- Hello everybody, it's Sam from the Financial Samurai podcast and in this episode I have a special guest with me, Eric Rosenberg, freelance extraordinaire. Say hello. - Hello, so excited to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. - No problem. So we go way back, maybe 12, 13 years, since I started Financial Samurai in 2009.

What were you doing back in 2009? - I was actually had just started my own personal finance blog as well. I started it October 2008, so I think that makes us dinosaur bloggers. - Oh wow, yeah. - It was a fun little journey. I didn't know anything about online marketing really at that point, so I made the really good decision of starting at narrowbridgeadventures.blogspot.com.

- Okay. - Definitely learned a bit along the way, so now my main personal finance site is called Personal Profitability, but that actually leveraged me into doing freelancing, which is how I was able to quit my old day job and become self-employed and control my schedule. Now I don't have to ask for time off from anybody when I wanna be away.

So my lifestyle has changed a lot because of that little blog I started way back when. - Yeah, it's pretty incredible. You got your MBA, and what did you do after business school first, and then how did you start doing the freelancing stuff, I guess? - Yeah, well, so I guess I'll back up a little bit.

I started my first blog in, I think it was the summer of 2006. I was working at a Boy Scout camp, and it was my seventh summer working there, and I was the office manager. So I was dealing with a lot of the paperwork, the finances of troops checking in and out, that kind of stuff, but when I wasn't dealing with Scoutmasters, and scouts didn't come into the office all that much, that gave me a little bit of downtime.

We had this brand new thing called satellite internet in the office, and I had my big old heavy laptop from school. So in my little bit of downtime here and there, I started a personal blog, and that gave me a little intro to the world of blogging. And then 2007, I finished my undergrad with a finance degree, and I started working as a bank manager, and I was reading all these personal finance blogs, mostly by people who were in debt, and they had a lot of credit card debt, and they were telling their stories about how they were getting out of debt and fixing their credit, what they were learning, and when I quit working in the bank 'cause I didn't like my banker's hours, which were about seven to seven, I started thinking, well, geez, I have a finance degree, I've never been in debt, I graduated from undergrad debt-free, had a great credit score, maybe I should start blogging about personal finance.

So that's when I started what was then Narrowbridge Finance, Narrowbridge Adventures, and I had that little bit of finance under my belt, and then I switched into cubicle land. I did corporate finance and accounting for about a decade, and I got the MBA full-time while working full-time. So I was super busy, and I kept the blog going.

The quality wasn't quite what I would have probably wanted, but busy with work and school. But I kept the blog going, and I was learning a lot, and that MBA helped me get better jobs, you know, as one would hope. I invested a lot of money to get an MBA.

I'm proud to say it has paid off multiple times. And along the way, I still kept that blog thing going as a side hustle. And it grew and grew, and actually through the Yawkeesi, that group that Sam founded, I started doing a few articles here and there on some other personal finance blogs.

Not getting paid a whole lot, but I was like, hey, you know, making some beer money here in my 20s. I went to nightclubs a lot. I like the EDM world, you know, boom, boom, boom kind of music. So it was nice to have a few extra bucks coming in, and it paid off my MBA loans, paid off my car loan early.

My MBA loans, I paid off two years and six days after graduation, which I'm always a little mad payday wasn't a week earlier, 'cause then I could say under two years. That six days always bothers me. So, but along the way, I kept that blog going, and I started going to this conference called FinCon, where Sam and I have hung out in person a few times.

And through FinCon, I connected with some bigger companies that were looking for freelance writing. And I was, they said, oh, you know, we like your blog. We like what you're doing there. Will you write your story for us and help write financial advice on our site? And my first bigger client that you might've heard of was Betterment.

So thank you to them for bringing me on. And that really changed the trajectory of my online work. 'Cause up until that point, I'd thought maybe I'd have a site, you know, more like yours, a big site with a lot of people coming every month. I looked up to Pat Flynn a lot from Smart Passive Income.

I thought, yeah, I could be like a little mini celebrity in my own world online. And make a bunch of money from my website. But Google seemed to have other plans for my website. I didn't ever get a ton, a ton of traffic. But I got enough recognition from my credentials and the quality of what I was writing that I just kept getting more freelance opportunities.

So I started to do something that I always advise people to do. Look at what you're working on and see what's working. And even if that's not what you expect to be working, if it's working, that's where you should double down. So on the blog, I had certain topics that did really well and I wrote similar posts and they kept doing well, not surprisingly.

But 'cause I was making more money with the freelancing thing, that's where I really started to focus my efforts. And I kept going back to FinCon every year and I met these great companies and built a larger and larger writing portfolio. And in 2000, let's see, 16, or actually 2015, I'd made $40,000 on the side, mostly from freelance writing, also freelance website designs.

Those were my kind of two main things I was focusing on outside of the day job. And I realized, wow, 40,000 on the side, living in Portland at the time, that was what the average person in Portland made in a year. I thought if I could do that in 10 to 20 hours a week, imagine what I could do if I went full time and started doing this 40 or who knows how many hours a week it would turn into.

And what really led me to make the big change and leave the day job, 'cause I was doing pretty well. I had the MBA, I was working as a senior financial analyst at a big financial and payments company on the card services division. I had great health insurance, great benefits, a team that I really enjoyed working with.

