Sold first website biz for $65k+ in 2021 & made low 6-figures total. What questions might you have about side hustles, growth, selling, etc?

Thank you! And basically, just things I was interested in + I love to create helpful content. I also noticed some slight gaps in the space. Both are crowded categories, but I still could find my new story/differentiator to still stand out.

Great question, but also A LOT that I could write here haha

The things I did from day 1 that helped this site grow:

~ Treat it like a business from day 1
~ Have a newsletter list built in from day 1
~ Use HARO to quickly get links, establish authority, and drive some early traffic
~ Writing great content, consistently no matter what. I had a schedule of new posts every week.
~ Mixed in some giveaways and contests to drive awareness/attention
~ Content syndication. Overlooked option, but can get you additional traffic and links to build trust.
~ Social media, as much as it can be a pain to build, majority of my traffic came from Twitter and Reddit. Same is happening now for Remote Work Junkie, but more so LinkedIn and Reddit.

Just some quick highlights!

For the first two years, I wrote everything. When I started to make some money from it, I had two freelancers to help. I would do the keyword research and outline for posts, they would fill in some of the content of those outlines. From there, I would edit, and add a bit of my personal touch to it. Saved me a few hours per week and was fairly cost-effective. I did scale back when I knew I was getting ready to potentially sell, but at that point, I had close to 200 articles doing a lot of work for me on traffic and revenue, so didn't need to pump out as much content.

For content websites, pretty much EVERYTHING has been done and written about, so not much originality left imo. I actually look at a few things though:

~ Is it something I'm interested in? I am a finance nerd and remote work nerd, so those subjects keep me focused and interested, even if it's a bit tough (mostly referring to finance here).

~ Is there opportunities to compete with any of the big boys that rank or dominate search engines? Plenty of topics, questions people ask, etc. The big media sites really love targeting keywords with massive search volume, but often overlook many other areas of content, which are easy for smaller sites like me to swoop in and grow from.

~ Do I need credentials to have a shot of being trusted source? Like I'll never write about healthcare because I know nothing about it, it's competitive, nor do I have any credentials that would be trust in people or search engines eyes. I have remote work experience and a good story about falling into remote work, but other than that, I don't need to be a Doctor to write about it or be trusted.

~ What are the opportunities to generate revenue from this niche? And is there enough interest where I could make sales? So for this project, its affiliates, job board revenue, sponsorship, and display ads. And being that it's business/tech orientated, payouts are generally much stronger than say music as a niche.

With SaaS, that's a whole different ball game there. As long as it solves a need and there is enough of a need, there's value in creating it. I'm oversimplifying of course, but I have way more thoughts there that would take up too much space here (:

Thanks for the Q!

I love following Peter's projects, interesting guy for sure to learn from.

But to your question, somewhat.

My main focus is content, resources, and guides for job seekers and remote employers, with the job board being a secondary piece (another potential source of revenue too, but I know those interested in remote content will love having a job board. Got great feedback so far about that being on there).

If the job board grows a lot, I won't be mad about it either though haha but not a main focus of mine. It's why I didn't spend time on a custom build for the job board (I use a third-party platform that integrates nicely and uses Stripe for payments).

I've thought about a Slack community or forum as well, but there is so much of that already (different communities and forums), that I'm hesitant for now to add another thing people would need to login to. But if demand shows that, I could certainly add that in the future.

There are a few sites about remote work or publications that talk about WFH, but the vast majority sites around remote work really prioritize the job board over content or talk about a million other things. And there are ALOT of job boards out there, which I think makes it more challenging to standout or be unique.

I'm flipping that common prioritization to be content-focused first. Content is where I shine with these kinds of web projects.

Plus, I've been working remotely for almost 6 years full-time and managing a team remotely, so hoping to add some experience and insights I've learned in various guides/blog posts.

I have some other ideas (one being something similar to the top 100 companies hiring remotely page) of where this could go, but keeping those under wraps for now (:

Thanks for the Q!

Thanks! Appreciate that (:

Generally website content businesses have a pretty large range of monthly multipliers, which I've seen from 10x up to 58x, which is generally an avg. monthly net profit of the last 12 months. Most look at the income as well as how the traffic direction is going. You can take a look at Empire Flippers for some of the going multiplier rates currently.

