Towards the end of 2018 and the beginning of the new year I was in a big reading kick. I was reading a lot of books (millionaire fastlane , tim ferris, the subtle art, etc.) but was also spending a lot of time reading around here on the forums and other places on the web.
From M-F I worked a lot (and unfortunately still do). I would get home at 7 or 8 and then maybe workout, and would get some reading in before heading to bed.
The reading was giving me ideas and motivation, but then I would go to sleep, have a long day the next day and need that motivation again the next night. Rinse and repeat.
What I realized was that all the reading was stopping my execution. I had to remove myself from reading about other people's stories to start building my own. But, then I had to find my motivation elsewhere.
Once you get in a cycle and can actually see the benefits of the work you're putting in; the process, and the knowing that the process generates results, becomes the motivation.
And thankfully, I think I've just reached that point. It's been ~6 months or so since I've been actively engaged on here. I had always wanted to start a progress thread (but didn't have enough progress), so I figured this would be the ideal time.
In my 6-months off, here's what I executed on:
I grew my niche content blog from $65 profit/month to $400-500/month
Honestly...I've only written 2 posts in 2018 (March and April), but I spent a ton of time working on monetization and optimization. I learned that quality is really all you need in a niche industry. I made a to do list, put a deadline on items, and executed. If it didn't work, I tried something else. Here is what I was able to accomplish.
I am 80% of the way to launching my first FBA product
As my blog grew consistently, so did my Amazon revenues. I started to notice that we consistently sold 10+ units of one single product per month. The product was ~$100 and had stupid shipping fees of $15+. I thought..."it's Amazon, no one wants to pay $15 for shipping." So I looked into it and realized that I could get a 99% similar product made for <$50. I am one supplier away from sending the product to Amazon and profiting $25/sale, plus the commission I get for referring the sale. Because I consistently sell 10+ of these a month, I am confident I can make $250+ (with a lot more upside) per month by getting my own product on FBA.
Next steps for my FBA project:
I launched an online business brokerage (saleaway.co), signed up my first $150k deal, and was accepted to Flippa's broker program
Sorry for the plug on this one and staying secretive about the one above
I have a background in technical and transaction-oriented finance (day job - see my next bullet). But also have a passion for online business...and so I thought, why not put those two together?
Welp, this is the result! It's something I had wanted to start for awhile but...had just never executed on.
I had had the concept down for awhile, which made it easier, but I was able to launch this and get the first client (~$150k ecom store) signed up to sell within 3-weeks.
To-do on this:
Left JPMorgan to join a Private Equity (buyside) firm
If you're familiar with the finance industry, the ultimate goal for most is to get to the buyside. The hours are better, the work is cooler, and the money is fatter. Well, after just one year, I was able to make it to the buyside. I really put my pencils down on everything entrepreneurial during this time, and spent one and a half to two months zeroing in on this opportunity (studying, networking, etc.).
It's paid off. I enjoy what I do - I get to work with businesses, just on a bigger scale than I do in my free time.
I flipped a website for a 25% profit
I wouldn't ever consider myself a website flipper...I am more of a buy and hold type of guy - generate monthly income. That was the plan at least, but I bought a site at the beginning of the year. A better way to put it is I "won" a site at the beginning of the year, on Flippa. Just last week, after maybe putting 4-5 total hours in on the site, one of the guys I outbid to win it on Flippa came in and offered to buy it for 17% more than I had paid for it. That plus the income it made me during the time I owned it resulted in a 25% return.
I started v2 of my niche blog network
I started a second niche blog, which is very similar to the one I was talking about at the beginning of this. I spent 10 hours writing two, very high quality, posts on it that were 2,000+ words, and let it "marinate". Three months later, it's getting 1,500 unique hits, 100% from organic traffic. Hoping to make this as big and profitable as my niche blog above!
Conclusion
This was a long post, and by the end of it I realized...this is a little bit of a "hey look what I did" or "look at my lamborghini, where is yours?" type of post. But, writing it has motivated me even more to push one step further and I hope it makes some of you realize the potential you have if you put your head down on something and actually execute on it.
From M-F I worked a lot (and unfortunately still do). I would get home at 7 or 8 and then maybe workout, and would get some reading in before heading to bed.
The reading was giving me ideas and motivation, but then I would go to sleep, have a long day the next day and need that motivation again the next night. Rinse and repeat.
What I realized was that all the reading was stopping my execution. I had to remove myself from reading about other people's stories to start building my own. But, then I had to find my motivation elsewhere.
Once you get in a cycle and can actually see the benefits of the work you're putting in; the process, and the knowing that the process generates results, becomes the motivation.
