Ashley Barnett is producing, editing, and publishing content for three major sites. She is the owner of HitPublish.com and has shown Dustin good content and what it looks like.
How Ashley Barnett Makes Money
Ashley helps bloggers create content for their blog. This includes editing, writing, and making sure the content goes out that she runs. Ashley had her site that she started in 2008 just having her 12 year anniversary this year.
She says that as you are blogging, you meet other bloggers. You start going to conferences to hang out and meet people. You start to find out the parts of blogging that you like and are good at that other people need help with.
Most people don’t realize blogging is a huge job, and you may not like all aspects of it. Ashley loves working with other bloggers and gets to do the parts that she likes and doesn’t worry about what she doesn’t.
Dustin runs a handful of sites, and there is a lot of things he likes about it, but there are some things that he doesn’t like. Dustin enjoys the things that generate revenue for him.
Even though he is very frugal, he realized hiring someone to do the things he doesn’t like to do, was a good idea. The people he hires make him money and alleviate time and tasks off his plate to do the things he wants to do and is good at.
Ashley runs three major sites. There is a lot of money made from running three sites that are big enough to pay the writers and someone to manage the site. When you realize how much value you get from Google and SEO it is incredible.
What Ashley Did Before HitPublish
Ashley used to work at a call center, answering customer service calls. She thought it was awful. Her son was born in 2006 so she quit her job and became a stay-at-home mom.
She got into blogging at that point because she was at home with her babies. Ashley was on the internet, while her kids were sleeping one day, and she came across a personal finance blog.
She didn’t realize it was a thing that people did. Merely 15 minutes later she was all in and had her site. Ashley wrote content six days a week for at least two years.
Around 2008 when the economy was crashing, her husband was in jeopardy of being laid off. This freaked them out a little bit because her blog was only bringing in $500 at the time, and they had two small kids.
Choosing To Help Others
Together they decided they would start a temp-agency and hire the laid-off workers from her husband’s company. They contracted about five to six guys for skilled labor jobs.
They called the company and told them that they have their guys. The company then contracted with them, and they would do on-demand labor for the company. Ashley believes it worked out beautifully.
Her husband was one of the only guys that were not laid off but still wanted the temp-agency to work and help out the coworkers who were laid-off.
Dustin likes how they saw a need and there was an opportunity. He thinks people who have their business need to be able to figure out how to solve problems.
Dustin thinks their idea was brilliant and that he maybe would have tried something else because he never thought about going to the company doing the layoffs.
The company did eventually hired the guys back. At that time, they could employ the guys for the hours needed instead of full-time and paying benefits like insurance.
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When Ashley got started in the personal finance space, the idea that you could make money in a different way than a regular job, she was hooked. She decided there was no in-between so if she was going to do it, she had to go all in.
Dustin mentions that Ashley has been into real estate a little bit where she bought at the right time, rented it out, and then sold at the right time. A little shoutout to Dustin’s passion.
What Came Next For Ashley
When you start getting into an industry, also true for any small business, you get to meet people and begin to make friends. Ashley had a vendor table at 2013 FinCon in Phoenix, and one of the speakers stopped by her table and they just hit it off.
They had never met, but he came to say hello and ended up hanging out with Ashley the whole weekend. They talked about a lot of stuff but most importantly he needed help on his site.
He was doing it on his own and it was successful, but he didn’t hire because of the risk and the cost.
Ashley really just wanted to help out a friend and she feels that is something you should be doing when you first get started anyway. Find someone you can help and charge whatever you feel at that point, and just start building your business.
Ashley started editing for him and doing some writing. The site was a large site, it was successful and he was doing really well. She was able to see behind the scenes how to run a big site.
The business started to click for her when she realized a different and higher level than she was used to is where she wanted to be.
In business, Dustin believes the more people he helps, the better he does in his businesses. If you are seeking to help someone, make it into a paid gig by freelancing or writing.
One of the big things about this guy’s site was his audience was very clearly defined. He knew the exact audience he was speaking to and about the topics that they wanted.
In fact, it was so important to him that he stayed true and closest to his ideal audience, he wouldn’t even choose affiliates just to make money. If he believed they didn’t fit the audience, he wouldn’t use them.
Learning this about him was a game-changer for Ashley. The way he thought about content and SEO was in a way she had never done. She was always chasing readers and got caught up in statistics and page views, but he was far beyond that.