To make it more attractive, I purchased all the domain variations and ensured I had decent following on socials, email, etc. as well as all my financials easy to report on (quickbooks online ftw!). Some don't care about the socials, domain variations, and it's generally just about the net profit. But I still try to do things to make it more attractive to buyers (professional looking, build domain authority, build community around it, etc.).

I was around a 40x monthly net income multiplier (of the avg of the last 12 months), but traffic was sorta stalling for me and after a bit, I like to work on a new project. (Though naturally after two months of selling, Google graced a lot of my posts and traffic moved in the right direction again, ha!). But my income stayed steady even with traffic dips, so wasn't a major concern for the buyers. And they are doing like 6x month income currently right now, so well worth their purchase i'd say!

Sounds awesome! And I just had a website dedicated to content and resources. But marketing it and standing out was hard because personal finances is a tough and crowded market. For me to stand out early on, I find a nice in the space. My story being: I'm not a millionaire, not retired early, but taught myself and here's where I'm at.

That to me resonated better, even though it's respectable for those who retired early or invested their way to millions at young age. But I barely found anyone on my side of things new it was probably way more relatable.

So you need a hook, a story and edge first with your web app.

I also used HARO to get press and my story out, was able to get on most major publications that had money categories. Financial categories are hard for Google to trust you with build expertise, authority, and trust (EAT), so having links and my name in bigger publications built credibility early on. I also did dabbled a little bit in Facebook ads, but didn't have much budget or time to focus there.

Beyond HARO, syndicating my content and social media were two big drivers, until Google helped kick in and boost more traffic.

Long winded answer here, but basically I wouldn't say there is one best way to market your app. It's different for each project, even if in a similar category. You could test 3 channels or so for a bit, see what is working, and double down on one until you mastered it, then move on. It can be a grind, but that's what it's all about!

Good luck on the app!

Thanks for the Question! So my business model was ads, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships - so a bit different from the way SaaS would generate buyers. But i can speak on a few things.

These were all companies for investing, financial planning, or budgeting that could genuinely help my audience. The audience I had were those in the trenches looking to better their financial knowledge. So I worked with apps and products that liked, used, or currently using. The same with affiliates, which added more genuine value to readers. I was spanning every product to get as much money. I also naturally put it through high value web pages and within content to improve conversions.

Had I held onto the site longer, I had lans for an ebook (I'm still considering writing it and selling on the side, it keeps lingering in my mind). I also had thought about some sort of lead gen model to pass to others, but never go tthat far.

Maybe not the answer you were looking for per se, but hope it was interesting (:

Lovely website! The typeform integration is something I will definitely use in my upcoming projects as well. Good Luck!

Awesome idea and website looks clean!

I think on this type of site, getting the word out and users will be key. This is something where building a community around your website project will be super important (I see you have Discord, which is great!). When you have a trusted community, you have an audience to eventually sell something, after all that good value you provide of course! I'd almost try to get the community to be more internal over Discord, especially if you think one day you'd like to be acquired by a company.

You also kinda still need to keep the features rolling too, to ensure people keep coming back and new users get excited. It's a balancing act for sure.

A few ways I could see you making money here.
~ Advanced challenges/courses that cost $X amount. Give away a lot of challenges for free, but create more advanced ones which have teaching moments, think Codecademy style a bit. Or, create a self-serve platform for the more advanced challenges, so someone pays $X per month to get advanced courses and new features you drop first.

~ Newsletter sponsorship. Are you capturing emails yet via the site? That also helps build your community, but you can sell sponsorships slots via the newsletter.

~Also, you can have challenges sponsored by companies too, especially if you get a strong viewership/community. Like GitHub could sponsor the featured challenge and have their branding on it, maybe a link within for them. Brand awareness play and relevant companies can subtly advertise.

~If it interests you, could have professional coaching/teaching as well of your skills.

~Could create and sell a ebook or digital product related to this niche as well. Some people say ebooks are dead, but there are plenty of people getting recovering monthly revenue for years after it's created.

~ Potential opps to drop some affiliates of platforms relevant to the audience. Whether in resources to help coders projects, mixed into the challenges, etc.

Just throwing ideas based on what I looked at quickly, without knowing everything about your audience, ideas, and where you'd like to take this.

Hope that helps or what you were looking for here! Happy to answer any more Qs you may have!