdusa]

This sounds great, looking forward to your progress.

Do you live in Zihuatanejo? I stayed there for 6 months in 2003. Love that place!

 

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[Andy Bell]

Well done on your past success. Best wishes for the future.
But reading your post got me thinking... Why did you keep getting hammered by algo updates? Why didn't you learn from the first couple of occasions? I assume that by now you are an SEO expert?

I have dedicated an unparallel amount of learning to SEO. Done almost every course; in my early days, I thought more knowledge would help me - then I learned you could get the most important fundamentals 90% in about one day. Everything else is icing on the cake and won't help you if you don't do the work.

Also, violating control by only relying on google traffic can leave you with something like this. Here's a site that made $10k a month for me that went to $500 a month in an afternoon.

My first penalty was for using PBNs (personal blog network links). I knew this practice was shady so I consider this my fault.

My next penalized site no one could figure out; I had consulting calls with the biggest names in SEO, and we tried everything under the sun no one could figure out what happened to it since it was a very well-written site with no shady practices.

The next site was from a may core update, again, was a completely whitehat site with nothing fishy; I had many friends wiped out with this update that had very clean sites. By this time, I had determined google is happy with getting it right 6/10 times, and any collateral damage doesn't phase them. I learned that Google traffic as a business model can be incredibly high risk and is like, if not worse, than a 9-5; you are still dependent on someone that can take away your livelihood.

 

[Andy Bell]

This sounds great, looking forward to your progress.

Do you live in Zihuatanejo? I stayed there for 6 months in 2003. Love that place!

Actually, Shawshank Redemption when they talk about Zihuatanejo is what got me down to Mexico.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=QhjzHwGskEA&feature=emb_logo


I live in Mazatlan though, on the Pacific coast. Don't google it, they just caught Chapos son this morning and there are a few things going on in the state that aren't too pretty today hehe. Usually its gorgeous.

 

[Andy Bell]

@polaroid22 Was typing you a reply to your dm but thought it would be better to put it here since many may ask the same question about whether blogging is worth it.

Hey Polaroid! I would not say I have the blogging thing down. As I have mentioned, I am the god of getting my sites destroyed by Google. My brother asked me about blogging a little while ago, and I told him I would not recommend it at this point with ChatGPT and ai coming and flooding all niches, the saturation, and just how hard it is to get a new site going as it stands with the competition.

If I were to start blogging again, I would buy a site that is already making money and is successful and then go hard on it to turn it into an authority with all the bells and whistles like youtube channels, social media, and newsletters. In this day and age, starting a new blog is a very high-risk activity. Hence, I am pivoting to a b2b method where I can be insulated from a lack of control caused by Google being my main revenue source.

If you are still set on blogging, I would recommend the following courses.
Jon Dystka - Fatstacks
Authority hackers
The Lab - Matt Diggity

 

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[Andy Bell]

Starting Update January 2023:

Goal: 15,000 by Jan 1, 2024
Online Hustles: 5225/m
B2B Business: 0/m

What's the niche?
I will try to get as close as possible without revealing the niche for obvious reasons. So a while back, I had an issue with a particular vertical I couldn't find an easy way to solve; I did a lot of research trying to find someone and only found one company doing this particular service online. I then investigated the whole niche and suspect high demand for this; I talked it through with my brothers (one works at a venture capital firm) to tell me I wasn't crazy. (Important from my reading, to always talk ideas through with your inner circle to get some initial signoff).

My business provides a service for a particular business niche that traditionally leaves a lot of revenue on the table. Many companies in this niche produce something but lack the expertise/time to turn it into another revenue source. For example, a whaler that only uses the meat on the whale but tosses out the rest, with me telling them I also have the expertise to make oil, clothes, and vitamins from the whale, those pieces they are just throwing out. My service will cost some money, but the benefits are huge.

Site is launched: I worked hard to get the site up and running this week, with most of the bells and whistles. I have learned much from Convertica.com's youtube channel and my conversion knowledge. I tried to model my site based on the convertica homepage, thinking, hey, if someone is selling a/b conversion, they would have the best conversion layout; this is a temporary stopgap until I do my a/b testing.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbrfvYIiSso&t=371s


My site's homepage gets right to the meat at the top for conversion, telling you what we do in three points and asking you to contact us. Below is my homepage text changed so I could show it; further below, there are about four pages of more detail and sales, but I'm trying to be very short and to the point, as discussed by convertica. (I blocked out the logo for obvious reasons. If you find my site from clues, please don't reveal it ).

My biggest sales pipeline will be cold outreach, but I can't go without a good website. I am trying not to dedicate too much time to the site since I want to get going as fast as possible, and I know many people get bogged down in website or logo creation before they even do anything to attract clients.


Homepage Funnel:

1. User types name, email, and website
2. User gets an email from us with information, including case studies on a google page in the email, and a link to a calendly invite to schedule a discovery call.
3. On the call, I discuss the benefits and if we continue, pricing
4. send over an invoice

This and Next Week's Todos -
- Create a whitepaper in the google doc outlining what we do and its benefits.
- Create a sample case study using my brother's businesses and applying my service to it completely
- Decide on tech stack for bootstrapping email outreach, looking at some possible app sumo deals along with some ideas for scraper tactics and manual outreach emails to personalize as much as possible
- Create SOPs to train my full-time va to do half-time email outreach with me.
- Create a discovery call sop
- Start hiring one person I will train to do this service

I hope to start outreach within two weeks after I finish all these steps. My goal is the 23rd to have all these documents ready and start reaching out. I may not have someone hired by then. I probably won't, but that won't stop me from starting sales. Worst comes to worst; I can service clients while I wait for my employee. This would help me know exactly what's involved before I ask someone else to take over.

