Our New Website: An In-Depth Progress Report After 2 Months

It has been quite a while since I’ve written a post on Goats On The Road. It’s not because I stopped loving this site. This amazing blog and the community that comes with it will always be my pride and joy.

But I’ve started another website and today, I thought I’d share a bit about it. 

It’s pretty much brand new, at just two months old, but it’s already seeing some incredible successes.

In this post, I’m going to share with you why I decided to start another website, how I’ve managed to grow the site so quickly, how much it’s earning, and what my goals are with the site in the future.

Why Did I Start Another Website?

When we started this Goats On The Road travel blog, we had no idea what we were doing. It was way back in March (March 10th to be exact) of 2012.

Dariece and I were travelling around the Philippines and trying to work on the blog in between beach beers and long bus rides.

We never could’ve imagined that this blog would have done so well.

It’s afforded us business-class travel around the world, incredible all-expenses-paid trips in some luxurious destinations, and more incredible experiences than I can remember.

All of this was without knowing anything about blogging when we started.

This blog did so well in fact, that we didn’t bother starting another website or working on other projects.

Why would we?

We hardly ever worked more than 10 hours per week, the site was earning more than we ever would’ve made at our full-time jobs in Canada, we were getting free travel, living a crazy exciting lifestyle, and we saw no way that any of this could stop.

But then the world changed.

Suddenly a pandemic swept the globe and people’s idea of travel changed overnight. Nobody was searching “where to stay in Rome”, instead they were searching “how to cancel my trip to Rome”.

This had a direct impact on this blog, its earnings and its ability to continue functioning as it was.

Luckily for Goats, we have an amazing community with this blog.

The people who follow this blog aren’t just travellers. They’re also digital nomads looking to work remotely, find side hustles, research cool travel jobs, and earn money online by doing things like teaching English online and starting blogs.

As a result of our varied audience, while our travel traffic plummeted, our remote work traffic began to grow.

When people are at home, one of the first things they think of is new projects they can take on.

This means that Goats On The Road, while definitely affected by the pandemic, is doing just fine. 

But still, the sudden shift in the global travel landscape was a wakeup call for us.

Yes, we’re very happy to say that we’ve diversified our blog income streams and we don’t just earn money from ads, or solely from travel referrals, press campaigns, or hotel stays. But having just one website isn’t diversified enough. We needed to do more.

So out of the chaos that was COVID in early 2020, I decided to start another website and on March 20th, my new site was born. Exactly 8 years and 10 days after we started Goats On The Road.

In just 2 months I’ve been able to grow it to a DA 21 (more on that later), it already gets Google traffic, it is starting to rank for some of my targeted keywords, I’ve had clicks on my affiliate links, I was offered my first press campaign, and it’s growing very quickly.

We have a lot of bloggers who read this blog and a lot of people who have always wanted to start their own websites but have never got around to it.

So I figured this was a good opportunity to share with you the struggles and successes that come with building a new website and online business from scratch.

Read More: Why We Started a New Website During Lockdown

Why is it my Website?

Well, because Dariece and I share everything, nothing is just mine of course 😉

But this site is my new side project.

Dariece has been so amazing (and successful) in keeping Goats On The Road and our other travel site running so that I can work on this new passion project.

Because I’ve taken sole responsibility for its growth, and it’s something that I’m interested in, I’ve got into the habit of calling it mine.

I love building websites and I’ve built a lot of sites for other people over the years, but it was time that I started a new site from scratch.

What is The New Website?

It’s a secret. I know, that’s annoying, but hear me out.

I’m using this new website as a case study so that I can show the students in my Beginner Blogger Course and my Advanced SEO Course just how effective the tools and strategies in those courses are.

I’m using the exact steps I teach in those two courses to grow this site. Nothing more, nothing less.

I do want it to be authentic though so that if other people follow the exact steps, they’d have the exact same results.

Most people don’t have a blog like Goats On The Road with 400,000+ readers a month (pre-COVID), so if I was to share the website on this blog, it would immediately get a ton of traffic, ultimately skewing the stats on the new site.

So… I’m keeping it a secret.

But I will be revealing the website after 6 months of working on it, so if you want to be informed when the big reveal happens, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

What I can tell you is that the website is not in the travel space.

Some Big Early Wins

I’ve only had the website for 2 months at the time of writing this post, and already it’s doing quite well. When starting any new project, it’s the wins (big or small) that help to keep you motivated.

Here are some of the wins I’ve had since starting this new site.

