192: How My Blog Performed As A Business In 2017 With Steve Chou

Podcast: Download (Duration: 22:14 — 30.8MB)

MyWifeQuitHerJob.com made seven figures in profit on roughly $1.35 million in revenue in 2017, on 15 to 20 hours of my time per week. The business runs on four income streams: an online course, affiliate revenue, podcast sponsorships, and an annual conference.

This is part three of a three-part series breaking down how my online businesses performed. Part two covered my ecommerce store, Bumblebee Linens, and this episode is the blog.

I have one assistant who helps with the podcast, and everything else is a solo operation. That structure matters more than the revenue figure, because it is what let the business keep running when I was injured and did almost nothing for months in the back half of the year.

This episode covers the traffic and subscriber numbers, a spam bot attack that forced me to change email providers, a three-week Facebook ad ban, and the content audit where I deleted hundreds of old posts.

A note on timing: this is a 2017 recap published in early 2018. Platform names, pricing, and SEO specifics have moved on since. The structural lessons hold.

Key takeaways

• Revenue was about $1.35 million with seven figures in profit, on 15 to 20 hours of work per week.
• Traffic rose 19% and podcast listenership nearly doubled, while email subscribers stayed flat because of a mass pruning.
• Spam bots clicked double opt-in links and every link in every email, which made them indistinguishable from real subscribers.
• Lead scoring solved the spam problem by flagging subscribers who accumulated points too fast, and JavaScript forms blocked most bots outright.
• A three-week Facebook ad account ban arrived with no warning, which is the argument for diversified traffic.
• The course price rose to $1,497, which weeded out tire kickers and improved focus on committed students.
• Of students who had been enrolled a year, 59% were earning at least four figures a month and 9% at least $50,000 a month.
• The content audit cut a roughly 900-post archive, removing 300-word roundups and status updates that added nothing.

How much money does a blog make?

This one produced about $1.35 million in revenue and seven figures in profit in 2017, up from breaking seven figures in revenue for the first time in 2016. The margin is high because there is almost no team and no physical product.

Going forward I am going to stop publishing absolute revenue numbers here, because the figure itself adds little. I would rather speak in relative terms and explain what actually produced the result.

Nine years is the number that gives the revenue context. The blog earned nothing at all for its first three years.

Should you start a blog or an ecommerce store?

Start an ecommerce store if you need revenue soon, and start a blog if you have a three to five year horizon. The store makes money sooner and scales worse, because physical products carry physical constraints.

A blog scales far better once it works. Getting it to work is the hard part, and blogging is a slog.

Three years of zero revenue is a real test of persistence. The only reason I lasted is that I built it into my routine and treated it as part of my lifestyle.

If you have no money and no ideas, document something you are already good at. Put it on a blog, a podcast, or video, build a following, and the money becomes solvable after that.

What traffic and email numbers did the blog hit in 2017?

Traffic grew 19% and podcast listenership nearly doubled after several flat years. Email subscribers stayed roughly level.

The podcast number deserves a caveat. Libsyn changed how it measures statistics around that time, so the doubling may partly reflect the new methodology.

Flat email subscribers were a deliberate outcome. I pruned a large volume of fake and inactive subscribers, and the growth and the cleanup roughly cancelled out.

How do you stop spam bots from signing up for your email list?

Score subscriber engagement and remove the ones whose behavior pattern is impossible for a human, then serve your forms through JavaScript. Together those two changes eliminated at least 90% of my email spam.

The attack was more sophisticated than typical form spam. Bots submitted hundreds of fake subscriptions a day, and when I switched to double opt-in they clicked the confirmation links.

They also clicked every link in every email I sent. That defeated the standard defense, since pruning inactive subscribers does nothing when the fake accounts look like your most engaged readers.

The cost was real on both sides. Deliverability dropped while I paid for subscribers who would never buy anything.

Why I switched from ConvertKit to Drip

I moved for lead scoring, which was the one feature that could identify the bots. I was otherwise happy with ConvertKit and would likely have stayed if the spam problem had not needed an immediate fix.

Lead scoring assigns each subscriber a point value that rises on opens and clicks and falls on inactivity. One number then summarizes how engaged someone is.

Automation on top of that score is what solved the problem. I built a rule that flags any subscriber accumulating a certain point total within a suspiciously short window and marks them for removal.

Form implementation was the other half. Serve email capture forms through JavaScript rather than raw HTML, because most of these bots cannot execute JavaScript.

What happens when Facebook bans your ad account?

Your ads stop with no warning and you may wait weeks for a resolution. Mine went down for about three weeks in mid-2017, and the first I knew of it was noticing nothing was running.

The notice arrived afterward. It said I had violated an ad policy, without much beyond that.

Facebook is not a huge part of this business, which is the only reason the ban was survivable. It drives new subscribers and retargeting for blog posts, courses, and the conference.

The lesson is the one I keep repeating about Amazon and eBay. If a single platform is your entire lead generation strategy, a policy decision you never see coming can end your business.

