EPP 096: Earning $90,000 From A Blog With Brock McGoff

In this week’s episode of the Extra Paycheck Podcast I am joined by an entrepreneur, the owner and founder of The Modest Man – Brock McGoff.

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Brock McGoff is the very first guest to appear twice on this podcast. He shared the story of his man style website, The Modest Man in episode #54 (yes, you should check it out). However a year has passed since we recorded that episode in the beginning of 2016. Brock has taken his blog to another level and I though it would great to have him back with new experiences, new strategies and new knowledge.

Many beginner online entrepreneurs always ask about numbers. How long does it take to make money online? How much can you earn from a blog? I understand that you are curious and you really want to know how much you can earn and how fast, however I also want you to know there is no shortcut to success. Let’s take a closer look at Brock’s results.

The Modest Man was launched in mid-2012 and Brock didn’t make much money with it (if any at all). However he kept working on his blog throughout 2013 and 2014 as well. Only in 2015 Brock decided to quit his job and dive into his blog full time. That year he earned $36,000. In 2016 he worked even harder (and smarter) and the blog brought in over $89,000 for that year. It took Brock over 4 years of hard work to get to this figure. He claims he probably could have done it faster but definitely not within his first year.

So what contributed to such growth in 2016? Brock says that he finally decided to get help from others. He found a better ad network to serve ads on his blog. He also partnered up with MENfluential that now handles all of his sponsorships. Brock also started hiring amazing writers (at a premium fee of course) to help him produce amazing content. Besides implementing all of these new strategies Brock believes that his efforts from the past (such as writing guest posts for other blogs) are finally kicking in and giving his blog more credibility, authority and as a result: income.

Since a lot of people were asking Brock if he was actually making any money from his blog he started creating income reports. He believes in transparency and is really fascinated with the whole world of digital marketing. In 2016 Brock also launched his second blog, the FullTimeBlog where he hopes to help other style/fashion bloggers to monetize their sites and get paid fairly for their efforts.

I’ve also asked Brock if it’s too late to start an online business (blog, Youtube channel, etc) in 2017. Lots of people complain online that the golden age of online business is now behind us and there is no way anyone can still succeed. Brock strongly disagrees with this belief. He says that although there might be more competition now than some years back, we have more and more opportunities that we can jump into. Also starting an online business has never been simpler and cheaper than it is now. There is one thing though, you have to differentiate yourself. For example when Brock started The Modest Man, there were already loads of well established players in the the style industry. Brock simply niched it down and started a style resource for men who are below average height. He simply filled a gap in the market since there were no other blogs catering to the same audience.

Brock’s biggest advice is to figure out why you want to start and run your own business. Make sure it’s a very motivating reason because it might take a while to get traction and if your main goal is “just to make money” than you’ll probably quit before getting the desired results. Once again, there is no shortcut to success. Work hard, be consistent and keep at it; the results will come.

We also talked about SEO and ranking strategies and a lot more so listen to this episode in order to get all the juicy details 😉

Resources:

The Modest Man – official website

FullTimeBlog – Brock’s new blog

Episode #54: Building A Successful Men Fashion Blog

How to Create Blog Posts that Outrank “The Big Guys” in Google’s Search Results

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If you do have any comments or question, please do use the comment form below! I will answer every single one 🙂

– Alex