It’s Reached DA 21

DA (Domain Authority) is a ranking from 1 to 100 and it ranks websites based on how good their SEO potential is.

For non-geeky, non-blogger types, this basically means that the higher the number, the more chance the site has of getting traffic from Google.

DA21 might not sound a lot on a scale of 1 to 100, but for a site that’s only 2 months old, this is incredible. In fact, the site reached that level on March 16th, just 7 weeks after I started it.

To give you a bit of comparison, it took us more than 2 years to get that far with Goats On The Road, and today, GOTR has a very solid DA54.

Large DAs like 90-100 are mostly reserved for huge global websites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Domain Authority is by no means the be-all and end-all of a website’s success.

In fact, it has little bearing on how good a website is overall. But what this number tells me personally is that the site has a solid enough foundation to start gaining traffic and to start ranking in Google.

The Website Is Getting Traffic

I’ve been working really hard on building up the site (more on how I’m doing that later in this post), and I’m happy to see that my hard work is paying off.

Slowly, but surely, I’ve started to see traffic coming in from Google, from Pinterest and from some of the other referrals I’ve been building up.

It’s not a lot of traffic, but it tells me that the site is on a good trajectory to grow quickly over time.

At the time of writing, the site has 1,880 page views and 358 users over the past 30 days, which is very good for a site that’s only 2 months old.

The Website Is Starting To Rank

The word “rank” basically means that my website shows up in Google Results.

When I started the site, I choose some queries that I figured I wanted to write posts for, so that when people search those queries in Google, my site might show up.

If I show up in Google Search Results, then I have a better chance of getting traffic to the site.

Google accounts for around 90% of web traffic these days, so without Google, sadly, most web owners don’t have a business.

I was targeting around 100 potentially lucrative keywords and I’m happy to see that my site is starting to show up in search results for those terms and I’m starting to see traffic from Google. 

I’ve Published 45 Posts!

The site is only 65 days old and yet it has 45 posts, all of which are in-depth, useful, and around 1,500 – 3,500 words. This is not an easy task to do, but luckily, I’ve had help.

I’m going to talk a bit more about how I managed to get 45 epic posts published in 65 days later on in this article.

I’ve Been Featured On Some Big Websites In My Industry

One of the best things you can do to help a new site grow is to leverage the traffic and audience of more established websites.

I have spent hours reaching out to different companies in my niche and asking them if I can write for them, if they can interview me, if they can feature me and basically just doing everything I can to get my name out.

I’m happy to say that after just 2 months, I’ve been able to have some really valuable features, which has helped the overall authority of the website.

I’m A Social Influencer

I have a total of 90 followers on all of my social media accounts. Just imagine all of that influence! 😉

These numbers are very small, but considering I’ve hardly posted on any of my social networks and I’m not focusing at all on social, this is a good sign. 

What I’m most happy about is the YouTube subscribers.

I have 21!

This is very few subscribers for sure, but YouTube subs are notoriously hard to gain and I already have a video on the channel with over 500 views. 

This is extremely difficult to do with a brand new channel, so I’m happy about the potential there. YouTube could be a good earning platform for this particular niche.

People Have Clicked On My Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are links that trackback to my website. If a reader clicks on one of those links and ends up purchasing on websites like Amazon or Expedia etc., then as the blogger who referred them, I would get a commission.

I’ve been tracking my affiliate links for this site and while I haven’t had any sales yet, in the past week or so I can see that people have started clicking my links.

This tells me that I’m getting traffic to my potentially lucrative posts, people are clicking the purchase links and I have a good chance of earning some money, once those posts get more traffic.

I’ve Received My First Press Campaign

When you have a website in a specific industry, whether it’s a sports website, a tech site or a travel site, there are always companies that are willing to partner with you in hopes that you share their product or service with your audience.

Even though the site is brand new, I was able to work out a press partnership with a company in my industry worth €400.

I’m not getting paid anything for it, but I’m getting the use of those services for free, in exchange for sharing it on my blog and YouTube channel for that site.

It’s something I was already going to spend money on out of my own pocket, so now I can take that €400 and invest it back in the business instead.

The Website Has Value

When you build a site with a user-friendly design, build it to a DA21 and start getting some traffic coming in from Google and Pinterest, it has value.

Like when you buy land and then build a house on it, the overall value of that property goes up.

In this case, the land is the domain name (www.____.com), and the house is the website that I’ve built on top of it.

As an example, we purchased the land for Goats On The Road in 2012, built the house on it over an 8 year period, and at its peak this property was likely worth around $1 million.

