Helping people make side-income idea → $50k/Month Online Success

Hello Rebels

🏖️ Fun one-liner:

Why do entrepreneurs love to read about history? Because they're planning to make some of their own!

Onto Today’s story….

Jeff Proctor, realized he didn't like working for someone else.

He found that millennials were interested in making and saving extra money through side hustles, but not sure how.

He with his friend Ben started Dollarsprout and built it into a thriving $50k/month online business.

This is how they did it.

Jeff Proctor never imagined he would become an entrepreneur.

While working at a wealth management firm, he discovered that he didn't enjoy working under someone else.

He wanted to start his own business.

He had an idea and discussed it with his long-time friend Ben Huber.

The idea was to create a subscription-based investing website where they would research stocks and share "trade secrets" with paying subscribers.

His friend Ben liked it.

So, Jeff quit his job to start an online business with Ben, even though they had zero audience and zero revenue at the time.

Jeff had saved up $20,000, which he thought would last a year.

However, it only lasted 9 months, and he was dead broke by this time.

Out of money, Jeff had to return to work.

Jeff says, "One of the biggest mistakes Ben and I made was never validating the idea before deciding to go all in."

But 10 months later, he was able to quit again, and he hoped it would be for good this time.

But this time, he changed the idea.

He started DollarSprout, a personal finance blog geared towards millennials interested in making and saving extra money,especially through side hustles.

All of their content is free,

and they make money through affiliate marketing - earning commissions on sales and leads generated from their referral links.

To launch the site, Jeff and Ben used GoDaddy's website builder tool, resulting in a glitchy, ugly initial version.

Everything felt like a struggle, from the logo not fitting to text blocks overlapping.

In the early days, they spent months posting on social media and

writing blog posts about investing trends, without any clear sales strategy.

It wasn't working.

They achieved their first breakthrough in building an audience through Pinterest, a platform neither had used before.

Getting accepted as contributors to popular "group boards" on Pinterest was a laborious process involving cold outreach,

such as sending personalized messages to board owners and showcasing how their content would add value to the board.

But it grew their traffic to 20,000 page views per month.

However, their revenue was still zero.

Noticing other bloggers succeeding with affiliate marketing on Pinterest, inspired them to find financial companies with affiliate programs and

add affiliate links to their own content.

Their first big hit was an article by Ben almost a year into the business,listing different ways to make money from home.

That single post drove 50,000 page views in 2 months and earned them over $500, their first real revenue.

Finally experiencing a taste of success, they started doubling down on this model.

SEO has been the biggest key to their growth.

Their straightforward SEO strategy focused on creating useful, keyword-oriented content that solved reader's problems.

They hustled to promote that content through guest posting, going on podcasts, networking with journalists, and more.

Since affiliate income depends on massive traffic, everything they did centers around what people wanted to read and

how to help them better than competitors do.

Initially, they were doing news/opinion pieces, but they moved away from it.

They focused solely on problem-solving content,such as "How to Make Money Online: 28 Real Ways to Earn Money Online" and

"16 Best Part-Time Jobs – Make $1,000+ Extra Per Month."

For review pages comparing products like investing apps,they matched different options to different reader needs,

rather than pushing a one-size-fits-all choice, which increased conversion rates.

However, the majority of their content doesn't heavily push affiliate offers.

This content existed mainly to teach readers and build their brand.

Repeat traffic from a loyal audience matters more than one-off clicks on affiliate links, says Jeff.

Within one year, they were making $13k/month, and within the next year, they were making $25k/month.

Traffic has grown steadily to 700,000+ visitors per month.

They made many mistakes along the way, like starting without validating their idea, quitting a job with zero business revenue,

and not adjusting fast enough when things weren't working.

But they believe they had to make those mistakes in order to really learn.

As they were growing, they aimed to become the go-to website for as many personal finance topics as possible.

They produced a lot of content, which, in the process, diluted what they excelled at, creating content on making extra money.

So they realized their mistake and returned to their roots and

become the best at creating content on making extra money.

For them, stumbling into affiliate marketing and

seeing a glimmer of success led them to go all-in on that model, which turned out to be a great decision.

Now they are making $50k/month.

Jeff says…

"Don't spend forever perfecting your idea or planning out every detail;

just get something out there in the marketplace and see how people respond.

From there, keep making your product better."

8 reasons why he succeeded

1. Be willing to change their idea as needed.

• Their original subscription idea didn't work, so they pivoted to a personal finance blog for millennials.

• This pivot to DollarSprout as a free blog with affiliate marketing revenue ended up being successful.

• Being flexible and pivoting based on market feedback was crucial.

2. Start with basic MVP

• DollarSprout started with an ugly, glitchy website built using GoDaddy's website builder.

• Despite the poor initial product, they improved it over time based on user feedback.

• Starting basic allowed them to get something live quickly and then iterate.

3. Leverage existing platforms/communities

• They built their initial audience by getting accepted into popular group boards on Pinterest.

• This involved outreach, showing how their content added value to each board.

• Leveraging existing platforms helped them avoid the cold start problem.

4. Focus on SEO & solving problems

• Creating keyword-focused content that solved readers' problems was their core SEO strategy.

• This included articles like "How to Make Money Online" and reviewing products/services.

• SEO for useful, problem-solving content drove the majority of their traffic.

5. Promote content relentlessly

• They hustled to promote their SEO content through guest posting, podcasts, media outreach, etc.

• This helped get their content discovered and drive more traffic to their site.

• Relentless promotion was important, especially when starting out.

6. Build loyal returning audience

• Rather than chasing one-off affiliate clicks, they focused on building brand loyalty.

• A loyal, returning audience mattered more than individual affiliate conversions.

• This involved providing lots of free, valuable content over time.

7. Double down on strengths

• They created content across many personal finance topics.

• They realized this diluted their brand and decided to focus on one core topic of helping people make extra money on the side.

• This helped them on becoming the best at making money topics.

8. Launch & improve over time

• Jeff's advice: Don't overplan, just get an initial version out quickly.

• Then keep improving and iterating the product based on real user feedback.

• Launching and learning is better than overanalyzing before launching.

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Hope you liked the story and the tactics which made them successful.

Let the good times roll for you!.

Yours “Rooting for your success” Vijay Peduru