Interviews 2.0 with Chris Miles from bloggerevolution.com

Welcome to building better developers in the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we're doing interviews. We're calling this interviews 2.0 and this starts a new interview. We're going to be talking with Chris Miles for this in the next couple of episodes. He is from bloggerevolution.com. He has done a lot. He is probably going to be one of the most relatable people we've talked to. Maybe will for a little bit because he very much I think is going to fall into a story that's going to sound similar to yours. This is somebody that's got a technical background. This is somebody that has done a lot of side hustle types of businesses. Had some failures along the way. Had some things that just didn't really click and kept at it. Now has a couple of things going very well to the point that, not to spoil too much, but as you'll hear from your story, that he was able to recover his wife's income and then his own as well so that he could completely go off and do his own thing. There is a lot that he's going to I think go over. This is definitely worth again, grabbing note paper and pencil or pen or your favorite digital note making tool because there are some things here that are, there are going to be some specifics, but there's also I think almost from a motivational point of view, some things that you may, when you get done with this, feel like, hey, you know, maybe I should go back and give whatever it was that you were working on a second chance, or maybe I should spend a little more time thinking through how to get the right eyeballs, how they market that and then maybe that thing that I gave up because I thought it wasn't going to be feasible will turn out to be feasible anyways. And then you're a very happy camper at that point. So I think I will just dive right in at this point. I'm going to talk to Chris, get his introduction and talk a little bit about bloggerevolution.com and some of his other businesses. Talking today to Chris Miles, bloggerevolution.com and we'll have links and such afterwards. I think as we get into it, you'll find out really quickly why I'm talking to Chris. I think you guys are going to find this is a very interesting person to talk to and very much sort of the story that we look at. And actually, I think most people listening, if they aren't already on that track, want to have that kind of story where they say, hey, let's, and it's not necessarily always focused on like an affiliate marketing point of view, although that is one of the areas that you can go into a very odd little niche and that's what you love and you can do fine in that, you know, in that very deep niche. But also it's just the general, hey, I'm doing some stuff, I'm paying bills, but I really want to do something else in finding that and then making that shift. And now from there, I just don't want to, in your words, because I'm never going to be as good at it as you are, give me a little bit of your background and your story. Yeah, for sure. So Rob, I was just one of those guys who've always been like a serial entrepreneur. I've always started this, started that, but none of it really justified continuing to do it because of the amount of money it was making. It would make a few dollars, but you know, nothing really too crazy. And I think a big reason for it was because of the motivation. You know, a lot of times my motivation at the time was just, I just want to make some extra cash, want to make some extra money. But then around 2016 or so, we found out that we were pregnant with our first son, my wife and I, and things kind of changed overnight. I remember she sat me down and said, Hey, Chris, I'd like to stay home with our son. And I was like, man, that would be nice. But I mean, we're going to be losing out on like $40,000, $50,000 a year that was coming into the house at the time. But so I told her like we couldn't, no, I mean, we can't afford it. You got to at least work part time or something. So then she sat me down looking square in the eye and said, Chris, you need to figure this out. And I was like, man, I had to put on my big boy pants like really quick. By doing that, I went online and did what a lot of people do. I Googled how to make money online and came across a lot of garbage, to be honest, a lot of things that are just time wasters. But I did eventually stumble across blogging and affiliate marketing. And it took a while. Don't get me wrong. I did have to figure out and kind of get through it. But eventually I figured it out. And within about 18 months or so, I was able to have my wife quit her job. And about maybe two years after that, I was able to quit mine. So it wasn't too bad for how it worked out. And that's kind of where we are now. So I guess backing up a little bit on that is so what was your and now you've you quit your other jobs. Obviously, it wasn't your dream job. So sort of how did you get started? And then I guess a little bit that is a start, but how you a little bit your mindset as you as you flipped to getting to that point, because it must have been a little bit of like a white knuckle kind of like, I don't know, when you said, OK, she gets to quit. And then a bigger one when you said, OK, I'm going to quit and sort of move into that point where sort of like that trigger to say, hey, I'm I'm ready to jump into this more full time for her and now full time for me as well. Yeah, that trigger wasn't wasn't pleasant, I guess you could say, because, man, it was like I said, I've always been the kind that always had a job. You know, I've always had something coming in, especially when I was, you know, since I was 16 years old, you know, I've always was working here, working there, always had something on the side going. But so, yeah, giving up that stability, I guess you could say that consistency of getting a paycheck every two weeks was was a little bit of a tough one. But I had a there's a nagging thing in the back of my mind that I was just missing out, especially on like my family's life. For example, like when my son was born, maybe not when he was born, but maybe, you know, he's starting to speak a little bit. And, you know, when the kids young like that and they start saying certain things, you're like, oh, he said this. Oh, you said that. And I remember I was working like 12, 15 hours a day. I was doing IT work. I was a manager at one of the big four firms. And while I was there, you know, I was working and on call all the time, probably gone 12, 15 hours a day, normally came home, was able to see my son and playing a little bit. And he said, I don't remember exactly what word it was. Let's just say he said coffee or something. And he said a word. And I was like, wow, I've never heard him say that before. So I picked him up and I ran him to my wife and I was like, hey, say it. You