You can see that by investing very little in a website (it costs about $60 to get started), you can build something very valuable.

I had a look at Flippa, a website where people buy and sell blogs, and I checked what other DA21 websites with very little traffic are selling for in my specific industry. 

I saw that a lot of sites that are not even built up as much as mine have been selling for $2,000 – $5,000. 

I’m not planning on selling the website, but knowing that all my hard work and investments have already added value to my property is a great feeling.

What Are The Goals For This Website?

My goal with this site is to start earning an income from it, then scaling it and growing it to a full-on business.

I’m hoping to start earning around $500 / month after 6 months.

Will I make it there? At this point the site is earning $0 / month, so I can’t really say, but I hope so.

Once the site is earning $500 / month, it’s proof that the concept is working.

At that point, I would have enough monthly income to invest back into the business to scale its growth. I would hire more writers and an editor to take care of the site’s day-to-day operations.

Then all I would have to do is manage the marketing side of things and the site would basically be on autopilot, growing consistently month on month. 

Once Goats On The Road reached $500 / month, it more than tripled every year until it reached more than 60 times that.

I’m not saying that this new site has as much potential as Goats, but I would love to one day see it earning $5,000 or even $10,000 per month, at which point we would also have the option for a $120,000 – $360,000 exit.

How Exactly Am I Growing This Website?

The cool thing about what I’ve been doing with this new website is that I’m following exactly what I’ve been teaching people in the Goats On The Road WordPress Beginners Blogger Course and Complete SEO Course for years.

I wanted to use this website as an inspiration for the newest students in those courses, to show them that it is possible to grow an online business to earn money quickly.

I love this stuff. I love designing websites, I love writing blog posts and I love growing businesses. It’s exciting, challenging, and a lot of fun.

I teach all of these steps in great detail in each of the courses, but here’s a basic rundown of how I grew this site to a DA21 and 1,800 page views per month in a little over 2 months.

Publishing A Lot of Valuable Content

As I said, I’ve published a lot of valuable content on the site. The reason I’ve been able to get 45 articles published (over 100,000 words total) in just over 2 months is that I’ve hired writers for this site.

I’ve also been writing blog posts for the site myself, but most have been done by my writers.

I hired 3 writers who are experts in the field. I thought I was an expert in the field, but these guys have worked in the industry for years, have trained others, and know a lot more than me, which has been very valuable.

I searched the writers from an online freelance writer database and it took me about 2 weeks to finalize all of the hires.

It took me that long because I really wanted the writers to be experts, and not just ghostwriters writing without any real experience.

I know what you’re probably thinking right now. 

“I don’t have the money to hire a bunch of writers for a new website, so how could I ever grow it like you did?”

I’m going to explain exactly why this isn’t as big of an advantage as it sounds, and why I think you could do even better than I’ve done later on in this post.

But either way, 45 posts in 2 months is a lot of work. I’ve edited every single one of them and even that has been a lot of work.

It’s important to note here that I’m not just publishing any old blog posts either. I’m following a proven set template of how to write great blog posts that people will enjoy reading and that Google will love.

It’s not difficult to do, I’m just following my own advice from my courses, but I’m not just allowing my writers to post whatever they want.

They are following my strict guidelines and post templates to give every single post the best possible chance of getting traffic, ranking in Google and going viral.

Internal Linking

I explain in great detail in my SEO Course exactly how you can build up a solid authority and user experience on a website by properly interlinking.

I call it my Pillar Web Strategy and it’s proven to work for me and my students time and time again.

I’ve literally linked every post (new and old) to other relevant posts on the site using this exact method and I think it’s a large part of the reason the site has been doing so well so early on.

By having internal links throughout the site structured in the correct way, I give people more of a chance to click on other things they’re interested in.

This increases dwell time (how long a user stays on the site), which is an important ranking factor in Google, and it also gives me more time to introduce my brand to my users and potentially convert them into subscribers.

Building A Solid Site Structure

There are a few vital things that a website needs to have a chance of success, and one of those is a solid site structure. 

When a user comes to my site, they immediately see the most important content on the site, and when they click to that content, they often have a landing page dedicated to that topic.

The site is mapped out in a way that makes browsing easy. Building a website in this way is imperative. It’s not difficult, you just have to know how to plan it out.

Guest Posting

This is as old as blogs themselves. To get traffic to a brand new site, you have to write blog posts for other, more established websites and then link back to your own site to try to drive some traffic and get some authority in the eyes of Google.

