Six years ago, Alexis Grant had to make a big decision. She loved her job as a journalist, but her side hustle was becoming super successful.
Should she leave her job at USNews and focus on her side business full-time?
See, Alexis had started a company helping businesses create amazing content to strategically grow their companies.
And it was working. In fact, it worked so well that within a few years she sold the company to a guy named Kyle.
Kyle was working on his own digital publication, and he needed some help. So, in 2011, he hired Alexis to write two blog posts for his site.
Alexis agreed to send Kyle the blog posts… for free. If Kyle liked the writing, they could work out a payment system for future articles. If not, no hard feelings.
Well, Kyle loved the articles. He loved them so much that he hired Alexis’ agency to write multiple articles for him a month.
Within a year he offered to buy the agency so they could build something great together.
Alexis — who was 7 months pregnant at the time — agreed. They were in business.
Over the next 2 and a half years, Alexis and Kyle grew their team to over 80 employees, and increased their traffic from 5m monthly readers to over 16m.
They bootstrapped their way to over $20m in revenue in 2016, and are on track to double that this year.
So, what was the blog they turned into a massive digital media company? A media company that Inc 5000 named as the fastest-growing media company in the country? It’s a little something called The Penny Hoarder — a publication designed to help you put more money in your pocket.
At Con Con, Alexis will explain how The Penny Hoarder’s organized, scalable editorial process has allowed them to publish up to 10 articles every day, plus custom content across their video and social media platforms.
Wanna find out how she does it? Click here to grab your ticket, and come see Alexis speak at Con Con on November 16 in San Francisco.
The post How a free blog post launched a movement appeared first on The Hustle.
(via The Hustle)