But one day I had to go, if anyone out there's worked in accounting, you know close is a busy time of the month. That's usually the first few days of the month if you're not from the accounting world. And I had a couple days that I was gonna have to go in really early and leave really late.

And one day I had to go to work before my daughter, who was then about four months old, was awake for the day. And I got home when she was already asleep for the night. And it looked like I was gonna have to do the same thing the next day.

And I was like, this isn't why I go to work. And I'd always kind of thought about going full time for myself. One of the biggest reasons I hadn't was 'cause of the cost of health insurance, which is still, it's actually more than my mortgage. And I live in Southern California, so it says what health insurance costs.

But there was just that point I thought, this isn't what my life is about. I'm not living to work, I wanna live for my family and work to support that. And if work is taking so much away from my family, that's not what I wanna be doing. So like any good, responsible dad with a four-month-old baby and a stay-at-home mom/wife, I quit my job and sold my house and moved to one of the most expensive parts of America.

And here I am, it's like seven years later, and things are going great. So that's the basic journey of how I got to where I am. - That's a good journey. A lot of risk-taking here. Freelancing is something that I feel most people should do. Why don't more people try to make more money on the side?

If you only work 40 hours a week, that's a single-digit workday. And let's be honest, we're not working all eight hours a day, right? There's probably downtime, go to the bathroom, water cooler, whatever it is. Why don't more people do freelance work since there are so many opportunities online right now with so many platforms to provide those opportunities?

- Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think a lot of people just don't realize what the opportunities are. If you have a degree in something, there's probably someone who will pay you to use that outside of your job. And if you think about it from the employer perspective, hiring a full-time person's a lot of money.

It's a big commitment. You have that, let's say I actually just had, for about a year, had a full-time employee working for me. No matter what happened, I had a certain amount I had to pay him every week or every other week for payday. I was doing weekly. I had extra insurance, extra taxes.

There's a lot of things that you have to do and have to pay when you have an employee. But when you have a freelancer, you're really just paying for performance and there's a lot less risk. All of my contracts with my clients basically say, if they're unhappy with my work, they can just stop giving me assignments.

So if, or if I've had some, not too long ago, there was a huge wave of layoffs in the tech world. So some clients just didn't have the budget anymore and they said, sorry, we have to cut back or cut completely what we're doing with you. So that's a risk on the freelancer side.

But if you think about it from the boss's side, there's a lot more potential benefit from working with freelancers with lower risk than there is to hiring employees. So when you have that mindset and know what value you can offer, that's where you can really start to find great opportunities.

And also, it was a lot easier for me when I was in my twenties to do freelancing and side hustle kind of jobs. Now I have three kids and a wife. So there's a little bit less time, but because I invested the time to learn other skills, to learn how to work online, all of these other things I started doing in my twenties, I was able to leverage that into real career opportunities in my thirties.

But that doesn't mean it's too late. If you're 45 and have kids, you probably still have down hours. Like Sam was saying, you might have a lunch break. If you have a personal laptop, there's no reason you can't go to the pizza place down the block that has wifi and have a slice of pizza and write a blog post.

Or if you have, I'll throw out accounting again, maybe you could do weekend bookkeeping for your business. You spend a couple hours on a Sunday. There's things people need and they will pay you to do it if you do a good job. - So I guess the question would be for many listeners who want to freelance but have never freelanced before, how does one get started?

What are the main areas to get started with finding these freelance gigs? - Yeah, so the first thing is to think about what you can offer and what someone's willing to pay. And there's actually a great book called "The $100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau. He has a bunch of good books.

One of the things he says in that book is to have a business, you really only need three things. Something that you sell, whether that's a product or service, someone to buy that, and a way to deliver it. So that's really all you need to freelance. So first you have to pick what service somebody wants.

Remember, just because you want to do it doesn't mean someone is willing to pay for it. So you have to think of what you're able to do that someone's willing to pay for. Then you just have to find the person willing to pay. So think about, for me, while I have a finance degree, I always seem to have a knack for writing.

I did well with English and writing classes and later on in high school and college. I always hated language arts and English classes until halfway through high school. And then I had a couple of really good English teachers that changed my perspective on writing. So ever since then, I was always, I looked at writing as something I enjoyed.

And as I mentioned, I started just as a little fun side thing when I had a few hours off at camp. So that, for me, was something I could do. And I was able to find ways to get paid to do it. But think about other things people are willing to pay to do, particularly things you can do online remotely, which is a lot of things these days.

Graphic design, if you know how to do Photoshop really well, there's probably somebody who would pay you to do that. It could even be photo editing for people who take their own wedding photos or something and they want those touched up. Maybe it's bookkeeping, I mentioned. That's something that, if you're really good at math, you don't even need an accounting degree.

You just need to understand how QuickBooks and similar software works. And there are probably some small business owners who don't want to understand how it works and are happy to pay you to do that for them. There's just so many things you can do online these days. If you have coding skills, it's a little bit more competitive right now because of all the tech people who got laid off who also have coding skills.

But you don't even need to have a degree in computer science to build websites. As Sam mentioned, I've worked with him on his website to do upgrades. And I don't have a degree in computer science. I self-taught HTML and PHP and CSS. Recently, I've learned Python, so I've been able to build some of my own apps.