So many new bloggers completely skip this step and it’s the reason why you see so many websites out there that have been around for years but still have a low DA, aren’t ranking for any keywords, are hardly seeing any traffic and aren’t earning any money.

People think guest posting is old school, or that it doesn’t work. That’s not true.

By offering other bloggers awesome blog posts, you’ll be able to introduce yourself to their audience. I like to make my guest posts as informative and useful as possible, and then I link them back to relevant posts on my own site.

By doing this, not only do you get links to your site which are like valuable votes in the eyes of Google but more importantly, you get the opportunity to convert some of those web readers onto your own site.

Maybe some people read those posts on those other websites, click over to you and realize that they also enjoy what you have to say. 

Voila, you have new readers.

This is one of the main reasons that I hired writers for the site as well. I wanted to be able to focus my time on external marketing for this website, which includes guest posting.

I’ve written every guest post and collaboration that I’ve done with other bloggers in my niche, which is taking a considerable amount of time, but is worth it.

Collaborations

Certainly not nearly as effective as Guest Posting, a “collab” is basically a collaboration with a bunch of other bloggers.

To describe it simply, it’s when someone is writing a new post on their blog and they want some insight from other people in their niche.

They put a notice in one of the many “Blogger Collab” groups on Facebook and then people contribute.

In exchange for writing a few hundred words for the blogger hosting the collab, you get a link to your own blog from their new blog post.

In exchange for the host blogger featuring you and many others, they hope that everyone involved will share it on your social media, and that there’s added credibility to the post by having many experts take part. 

Again, the goal of this is to get your name out there.

With the new site I’ve done a few collabs, but I’m trying to do more guest posts as I feel that they add more value to the end-user and I like my writing to not be diluted by a bunch of other bloggers.

I prefer that the reader understands right away that I’m writing the entire post. This helps to ensure they’ll click over to my site and potentially become my new subscriber.

Other Link Building

With the new site, I’ve also done some link building by contributing to active forums in my community, by commenting on other blogs and YouTube channels in my niche and by asking other sites to link to me.

My link building efforts have been limited up until now, but I’ve managed to build nearly 30 links to my site in just two months, using all of the methods I’ve listed so far in this post.

The links I’ve built have ranged from DA10 to DA86 and almost all of them are totally relevant to my brand.

This has helped my site to gain E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness) in the eyes of Google and I’m hoping it will translate to more traffic down the road.

By the way, I want to make it totally clear that I’ve only done “white hat” SEO work on the new site.

There are ways to scam the system and get a higher DA and fake traffic to a site, but these methods are always short-lived and you can’t build a successful online business with dodgy practices.

How Many Hours Am I Working?

This is a common question that we always get from people who are interested in starting a blog. They ask us:

“I have a full-time job. How will I ever have time to build a new website?”

The truth is, it is a lot of work to have a full-time job and build a new site, but it can be done.

Currently I’m working around 20 hours per week on my site and it’s growing very fast. But 10 of those hours are spent editing the 9 articles being submitted every week. 

If you were to work 20 hours per week on a site with a full-time job, it would be tough, but when you’re building something that can one day earn a full-time income and help you quit your job and work remotely, it doesn’t often feel like work.

If you were to work on your computer for an hour every day after work and then a couple of hours on Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday, that would be plenty to build it up quickly.

The old adage “time is money” has never been so true as it is with building an online business.

How Much Money is The Website Earning?

Currently, the website is earning $0.

That’s right. I’ve invested money into the site, I’ve spent hours and hours working on it over a 2 month period and it’s not earning a dime.

So you might be asking yourself… why would I spend all of this time, energy and money on it?

The fact is that the internet is a surprisingly predictable landscape.

Just as the saying “time is money” rings true in the online entrepreneurship world, so too does the old Field Of Dreams line:

“If you build it, they will come.”

But perhaps more accurately:

“If you build it properly, they will come.”

I’m confident that by following the exact steps that I’ve used to build other profitable websites, and by following what I’ve taught my students in our courses who have also built profitable, successful websites, I’ll be able to repeat the formula.

I think that within a few months, this site will start earning money and I believe that in the long run, it has the potential to be a 6-figure per year business.

Not only that, but it’s a topic that I love, so I think I’ll be able to connect with some really cool people, help them answer their burning questions in the industry, and share my passion with them.

My Advantages

As I’ve said throughout this post, my goal with this new website is to use it as a case study to show others just how easy it is to build a profitable website from scratch.

