My Job Search And Career Advice Website That Makes $50K/Month
This is a follow up story for Career Sidekick. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hi, my name is Biron and I’m the founder of Career Sidekick.
We’re a job search and career advice website read by more than a million people per month and covered previously in Starter Story here.
In the past year or so, we’ve approximately doubled our revenue while utilizing fewer income streams.
I’ll share more about this approach and how it’s been going below!
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
When our original story was published, we were earning revenue from display advertising, affiliate marketing, and digital products (e-books and a job search course).
In the past year, we took all of our e-books and courses off the market to focus on growing our other revenue streams.
Here’s my LinkedIn post announcing the change near the beginning of the year:
Now, I think this would be a terrible move in some online niches, where a single course or digital product can earn you millions of dollars per year.
Yet, with my audience of job seekers, I’ve found it difficult to make consistent sales.
Most job seekers are stressed, worried about cash, and not looking to invest in information.
I know a couple of big names in my industry have had successful courses, on topics such as how to find your dream job, but it always felt like an uphill battle to me and I’ve earned significantly more ever since I switched to display advertising and affiliate marketing. For affiliate marketing, I’m mainly using large affiliate networks like Impact but may look to develop one-on-one relationships with some brands in the future.
Making all of the information on Career Sidekick free allowed us to rework our email campaigns to showcase our best free content instead of trying to push people to buy products.
It also allowed us to incorporate some of this previously paid/hidden content into our articles, making the articles significantly better.
This led to more social sharing, more engagement from our email list, and more positive feedback and goodwill in our industry.
As a result, we got more page views and more ad revenue, all while having to do a lot less to run the business (for example, we no longer have to update our products, respond to customer service emails, etc.).
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
Our biggest challenge in the last year has been increased competition from other websites in the industry.
More websites/brands are writing career advice online and it’s harder to stand out.
There has also been some consolidation in the industry. Large sites with massive teams/funding are acquiring smaller companies and merging the content onto their sites.
Still, we were able to hold our own and grow in terms of page views and revenue in 2021.
I’ve learned that you don’t have to try to do everything or be everywhere at once in your market.”
Our content strategy has always been one of quality, not quantity, and this continues to work in 2022.
We also rewrite/improve many of our older articles each year.
Updating older content is a quick (and potentially huge) win in terms of organic traffic.
If you have an established website where you’re writing new content but not going back to update and improve older content, you’re missing a big opportunity.
Here is an example of the traffic spike after updating an existing article. The red arrow marks the approximate date where we changed/updated the article.
I recommend updating articles to add more depth and detail, provide more examples, answer further questions on the topic, or add value in some other way.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
I’ve learned that you don’t have to try to do everything or be everywhere at once in your market.
If you look at Career Sidekick now compared to the first few years, we have fewer revenue streams now, we use fewer social channels (we’ve quit Facebook entirely, and do very little on Pinterest), etc.
But we do those few things better and we earn more income/profit.
We identified what was already bringing in 80-90% of the results and doubled down on those things.
For example, in 2021, we changed some key ad settings with a few clicks and nearly doubled our ad revenue overnight.
This was much more impactful than trying to improve some minor revenue stream that wasn’t as significant.
Identifying that one high-value change was more important than months of busy work.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
I’ve been moving a lot more slowly on this than I’d like to admit, but the long-term goal is to grow horizontally and diversify.
I’d like to build up a portfolio of multiple websites that help job seekers and professionals to not only find a job but also earn promotions/raises, negotiate salary, and perhaps even invest their money.
I’m also looking into the potential to create tools, software, etc., yet I haven’t found an opportunity that excites me enough to jump on it yet.
I’m mainly looking for ways to grow exponentially, not incrementally.
How can I grow my revenue 5x or 10x? That’s what’s on my mind.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
Alex Hormozi’s YouTube channel is a goldmine if you’re trying to grow your business and your mindset.
He’s the person who got me thinking about the difference between incremental gains and exponential gains, which I discussed in the section above.
He’ll get you thinking BIG.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
Work smart, not hard. Be productive, not busy.
Ask yourself each day, “What is the single most high-impact, high-reward task I can do today?”
Do that first.
It may be a single phone call lasting just 10 minutes. That’s still more productive than hours of busy work.
Also, get great at one thing in your business and then repeat it. Don’t overcomplicate things.
You need a niche and a specific problem you solve for that niche, and that’s it.
For example, if you’re trying to start a service business, figure out and refine one great service you can offer to one type of client.
Don’t spin up a second service yet. Become so good at selling (and delivering) that first one that it bores you (and makes you tons of money).
There are people making millions with one single product or service, so if you’re struggling to make money but have multiple products/services, try to do less but with more focus.
One exception: I do understand that in some businesses (like e-commerce), you need to put many products out to see what sells. Still, once you’ve found a winning product or two, focus heavily on how to grow those sales by 5x or 10x, instead of rushing to launch many new things.
Where can we go to learn more?
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