And thankfully, I think I've just reached that point. It's been ~6 months or so since I've been actively engaged on here. I had always wanted to start a progress thread (but didn't have enough progress), so I figured this would be the ideal time.
In my 6-months off, here's what I executed on:
I grew my niche content blog from $65 profit/month to $400-500/month
Honestly...I've only written 2 posts in 2018 (March and April), but I spent a ton of time working on monetization and optimization. I learned that quality is really all you need in a niche industry. I made a to do list, put a deadline on items, and executed. If it didn't work, I tried something else. Here is what I was able to accomplish.
- Traffic grew from 7.5k uniques (Feb 2018) to 22.8k uniques (Jul 2018)
- Grew from 250 email subs to now over 1,200
- Implemented a 6-email drip email campaign which is running at a 53% open rate and 20% click rate
- Was originally only using Adsense and Amazon as monetization. Now the site uses: Amazon, Adsense, eBay Partner, CJ Affiliate, and Private Advertisers.
- NEW CONTENT (it's been awhile). Need to find someone to outsource the content writing to since it usually takes me ~6-8 hours to write a quality post
- Add on to my drip email series. I have 4 ideas for good emails that I need to execute on
- Publish a free e-book. I've been saying I would do this for awhile. I have 80% of the content from already published blog posts, I just need to generate the rest, format it, and fine tune it
I am 80% of the way to launching my first FBA product
As my blog grew consistently, so did my Amazon revenues. I started to notice that we consistently sold 10+ units of one single product per month. The product was ~$100 and had stupid shipping fees of $15+. I thought..."it's Amazon, no one wants to pay $15 for shipping." So I looked into it and realized that I could get a 99% similar product made for <$50. I am one supplier away from sending the product to Amazon and profiting $25/sale, plus the commission I get for referring the sale. Because I consistently sell 10+ of these a month, I am confident I can make $250+ (with a lot more upside) per month by getting my own product on FBA.
Next steps for my FBA project:
- Source this last supplier!!! The small order size has been the biggest hiccup in this process. Going to try to find a local supplier who might be more willing
- Need to educate myself more on how to actually package products and send them to Amazon for FBA. I don't have any experience so I'm not sure what my best route is
I launched an online business brokerage (saleaway.co), signed up my first $150k deal, and was accepted to Flippa's broker program
Sorry for the plug on this one and staying secretive about the one above
I have a background in technical and transaction-oriented finance (day job - see my next bullet). But also have a passion for online business...and so I thought, why not put those two together? Welp, this is the result! It's something I had wanted to start for awhile but...had just never executed on.
I had had the concept down for awhile, which made it easier, but I was able to launch this and get the first client (~$150k ecom store) signed up to sell within 3-weeks.
To-do on this:
- Ramp up marketing...paid ads, SEO, content creation, etc.
- Continue to reach out to business owners to generate leads
- Button-up the functionality of the website. It's on the minimal side right now and eventually would like to have a full buyers platform, etc.
Left JPMorgan to join a Private Equity (buyside) firm
If you're familiar with the finance industry, the ultimate goal for most is to get to the buyside. The hours are better, the work is cooler, and the money is fatter. Well, after just one year, I was able to make it to the buyside. I really put my pencils down on everything entrepreneurial during this time, and spent one and a half to two months zeroing in on this opportunity (studying, networking, etc.).
It's paid off. I enjoy what I do - I get to work with businesses, just on a bigger scale than I do in my free time.
I flipped a website for a 25% profit
I wouldn't ever consider myself a website flipper...I am more of a buy and hold type of guy - generate monthly income. That was the plan at least, but I bought a site at the beginning of the year. A better way to put it is I "won" a site at the beginning of the year, on Flippa. Just last week, after maybe putting 4-5 total hours in on the site, one of the guys I outbid to win it on Flippa came in and offered to buy it for 17% more than I had paid for it. That plus the income it made me during the time I owned it resulted in a 25% return.
I started v2 of my niche blog network
I started a second niche blog, which is very similar to the one I was talking about at the beginning of this. I spent 10 hours writing two, very high quality, posts on it that were 2,000+ words, and let it "marinate". Three months later, it's getting 1,500 unique hits, 100% from organic traffic. Hoping to make this as big and profitable as my niche blog above!
Conclusion
This was a long post, and by the end of it I realized...this is a little bit of a "hey look what I did" or "look at my lamborghini, where is yours?" type of post. But, writing it has motivated me even more to push one step further and I hope it makes some of you realize the potential you have if you put your head down on something and actually execute on it.
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