A few months ago I quit my job. In the time since then, I have gone from a minor depression and questioning whether I could find the fastlane to monetizing an unprofitable asset. Now I'm back risking it all on a joint venture e-commerce business with a partner that I've never even met in real life. Back on track. :icon_super:
The background
Former e-commerce startup guy, who escaped the world of chasing VC money and glamorous exits to follow my passion. Eventually I landed an easy corporate job that paid well and allowed me to pursue my side hustles. After a massive failure at SaaS (really hard if you're not a programmer), my music blog really started to take off. Eventually I quit my job figuring that a mix of my consulting and other jobs would pay the bills.
Well after quitting I went out and partied for a while. Then I was back on the couch watching series on Netflix, slightly depressed and questioning whether I was cut out for this life or good enough to make my dreams happen. I think as entrepreneurs, go-getters and fast laners if you don't question what you're doing every once and a while, then you're crazy.
The music site
I started an electronic dance music blog back in 2011 as a way to share my favorite songs with friends. Music blogging was much different then and "EDM" hadn't really taken off in America yet. Fast forward to today and we're doing 500,000 pageviews a month with a hosting bill at WPEngine that will make you scream like you sat on a needle. Adsense wasn't doing it for us and affiliate offers didn't pay or convert well. It was becoming an expensive passion project.
What changed in the "edm blog" world was that as more people became interested, the focus shifted from the music to the stars like Deadmau5 or Skrillex. People would read anything about their favorite DJs, they had become the new rockstars of our era. Previously we posted mostly music releases, but had changed our content types more to match what you'll find on a Buzzfeed or Gawker. Content to be consumed easily and shared.
Wait so how did you make this profitable...
Blogging, business, everything is about providing value. Who was getting the most value out of our posts? Because clearly as it was running at -600 a month, it wasn't us.
The value chain looked something like this...
1.) The reader: They're getting their news, free music and everything related to the topic in one place.
2.) The artist: The blog literally served as a place for free publicity for their music and promotion.
3.) Business: The big music festivals, club promoters, etc need our audience to buy tickets to their shows.
By evaluating the value chain, I considered charging consumers for the content. But opted against it because of the amount of competition and substitute products out there, plus information should be free and people download music illegally all day. Artists have almost ZERO dollars of their own, this one was out of the question. It came down to the businesses involved.
If you own a blog, think of yourselves less of a blog or website or even magazine. You're like a television station. People turn you on to consume content and then they change the channel when they leave. Your content brings the viewers and you should be awarded, if you're doing big numbers you can charge them. So instead of giving away free banner space to events, we started charging all of the promoters and you know what most of them were completely OKAY.
As our advertising media kit started floating around, we were eventually recruited by an ad-network who does all of our sales for us. We just post and make money. Depending on your niche, this may or may not be available. What you can control are the number of pageviews and unique visitors that you're getting to the site.
Basically the question you want to ask is: who is benefiting from my content and how can you monetize that relationship?
When we would post about an event at a club, the promoter would directly benefit from the free exposure provided. We wouldn't make anything. Now we are media partners with certain reputable organizations and can earn income and additional backlinks that way
Publishing content? You have to read this: I just finished, Trust Me I'm Lying (Confessions of a Media Manipulator) and it's been an eye-opener for how I should operate the blog. While some examples were slightly outrageous, it does a good job at making you examine the current media landscape and how even small blogs (like mine) can impact national media. There's not a lot of discussion about what happens behind the scene and that's because they don't want you to know.
Operations that SCALE
Once you're actually making money online, it's all about scale. Scale is the sexiest S word in the world. EVERYONE loves scale. To achieve scale you need to breakdown the current process... I mean every single tiny detail. When you go through that workflow, find out what you can do to make it better, automate it or remove it entirely. Then you'll go onto create a "standard operating document", that's how you do work and you can share it with someone else. They'll be able to plugin to your organization and go. Review this constantly.
What I'm doing now...
From constant blogging and networking I've been able to connect with a partner on a project that's very close to launch. We're launching our own private label supplement company and looking to shake up an industry that is filled with bullshit. So many fancy named proprietary formulas that make me do this all day long :bgh::bgh::bgh:.
