Journey to a Legitimate $250,000 PER YEAR Online Business

Introduction

This is going to be my first Journey thread in a long time, as I haven’t been overly active on the forum in recent months. However, I have recently started up a website which I thought might interest other people

In this Journey I plan to be 100% transparent about EVERYTHING! I know some guys on here tend to hide their niche, and not disclose things out of fear of other people stealing their ideas or copying them. However, I’m hoping that people will realise that you will get far better results if you take my journey and modify it to your own strengths.

So, what I will be doing is setting up a blog in the personal finance and investment niche. Some background on me is that I am actually a qualified accountant, so the topic of finance is something which I 1) Know a lot about 2) Passionate about 3) Have some sort of authority on.

I have always found with IM that the projects which I am most passionate about are the ones which are always the most successful. What do you love doing? Combine it with IM!


Monetisation

Initially, there will be no monetisation at all. I suspect I will not make a cent for the first 30 days or so. The plan for the first 30 days is to just create plenty of blog content, the aim being at least one article per day, preferably two (depending on how busy I am).

Once I get a steady flow of traffic to the website via natural Google progression of the blog posts, I will start implementing email list building, in order to build up a list where I will be giving away “Free Financial Advice” (or something similar). This email list will then be utilised to monetise in various ways.

Long term, I plan to make the website a membership site. I will be making investments into the creation of tools and programmes which will aid people with their personal finance and investments on a day-to-day basis.

Short term, I will begin writing eBooks and Courses 60 days in. These will then be sold on the website and promoted to individuals on the email list. These, as with everything will revolve around the topic of personal finance, budgeting, wealth generation etc


The Niche

As has been noted above, my niche is going to be Personal Finance & Investment. This is mostly because it is a topic I know a lot about, and I’m very passionate about. I’m also a qualified accountant, which will obviously sound a bit more authoritative when discussing ideas on the blog.

I also feel as though there is a lot of long term potential with this niche, as the finance world is very broad and I think there is a lot of room for combining programme creation with financial issues.


Goals

This is going to be a very very long-term Journey (so make sure you subscribe to keep up to date with progress!)

I plan to do this for 5 years, and then potentially sell the business. So I will split my goals into annual goals, instead of the normal daily or monthly financial goals that we tend to see around the forum. I’m not just doing this to be different, I’m doing this to set my brain mentally to aim for the larger goals.

Year 1: $20,000 ($1,667/pm)

Year 2: $50,000 ($4,167/pm)

Year 3: $80,000 ($6,667/pm)

Year 4: $150,000 ($12,500/pm)

Year 5: $250,000 ($20,833/pm)


BHW Update Plan

I plan to post a full update every Sunday. However, if I cannot keep to this, or there’s a reason I cannot post, I will be sure to let you know. This full update will keep to a set template where I will discuss what I have done that week, what I hope to do in the coming week, as well as my progress towards my goals.

I will still check back on the thread hopefully every day in order to answer any questions you may have.


Other than that, I hope you all enjoy the journey!
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have!

Update #1
Date: 28/02/2019

I thought I would get an update to you now, as I am actually on holiday this weekend, so will likely not have time to write anything in-depth on sunday.

What I have done this week

• The website is now pretty much set up. There are some little issues which I need to sort out, and I still need to have my designer sort out a logo for the site, but the majority of it is sorted
• I decided to use Divi Theme and WordPress as a basis for the site. I have used this loads in the past, and it is super-simple to work with
• I now have a total of 6 posts on the website, most of which are at least 1,500 words in length. I am trying to post long, but useful content. Definitely something I need to improve on, as I can waffle quite a bit.
• Set up a group on Facebook, which I will utilise in the future to host only subscribed members to the site
• Researched more into Membership Sites as well as what platform I will use (still undecided)
• Put the website online!

What I've learnt so far

Blogging is difficult! haha. I am really struggling to get out as much content as I had hoped to. I get much more time on my hands at the end of April as I am currently in the "busy season" in my main job. So, for now, I will just try and do my best and aim for around 1 article per day.

