Hello! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your business?

Hey there, my name is Todd and I reside in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Just about an hour north of Philadelphia for those who may not be familar with the area. I'm 35 years old (don't know when that happen, wasn't I just 21!?).

While I work in marketing full-time, I started an LLC back in 2018 to build content businesses or blogs on the side. I've been writing and creating websites for over a decade, but wanted to get more serious about it. And with my marketing background, I knew I had the skills to build them up and hopefully make money, while entertaining and educating others.

I currently run Remote Work Junkie, which is a media site, community, and remote job board I launched in March 2022.

Remote Work Junkie is for anyone interested in remote work and looking to boost their career.

We share insights about the basics of remote work, tips for getting hired, strategies for managing and building remote teams, general career advice, and a growing remote job board with new opportunities.

How did you start this business? Take us through the process.

Once I sold my personal finance and investing website, I knew the next one would be around remote work and careers.

For one, it's something I'm passionate about and have plenty of experience with. I've been working remotely full-time since 2017 and prior to that, I was consulting remotely for a few companies too.

And because of COVID, the remote work era grew rapidly and more people were thrown into this completely different working environment. And that can be a bit of shock to the system. Plus, I wanted to help companies navigate remote work too.

The other reason is at the time before I launched, I saw a gap in content resources and a site solely dedicated to remote work.

There are plenty of awesome remote job boards out there. But the jobs were the focus, where the content was secondary. I flipped it, where content was the focus and the job board was secondary. I'm not the only remote work content site today but at the time, I really didn't seem many out there.

Getting launched the right way can be a lot of work.

Remember, I treat this as a business so I have a deep approach. Using some of the capital from my previous content sale, I hired a designer and WordPress developer that I worked closely with on other projects. I designed the wireframes, which the designer then built the brand style I was looking for and the webpages. Then from there, we handed that off to the developer.

With design and development, I spent about $8k. Now most people won't need anywhere near that to launch effectively, but I had customizations I wanted and prefer not to waste time on areas that I'm not as skilled in (designing and coding websites). And in the first year, I made all that money back any way.

If I built a custom job board, that number would be much higher. But it's why I decided to utilize a third party vendor that had customization options instead. Cheaper and did all the things I needed it to do. A win- win!

How did you get your first initial customers?

So "customers" is a bit different when it comes to a content business. I look at email subscribers as a big win as well as sponsors I can land.

Much of which happens organically by promoting the site, content, or strategically placing links in social posts.

For example, all my sponsorship deals last year happened organically, meaning they reached out to me and we started a conversation.

The other onboarding is via the job board, where I built a database of 1,000 jobs seekers (and counting). This grew has many people were on the job hunt and I used LinkedIn to offer our resource as a way to reach recruiters and hopefully help them be discovered in another way. Plus it's completely free for any job seeker looking for remote work, so there is no barrier for them.

I used LinkedIn by joining relevant conversations as the brand or even just my personal one, posting remote jobs weekly on our company page, and others posting about our resources and job board helped as well. This also happened organically as my brand name started showing up everywhere! (:

Since launch, what are your marketing strategies or channels to get new customers?

Each content business I've launched, the channels have been slightly different. It really comes down to understanding the target audience you are writing for and trying to attract. Where do they most likely hang out? And sometimes you take a calculated chance on which channel you think will work before adjusting.

For Remote Work Junkie, I started with a few main channels:

• Product Hunt and Indie Hackers. A way to get some initial attention, traffic, and a bit of build in public, which has a good following of folks.

• LinkedIn. Being remote work and career orientated, it was a no brainer that this was a social media channel to be active on. And it's worked out well, the LinkedIn company page is my second best channel of driving website traffic and creating strong brand awareness.

• Reddit. This is a tough channel to crack, because users hate self promotion and can smell it fast. But, there are a lot of subreddits here where I could provide value and subtly hint to Remote Work Junkie. I've scaled back a bit on this channel, but it still delivers value to me.

Other than that, I wait for Google to catch up and start indexing some of the more SEO driven posts to help drive traffic organically.

How does your business make money?

The cool thing about content businesses is that there are multiple streams of revenue you can set up. And often, you can be a bit creative as well.

For Remote Work Junkie, I have a few ways I can generate income:

• Display ads. I work with a premium ad network.

• Affiliates. Promoting relevant products or services that I get a commission when someone signs up or converts to a paid customer.

• Sponsorships. This is one of my favorites where I get to work with cool brands are various campaigns to get their product or service in front of the Remote Work Junkie audience. This can be the newsletter, native ad placements, sponsored content, social media, or a combo.

• Remote job board. Companies can post their remote jobs for free or upgrade to a featured listing for $79 to get more promotion. Featured listings generally drive 2-4x more views and clicks.

• Consulting work. Even from a website like Remote Work Junkie, I get offers to advise or consult with others on marketing through this site.

Some other ways I've contemplated include:

• Packing content into an ebook and selling it.

• Opening a Shopify store with remote work related items.

• A course on careers and remote work.

Quite frankly, it's not making much right now. In 2022, I did just about $10k total. Mostly through sponsorships and some affiliates.

This year has been much less (a few hundred each month), as I've put very little focus on driving revenue.

Mostly because my time is limited and I have a full-time gig that pays the bills. I mainly focus on the brand and following right now.

I also hate doing sales outreach for sponsorships or to get people posting on the job board. One of my least favorite things that I do need to do more of soon.

But this was also a similar path I took with my previous personal finance and investing website, which I was then able to sell for mid-figures.

Maybe this doesn't sound glamorous since I don't have big MRR or ARR numbers, but I'm not worried about it. Slow and steady wins the race in my book (:

Where can we go to lean more about you and your business?

Here are some links you can go to learn more:

http://remoteworkjunkie.com/

0