So if you're able to learn something that helps somebody, you can make money helping them. So just keep thinking through what skills you have and who would want those skills and find those people. And there's marketplaces you can use to start out. There are sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

Those are good. I'd say they're usually better for newer freelancers, not once you're farther in, because they're ultra-competitive and you're competing against people in India and Philippines who are willing to work for a lot less than you probably. But you can get some of those first gigs there, start building your portfolio.

I always think everybody, regardless of if you're freelancing or not, should have your own website. I'm a big fan of getting yourname.com, or as close as you can to that. And start building a portfolio to show off what you can do. So for me, it was writing for some people.

It could be graphics for some people. Like I say, who knows what it could be? It could be an editor. You could be a, I don't know, freelance engineer. Whatever you do, start building that portfolio. And even if they pay less, it's good to find those first few clients.

I'd never say to work for free, but I would work for less early on. And then you have that base to build on, and you can start networking. I find a lot of clients at conferences. I actually had to do a couple of conferences in the next couple of months where I plan to find new clients.

Those in-person connections have been instrumental for my business. But everyone I've worked with, I've not met in person necessarily. So once you start building your portfolio, you can start building a reputation in that industry. And hopefully, your freelance business will blossom. How easy is it to start a site nowadays?

And how much does it cost on average? And we're talking about, let's say, a good site. And do you recommend going with those pre-built sites, like Wix or whatever, or a WordPress site, like the one Financial Samurai is on? How quick and easy is it to do? Yeah. So quick and easy depends on your internet and computer skills.

OK. But for most people, you can run a website. If your name.com is available or something similar, the domain cost is about $10 a year. I now do all of my domains on CloudFlare. So they're like $8 and something cents a year. It's about the cheapest you can find.

So that's where I do my domains. But you could get them from GoDaddy. There's lots of sites there. They're like $12 a year. Something I like to remind people-- like, I've seen people who work really, really hard on their blogs. And they keep them at .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. And I think, why, if you're willing to do all this work on something, would you not spend $1 a month to get your own piece of real estate?

I have something like 42 domain names right now, which is more than most people need. But I have every permutation of my name you can get, or I could get. But you don't need that many. You just get-- like, Sam has financialsamurai.com. But let's say your name is-- I don't know-- John Smith.

Johnsmith.com is probably already taken. But get something as close to that as you can. It'll be about $10 a year. Then for the hosting, I recommend WordPress over things like Squarespace and Wix. There are all these little site builders that-- they're OK. You can drag and drop and get something that looks all right pretty quickly.

But at the end of the day, you don't really own it. It's sitting on someone else's server. And you are tied to that service as long as you have that website. Where WordPress, which is what my sites are all built on and what Sam's site is built on, it's on whatever server you choose.

And there's a lot of hosting companies out there. So if you're not happy with your host, you can move it. And if you find-- there are some good discount hosts out there that are $5, $10 a month. So for a year, let's say $60, $70. All in, on average, with a domain name and hosting, let's say maybe $60 to $100 a year is what you would spend, which I think is pretty reasonable to have your own chunk of the internet.

And hopefully have that come up first if someone Googles your name. You can create the resume you want the world to see and have that come up first. And with WordPress, a lot of people don't realize-- so when I started way back when to install WordPress, you had to really know a bunch of codey things.

You had to be able to move files to servers and set up databases and whatnot. But these days, you can click one button on most hosting companies. There's a handful of big hosting companies that all have this. A lot of them use something called cPanel on the back end.

It's short for control panel. So you go into cPanel. And at the bottom, there's something that'll say, soft, delicious site installer, something like that. You click on it. And then there's a list of different things you can put on your server. And one of them is WordPress. You click on that.

You type in your email and choose a password and click Install. And your site is up and running. It takes less than five minutes. Even a grandma can do that in less than five minutes. If you can send an email and do basic web browsing, you could do this in about five minutes.

Well, how about-- we're just at the bottom in terms of understanding the internet. So how much could I pay you to help launch a decent site from scratch? So me, these days, my rate would be $5,000 for a full website. Oh, nice. And I'm definitely not the cheapest out there.

I'm definitely not the most expensive out there. When I work with a brand and they want a brand new site and a brand new design, and I can help them with logos and get their basic text written out for a handful of pages, make sure they have a nice home page, an about page, a contact form that works, those are the things that I would package it all together.

OK, cool. There are cheaper people out there. If you want to do it for a couple hundred bucks, you can find somebody on those sites that I mentioned that you could go find gigs on, Fiverr or Upwork, places like that, even Craigslist, if you trust it, Facebook Marketplace. You could find designers who will do it for a couple hundred bucks.

The quality might not be the same as when you pay somebody who works with bigger companies, usually, like me. I often work with large brands these days. But you can get something out there put together. If you don't want to do anything yourself, you can just send them a message, like I want a site that's basically these colors, here's the things that I want included.

You could probably find someone for a few hundred dollars that will get the basics done for you. And then once you get started, I feel like, for me, I came up with the idea of Financial Samurai in 2006. And I didn't start until 2009 because I was busy, business school, and then I was like, well, OK, the global financial crisis is here, time to have a backup plan.

But I just couldn't get started. And that start from zero to one, I feel, is the biggest hurdle for most people. Because once you start, you can adapt and pivot and adjust and make your site better and so forth. Absolutely. Yeah. I have a friend who comes to mind when you say that.