I really need to focus on one thing at a time. This week I was setting up FB groups, doing the website, making content and more! I should really focus on one step at a time and not leave anything unfinished. The website still needs some work, so that is the main focus for next week!

What I plan to do next week

• Try and get at least another 5 articles online. It can be hard, as I work 60 hour weeks currently with my normal job. If I miss a day, I try and write two articles the next day
• Do a mindmap/think about an eBook I can write
• Start up an Instagram page and begin growing it
• Focus on completing the website 100% (needs a lot of image tweaks and settings etc)

Stats
Total $ Made: $0
Total Blog Posts: 6
Total Members: 0

Excellent journey! It sounds like you’ve planned really well. I’m in the banking industry in Audit and have past experience in accounting - but I enjoy IM much more... hope to be able to replace income soon!

Good luck!

best of luck for your journey

riseNgrind said:

Excellent journey! It sounds like you’ve planned really well. I’m in the banking industry in Audit and have past experience in accounting - but I enjoy IM much more... hope to be able to replace income soon!

Good luck!

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Awesome. I actually started my career working at a Big 4 accounting firm doing audit while I did my exams

This sounds great! Best of luck, I'm hopping on your journey train!

I'm in London until Tuesday next week, so not much will be happening over the weekend. But I'm going to try and get lots done tonight to make up for it

Apologies for the delay on the update, I wasn't feeling great the past few days, so focused on getting the business work done from bed.

Update #2
Date: 12/03/19

What I have done this week

• Managed to only write 5 new articles the past week. I'm trying to focus on quality rather than quantity, and each post has been about 2,000+ words each
• I started my SEO efforts on the site. Started with a round of social signals.
• Created a Twitter account, and connected the blog to post a link on Twitter automatically
• Made some alterations to the site content on the front-end/sales pages
• Created a 'Recommended Books' page so I can monetize Amazon affiliate income at some point

Plan for the coming week

• Keep going with the blog posts. I'm struggling to find low competition keywords to focus on, so at the moment I'm honestly just posting about things I find interesting.
• Look into getting LongtailPro for my keyword research
• Think about starting a YouTube channel to go with the website. Although I don't want to appear on YouTube myself, so not sure how I'm going to do it

Thanks for keeping up with the Journey. Happy to answer any questions along the way!

Following.

• Do you grow the Instagram account manually ? What about the YouYube channel you want to create ?
• Without revealing the niche, could you tell us why your visitors would get a membership to your blog ?

Thanks and good luck

sobolanu said:

Following.

• Do you grow the Instagram account manually ? What about the YouYube channel you want to create ?
• Without revealing the niche, could you tell us why your visitors would get a membership to your blog ?

Thanks and good luck

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I believe I said the niche in my first post. It is about personal finance and investing to increase your wealth. I'm an accountant by trade

My Instagram has been manual up to this point. But im researching follow unfollow bots to automate that

I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do regarding YouTube yet. I might not do it in the end

Soo much free knowledge, definitely I will follow Good luck!

Good Luck

That’s the way to go. Good for you.

good luck for your journey bud!

Dude i’m about to start a similar journey. PM your skype if you want to connect.

I think you might be underestimating the time required for this project.

30, 60 or even 90 days might not cut it to get organic traffic in such a huge competition niche.

It's worth branching out to acquire traffic from non-organic sources (YouTube, Quora, Niche Relevant Forums, Reddit Etc).

I couldn’t agree more, but I’m so shying away from FB ads. I keep losing money. I’m muuuuch better with SM traffic and my (white label) clicks. Lol

hippo123 said:

I think you might be underestimating the time required for this project.

30, 60 or even 90 days might not cut it to get organic traffic in such a huge competition niche.

It's worth branching out to acquire traffic from non-organic sources (YouTube, Quora, Niche Relevant Forums, Reddit Etc).

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I am starting to do this as well. I'll discuss it further in my next main update

Great All the best on your journey mate.