I am excited to start, haven't been this excited about an idea in a while!

 

[Andy Bell]

Starting Update Up to April 2023:

Goal: 15,000 by Jan 1, 2024
Online Hustles (After sold sites income deducted): $4995/m
Sold small Sites - $11,695
Sold Ecom site - $46,125

So I took a big break from posting here since I had some medical problems being 34 I still felt like I was immortal and lived my life like I was still in my early 20s. I quickly learned this was not the case, and I was brought back to earth with respiratory and heart issues. If you don't have Nomad health insurance, I recommend it; it saved me a boatload here in Mexico.

So what did I do since?

Sold three blogs for $11,695
Sold my seasonal ecom site for $46,125
Restructured my online businesses with AI, firing many writers, rehired

As I mentioned in my previous posts, I am bearish on the online publishing market, with the massive influx of AI flooding the Google search results and killing the barrier to entry for millions of people, so I offloaded a portion of my portfolio to insulate myself.

Despite offloading this much of the portfolio, I was surprised that my growth kept me at about $5000 a month. So basically, I cashed out $60,000 and stayed at the same monthly income. Great!

These funds are going into an index fund while I continue to grow with the monthly income.

All sales have passed escrow and are final, so I can rest easy now.


I had been sitting on three of the blog sites for a long time without making any additional changes. The first made about $40 monthly but was well-built with a great domain.

The second, about $150 a month also a great domain and well-built in the archery niche; not sure why this one didn't go for more.

The third had links from Samsung and other huge publishers and was making $130 a month; as soon as I sold it, someone messaged me asking me to cancel the sale saying they would pay $5000, but it was too late.

Note to anyone selling sites, Flippa is a fickle beast with sales, I spent a ton of time setting these listings up, and I used an auction system, which was a mixed bag. Sometimes you get lucky on a competitive auction, and sometimes it's a bunch of tire kickers.

Out of 4 auctions I did, I kid you not, all the buyers were people that never sent me a single message, and I had an inbox full for two weeks of people asking everything under the sun; they never even bid in the end. Be careful. Many people are just trying to get information on your business to replicate it.

The last site was the dropshipping ecom store that I offloaded; it is seasonal for the summer and would just be starting to earn now; it had very good months before covid and terrible months during covid because we were out of supply, if I had sold it before I could see it getting me 100-150k. It was a stressful site, and I'm not particularly bullish on dropshipping; I tried to produce the product myself, but the economics weren't feasible, so I decided to let it go to focus on other projects.


Restructuring Business

Blogging was always a means to an end to create a brand and actual business selling my own product/service in the sector. It was never the end goal, and with AI, that's even more so; with the sale of these businesses, I have let go of my AI writers and shifted to a more ai-based approach using human-edited AI content. If you want to learn about this, Fatstacks is a great resource, I could write all day, but he's covered the majority in his blog posts.

I went from 10 writers to 2 ai human-assisted writers/wranglers (hard to title them now hehe). I created sops for every corner of the business, and I'm trying to hire more.

One of my sites has been taking off, which has been the cause of me not losing any monthly revenue even though more than a third of my portfolio was sold.


Keep in mind I don't see this as a long-term play; Google is working on two new search engines and eventually will wipe out all of this info content I have relied on for ad revenue. I am trying to pivot 1-3 sites to brands/ businesses with multiple streams of revenue and traffic nonreliant on Google. My next foray with these will be into social platforms growth.

Other Business

The other business I had been working on took a backseat because of all of this ai development. I had to choose to restructure my business or risk losing it. This took me the majority of the past couple of months.

Now that I am more stable, I can go back to it, but the advent of ai has also changed how this business and service will work, so it needs to be rethought and restructured.

I had an opportunity from a friend who used to be an executive at a large bank in Holland extremely smart guy, to try and import a product and sell it here in Mexico that I used to have a site based on.

We did a market analysis, and it seems like a good fit as for whatever reason the product has terrible suppliers here in Mexico we could easily do better. This guy would be a dream partner, an incredibly hard-working good guy who has made successful product sales in Mexico, knows the ins and outs of the federal and municipal import issues here, and has a fast-growing company. He told me he would go all in with his time on this project if I wanted to start with him, as we both saw some good potential.

The first import purchase would be relatively small from China, about $15,000 (a large ticket item), to test the market and see if it's viable.


Anyway, this is a massive update, but its been months, so I had to pad it out I feel excited for the future. I think there's a ton of growth out there, and I'm taking a few shots before I find something I can go all in on. I know it may look like I'm a bit scatter-brained, but I'm looking for something to show a nice glimmer before I am laser-focused on it since I have been burned a few times, spending years on ideas that were too small.

Good luck to anyone else on their income journeys!!

P.s Have been diving into the book profit first to break down income into how much you should be spending on expenses and buying more income, very good book I recommend it, here's where I'm at now and the ideals (shown above) based on my income


Operating expenses will be dropping in a huge way with my changes, focusing on lowering taxes with my llc and international residency and everything thats now owners pay is dedicated to more growth