I'm not going to call him out by name. He's a nice guy. He's been a friend for a long time. And we kept talking about all these entrepreneurial ideas. He's like, I want to start a blog. And now I can't figure out the name. And now I can't figure out the logo.

And now I can't figure out this. And now I can't figure out that. And years go by. And something that I always used in my day jobs that's a philosophy I still hold to and what I do is don't let perfection get in the way of progress. You don't have to have a perfect website to get started.

As Sam just said, you can always improve it. If you don't like your logo, change it. If you don't like your design, pick a new one. If you don't like the words on your home page, rewrite it. It's not rocket science here. It's something you can do sitting at home on your laptop with a movie on in the background while you have a bowl of popcorn next to you and you're hacking away on the computer.

It's not that difficult. But if you don't start, it's impossible. So just start. Just start, folks. You never know where it will take you. I never thought-- I remember when I started Financial Samurai in 2009, I thought, OK, I would like to retire by 40. At that time, I was like 32.

And I was thinking, if I could make $1,000 a month while in Hawaii, that'd be some great supplemental income in an early retirement Hawaii lifestyle. And so it grew larger than I expected. And that's the thing, folks. If you start, you tinker with it, and you work on something you enjoy, you might be surprised where it could take you.

It might not grow to be a very big site, but at least you'll brand yourself online. You'll have your own customized resume. And you'll attract, due to the law of attraction, people who are looking for the things that you can offer. Totally. Yeah. Like you say, you never know where it'll take you.

When I started, I was really excited when I got a $5 ad on my website. That's like enough to buy a beer. That's not today's inflation rates. Beers used to be $5. That ages me, right? So I was like, yeah, $5. Wow, I could do something with that. And then it got to a point I was making a couple hundred bucks a month.

And I was like, wow, this is enough to make a car payment or enough for all of my beers for a month. Then it grew to a point that I was making $1,000 some months. And I was like, wow, this is covering my rent. This could cover a mortgage someday.

And now, I don't remember the last month that I did less than $10,000 in a month. And it started somewhere. It started with that $5 ad on my blog. And now, it pays for my whole family to live. So you got to-- you say, you got to go from zero to one.

You got to start somewhere. And you can always grow and build and pivot and improve. But if you don't have something, you're not-- you can't do anything with nothing, right? So you've got to start something. So starting is the biggest hurdle. You heard from Eric, we could start with a couple hundred bucks, maybe $500.

You can start a website and just go. So the other hurdle is quitting or keeping consistency. Why do people quit? Why do people give up when you can just keep on going? Because you'll never lose if you don't quit. Yeah, that's true. If you look at a lot of businesses, if you look at small business administration statistics, something like half of businesses don't make it 10 years.

I think that's the number. You can look it up. Don't quote me on it. Something like that. But with blogging and things like that, online projects, I'd say the attrition rate is much higher. There's probably millions of blogs that were really exciting to the person who started them for the first month.

And then they weren't on the cover of USA Today or invited on a national talk show. So they were like, oh, well, I'm a failure. But that's not true. I was just reading a story last week about somebody who gets 200 to 300 visitors per month to their website.

But they're so highly targeted. And the service that they sell is so valuable that they're able to make a living on a service they provide with just that level of traffic. So you don't have to be a superstar to make money doing what you do. But if you give up, you're not going to do anything.

You've got to stick with it. And pivoting, we've mentioned a couple times. For me, that changed what I do in multiple ways. I said I wanted to be like Pat Flynn or like Financial Samurai. But I ended up doing the freelance route. And when I quit my job, there was a point about, I'd say, six months later where I was working a lot more hours.

And my income did grow from when I had the day job. But it didn't grow proportionally for the hours that I grew. And I was like, why am I working so hard and feeling more stress but my income isn't going up the way I expected? And me, with a finance background, I opened up my accounting records.

And I was looking at them. And I noticed that about 76% of my income was coming from writing. And that was taking about 20% of my time. And about 17% of my income was coming from website projects. And that was taking about 80% of my time and causing about 90% of my stress.

I was like, huh, that's like the 80/20 rule smacking me in the face saying, Eric, you need to focus on writing over website projects. So actually, that is what I did. The next month, I had some recurring website support clients that I'd fix their websites when they broke, things like that.

And I told them I was ending that business and pointed them to a friend in the industry who I thought would do a good job for them. And I doubled down, tripled down on my writing. And the next month, my income did go down a little. But the month after and the month after, over about three months, my income roughly tripled.

And that's when it went over $10,000 in a month for the first time. And it's almost never gone back down since. So again, it was one of those places-- it wasn't exactly what I expected. But I noticed what was working in my business, refocused my efforts on that. And if you keep focusing on what's working well for you, it should keep working well for you.

I like that. Again, in banking, when we were approving loans and reviewing credit reports, we'd say past performance is the best predictor of future performance. So if somebody was late paying all their loans, they'll probably keep being late paying all their loans. But when you're looking at freelancing, the place you're making the most money is probably the place you will keep making the most money.

If there's a place you're making more money with less effort, do that. Don't work yourself to the bone trying to do something that's not working when something else is working for you. So focus on what's working, and keep focusing on what's working, and reevaluate periodically. Big companies have teams of financial planning and analysis people, FP&A.