know, his name is Benji. I'm like, come on, Benji, say it, say it. And he said coffee. And I was like, oh, she's like, oh, yeah, that's great. He's been saying that for about a week now. I was like, oh, gosh, that won't hurt me because I was like, man, he's you know, he's basically growing up and I'm behind a desk at work. So at that point, I kind of started to think, OK, what can I do to be there for them more but still be able to bring income into the house? And that's really the like the toughest part of the entire thing. Right. So I've done it. You know, I started working even harder on what I was working on. At that point, I was I had already started with it, but it wasn't like it was working, but it wasn't like gangbusters. You know, it was kind of making a few bucks on the side. It was paying a cell phone bill. You know, it was paying the electricity kind of a thing. But I needed this thing to start paying the mortgage. You know, I needed to start paying a few other bigger bills. So I like I doubled down. I started looking at a lot of other people, what they were doing, how they were doing it. Found a lot of people online, podcast and YouTube channels of people who had already done it. And then it just it became more and more clear that of what I needed to do in order to get this to really get bigger. So my wife got a job and we were doing fine. And then it got to the point to where we were going to go on a family vacation or something. And we had already gotten the the vacation approved. I remember we went to gotten the plane tickets, got the hotel, all of that great stuff. And then all of a sudden, you know, when about a week before there was a go live, what we used to call it, you had to go live going on at the at the office. And they're like, hey, Chris, you got to cancel your vacation. I was like, no, I got all of the stuff that's going on. You guys got to figure this out. But because I was the manager in the office and I was the only one there, you know, for the most part, I had one guy under me. But for the most part, it was just me. And I just had to, you know, they were like, you know, we need you to do this. And I was like, well, I started looking around and I realized that at that point, my the business was generating more income than I was working there. So it kind of was a luxury that I was working there. It became a waste of time almost to go to the office. So at that point is when I decided, you know what? Bye, guys. You know, and I turned to my two weeks notice, my boss's jaw just dropped. He could not. He didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it at first. But that's basically what it was. It kind of kind of got pushed into it. But my realization was, let me just try this out and just see what happens. If it works for a year, great. And we went on from there. It's been four years ago and we're still doing strong. Yeah, I guess you'll probably appreciate that. I'll share a story that's a little off. But back to the kids thing is I did the same thing as I've worked in IT for many years. And I had a period that I was working, you know, just working my butt off had at this point. I think I had three kids. So it was, you know, making sure the bills were paid. My wife didn't work. So it was like, you know, getting all that stuff done. Yeah. And I went and I enjoyed my work. I was at a company that was it was it was fun stuff. But it was something where it started out full remote. And then they started calling me in the office and the office was in another city. So it was like an hour and a half, two hour drive. So I go, you know, like go down, get up Monday morning, be there a couple of days and come home. And they they were like, I was doing it got to the point where, like. I was supposed to go in for two days and I was now like it was like two weeks because I know we got it. And it's the same thing as like we've got fires going on, we've got this stuff going live, we've got all these things we need to do. And it was sort of like, you know, we need you to do this. And I came home. It was one of these words like I sort of had run out of clothes. I was like, I got to go home. I got to like get some stuff swapped out if I'm going to do any of this. And I got home and my one son was like, he comes in and is like, daddy, you came home. And I was like, oh, man, that just like. Yeah, that hits to the heart. And you're like, like, wow, you didn't even expect me to come at that is not good. And so that was one of those. It was a moment I was like, I have got to change the schedule up just a little bit. Yeah, I don't want the kids don't recognize. Exactly. Yeah. Look, I was working with a lot of consultants who literally are on the road 300 days a year. Right. And they had this one guy who he I think he semi retired or something like that, and he went home and his kids were a little more grown. Probably their teenage years or whatever. And he basically said that his kids were asking him, OK, then when are you going back to work or something like they were? They weren't used to him being at the house. And to him, he laughed it off and was like, oh, yeah, this is great. And he ended up going back to work, actually. But I remember thinking to myself, like, that's not the life that I want. I don't want to be a stranger in my own house. And I see you had the same same thing. Yeah. And I say it was one of those. All right. I can't. I got to change some stuff around and look for ways to. And it was it's tough because it's like, you know, you're making money. And it's especially with something you like. Yeah. Then it's sort of tough to say, hey, I've got to like, I've got to adjust some stuff because I don't like it that much that I want to give up time with the kids and having a fan. And so you have the family sort of a waste if you go work the whole time. It's like, you might as well skip the family thing. And I do it as well, you know, and then you leave yourself with some of the guilt. Exactly. Go. Um, I see where do we go? So I think because you sort of sort of touched on this already, you. When you went into this, you went and looked out because everybody does. You Google stuff and you go check some stuff out and go see, you know, what's out there, what are other people doing? And I know that one of the things you do is you offer coaching, mentoring type of approach to this and saying, hey, here's, here's what I do. Here's how I can help you. So what are what's what is your secret sauce? What is the thing that you that you've learned where you say, look, there's because there are there's a million people out there doing this. But this is what's going to work for you. Or this is how spending some time with Chris is going to be a benefit to you. Yeah, that's a great question. But I do want to preface it by saying, even though I do the coaching and helping out and everything, that's