In hindsight, I would’ve done many things differently – but I am grateful for this bittersweet experience.
In the making for over a decade.
Rewind to 2nd half of 2012
I was a young, and motivated 30 years old.
After some years of living abroad, I had returned to spend some time with my folks in Johannesburg, South Africa.
I was open to the idea of spending more time in SA, and found myself looking for a job.
The digital industry was really tough. I almost gave up on this idea, and was very close to leaving for abroad again.
Minutes-to-midnight, I was offered a full-time job as the web designer/ developer for a privately owned, alternative medicine e-commerce business out of Bryanston, Randburg. It was a great working environment, with a health-focused team of experts. I was learning all about e-commerce, how to navigate the Magento CMS, setting up payment gateways, marketing and selling products online. I’m now a 9-5er!
I had negotiated a very good salary for South African standards. I was earning US$4,285 (around ZAR37,500) per month. After tax, the take home was around $3,370 (around ZAR29,500). This was very good money for that time.
Still, I was not quite satisfied with myself.
I had often wondered to myself, is this it? Will I only ever be worth this much money? Could this be my ultimate salary ceiling? Is it perhaps not possible to pursue an extra revenue stream – surely I have the skills and ambition to put something together.
Deep in my bones I knew, I needed to earn more, and not in exchange for my time.
I set out to create a passive income stream – this is money you earn without having to actively work for it all the time.
I was going to do this by using Google Adsense; a program that lets you make money by showing ads on your website, blog, or YouTube channel.
Next, I needed to choose an industry, so as I’m sure many affiliate marketers start off like this, I googled: highest paid keywords.
The top paid niches; insurance, loans, lawyer – I don’t think much has changed since those times.
After a little bit more research, I knew… I was going to set up insurance and loans websites.
Over the next month, I registered a couple of South African .co.za domains, set up very basic 20-30 page websites that ran on the SilverStripe CMS. I had some help with the content from various (cheap) freelancers.
Uploaded the sites on the cheapest web hosting I could find.
My websites were live, and I was ready to apply for the Google Adsense program.
Applying for Adsense was pretty straightforward. Google gives you a piece of code. You need to paste this code into your website where you want the ads to appear. Google then reviews your site to make sure it complies with their policies. This can take a few days or a few weeks. They look for things like original content, a good user experience, and adherence to their guidelines.
Once your site is approved, ads will start showing up. When visitors click on these ads or even just view them, you start earning money. The amount you make depends on factors like traffic and the types of ads shown.
My Adsense application was approved within a few days. Adverts were now serving on my websites – passive income was certainly on its way!
I was literally obsessed with checking my earnings. I kept logging into the dashboard to check if someone had clicked an advert, and how much that click was worth.
Money was slowly dripping in, and I realised that this plan definitely had legs to stand on – I also couldn’t expect much more from only a couple of basic websites.
The second month of revenue, December 2012 closed on $175 for the month.
2013
I repeated the very same website process for the following countries; New Zealand .co.nz, Australia .com.au, and the UK .co.uk.
The CPC (cost-per-click) for loan and insurance advertising in the above-mentioned countries was much higher compared to South Africa.
Once the next 20-30 page websites were ready, I simply added them to my existing Adsense account, which was easy enough to do at the time.
I had created five very basic websites running across four different countries.
I had achieved all of this after-hours, and on weekends.
Utilizing the little income that came in, I kept on growing the sites, I hired the services of content writers to improve the content, with the hope to increase the revenue.
Toward the end of 2013, the monthly revenue was averaging between $800 and $1,650.
I had reason to make this business official, and registered with the CIPC.
2014-2015
I will put great emphasis on the word consistency.
I kept at it, pushing forward with the little resources available to me, after-hours, on weekends, any time that I could find – I worked on the websites, adding more pages, improving the content, technical SEO, look and feel, user-experience, anything that I could do, I did it.
Each of the websites had grown to 300-400 pages of relevant content.
One of the more prominent additions was in 2014, I created a form-to-email that captured email addresses of the visitors looking to apply for a loan. By doing this, I built a huge database of active credit consumers, and in a very short period of time this database grew to 50,000 emails.