That's what I used to do. And their whole job is to sit there and look at financial results and find trends, what's working well, what's not working well, basically. And if you do that for your own business, which I say, everyone should keep really good records of income and expenses, not just because the IRS says so, but because you're the manager of your business, and you need that data to know what's working well and what's not working well.

And when you look at it and you notice trends, act on it. Don't just sit idly by. Like we said, you can improve that website. You can improve your business. You can refocus what you're doing. It doesn't always have to be as knee jerk as I did, where I dropped a big part of my business and focused on another.

It can be more gradual. But if you ignore those trends and ignore what's working, you'll probably just keep doing what you're doing now. It'll probably maintain the status quo, unless you take some kind of action to keep that improvement. Yeah. No, I like how you're very process driven, and you look at the numbers.

For me, I don't really look at the numbers, because they kind of bum me out a little bit. Because I really just try to write whatever is interesting that's on my mind, or I need some help or inspiration from the community. And I feel that that has worked with me since 2009.

But then if I start looking at the numbers, then the problem is I start questioning, am I writing because I want to make money, or because I want to connect and have a dialogue? And I'm trying my best to write interesting things based on firsthand experience that is relevant to today's economy or society, whatever the topics may be.

There's endless amount of stuff. But I do agree with you that I need to focus on the numbers. I kind of outsource the numbers, ironically, to my wife, even though I'm the finance guy. Because I don't want to look at that stuff. Because I've seen before where people-- let's say they get into blogging or something, and they're so focused on trying to make money from that endeavor that they inevitably end up quitting, because they don't make enough money in the beginning to make it worthwhile.

It's definitely-- blogging is a long haul. It's not a get-rich-quick thing. It takes-- outside of extremely few people, most experiences with a blog, it's going to take time. YouTube channels is a great example of things that it takes a lot of time to do well. And I've known people who post a video a week, almost religiously, for a long period of time and have a little bit of traffic.

They get bumps and ups and downs. But all of a sudden, two years later, Google's algorithm notices them. And they shoot up and do great and continue to do great. Does that mean that those first two years were a failure? Absolutely not. That's part of-- That was foundation. --their assets.

Right. That's their foundation. But if they hadn't put those two years in, that big spike wouldn't have happened. When I was able to quit my job and become self-employed-- and I used to do income reports. So my income jumped those months and went over $10,000. All of a sudden, people noticed me.

So it was like, wow, eight years of hard work, and I'm an overnight success. But nobody wants to do the eight years first. It was a lot of work to get me to the point where I was an overnight success. So once in a blue moon, somebody will start a blog.

And it'll get picked up by a major media outlet. Or something will just work with their search engine stuff. Or it'll have a post go viral on some social network. And they'll take off early on. But most people probably won't have that. Most people, it's a slower process. It's building a community.

It's building a following. There's a lot of interactions, a lot of emails. You know you're doing something right when you start getting the hater emails. You're getting to-- getting-- rubbing somebody either the wrong way, it's probably because they're jealous of what you're saying, or your success. Or disagree. And it's OK if they disagree.

That means you're engaging people. So stick with it. I have one of those personalities where I'll work on something. And when I start seeing success in it, I get bored. I'm like, all right, I did that. On to the next thing. I've never been diagnosed, but I think I have ADHD.

I think that's what probably causes that in me. But because the freelancing thing, it became so successful, I just couldn't ignore it. It wasn't-- it became something that I was like, wow, this can go beyond a side hustle. But even when you have a full time job-- I'm a big fan of side hustles.

Having multiple income streams, I think, is really important. Because as we saw recently, people can get laid off any day, even if they're doing a great job. Maybe you worked at Twitter, and you were an engineer, and you kept the whole site together. You'd think that would be job security.

But a new boss comes in, and you're gone the next day. If you have multiple income streams, you at least have something else to fall back on if you lose a job. And if you are a freelancer, I like to say, I traded having one boss for having about a dozen bosses any given time.

But if I don't like any of my bosses, I can fire them. And I still have 11 more who are happy to pay me. And it ebbs and flows every month. I'd say I work with 10 to 15 companies. And some come and go. Some come back. It's just the nature of freelancing.

You have to have a thicker skin than a lot of things. But I have noticed a lot of people, when they lose a job, that's it. They're like, wow, I need to find the next job. Where for me, if I lose a gig, oh, well, I'll find another. I'll find a lot more.

So to me, that's almost more job security. There's expenses. Yeah, I think so. But it's a very different way of looking at income than when I had the day job. No, I absolutely agree. Yeah, start and stick with it. For listeners, just as an example, I started the Financial Samurai podcast maybe five years ago, six years ago.

Not consistent three, four years ago. But I've been consistent. And I haven't tried to find any sponsors or anything. I do mention some of the things that I've written and produced in the past or some affiliates on occasion. But I've basically made no money from this podcast for five years.

But that's OK because I'm enjoying it. I like talking to people like you. And I have this 10-year-plus vision from now. So another 10 years when my kids are older, hopefully maybe they can come on and they can listen to archive episodes. And it's just fun. And I do believe if you don't quit and you keep on going, there's no way that this podcast will be smaller 10 years from now than it is today.

