BowTiedChukar - My WiFi Money Journey
BowTiedChukar - My WiFi Money Journey
Winners win.
Builders build.
Everybody else just makes excuses.
That is the one lesson in today’s post. Todays post is a guest post from BowTiedChukar.
My journey to creating this SaaS started a little over a year ago when I decided to implement BowTiedOpossum's Your Path to WiFi Money.
I'm a web developer who learned how to program in my free time. My job isn't related to programming. A year ago, I'd never made $1 online.
I decided to start a website in a niche I'm familiar with, following the steps in Your Path to WiFi Money. Being a developer, I always used static site generators like Gatsby or Jekyll.
Following BowTiedOpossum's recommendation, I used WordPress because it would be an affiliate site.
The first time I opened up the WordPress interface, I hated it. It seemed cluttered and clunky. However, I was committed to following the plan, so I stuck with it, and now I'm a huge fan.
I published 1-2 articles a week for several months. Some of my posts started ranking in the top 10, so I started getting organic search traffic.
Unfortunately, I only had one good affiliate offer in my posts. Looking back, I probably could have pivoted the content and found more offers.
I started brainstorming potential SaaS ideas to take advantage of my programming skills. I discovered most people recommend against starting a SaaS if you have no marketing or sales experience.
There was another guy in my niche who started around when I did and was doing well-selling e-books.
I figured I would give that a shot and combine existing content with some new material and release an e-book.
The e-book generated my first-ever WiFI $$. After the 1st month, I had made $1k.
I used the e-book to work on sales, marketing, copywriting, and ads. Some of my efforts were failures. I lit $1k on fire, trying Facebook ads...getting thousands of clicks and not one sale.
I had success in other areas and continue to get sales today. My initial efforts to generate content have paid off. The majority of the traffic to my book comes from organic search.
Nearly a Missed Opportunity
In May, I saw this tweet:
I spent a couple of hours working on a solution, but I ran into some technical challenges I wasn't sure how to fix.
I put the link to the tweet in my potential projects list and decided to go back to posting content on my original site.
In late September, I was browsing Product Hunt. I came across a SaaS that reminded me of BowTiedOpossum's tweet and a way to overcome the roadblock I faced earlier.
I made my first Git commit for the MVP project on Sep 30th and had an initial version ready on Oct 3rd:
The first feature request was to add file export. I had to rework a big portion of the app to get the export feature working, but V2 was ready on Oct 5th.
I decided to turn it into a full SaaS based on interest and feedback.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been focused on dropping the proof of concept into a SaaS boilerplate.
I've had to remind myself to focus on the features people are about and not waste time optimizing things that only I will notice. I've found the best way to stay focused is to keep those fixes/features in my issue tracker to focus on later.
In software, we have the Ninety-ninety rule: The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
I ran into unexpected bugs and issues as I tried to get the project to where I could launch it, but I released the full SaaS on October 19th.
The Heading Scraper tool
I've been looking for a SaaS idea for at least 6 months. I'm excited to give this one a shot because I've felt the pain it aims to solve.
I've sat at my laptop trying to will myself to write so I could meet the publishing deadlines I set for myself.
I've painstakingly skimmed through the top articles for my next keyword making sure I hit all the key topic areas Google expects.
I also remember the sticker shock from many of the SEO tools on the market.
I’m excited to use the Heading Scraper tool to make my life easier. And if you are producing content, the Heading Scraper tool will make your life easier too.
It's a low-cost tool you can use to build an outline to start writing quickly while covering all the topics necessary to rank for your keyword.
The other benefit I've discovered while testing it out is you get exposed to how top sites structure their articles. You can scan through and pick up good ideas in a minute or two to use in future articles.
You'll also see some terrible article structure that still ranks high.
Here’s how you can add it to your workflow…
Once you’ve found a new keyword to target, enter it into the Header Scraper tool. It will get the 1st page of the Google search results and pull all the organic search results. Then it will scrape each of those websites to return all headings in an easily usable format.
You export the headings to your computer so you can build an outline structure for your next article. The outline will help you avoid writer’s block and ensure you hit all the important topics the other top sites cover in their articles.
If you want to dive a little deeper into how to structure your articles, check out Building a Semantic Tree.
It’s still in early development, so I welcome improvement suggestions or feature requests.
Give the free trial a try and write content that ranks. Fast. Thanks!
Opossum back writing now. If you didn’t yet realize it, Google relies on your headers a lot when deciding what your content is about…
…and whether it’s going to rank you. That’s why I pushed for someone, anyone, to build this tool. If you’re pumping out content to get it to rank, this tool will save you a ton of time figuring out how to build and structure your articles.
If you still don’t get it, checkout this post on Building a Semantic Tree for your articles. Then go over to SterySEO and see how much faster you can build them…
If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you need to keep in mind why we’re here.
Your boss and company, no matter how nice, doesn’t care about your future. Nobody outside of a few family members and select friends care about your growth and your future.
You are the only one that can save yourself and make your life what you want it.
Single player. Just you.
This Substack is here to help you build a business and build the life that you want. I’ve laid out the basics to understand, analyze, & grow most any online business.
The best way to learn how to do this as fast as possible is to start from the beginning of the Substack. That and follow me on Twitter & Instagram.
Free articles on WiFi Money are supported by:
►SiteGround - SiteGround is one of the easiest hosting providers to get setup on quickly. For a full guide in getting setup with your first website in less than an hour, read how to start your own website.
►Shopify - The #1 and only ecommerce website builder that you should be using. If you’re selling a physical product online, look no further. They handle 90% of the hard stuff. Start building on Saturday morning and be selling by the afternoon.
►Surfer SEO - Save hours by using Surfer SEO to prepare content optimized to your domain, niche, and audience. Use the #1 AI writing tool on the market that the best affiliate marketers are using.
►SEMRush - The one tool I cannot live without. This tool has almost everything you need. Keyword research, spy on your competitors, local SEO, site audits, social media management, paid advertising tracking, PR monitoring and much much more.
If you want to get smarter about all things digital, upgrade today from free to paid for only $10 a month. The paid posts are where I dive even further into the weeds to help you truly understand and capitalize on the digital landscape.
Disclaimer: Nothing written here should be construed as legal for financial advice of any kind. These are opinions and observations, written by an anonymous cartoon Opossum, built up over years working in e-commerce & affiliate marketing.
This is awesome, great work Chukar!
Also love that you set personal expectations for yourself to move things forward, and stuck to them.
Who dares wins. Simple. Congrats to Chukar and amazing idea from Opossum! Truly “not not a guru”