Stop forcing it and focus on the story: J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly

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J.D. Roth is a blogging legend. He is one of the proud few OG bloggers who has been at this for over 20 years, built an incredible successful personal finance blog (Get Rich Slowly), SOLD IT, started another great blog, BOUGHT Get Rich Slowly BACK…

His journey has been a wild and crazy one, but filled with awesome blogging stories, inspiration, and lessons learned.

In this wide-ranging episode, we chat about…

  • How he grew GRS
  • The process of selling (and buying) blogs
  • Burnout and quitting! (#important)
  • Screw metrics, focus on the story.
  • The World’s Best Rant Against Blog Pop-ups.
  • and more 🙂

He’s a legend in our community, and otherwise a delightful guy to hang out with! Enjoy this episode!

(Text takeaways below)

Listen to my episode with J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly:

or listen on Apple Podcasts \ Google Podcasts \ Spotify

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Show notes and referenced links

Key takeaways from today’s episode with J.D. Roth

1 – Focusing on the content IS contrarian and WILL help you stand out.

We’re ALL bogged down in marketing. Trying to grow grow grow our traffic, revenues, Pinterest pins, shares, email subs, etc.

Not too ironically, all of those things bloggers desire (traffic, fame, $) come as a result of the content. The content itself affects literally all of our desires.

J.D. focuses heavily on the content.

Just writing. Focus on the story. Focus on the writing. 2-3 times a day in J.D.’s case.

No fancy gimmicks. No 11-point marketing strategies, just producing content that resonates with and helps his readers. As much of it as possible. VERY few bloggers do this type of blogging anymore. Myself included.

But it seems to work. It works for J Money. It works for Bobby Hoyt and Michelle Schroeder as well.

Stop trying to force it?

Focus on the content. Write stories that change people.

2 – Write your opinions. Or not. Blog how you want to.

Who says you have to optimize for SEO? Marketers?

Who says you need long-form content? Or affiliate links? Or only useful posts for your readers?

Who says you should run your blog this way? Or that? Who is anybody (myself included) to tell you what to do with your blog?

PT Money also told me this on our podcast interview: Blog how YOU want to.

If that means publishing 10x per week like J.D., or 2x per month like Brian Dean, then so bet it.

Blogging is such a widely-played game now. Cookie cutter blog posts and cookie-cutter bloggers get lost in the crowd. Set yourself apart by BEING your odd and crazy self.

3 – Should more bloggers quit?

Probably.

J.D. quit for a while after suffering from burnout. But he came back.

Seth Godin says we should ALL quit MORE things more often. Why?

To avoid wasting our time and energy on endeavors that are unlikely to succeed. 

The trick, of course, is to distinguish the following:

  1. This endeavor might not succeed, therefore I should quit NOW.
  2. This endeavor might not succeed, but I need to push THROUGH and be more persistent.

It’s seriously a question for the ages, and I’m afraid I don’t have a solid answer for this.

I digress…

“Winners never quit” is terrible advice.

Winners quit all the time. In fact, they’re PROS at quitting. Winners quit everything that distracts them from doing what they were truly meant to do.

4 – To that end, what’s your mission statement?

One small piece of advice for decided when and if to quit anything is bringing every action back to one question:

Is this in line with my mission?

Of course, first you have to know your mission. Your purpose. WHY are you blogging? To make money, or because you can’t shutup about something?

What change are you trying to make in the world? What change are you trying to bring about in other people?

Identify your purpose for your blog, and write it out (literally would be great, but let’s be frank. This is advice on the internet) somewhere where you can refer back to it.

If you already have a mission statement, please comment below and share it!

If not, make one up and comment anyways 😉

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