So really, that grit and perseverance mentality is so important. And speaking of podcasts, you mentioned that you have another freelance gig as a podcast host. How does that come about? I mean, that seems so-- it just keeps on going. Yeah, yes. I'm one of those people that if something comes along, I like to say yes if I could make money from it.

I always give it a try. Of course, I have limits. There have been big media companies that have asked me to work with them that I have moral disagreements with that I've been able to say no. I'm glad I was in that position. I could say no. But with the podcasting thing, I'd had my own podcast.

I don't really add to it anymore, but anyone can go download it. There's 120 episodes. It's called the Personal Profitability Podcast. You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. And I was going to a podcast conference called Podcast Movement. I've been to, I think, five or six of them, got to know a lot of people.

So I got to learn a lot about podcasting just by doing it. My first episode was not nearly as good as my 50th, which was not nearly as good as my 100th. If you go back five years of Financial Samurai, you'll probably notice the same thing. The podcast gets better.

We get better microphones, better editing. We get more consistent. We get better at interviewing people. Anything you practice, you're going to get better at. So podcasting, because I practiced 120-something times, became a skill. And one of my writing clients-- it's a company I really love working with. It's called PayActive.

They do a financial wellness-- it's a financial wellness platform for targeting lower-income hourly workers. Anyone could really benefit from it if you ever feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck. And I met the CEO at a conference in LA. They invited me as a media guest. And we were chatting.

And he said, you seem to really get the idea of what we're about. Will you write for our blog? And I've actually been one of their longest-affiliated people. I've seen multiple chief marketing officers come and go over the years. But the last one said, I like the blogging world.

We really need to expand, though. We need to do video and audio, because that's a big trend. People listen to podcasts on-- you live in New York on the subway to work. If you live wherever, you might listen to one on your commute. Commutes are a really big place to listen to podcasts, or if you do any kind of driving.

I actually got a little podcasting speaker in my shower, because I was just not getting enough podcast hours. So I'm listening to podcasts whenever I can. Yesterday, I had a podcast on in my ears while I was doing yard work. So for me, podcasts are just something I've always loved and enjoyed.

And when they said, oh, we want to add a podcast and add an audio component to what we're doing, I put my hand up. I said, hey, I've done my own podcast. You can check out episodes. I'd love to be the host and be part of the face of the brand even a little more.

And they said, sure, we'd love it. And we've been doing the podcast over a year now. And we've been able to interview some really interesting people and give really great advice, financial tips to people. I think they're good advice for anybody, but we target them at that audience that we have in mind.

And I think we're able to change people's lives by the show. So I feel good about it, and it helps me make a living. And do you edit the podcast, too, or do you just host it? So I'm the host, and I found the editors, actually, the old editor from my podcast from way back when I sent her an email and said, hey, I'm doing a podcast for a client.

They want an editor. Will you be the editor? And she said, sure, here's my current rate. And I said, that works great if it works for them. And I sent an email to the CMO, said, does this rate work for editing? He said, sure, and here we are. And let's talk about-- you don't have to talk specific numbers, but let's talk about, OK, how much can a podcast editor make, and how do they charge, and how much can a podcast host make, and how long does that work?

How do all these contracts work? Yeah, so for editors, if you want to learn about podcast editing, I've got to throw out a name of a friend. His name's Steve Stewart. He is the leader of an online podcast editor group. He's a cheerleader to help people become full-time podcast editors.

And most of them are freelancers. Though what they get paid, there's a big range, depending on what they offer. So on the low end, you might find someone for around $50 an episode, depending on how long your episodes are. So let's say for a half-hour episode to a 45-minute episode, you might find someone around that range.

And for that, you'll get someone who will maybe cut out your ums and uhs and run it through a software tool to equalize the sound so it comes out nice and it doesn't go way high and way low. It sounds nice. On the high end, you can pay hundreds of dollars an episode, and that includes way more in-depth editing and equalization.

They might-- they have all sorts of audio editing tricks that they use. We don't have to give a whole lesson on that. And then they'll do the show notes. They'll help maybe get a transcription together. They'll make sure that the links are in right to the right places. They do-- That's a lot of work, folks.

Listeners, you've got to appreciate these episodes. There's a lot of work goes into production. I'm a one-man band here, folks. So your reviews are what the rewards are. So thank you. So it's adding-- getting the fading right for a theme song to go into the beginning and the end.

There's so many things that you can do, clip pieces together. You just got to pay money and find that right editor. OK. So if you find a great editor, there's a reason they're able to charge hundreds of dollars an episode. Because they're creating a service that is worth that.

And if you want the $50 one, you'll get a $50 value back. And maybe that's all you want or need as you're growing. But maybe you work for a big company. I've talked to a few big companies, like large investment companies who you've heard of. And they have much higher budgets, but they also have much higher requirements.

So they're happier to pay a lot more money, because they want something that is good enough that they could sit down with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who's their boss and say, are you happy with this? Their requirements are going to be a lot different. Yeah. So they want it to be like NPR quality.

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So when I'm listening to podcasts, I mean, I definitely understand production quality, intros, the music, and all that stuff. But for me, at the end of the day, I just want to listen to the content. That's like 90%, 95% of it. And I know I have nothing fancy here on this podcast.