I’m well aware that I have some advantages because of our current influence online, and because of my previous experience.

In this article, I want to break down some advantages and disadvantages that I have, as I’m pretty sure they start to even themselves out in the end.

My Experience Building Websites

I’m not a web developer or a web designer and I’ve never been formally taught anything to do with WordPress, HTML, or blogging in general, but I do have experience.

Because this is technically the 10th website I’ve built (I’ve done some website builds for other people), I do have a lot of experience in the process.

But the cool thing is that most of the web design and web-building I’m doing now is using tools that I’ve only had access to for a few months. It was all new to me then.

The themes, design templates, and website building software that I teach in my Beginner Blogger Course are the exact same ones I’ve used to build my last 3 websites and I have to say, they’re super easy to learn.

You don’t have to know anything about websites, website design or WordPress to learn how to use these tools. They’re so intuitive that you can have a professional-looking website up and running in less than an hour.

I’m not saying that you won’t run into some speed bumps along the way. I’ve been blogging for 7 years now and I still get frustrated and challenged by certain aspects of the work, but things are much easier these days.

When we started, we didn’t have any of the tools available today and it’s a big part of the reason it took us so long to get Goats On The Road to where we wanted it.

As with any new project,  building a new website will be a challenge, but just knowing that you’re teaching yourself a valuable new skill and building something with a lot of potential makes every bit of work worthwhile.

Our Online Connections

Having been blogging for 8 years and meeting hundreds of web owners and online entrepreneurs over the years has given me an advantage throughout this process, mostly when it comes to getting the new site seen.

However, almost all of my collabs, guest posts, and link building outreach strategies have come from Facebook Groups and online forums that pretty much everyone could have access to if they tried.

I list all of these groups in my SEO course and it’s usually just a matter of requesting to join and you’re in.

But there have been a few guest posts that I’ve done that are old blogger friends of mine, so I guess in that way I have the advantage of knowing a lot of other bloggers who maybe accepted a guest post from me when they otherwise wouldn’t have from a stranger.

But that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be able to get just as many guest posts for your own site, it just means that it may take a bit longer to get accepted for some of them.

I’m In Lockdown

As you’ll see later on in this post, being in lockdown is also a disadvantage, but I think the advantage of the current global situation for a remote worker is more obvious. I have more time on my hands.

Like most people around the world right now, for the past 2 months or so we’ve been locked into our homes for most of the day. This has given me more time than usual to work on this site and get it off the ground.

Money To Invest

The money that I’m investing in the site (aside from the $60 for buying the domain and paying for hosting to get it started) is for content creation and for help with Pinterest.

I’m going to explain in the next part of this post why I don’t think that this is as much of an advantage as it sounds, but basically I’ve spent around $2,500 so far on content creation for the site.

This includes the cost of hosting and the domain name, and has paid for around 70 blog posts in total (some are scheduled and not published yet), and a few videos for the YouTube Channel.

The hours I’ve saved by paying for this content would translate to extra hours a new blogger without the monetary investment would have to spend to match my pace.

I’ve also invested around $200 in Pinterest work, which has basically just been for the design of 140 pins and then pinning them to different boards.

It sounds like a lot, and it sounds like a huge advantage, and it has been helpful, but let me explain why it isn’t as big of an advantage as it sounds.

My Disadvantages

Yes I had some money to invest, I have experience building websites and I have some blogger friends, but there are also some disadvantages that I have in my current position when building this site.

If you’re thinking of building your own website, you can look at these disadvantages as potential advantages for you when you go to build your own online business.

I’m A Solo-Blogger

For years Dariece and I have been getting emails from solo-bloggers saying:

“Easy for you to say. You’re a couple and you can share the workload.”

This is 100% true and now that I’m building a site by myself, I can see how much more difficult it can be to bare the entire workload.

So, if you are planning on starting a new site with a partner, then you can expect to spend half as much time and potentially grow it twice as fast as me.

I’m Running Two Other Websites

This is a major disadvantage for me and I feel that if I wasn’t also still doing a couple of things on Goats On The Road and one other website, I would have a lot more time to focus on my new site and it would’ve grown even faster.

As I said earlier in this post, I’m working around 20 hours per week on this new website.

While Dariece is basically doing everything on Goats and our other travel site right now, every week I spend at least one full day answering emails and creating a YouTube video on Goats On The Road (or writing a post like this one). Plus, a bit of design and “geeky tech stuff” time working on the other travel site we have. 