all kind of an afterthought, because the majority of my income comes from building websites and doing that kind of thing. I don't want to be lumped into those people who who can't. What do they say? People who can't do teach, you know, I'm not in that thing. I just actually do the coaching stuff on the side, you know, basically. But so I'm always in the weeds. It's kind of what I'm getting at. And, you know, I got niche sites that are live right now that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. So what I do is differently is that I do take a more you mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing. I take a more affiliate heavy approach when it comes to creating those niche sites where a lot of people today say, oh, don't go don't go after just display ads, which are those little ads that pop up on a website and the the owner of the website gets paid for that. You don't get paid a lot, but they get paid for that. But usually going after that type of game is a big volume type game. You need a lot of traffic to your website in order to make a decent income from it. You might be able to get 20, 30 thousand people to your site per month, but it only bring in, you know, two hundred dollars. And then that's a lot of people to say that you're only bringing in two hundred bucks. Right. So I try to build more of a brand online. I teach people how to go after affiliate marketing terms that are going to get you not just traffic, but conversion that's going to get you some nice recurring income and recurring income is like the holy grail when it comes to affiliate marketing, because you only have to make the sale once and then you can make money over and over and over again. So I kind of just teach people to have a more monetization focused way of building their sites. And it's been pretty successful. I've had quite a few students come through and start making money with their sites, usually within a few weeks, maybe a month or two. So good. That backs me up to. So the the genesis of that, I guess, is a little bit a little deeper into what. So you you shifted into this like, you know, getting away from your day job. Yeah. What. And as you said, you've done this a few times before that you got sort of that serial entrepreneur, which is not that we'll touch on a little bit. But what what did you shift into and what where where did you see that? Like, hey, I can make more money and go enjoy myself doing, you know, where did you go from there and how did you sort of like fall into that and say, here's here's the things that I like to do and where I can make it work for me? Yeah. So I tried a few things like I've done quite a bit. I DJ on the side at one point doing like anniversaries and parties and stuff like that. I've bought and sold clothes on eBay. I've bought and sold clothes. I'm sorry. But so laptops on eBay had a little bit of what do you call it? Amazon drop shipping. I did that for a little bit. And, you know, I've done a lot of these business models and a lot of them just what they kind of forget to tell you about usually is that you got to get the right eyeballs on there and they get the right eyeballs onto a lot of these products. That's easier said than done usually. And, you know, they'll say, hey, go sign up for this affiliate program. They pay a hundred dollars every time somebody signs up. You know, oh, that's great. But if I can't get the right people to see that offer, then I'm not going to make any money at all. You know, so you have to be able to attract the right audience and do it that way. So how to attract the audience is really the question. Are you going to pay for it usually by giving Mr. Zuckerberg as much money as you can or Google? Or are you going to do it organically, which is free, meaning you create content and get it to rank online, whether it's a blog or YouTube and even a podcast. You know, so I started to do a little bit of paid advertising. And I literally got undressed like completely. They just straight up took a lot of my money. I did eventually figure it out years later, but it was after I had like a business in place and knew what I was doing. So I focused early on on strictly organic. And I found that blogging was pretty cool. And the reason I love blogging so much is because you create content once and it's out there for years. And that's really the best part about it because it becomes more and more increasingly passive over time. If you put something on Facebook, like if I have an affiliate link, I want to put it on Facebook, even if I have the right audience, that post is only going to last about two hours. You know, if I put it on Twitter, it's only going to last like 15 minutes. If I put it on Pinterest or even YouTube to a certain extent, YouTube will stick around for a little while unless you do you dial in your SEO search engine optimization. But for the most part, it's going to be there for a few months or a few days. I have blog posts that I have written close to four and a half years ago that still rank on Google and that still make me affiliate income each and every month. You can't really get that with anything else other than blogging and blogging with Google. And that will wrap up part one. We've heard quite a bit from Chris already. We've got a really good background. And hopefully now you're starting to see that he is we'll call it one of us. This is somebody that has, you know, spent been through the the paces a few times, has looked at a couple of different options for actually several different options for side hustles and how to make those work and seeing where they did a little bit or not. And some of the the challenges, really, the things that need to be overcome to be successful. And as we continue into the next couple of episodes, when we're talking with Chris, we're going to see how this really has grown into something that he enjoys, how he continues to feed that that desire to do a little side hustles and grow, learn new things and not get stale or in a rut. And how he addresses some of that. Now, you'll see that, as we've talked about before, true passive income does not mean zero effort. There is some stuff that goes into it. He's going to talk about that and how you can keep fresh sort of with that, how you can find ways to make that work, to to refresh or touch a property often enough that it will continue to generate some income. You can continue to get something out of it or maybe at some point you're going to get to a point where you say, no, I'm done. I want to move on to something else. And we'll we'll hear about that in further episodes as well. That being said, I think it's a good time to wrap it up for today. Let you get out there and get off to your day and whatever you're working on. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. 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