Maybe I will get more fancy as the podcast grows. But it's that content quality that's the most important, to me at least. So in terms of, OK, podcast editing, $50 to several $100 per episode. How about being a podcast host? Because I think that's something that more of us could be like, oh, we could be a podcast host.

I can speak more eloquently. I can learn how to not say uhs and ums, and research, and ask good questions. What does that kind of range look like? So that one is going to also be a wide range. I don't want to give away my exact contract. No, don't do that.

I don't think I'm allowed to. No, the range would be good. Imagine on the low end, someone might be able to do maybe $300 to $400 an episode, depending on the length and the time commitment. Wow, $300 to $400. Oh, I got myself a side gig, maybe. On the high end, it can be thousands an episode.

But remember, with that, you are becoming a face of the company, a voice of the company. So you're going beyond just putting a few words on a page. Here, it's your personality. It's you are a face of the brand. It's becoming almost a brand ambassador. I like it. The podcast I do for my client, we record the podcast.

I find the guests. I do the questions. I found the editor. I drive most of the process. And I also-- we actually use the platform we're using right now, and called Riverside. And I download the videos for the show. And they get that to make little clips to put use on their social media.

So yes, I'm the podcast host. But then we're also in Instagram reels, and TikToks, and wherever they want to put their stuff. Basically, once we record the episode, the audio and the video is the company's. So I make sure they get a good quality podcast. But then they can use clips of it.

They can take parts of the transcription and put it into their app that the clients use, customers use. So they can do a whole lot with it. But then I'm also really tying myself to that brand. So they're tying themselves to me. I'm tying myself to them. So it's a bigger relationship when you're a podcast host or a video host for a company.

No, that's fascinating. Personal brand, branding is very important. If you want these gigs, you better have a good personal brand. You better not offend people too much, unless that's kind of the trend of the client. I don't know. If you think about the brands of just different creators who you might know online, there are people who are-- think about the people you follow on whatever your social network of choice is.

There's so many of them now. There's people that I follow that are always complaining or always being kind of cynical. And over time, I kind of like, oh, maybe I don't want to follow this person. But there are people who might really like that and find affinity to that.

But for me, I like positivity. I like growth over being down on people. I don't want to-- I don't like complaining. I like growing. So I like to follow positive people. So think about what brand you want to build for yourself, and then what brands would want to work with that.

I mean, if you're just complaining all day on Facebook, no one's going to want to work with you. No one's going to want to be friends with you on Facebook if all you're doing is complaining all day. But if you're out there putting out helpful, positive information on whatever topic, you can become a thought leader in that area.

Then brands might start coming to you, or you might be able to approach brands and start building those relationships. But you have to be professional and think about-- we see celebrities-- Michael Phelps, I don't know why he came to mind. He won a bunch of gold medals. Everyone loved him.

And then one time, he got caught smoking pot, and he got fired from all of these brand relationships. It cost him millions of dollars. Tiger Woods, everyone loved him for a long time. And then he cheated on his wife, and he got fired from all these different brands he was working with.

So it can happen to even the big, big celebrities. The tolerance for bad behavior is going to be a lot lower for someone who's not a super celebrity like me. So I definitely have to be thoughtful about what I put out there. I don't want to look like a drinking frat boy when I'm putting pictures online.

I want to look like a professional. So speaking of pictures online, how important is what you look like, your image, online if you're doing a podcast, if you're a podcast host? And vice versa, I guess. There's a saying, you have a great face for podcasting. You don't have to be a supermodel to be on the radio or to be a podcaster.

But you do have to-- I'd say in this day and age, you do kind of have to put your face out there. That doesn't mean you have to be a beautiful person. It means you should be-- Everybody's a beautiful person. Yeah, I agree. Everyone's a-- we all have beauty in us.

But you should be thoughtful about what do you want to put out there? What do you want to say out there? If you put a little video out on your Instagram, are you showing yourself in Las Vegas partying? Or are you showing yourself at the pool reading a business magazine?

I'm in finance, so that comes to mind. I don't know. There's so many examples. If you're an athlete, are you going to show yourself at the gym working out in a good way? If you want to be a fashion person, you don't want to be in a frumpy outfit with your hair messed up.

Once in a while, those are kind of fun for authenticity. But think about the trend that you're creating, that brand, that package you're creating. A lot of work. A lot of work upkeeping your image. But what about voice? Because I listen to some podcasts, and I listen to the host voice.

And I'm thinking to myself, man, that's a little difficult voice to listen to. But it's a successful podcast because of the quality of the content, and the guests, and how much value the podcast can add. And then I know a couple journalists, or broadcast journalists, and they change their voice.

They change their voice to speak on TV and speak in a more professional way. How much does that type of deliverance matter in terms of building a podcast? I'd say it matters less than you'd think, but it does matter. You said there are podcasts whose voices rub you a little bit the wrong way, but the show's good enough, you listen anyway.

So if you have a voice that you believe most people find annoying, you could-- if you really want, you could go to a voice coach. You could work on having-- sounding nice. Something that I advise most people to do when they're creating video and audio content is to slow down a little bit.

People often speed up when they're on a stage, and the same thing happens when you turn the camera or the microphone on. And when you start talking fast, you're harder to understand, and you throw out a lot more ums and uhs. For me, I've voice trained myself to do that less by slowing down and being a little more thoughtful in my speaking and how I approach it.