How does MyWifeQuitHerJob.com make money?

Four streams: an online course, affiliate revenue, podcast sponsorships, and an annual conference. The course is the largest by a wide margin.

Podcast sponsorships bring in a token amount. They cover the podcast’s costs and my editor, which is the whole reason I sell them.

The podcast exists for a different reason entirely. Working from home is lonely, an hour of real conversation builds a genuine connection, and many former guests are now friends and speakers at my conference.

How does affiliate revenue work for a blog?

I run a real ecommerce store, so I can test tools with actual sales data and report what happened. The store functions as a laboratory that feeds the blog.

The blog opens the door in the other direction. Software companies are easy to reach, which means I can get access, run their tool on a live store, and publish real numbers.

One rule governs all of it. I will not promote a tool unless I or a close colleague has used it in a real business, and that constraint is why recommendations here carry weight.

Why raising your course price improves the business

Higher prices filter for commitment, which raises the quality of the group you are teaching. I raised my ecommerce course to $1,497 and it continued to sell well.

The contrast with the early days is stark. I was terrified launching at $299 for lifetime access.

Tire kickers disappear at the higher price. That lets me concentrate on students who are actually going to do the work.

I have never wanted to play the volume game. Small, motivated groups produce deeper relationships than large surface-level ones, which is also why I deliberately cap attendance at Sellers Summit.

What results do students get from an ecommerce course?

Among students enrolled for at least a year, 59% were earning four figures or more per month and 9% were earning at least $50,000 per month. There are almost 3,000 students in the course.

The outliers go much further. One student, Abby, now runs a multimillion dollar business and has published a book about the journey.

Those results are the reason I still teach. Watching other people succeed at this is the most rewarding part of the work.

Is running a conference profitable?

Not particularly, and Sellers Summit is not a significant moneymaker. Fixed costs for food, space, and beverages are heavy because hotels mark up everything.

Organization is the other cost. Running an event of this kind is a logistical burden that consumes far more hours than the revenue justifies.

I run it anyway for the in-person contact. Measured in dollars per hour it makes no sense, and the human connection is worth more than that calculation captures.

Why I deleted hundreds of blog posts in a content audit

Because a tight site of strong articles now outranks a large site padded with mediocre ones. I audited an archive of close to 900 posts at the end of 2017 and cut heavily.

The SEO logic changed underneath the old approach. Writing a separate thin post for every long tail keyword worked once, and Google now understands the long tail on its own.

On-site engagement is what matters now. How long someone stays, whether they engage, and whether they click your result or bounce straight back all feed the ranking.

Short articles no longer clear the bar, which is why posts here have gotten longer and more comprehensive.

The deletions were not close calls. I removed 300-word posts with no value, link roundups, status updates, and guest and paid-writer content that never went anywhere.

How do you decide which old posts to delete or rewrite?

Judge each post against the best work on your site rather than against nothing. Noah Kagan’s restaurant analogy is the one I use: your menu should list your best dishes rather than everything you know how to cook.

First impressions are why this matters. A visitor who lands on your weakest post is unlikely to come back, while one who lands on something excellent may subscribe or tell someone.

The work itself is slow and ongoing. I am going through old posts one at a time deciding whether to delete or rewrite, and a lot of the older material had simply gone obsolete.

Some cuts stung. I removed a number of my earliest posts from 2009 because the writing was genuinely bad.

That is its own encouragement for anyone starting. I used to hate writing and a 500-word post took me hours, and the improvement came entirely from repetition.

Frequently asked questions

How much revenue did MyWifeQuitHerJob.com generate in 2017?

About $1.35 million in revenue with seven figures in profit, on 15 to 20 hours of work per week with a single part-time assistant.

How long does it take for a blog to make money?

This one earned nothing for its first three years and took nine years to reach its 2017 numbers. Plan for a three to five year horizon before meaningful revenue.

Is a blog or an ecommerce store better to start?

An ecommerce store makes money sooner, and a blog scales better long term because there are no physical products to manage. Choose based on how soon you need income.

How do you stop bots from signing up for your email list?

Serve your forms with JavaScript rather than raw HTML, since most bots cannot execute it, and use lead scoring to flag subscribers who accumulate engagement points impossibly fast.

Does double opt-in stop email spam bots?

Not reliably. The bots that attacked my list clicked the double opt-in confirmation links and then clicked every link in every subsequent email.

How much does an ecommerce course cost?

Mine rose to $1,497 in 2017, up from a $299 lifetime price at launch. The higher price filters out uncommitted buyers and improves the quality of the student group.

Why do bloggers delete old posts?

Thin and outdated posts drag down site-wide quality signals and give first-time visitors a bad impression. A smaller archive of strong articles generally outperforms a large one full of filler.

How many blog posts should a site have?

There is no target number. Quality per post matters more than volume, which is why I cut a roughly 900-post archive rather than continuing to add to it.