He was creating something bigger than just getting a hit article and that was an important thing to learn at the time for Ashley.
Research Competitor’s Websites
What Dustin learned to do at one point was to go to a competitor’s website and pull out the keywords they used and were ranked for. He looked for the high ones like 1,000 page views a month.
Then he looked for ones that have a low ranking and he assumed he could write in between the two.
Ashley says it is more about strategy. For example, posting a controversial topic and getting a lot of page views as opposed to Dustin’s strategy which is more beneficial long-term.
Beyond the keywords, you want to reach the reader’s intent then search for similar articles and answer the same types of questions that they are responding to.
Ashley once wrote an article about how to host a Christmas party. The keywords “office Christmas party” seems like a logical choice. However, Googling that title, she realized it is an actual movie title.
All of the rankings were for the movie so she had to come up with something else. Knowing what is ranking and trying to match that is a big part of the strategy of blogs.
She goes after the minimum page searches per month and just wants to make sure that there is traffic to the page. If it was zero, that is not a good sign because that means that no one is searching that topic or keyword and no one cares.
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Pro Tip: You don’t want to write an article that no one cares about the content, or even knows to search it in the first place.
Ashley says any volume works but Dustin has heard that if it is over 1,000, that is something to go towards and mimic on your site. This can be on an individualized basis, but Ashley shoots for anything over zero.
Finding Keywords For Better Ranking
Ashley says you can go straight to your audience such as a Facebook group and ask questions there. Any Facebook group about your topic is a great way to get ideas. Additionally, you can ask for guest posts with new topic ideas.
How to Land Your First Client
If you already have a blog, you probably know what you like to do already. If you have a regular job right now and feel the need to get out of there, start blogging in your free time.
Ashley says to learn the skills first because the best way to learn how is to start doing it. You will start meeting people who need your help, and you can start helping them.
Find someone to help and charge them whatever you think is fair to charge for that help or service.
As you get better and specialize, you can start charging more and more moving forward. Ashley believes that every new client you bring on should be charged a little bit more than the previous one.
If you can’t find someone who will pay you for your services there are online forums like Upwork and Fiverr where you can get on the job boards and put services out there.
Ashley has hired from those types of platforms but has never been on there marketing herself. She believes if you don’t know anyone, that is where you should go. If you start, you are going to meet people with similar talents very quickly so it is just about getting out there.
Why Networking is Important
Dustin blogged for three years and never met anyone, but that was intentional. He believed he was in competition with the other bloggers but realized that was not the smartest thing to do at a certain point.
Dustin believed it hindered his business for so long that he wasn’t out there meeting people. Then in 2017, he went to his first conference for his business.
Having gone to conferences for his previous job with the government, Dustin says he didn’t even want to talk to anyone because of the different personalities and he didn’t think they were driven.
Networking was not on his mind at those types of conferences, so he went to sessions and went back to his room. Unfortunately, Dustin took that same mentality to the conferences he could attend as a blogger, but quickly learned it was not the case.
Dustin attended FinCon, which is where he met Ashley. He meets so many great people now every year he goes to FinCon, and they work together even if they’re in the same niche.
At one conference, Dustin met someone who invests in land real estate and he has made a lot of money from the referrals from this guy and vice versa.
Pro Tip: Go to Conferences and Network!
Ashley puts on some great meetups in Phoenix where everyone just has a great time, and people help each other out. There are also tons of Facebook groups for bloggers.
Ashley is in a group specifically for new bloggers. She says just to look for those types of groups because if you are a new blogger, you are going to have questions. Join the groups and ask them the questions you have.
Ashley says there are courses you can take that are also a great way to meet people because they usually have a Facebook group or community attached to them. MeetUp.com is another option to meet with like-minded individuals locally and they are very active in Phoenix.
Dustin believes that in this business, the more people you meet, the bigger your audience can grow. He also believes you have more significant influence because you are tapping into other people’s networks.
Since not everyone will mesh with your personality, they may move on to someone else that they do mesh with. Dustin isn’t bothered with this because they are self-weeding themselves from your audience, so you don’t end up wasting each other’s time.
How to Grow Your Blog
Ashley says it takes time and that you want to create quality content. You have to be the best on the internet at what you are talking about. That may sound scary, but you can definitely be the best.