But in the long term, I'd say just practice. Like we said for blogging, it's not going to get better unless you try. So try your own show. Try your own podcast. Listen back to it. We always hate how we sound, because we sound different in our heads than we do in our earbuds.

But if you practice, you'll get used to hearing yourself. And it's good to critique yourself. We're often our biggest critics, so don't be too hard on yourself. But it's OK to critique yourself and listen to the things you like about how you sound and you don't like about how you sound.

When you turn that microphone on, try to sound like your best self. That doesn't mean be like Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos and make up a new voice. It means-- OK. I can pick on her now. Is that her fake voice? I don't know. I haven't heard her different voice.

She has-- if you go look at some more recent videos after it was pretty sure she was going to prison, her voice changed. I was like, huh, that's interesting. So she has apparently gone to a voice coach to learn how to talk like this all the time, so she sounded more like a man.

But most people don't need to change their voice completely. But if you try to speak as well as you can, you probably sound better than if you don't. So think about that. All the little things count. The little things count. At the same time, folks, I don't think-- don't focus so much on perfection and being the perfect delivery.

I don't know. For me, my personality has always been, well, if it's good enough, it's good enough. You get it out there. You can work on it. Just don't wait. So in conclusion, Eric, it's interesting to see your journey because you've gone the freelance journey, and you're doing all these different things.

And you said it yourself, you haven't been diagnosed, but maybe you have ADHD, where you like to focus on many, many different things. And it's part of your personality, which is great. And you're doing things based on your personality. And on the flip side, I've done exactly the opposite.

I've just stuck with one side. I've just written three times a week since 2009 and just gone that way because I wanted to just focus on my own platform. What are your thoughts on those two different paths? And what is the thought process in terms of doing both maybe?

Yeah, well, actually, I learned something. I think it was FinCon in 2013 in St. Louis. I had this blow my mind realization. I went to a session by a guy named Stacy Johnson. He runs a site called Money Talks News. And he said the only way to be successful online is to create a ton of content.

He was like, I make five posts a day every weekday, and we have our newsletter, and we're just adding more and growing more. And that's the only way you can succeed online. And then I went to a session like an hour later by a guy named Derek Halpern. And he said, I post one post a month.

It's really, really long. It's really, really good. And I spend way more time on promotion than I do on creation. And that's the only way I could succeed online. That's the only way to do it in the current day. And I realized they were saying totally opposite things. And they were both right and wrong.

They were both right in those are ways to be successful, but they were wrong in saying there's only one way to be successful. If there are-- you could be successful in both. So some people, it's a volume thing. Some people, it's a quality and consistency thing. What's important is that you find what works for you and the audience you're trying to reach.

I create multiple articles every single day for different sites. And for me, that works really great. But I've spoken to other freelancers who the idea of creating more than two articles in a day is like their version of hell. They're like, I couldn't do that. That's terrible. I've spoken to others who create more than I do.

So it's finding what works for you and finding the right balance. And we've said a few times, don't let perfection get in the way of progress. Don't have to have a perfect podcast. You don't have to have a perfect blog. In my freelancing, I do try to turn in perfect articles to my clients.

I use a bunch of tools to do that. But at the end of the day, we're all human. We're not perfect. AIs are even less perfect. I'm hoping they'll not take all of our jobs at some point. But for now, we need people to do things. And I've found a way to make it work for me.

And with the getting distracted and getting bored of things, something I like about freelancing is that I get to focus on different topics all the time. Maybe in the morning-- yesterday, I wrote an article about starting an LLC in one state. When we hang up from this, I'm going to be working on an article on the tax benefits of donating cryptocurrency assets.

So to me, some people might think those are horribly boring to write about. To me, I think any business topic and finance topic is fun to write about. And those are different enough that it's exciting to me. I get to learn about different things. I get to try different things.

I get to read and learn a lot as I'm writing and creating a lot. So I found a way to enjoy what I do and make a great living doing it. So I'd say that's what anybody should be trying to do at the end of the day. Try to find a way to enjoy what you do and make a good living doing it.

And by focusing on what works and what you enjoy, hopefully those returns will come back to you. Yeah. Amen to that. Well, it's been great chatting with you for the past hour, Eric. It's awesome to see that you're doing all this freelancing, to be able to take care of a family, three children, a wife in Southern California, not too cheap place to live there.

Totally. So for folks thinking about freelancing, I would just start with your first gig. What are you good at? What do you like? Brand yourself online. Start your own website. It doesn't have to be generating a lot of content. But plant that flag online and just go start. There's so many Reeses out there online to make money, to connect, and then build your brand and network.

So thanks so much again, Eric. And if people want to follow up with you, where can they find you? Yeah, the easiest thing to do is pull up your web browser and type eric.money. That was one of my branding things that I'm really glad I bought. So type eric.money, and that has links to all the things I do, all my social networks.

So head there, and I'd love to connect with you. You can find ways to send me an email or follow me on the socials. And I'd love to connect and answer any questions. Yeah, and thanks again for updating financialsamurai.com. It was very helpful. I know you worked hard on all these little nitpicks here and there that we've solved.

So I really appreciate that. And for folks who want to keep in touch, don't forget to subscribe to the Financial Samurai newsletter at financialsamurai.com/news. And please share, rate, and review the podcast. Thanks so much. Take care.