In an attempt to neutralize this disadvantage, I’ve hired writers for the new site.

They are writing and submitting 9 articles per week for the blog. Each of these articles is between 1,500 – 3,000 words. 

I’m editing all of these posts which takes me around 10 hours in total. I’m then publishing one post a day on the new blog, leaving the two extra each week in the scheduling calendar for later.

If you were writing all of your own blog posts, then there’s no reason why you’d have to publish 7 posts per week. It would be doable, but not vital at all. It would be fine if you were just able to publish 2 or 3 posts per week to start out.

Like I said, in total I spend about 10 hours per week editing these 9 articles, which is time you wouldn’t have to spend if you were writing for yourself.

Let’s say the average post length is 2,250 words.

If you’re writing your own blog posts about something you’re knowledgeable about, then once you’re comfortable with WordPress, it likely takes 3 hours to write, format, add photos, edit, and publish a 2,250-word post.

If you were publishing 3 times per week to start (which would be great), then you’re looking at around 9 hours of writing time per week.

My work week is currently 20 hours per week, but that includes 10 hours of editing other people’s work (my biggest job on the site).

If you were to write your own posts, you could effectively take 10 hours off of my average workweek.

The other day-to-day tasks on the site, like writing guest posts, social sharing, marketing the site etc., make up for the remaining 10 hours.

So if you were writing and publishing your own posts in the aforementioned time, then your total would be 9 hours + 10 hours for the other tasks, bringing you to around 19 hours per week total. Totally doable.

I Don’t Work More Than 20 Hours Per Week

Call us lazy, call us unmotivated, but ever since we left our jobs in Canada (where I was frequently putting in 80 hours per week), Dariece and I both do our best to never work more than 20 hours per week.

We love blogging, don’t get me wrong. There are days when we have to peel ourselves away from the laptops. But we do it so that we can keep a healthy work-life balance while living and travelling abroad.

We’ve met other bloggers who started their websites and after 18 months were earning more than 6-figures per year. The primary reason? Because they worked 8-12 hours per day on their sites until they had built something profitable.

If you’re willing to put in more time, then that will definitely be an advantage for you. As I said earlier in this post, time is money in the world of online business.

If you were to work 40 or 50 hours per week on your new site following the proven methods for success, I have no doubt that the site would be profitable after a few months.

But, the joy of websites is that they don’t require that much time. You could build a successful website while working just 15-20 hours per week on it.

I’m Locked Down

Like I said, this is an advantage and a disadvantage.

With pretty much any site, whether it’s about travel or technology or outdoor adventures, it is easier to get inspired and create content when you can actually leave your house.

The global lockdown has limited the type of content I can produce, the locations I can visit, the companies I could potentially work with and the research and development that I’m able to do for the new site.

If you’re starting a website while things are open in the world, you’ll likely have a distinct advantage, no matter what your site is about.

As mentioned earlier, your only disadvantage will be that you won’t have as much time on your hands.

In Conclusion

I’ve been preaching for years that everyone should start their own website and should start growing a blog around something they’re passionate about.

Starting Goats On The Road was literally the best decision that Dariece and I ever made, and we want to share this lifestyle and the freedom that comes from remote work with other people.

I’ve helped more than 1,000 people start new websites since creating the WordPress Beginner Blogger Course and the Complete SEO Course, many of them already have successful, money-making websites.

Quite a few of them have quit their jobs and turned to blogging full-time, which to me, a person who worked at a job that I didn’t enjoy in Canada, feels like the ultimate accomplishment.

As I said in this post already, I’m going to be using this new website as a case study, to show the students in the courses that it’s possible to build a successful website quickly, even these days.

So many people email us and ask if we still recommend starting a blog, now that pretty much everyone and their dog (literally) has a blog.

Our answer is always an emphatic yes.

Perhaps gone are the days when you can just start a “travel blog” or a “recipe blog” and build it to earn a full-time income.

But if you build a more niche-specific website around something you’re passionate about, even if it’s something like “Van Life Travel in New Zealand” or “One-Pot Vegetarian Meals”, you can still carve out a niche and earn a lot of money from a good blog.

Travel blogs and recipe websites aren’t the only way to go either.

You can (and should) start a website about anything you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. And if you already have a blog, you should take a page from our diversification handbook and start another one.

To me, websites, blogs, and online businesses are still the best opportunities we have in this world to create a business that can pay us well, and offer remote work freedom and location independence.

Remember… If you build it, they will come.

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