Considering Starting a Finance Blog...

I was thinking of starting a finance blog with an emphasis on longer-term investing and how to allocate your capital since I've had some pretty good real-world success with this.

Regarding monetizing this, here what was what I was thinking:

1. Premium section - Weekly video showing what I am doing in my real portfolio.
2. Coaching - Skype consults for beginners or anybody who wants my personal time.
3. Forum for premium members.

I thought in order to get the site up and running, I could start posting some blog articles about some finance topics for beginners and where to begin. Then from there continue to blog on different topics and hopefully drive more traffic to the premium section.

I wanted some advice on the ways to monetize this. I know a lot of these type of blogs focus on the get rich quick approach, but I would really like to stray away from that as I think its quite gimmicky.

Regarding traffic, would paid traffic be a good way to initiate?

I'm looking at this as building a quality long term business for myself.

Thanks!

Finance is a tough niche but lucrative. It has monster competition. I have a friend who was struggling in this niche until he started to incorporate YT videos and point to his blog.

As for the coaching part unless you are going to charge a hefty fee don't waste your time. Doing so will take up a lot of your time unless that's what you're after.

I have one financial blog post that does pretty well mainly because I offer a free service in which I still get paid from the user regardless if they buy or not. CPA offer because I know you'll ask.

hellis said:

Finance is a tough niche but lucrative. It has monster competition. I have a friend who was struggling in this niche until he started to incorporate YT videos and point to his blog.

As for the coaching part unless you are going to charge a hefty fee don't waste your time. Doing so will take up a lot of your time unless that's what you're after.

I have one financial blog post that does pretty well mainly because I offer a free service in which I still get paid from the user regardless if they buy or not. CPA offer because I know you'll ask.

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So a weekly video to my premium subscribers is not a good idea to monetize?

Finance is a tough niche, especially for SEO. I have a site in it. In fact, it was the first site I ever started. I pretty much keep it out of nostalgia. Now, most of this article is really just addressing this topic from the SEO perspective. PPC might be doable, but it will be extraordinarily expensive.

The reason most people go into the get-rich-quick or make money online is because all of the legitimate finance stuff is covered by some of the most powerful companies on earth.

Think about it: pretty much every bank, insurance, and credit card company runs a blog.

• Bank of America
• Geico
• Prudential
• MetLife
• Visa
• MasterCard

On top of that, you have huge content sites covering much of the basics:

• Investopedia
• Mint.com
• The Fool
• The Street
• MarketWatch
• Seeking Alpha
• Stock Twits
• Kiplinger
• Forbes
• Bloomberg
• Yahoo Finance
• CNN Money

Then you just have massive finance blogs:

• NerdWallet
• Penny Hoarder
• Money Crashers
• Get Rich Slowly

The list just goes on-and-on. It's a bloodbath. That's just covering competition.

Now, let's move onto YMYL (Google's Your Money Your Life guidelines). Google is very careful about ranking untrustworthy sites about financial topics. Without credentials and validating your authority on the subject, you might have trouble getting anything ranked.

About your idea on coaching, you need to be careful. I don't know what country you're in, but in the United States, there are fiduciary laws that require people giving financial advice to be credentialed, and follow a code of ethics etc. I'm not terribly educated on all of this because I never went down this path, but I know Dave Ramsey had to be careful about the new (at the time) rules. If you decide to go that route, you'll want to see what all of the legalities are for offering personalized financial advice.

Hope this helps.

Sounds like a legit and awesome plan to kick in to the niche. As you planned start a YouTube channel to coaching ideas .

Looking for your next updates how you move forward with this effective plan

Tall_Mike said:

I was thinking of starting a finance blog with an emphasis on longer-term investing and how to allocate your capital since I've had some pretty good real-world success with this.

Regarding monetizing this, here what was what I was thinking:

1. Premium section - Weekly video showing what I am doing in my real portfolio.
2. Coaching - Skype consults for beginners or anybody who wants my personal time.
3. Forum for premium members.