If you write on a particular topic, and you have your niche, each post will be answering one question better than anyone else. Google already tells you who is the best by the search results, to find them and do better than them.
She also says SEO and being active on social media are really important. You will grow slowly over time and it may seem so impossible, but it’s not.
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Even though it takes time, it doesn’t have to take too much time. It doesn’t have to look like working for 40 years and retiring at 68. Dustin interviews people that within two years, replace their income from their regular job with their passion job or side hustle and they have been able to quit their regular job.
Dustin thinks never in history has it been that easy to make that amount of money in that quick of a time frame.
Ashley Barnett Fun Fact
For example, Ashley has a fantastic ability to put together puzzles. Dustin hates puzzles and legos, but his wife and children love them. Ashley created a video that shows her putting together a puzzle and put the video on YouTube.
The great thing is if you do one video a week; that is a lot of content, and people will watch it. Even though Dustin doesn’t like puzzles, he watched the video and was amazed at her talent.
At one point, Dustin went to a friend’s site to see what he was ranking he saw P/PC. At the time, he wasn’t sure what that was but then he learned that it was from the book 7 Habits for Highly Effective People.
The P/PC stands for Production/Production Capability. There were over 30,000 people searching that and eventually Dustin added it to his blog post and was ranked #4 at one point.
Another keyword that Dustin found that is used lately and is wholetailing. He wrote an article with that keyword and it only took him a month and a half to rank #1.
What Ashley Does As A Content Manager
Maintaining affiliate relationships is really important it takes up the majority of the time when running a site. You can’t just add a link to your posts and be done. They need to be updated constantly because things change and programs change.
For example, if you are talking about a bank and their fees change, then it is imperative that you keep the links up to date. Ashley thinks about 75% of the time is spent on that.
They have affiliate managers whose job is to manage the affiliate relationships to keep them up to date and It is a lot of work.
Ashley says you also want to come up with ideas and get those to the writers and get their feedback. Then there is the tech, the design of the site, and testing everything.
There is someone managing SEO and social platforms. The ideal schedule for Ashley is five articles a week. You can definitely do more but you can’t forget updating old articles is really important.
Ashley Doesn’t Do All the Writing
As the content manager, Ashley is not quite a blog manager but makes sure things are done and are correct on the site. She will usually come up with the content ideas but sometimes the content ideas come from the SEO manager or the affiliate manager.
Ashley does the keyword research and does all of the rankings. She then gives the writers the articles that are ranking to determine how long she wants their article to be based on those.
If there is a chance they rank for it, Ashley wants it to be the longest article and if not, she will aim for the middle or average length.
You can provide your writers with the subheadings you want them to use which are based on SEO searches. Google provides some keywords and related words that are searched on the bottom of the search page after you have entered the keyword you are looking for as well.
Keyword Search Tip
Google also has a section called the “people also asked” so it is imperative to answer some of those as well as using the keywords or related words. You spend time editing and making sure you have a consistent look on your site.
You don’t want different size images, bolded or not bolded links, or some links that open in another tab when others don’t.
Ashley mentions that not all three sites publish five times a week. One blog publishes more but the average for the three sites is about 15-20 articles a week.
How to Charge When Managing Sites
Ashley says that charging per article would be a good place to start. However, if you come up with content ideas and publishing, you would want to charge more. For two of Ashley’s clients, she has a flat monthly rate that she charges and the other one is a percentage of the writer’s budget.
If you are a blogger just getting started, Ashley suggests getting paid per article but if you already have a schedule and things are running, then it would be beneficial to have a flat rate.
Consider The Volume of Articles Going Out
Ashley is a big fan of volume so she believes as many articles as you can get out, do that. She says every article you put out is a little “army guy” going out and getting you more traffic. So the more of those you have out there, the better.
You will then figure out what is ranking and what Google and your audience likes.
Ashley says it is also so important to go back and edit old articles. Ashley tries to go back and look at every article once a year. To cut down on some time if you have two articles that are similar then you can combine them down to one.
The more volume you have the easier you can tell what is doing well. If you have highly detailed articles or some that the details can change, you may want to consider checking those once a month.
Ones with interest rates or details that are frequently changing are best to check back on. Ashley has a list of each article she needs to look at every month for each of the three sites because they have frequently changed details.
Dustin has some friends that he has met through FinCon that as they have their sites, they make money from affiliates. Affiliates like banks who pay the blogger to share their names with their interest rates and other important information.