August/ September of 2015 I started to make use of email marketing. Sending out campaigns that would bring back the visitors. It was as simple as – more traffic, more revenue.
The average monthly revenue during these two years ranged between $1,100 and $1,800.
September 2015 marks the first month that the Google Adsense revenue was on par with the salary of my full-time job. This was quite a big deal for me. A milestone to be proud of.
By the end of 2015, once the email marketing campaigns were in full swing, the revenue just kept climbing, it was incredible. I had opened up a new, simple channel of advertising that took the revenue to new all-time-highs.
- October 2015 / $3,900
- November 2015 / $4,500
- December 2015 / $3,700
2016
My side-hustle was making more money than I could ever have imagined, and I was beyond excited.
I had achieved my dream – I was earning pure passive income (more or less)!
March 2016 marks the first month that my business generated an excess of $6,500 for the month.
Early-to-mid 2016, I resigned from my full-time e-commerce job to put 100% of my focus on this. The last four years of riding my side-hustle had finally paid off.
It was no longer just a side hustle, but now… something more!
By the second half of the year, the business is generating monthly revenue of $12,500 and more.
2017-2019
I hired a content team lead to help me create more content, so that I could grow and replicate my ‘blueprint of success’. More websites, and even more passive income!
The content lead had successfully created a stream of quality content via multiple writers looking for extra income working from home.
I had also hired a CMS administrator that would create the relevant pages, and upload the content obtained from the content writers.
The content stream was flowing – we could easily put together 300-to-400 page website within 8-12 weeks.
In a very quick space of time, I went from a 9-5er, to self-employed, to business owner.
Between 2017 and 2019, my business was generating in excess of $12,000 per month – setting an all time high of $21,500 for the month of December 2017 – Merry Christmas!
2020
Covid. We ceased all operations. A terrible time for everyone.
After February 2020, the revenue declined rapidly.
Midway through the 2nd half of the year, there was a glimmer of optimism – the revenue started to improve, and we had resumed email marketing efforts. There was enough money to put team members back on the payroll.
The content lead resumed working on obtaining more content. Things were starting to look and feel a lot better than the first part of the year.
2021-2022
In June 2021, we were again generating in excess of $6,000 for the month.
I was determined to throw more money into the business… because, “money makes money”, right?!
By October 2021, the revenue for the month had almost tripled to a whopping $16,000.
Reaching an all-time-high of $19,000 for the month of February 2022.
Now, I had the means to hire people much smarter than me, to achieve even more.
I hired a back-end web developer to help me customise the admin area of the website template into something that was very flexible and scalable, and specifically aimed at creating and maintaining review sites and directories.
I hired a front-end developer that re-wrote the HTML & CSS for performance in-mind.
I hired more writers, more CMS administrators.
I hired… I paid. Then repeat.
My operation had quickly scaled to 7-8 full-time team members and 15 (or so) freelance writers. Every team member supported the next.
The business was now on steroids!
Over the course of these two years, the revenue did not see a drop below $12,000 p/m and mostly averaged between $14,000 to $18,000 p/m.
The revenue was amazing, and I had a great team in place!
The network of sites was starting to look fantastic. The user-experience was great! They felt like mainstream online loan comparison sites.
2022-2023
For a number of years, I wanted to diversify the revenue stream – you shouldn’t keep all your eggs in one basket!
– LeadsPro
***more***
Toward the end of 2022 / beginning of 2023 we saw the start of a decline in the Adsense revenue.
A year later (the end of 2023) I had to dismantle the team due to lack of funds.
2024
June 2024 / $1,500.
Payroll down to none. This seems far worse than Covid.
All revenue is going to supporting services; web hosting, domains, Cloudflare, Mailgun, and SemRush.
It’s not looking good, but we are not quite dead in the water – I’m optimistic for the future.
In hindsight
It’s all very bittersweet.
The climb up was hard. The fall was even harder.
I think, in a lot of ways I just got lucky!
The revenue generated from this business supported a lot of livelihoods (at least for a number of years).
I give Thanks to the all parties involved (even the bad apples).
The ride was fantastic – I would do it all again, in a heart-beat.