I'll be sure to come back soon with info on how to work through virtual partnerships, launch a supplements company and even include a special launch deal for the community here (you guys will love it!!!).
In the meantime I would love to answer any questions or help out with the following:
If interested in checking out my personal blog I just wrote a post on 7 things necessary for success and would love to hear your feedback!
- ben
The background
Former e-commerce startup guy, who escaped the world of chasing VC money and glamorous exits to follow my passion. Eventually I landed an easy corporate job that paid well and allowed me to pursue my side hustles. After a massive failure at SaaS (really hard if you're not a programmer), my music blog really started to take off. Eventually I quit my job figuring that a mix of my consulting and other jobs would pay the bills.
Well after quitting I went out and partied for a while. Then I was back on the couch watching series on Netflix, slightly depressed and questioning whether I was cut out for this life or good enough to make my dreams happen. I think as entrepreneurs, go-getters and fast laners if you don't question what you're doing every once and a while, then you're crazy.
The music site
I started an electronic dance music blog back in 2011 as a way to share my favorite songs with friends. Music blogging was much different then and "EDM" hadn't really taken off in America yet. Fast forward to today and we're doing 500,000 pageviews a month with a hosting bill at WPEngine that will make you scream like you sat on a needle. Adsense wasn't doing it for us and affiliate offers didn't pay or convert well. It was becoming an expensive passion project.
What changed in the "edm blog" world was that as more people became interested, the focus shifted from the music to the stars like Deadmau5 or Skrillex. People would read anything about their favorite DJs, they had become the new rockstars of our era. Previously we posted mostly music releases, but had changed our content types more to match what you'll find on a Buzzfeed or Gawker. Content to be consumed easily and shared.
Wait so how did you make this profitable...
Blogging, business, everything is about providing value. Who was getting the most value out of our posts? Because clearly as it was running at -600 a month, it wasn't us.
The value chain looked something like this...
1.) The reader: They're getting their news, free music and everything related to the topic in one place.
2.) The artist: The blog literally served as a place for free publicity for their music and promotion.
3.) Business: The big music festivals, club promoters, etc need our audience to buy tickets to their shows.
By evaluating the value chain, I considered charging consumers for the content. But opted against it because of the amount of competition and substitute products out there, plus information should be free and people download music illegally all day. Artists have almost ZERO dollars of their own, this one was out of the question. It came down to the businesses involved.
If you own a blog, think of yourselves less of a blog or website or even magazine. You're like a television station. People turn you on to consume content and then they change the channel when they leave. Your content brings the viewers and you should be awarded, if you're doing big numbers you can charge them. So instead of giving away free banner space to events, we started charging all of the promoters and you know what most of them were completely OKAY.
As our advertising media kit started floating around, we were eventually recruited by an ad-network who does all of our sales for us. We just post and make money. Depending on your niche, this may or may not be available. What you can control are the number of pageviews and unique visitors that you're getting to the site.
Basically the question you want to ask is: who is benefiting from my content and how can you monetize that relationship?
When we would post about an event at a club, the promoter would directly benefit from the free exposure provided. We wouldn't make anything. Now we are media partners with certain reputable organizations and can earn income and additional backlinks that way
Publishing content? You have to read this: I just finished, Trust Me I'm Lying (Confessions of a Media Manipulator) and it's been an eye-opener for how I should operate the blog. While some examples were slightly outrageous, it does a good job at making you examine the current media landscape and how even small blogs (like mine) can impact national media. There's not a lot of discussion about what happens behind the scene and that's because they don't want you to know.
Operations that SCALE
What I'm doing now...
From constant blogging and networking I've been able to connect with a partner on a project that's very close to launch. We're launching our own private label supplement company and looking to shake up an industry that is filled with bullshit. So many fancy named proprietary formulas that make me do this all day long :bgh::bgh::bgh:.
I'll be sure to come back soon with info on how to work through virtual partnerships, launch a supplements company and even include a special launch deal for the community here (you guys will love it!!!).
In the meantime I would love to answer any questions or help out with the following:
- Scaling a blog (10k -> 100k)
- What's working in blogging / social media
- How to approach advertisers for your blog
If interested in checking out my personal blog I just wrote a post on 7 things necessary for success and would love to hear your feedback!
- ben
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