He assumes it takes a lot of time to go back in there and change all of the ones similar to those.
Some Tricks On Formatting
As an article is being written and it’s formatted, Dustin is curious if bloggers should just put random images in your blog post to get attention. Ashley doesn’t recommend images just for decoration except at the top of the post and she really likes screenshots or anything that enhances comprehension.
She also thinks if you are relying on images to keep people on your page then maybe you have a bigger problem.
How to Scale Your Business
Once you have a system in place, you can hire your own virtual assistants to work for you. The key to making enough money to do that would be to specialize in something.
She thinks that if you are not sure what you can offer a client, then you probably lost some of the hourly rates that you could charge. It is important to know exactly what you can do for a client to satisfy a need they have.
Once you specialize, you can start building processes, routines, have training materials, and checklists. You will then be able to hire people to accomplish the more mundane tasks the eat up a lot of your time.
Ashley has virtual assistants working for her but nothing goes out to her clients without her checking things over first.
What a Blog Manager Does
Most of what Ashley does is content, managing schedules, writers, and works with coordinating everyone. She makes sure everyone is getting what they need and getting feedback from the SEO person as to how things are going.
Dustin is looking into hiring more people to help with the tasks he doesn’t like to do. Ashley thinks that is a great plan because if you don’t like it, you are not going to do it as well as someone who does like it.
Successfully Unemployed Rapid Fire Round
What Ashley’s Tombstone Would Say
Dustin remembers going through this exercise and it stumped him, too. Ashley is not sure what her legacy would be. Dustin remembers a time when they went hiking and he was unsure of how to feel about turning 40 and wondered why Ashley was so excited to be in her 40’s.
Ashley said that when you turn 40 you stop caring about what other people think. She was excited about that. She also said that everything that you have built up from when you were born to your teens, twenties, and thirties that by the time you are 40, you can just enjoy life. Especially if you are not working that J.O.B you are just enjoying things.
Dustin says his 20’s and 30’s were rough having worked really hard between 5 am-10 pm. Now he doesn’t have to do anything like that because he worked really hard to get to be successfully unemployed.
What Ashley Does to Give Back
Ashley is creating a course to help new bloggers improve their content and put out really good work, grow their site, and live their dream. She also just rented an office outside her home and she is really excited about it.
It has been great in the first week and she feels like she can be more present when she goes home now without her computer right there in the background as a temptation. She says she felt an instant release of stress the moment she moved her computer out of the house and into the office.
Dustin quit his 40 hours/ week job to work 80 hours and it doesn’t bother him because he loves it and there is always something to do or someone to coach.
He feels like since there is always something to do, he feels weird when he is hanging around thinking about what he could be doing for his businesses.
Ashley’s Advice To Start
Start your own site if you don’t already have your own. You will learn all the skills you need even though these skills are teachable, you need the experience and they take practice.
Ashley says it is easier to practice on your own stuff because if you make a mistake it is just yours, but if you mess up on a client’s work then that’s a bigger deal. It is less stressful to learn and figure it out before you do it for someone else.
Ashley compares it to sending a newsletter to a thousand subscribers with a typo versus sending that same newsletter to 50,000. It becomes a little bit bigger of an issue.
Ashley’s Advice to Her Younger Self
It is easier said than done but she would tell her younger self to relax and that everything is going to be fine. One thing she has learned is that when you tell someone you can do something, they believe you.
She says the whenever people start something new they feel unqualified but if you know you can do it, your client is going to know, too.
An App Ashley Barnett Uses Daily
Todoist. It’s a to-do list manager. She loves the app and doesn’t know what she would do without it.
The Non-Fiction Book Ashley Recommends
How We Got to Now. It’s about the six innovations that made the modern world. She finds it fascinating. 
A business book she recommends is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. Even though it isn’t a thick book, Ashley said it took her a month to read because you have to really focus on each page and process what it says.
The book is for people who are already successful and want to go higher. It talks about the skills they used to get where they are currently not being the same skills that will get them to the next level.
Ashley’s biggest takeaway from this book was people not realizing they are telling people that you are smarter than them. If you think about it, we really do that sometimes without realizing it.
Reading the book you also realize that you actually do have a lot of little bad habits.
Where to Find Ashley Barnett
Hitpublish.com You can find her course there and her email to reach out.
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