I thought in order to get the site up and running, I could start posting some blog articles about some finance topics for beginners and where to begin. Then from there continue to blog on different topics and hopefully drive more traffic to the premium section.

I wanted some advice on the ways to monetize this. I know a lot of these type of blogs focus on the get rich quick approach, but I would really like to stray away from that as I think its quite gimmicky.

Regarding traffic, would paid traffic be a good way to initiate?

I'm looking at this as building a quality long term business for myself.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Monsterer said:

Sounds like a legit and awesome plan to kick in to the niche. As you planned start a YouTube channel to coaching ideas .

Looking for your next updates how you move forward with this effective plan

Click to expand...

Basd on the last few replies, idk if this is a troll comment or not lol.

I feel passionate about making this happen though.

Ha ha mike I am not trolling you , I just appreciate your thoughts and curious to know how you move forward to your strong plan for this idea to make it implement

Tall_Mike said:

Basd on the last few replies, idk if this is a troll comment or not lol.

I feel passionate about making this happen though.

Click to expand...

Monsterer said:

Ha ha mike I am not trolling you , I just appreciate your thoughts and curious to know how you move forward to your strong plan for this idea to make it implement

Click to expand...

figured you weren't lol.

Yeah, I mean I felt like this might be a good idea since I know a thing or two about investing but wanted some advice from the board. I know its a very competitive field but I was thinking of blogging more just about my own experiences and then maybe having some type of premium version idk.

Okay cool feel free to ping me if you need any help or other works related things

Tall_Mike said:

figured you weren't lol.

Yeah, I mean I felt like this might be a good idea since I know a thing or two about investing but wanted some advice from the board. I know its a very competitive field but I was thinking of blogging more just about my own experiences and then maybe having some type of premium version idk.

Click to expand...

Forum for premium members is not a good idea.
Sub-forum for premium members is ok, but the forum itself must be free.

paid traffic for the niche is very costly, however you can use adsense for the monetization for the blog. As its a costly traffic you will get decent amount per click or a CPA may pay you more than $100 per lead.

As @SEO said, finance is very tough niche.

As you plan to focus on long term investing, what is your track record of investment return.

I mean how good are you in identifying companies and investing.

If you are good in that and provide real value, people will come to you.

Regarding traffic, I think better avoid paid ad as it is very costly.

I would suggest you to start twitter account and build your base from there.

In terms of growing traffic, I see a lot of blog post being shared in different financial subreddits.

Perhaps you could join a few, build a name for yourself, and share the content there?

WebTG said:

paid traffic for the niche is very costly, however you can use adsense for the monetization for the blog. As its a costly traffic you will get decent amount per click or a CPA may pay you more than $100 per lead.

Click to expand...

So if I wanted to run a google ads campaign (which I am not too familiar with), how much might something like that cost? Can I even run ads for a finance-related blog or is that against their terms?

MisterXYZ said:

As @SEO said, finance is very tough niche.

As you plan to focus on long term investing, what is your track record of investment return.

I mean how good are you in identifying companies and investing.

If you are good in that and provide real value, people will come to you.

Regarding traffic, I think better avoid paid ad as it is very costly.

I would suggest you to start twitter account and build your base from there.

Click to expand...

Regarding my returns, I don't "invest" in individual companies, as I have not had much success with that approach, and I think this is where I could add value. Starting out and knowing what I know now, my base bread and butter strategy is DRIP investing. I feel like I could offer some good advice for those starting out on how to actually build wealth long term. That's actually kinda what i want to avoid, giving out advice on individual stocks as I don't think that's really a viable long term strategy for somebody starting out looking to grow their wealth.

Having said that, you might argue that blogging about that is not really a good idea then, which I can also see that side of the coin also.

What do you think?

biitz said:

In terms of growing traffic, I see a lot of blog post being shared in different financial subreddits.

Perhaps you could join a few, build a name for yourself, and share the content there?

Click to expand...

I was thinking more paid traffic to start maybe, and perhaps a FB group.