Today’s interview is with Anil Agarwal, founder of bloggerspassion and hostingmonk. He has spent more than 10 years working in the blogging and SEO industry and is still working on it. His blog has been featured on very big websites like Forbes, Semrush, Neilpatel and many more. I am very happy that I was able to share Anil Agarwal’s interview with you all.
Who are You and What Kind of Business You Started (Back Story, Revenue Model)
I started my career in the SEO domain.I have worked for 15 years in the SEO domain with small and big companies also blogging side by side. I started doing a job as an SEO trainee and gradually my position also increased in the company. For the last 4 to 5 years I used to handle and manage big projects for companies.
The salary in companies was not good when I started blogging. In the early days I made a blog on Free Blogspot.
In 2007, I created my first blog, that too on blogging. Which I sold in 2011 on flippa and the amount was 35000 dollars.
Then in 2010, I started Bloggers Passion Blog. In the early days of four to five years I used to do all the work of bloggerspassion from creating content to distributing all the work. In simple terms I used to work like a one man army.
Then slowly, I started building my team and also began to outsource some works like design part, video editing and more.
However, the SEO and monetization work has been with me from the beginning and will remain with me.
In 2018, I left my job and I have been blogging full time for the last two years. In 2019, I opened another blog of mine. Its name is Hosting Monk, which is related to web hosting.
Our source of revenue is Affiliate Marketing. Also we are able to make 10000 dollars every month from our two blogs. A major source is bloggers’ passion.
This year we have also launched some eBooks. Our first book is about keyword research. I recently launched an eBook on the subject of affiliate marketing. We have started working on our next ebook which is on SEO.
We have also Launched Some Free Courses on SEO Blogging and Affiliate Marketing.
Why You Started Your Blog in a Blogging Niche
I created the first blog on weight loss that was created on the blogspot and the second blog on credit report credit score credit history. These things went well, so I made a blog on it
But i didn’t enjoy it.
I made my first self-hosted blog in 2008 over blogging. My first blog and everything where I worked was based on blogging and SEO So that’s the reason the blog that I started was in the blogging niche.
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When a New Blog is Started, It does not See Much Traffic in the Beginning. So How Did You Keep Yourself Motivated that You Don’t have to Quit Blogging Now?
I also had a job when I started a blog. So blogging was not my full time job. I was doing it side by side.
I mean it wasn’t too early to be successful. So things started to grow slowly. These days some bloggers are coming, who may be getting success very soon because they do the blogging thing all day long but were doing it side by side.
This could also be the reason At that time there was no guide, no good mentor also YouTube did not have that much video so resources were very limited.
Many People have Also Selected Specific Inside Blogging Like Focus on Beginners, Mid Level Blogger, Pro Level Blogger Then How did You Select Which Audience You Should Focus on?
We are focused on beginners. A Beginner’s niche has a lot of potential and you can tell and explain things to beginners very well. At at this level, you can also monetize your blog well. But someone who is at mid level and is at a high level cannot become your customer. Because they know many things already.
As if you are launching a book or course for advance level or mid level then the audience base becomes so small but for beginner level it is so broad so selling ebooks and courses is easy there.
If you read my blog, you will see one thing on it: My blog is a beginner’s focus, but we also say some things that are for both mid and advance.
What’s Your Business Model Before and Now ?
When i was using a free blogspot blog, my blog business model was Google Adsense. But when i started a self-hosted blog on WordPress I used to sell links, take sponsored posts, also banner ads and a little bit of affiliate marketing.
In 2014 I got into affiliate marketing properly then used it to promote web hosting, Manly was promoting hostgator hosting at the time because my own site was also hosted on hostgator and also the affiliate income that comes was mainly from hostgator affiliates.
After some time I used to promote BlueHost because I think that time bluehost is better from hostgator
After 2016 I used to promote seo tools also because at that time I started using some seo tools. Semruush was the first seo tool that I promoted. Before promoting semrush I used it 6 month properly and semrush also helped me a lot in finding untapped keywords. So i think that if this tool helped me this much then it will surely help others as well.
So right now my major revenue comes from affiliate products and these products are seo tools hosting wordpress themes and plugins.
Also, as I said, I launched books this year, so some portions of my income also come from ebooks. Stated selling ebooks because my main stream of income was affiliate and what I believe to always diversify your source of income that’s the reason we started diversifying my revenue sources.
Some Bloggers Face the Problem They Don’t Get Sales Every Month, so How to Make a Recurring Income from Affiliate
The biggest advantage I found is that the tool we were promoting, Semrush, is providing recurring affiliates.
This means that if anyone through my link buys a semrush and does regular renewal each year we also get commission till the person is using semrush and paying them for semrush
So from my point of view if you find any good recurring base product then you should try that one over a one time affiliate product.
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How You Find Your Team Person and How You Choose Them While Hiring
Have had the same team for a very long time. So let’s For example, I have to hire a content writer for my blog, so what I do is I will reach out to new bloggers who have just started but are struggling to make money online but have good writing skills or blogging knowledge.
I will outreach to them and then hire those content writers. I have never hired a normal content writer.
Actually these content writers have actual blog knowledge or they have their own blog related to seo blogging. So then I reach out to them, check their blog quality, then hire them.
What’s the Biggest Problem You Face With Your Entire 15 Years of Experience and How You Overcome That
In stan phase the problem was that my google ad sense account was suspended so i was starting to think that all of sudden everything is finished because I have traffic but what to do with traffic if i am not generating any money.
Then slowly, slowly, I started looking for google alternatives. I found direct ad selling, paid reviews, text links and after some time I found affiliate marketing so that’s how i discovered different google ad sense alternatives.
What are Your Future Plans for Bloggers Passion and Hosting Monks
So for the future my plan is to improve the Ebooks part of bloggerspassion also launch some paid courses as well and we will try to cover all topics related to blogging,seo marketing as much as we can.
We also started making youtube videos. While we also have a quora profile, I have more than 1 million plus views.
We try to cover every place where people are asking questions around blogging, so we drive more people to our system.
What Kind of Tools are You Using to Manage and Grow Your Business?
SEO: Semrush, Aherfs and many more
Email Marketing : Before drip has now been moved to convertkit
Hosting: Wpx
SEO Plugin: Rankmath
Video Editing: Camtasia
Books: Traffic Secrets by Russell Branson
If Any New Blogger Wants to Start Blogging So How Can He/She Start
If you are in the job then you can start side by side until you don’t get to any decent level.
How many bloggers make a mistake if they get any decent amount in any particular month so they start thinking they will get the same amount every month.
However, this did not happen so it always takes at least 6 to 12 months of data so based upon that data you can decide your next move
What is Your Key Learning?
- Clarity about your niche and have a passion for that niche
- Focus on SEO from Starting
FAQ Related to Bloggerspassion
Where I Found Bloggers Passion Income Report
If you are looking for bloggers passion yearly income report you can visit here.
Who is Founder of Bloggerspassion.com and Hostingmonks.com
Anil Agarwal is the founder of bloggerspassion and hostingmonks