Remote Work Junkie

It's been a while since I did an update on Remote Work Junkie. And the last year+ has been a roller coaster.

The tldr;

in mid 2023, I took a break from posting new content. I did keep up with the LinkedIn company page and job board, but otherwise I was burnt out.

2023 the business lost money, but not suprising as I did no sales outreach or create new content.

By the end of 2023, I was feeling refreshed and put some new things in motion. And saw some growth going into 2024.

Okay, let's get into the January stats and the Talent Pool.

January 2024 Stats:

Website traffic 📈

↳ 67k+ pageviews
↳ 47k+ sessions
↳ 7 new articles added

Job board 👨‍💻

Been a tough market for tech and remote jobs in general. Demand is higher than ever for remote work, but supply is still fairly low.

↳ 29 remote jobs added to the board
↳ 317 new jobseeker profiles created (1700+ total)
↳ 93 new remote job alert emails created (670 total)
↳ 1182 external job applications

LinkedIn Page 🌐

Continues to crush and compound. Really becoming an amazing marketing and brand channel overall.

↳ 209k+ content impressions
↳ 44k+ pageviews to it
↳ 16.7k+ unique visitors
↳ 7.6k+ customer button clicks
↳ 18.6k+ new followers (hit 80k+ total)

Newsletter 👀

This is a channel I want to improve on in 2024 now that LinkedIn is humming along well. I've slightly neglected this for too long.

↳ 2,692 subscribers
↳ 34%+ open rates
↳ 1.4% click rates

Partners 🤝

↳ Closed first new paid partner for Q1 2024.

And today, I officially launched the new Talent Pool for remote job seekers. This allows recruiters to gain access, source candidates, and reach out directly with the roles they have.

If you want to check it out, go here: https://jobs.remoteworkjunkie.com/talent

If you are a job seeker looking for remote work, you can create your free profile here: https://jobs.remoteworkjunkie.com/seeker/signup

Excited to get these out to not only help the business, but help remote job seekers, and recruiters. A win-win all around.

Cheers!
Todd

I've been slacking on an update around https://remoteworkjunkie.com/, mostly do to welcoming my son to the world in October and being super busy with my full-time work and RWJ.

But now that I have a few minutes, wanted to drop the latest progress and things I worked on these last two months!

Remote Work Junkie is about to pass $9k ARR in the 8 months that it has been live. I'm excited about this as almost all the revenue has come from sponsorships (some affiliates as well).

I was accepted into an ad network and have the ads live, but I won't see much income from that until my web traffic really starts to take off.

This revenue gets funneled right back into the website, so right now I take $0 from this. And that's okay! I think this is the time to put the money back into the site to help fuel growth and the brand.

I fell short of publishing more content, it's challenging as I can only afford one freelance writer to help with just 2-3 articles per month and I only have time for 1-2 myself typically. I need to find some ways to ramp this up to 10-15 per month to elevate organic traffic, but right now it is not feasible with my schedule/budget.

I'll certainly get there at some point as things settle down and winter settles in, but will need to be more patient on the organic traffic then.

The other cool thing, the company LinkedIn page continues to grow every day and is now close to 3k followers. This social network has been a major source of traffic and how most of my sponsors have found RWJ. Being active here has been a game changer for sure, and still, recommend anyone building SaaS or B2B products to be active in some way.

Some other stats:

• 400+ free job seeker accounts created
  -1500+ email subscribers
  -200+ job alerts created
  -110k+ pageviews since launch

Not bad for a project I work on just a couple of hours each week (:

Cheers!
Todd

I can't believe August is now over and the 5th full month of Remote Work Junkie being live in the world! It's been a busy few months between working full-time, a new advisor role, growing the RWJ brand, and moving into a new home.

With that, let's get into some updates on how the month went.

Revenue was solid again as I closed another 4-figure paid sponsorship and had a few small affiliate sales. I also got approved for a premium ad network, although not as recognizable as say AdThrive or Mediavine. Although, I will move to one of them in the future.

But this is a start to help get some recurring revenue each month to fund the site. The ads are not live yet, but should be in the next week or so.

I also did bring on a freelance writer in August to help knock out some topics. Usually just 2-3 per month, where I provide the outline.

I have close to 1k article ideas and I want to publish them all now! But I can't afford to hire a big team of writers, so any help I get is a plus to pumping out more great content. I still write 90%+ of the content too, but having some help is nice.

No revenue from the job board in August, it's a tough and crowded market. However, it also was never my priority to be a remote job board website. There are hundreds out there!

I'm close to 400 job seekers who have signed up for free and I pull in some great remote jobs daily, so I think down the road we'll see more paid remote jobs listed. This stuff takes time to build trust and be known. The traffic and attention is happening there, so no doubt I'll see some revenue later from this channel.

Lastly, the site generated over 11k pageviews for the month. If you saw a previous post, you maybe thinking wait that is way lower than June.

Correct!

In June, Google was testing my job board content and was giving me a ton of traffic from the Google Job Network. But alas, it did not last. Right now, I'm still in a bit of that "Google Sandbox" where because my site is so new, it's trying to establish if I'm a trusted source or not. I predict in the next 2-3 months, the traffic will start to jump, not only from the job board, but from the general content I'm writing as well.

That's the post! Come check out the site if you have not yet: https://remoteworkjunkie.com/

While the traffic was not as intense as June, I saw a few positive signs that are really excited.

So why the traffic loss? Well in June, Google was testing and indexing our remote jobs in the top spots of searches. The site is now going into Month 5, which is very early for Google to show some love.

So I know they are testing my site and seeing where it belongs. This is normal, and I've seen this happen in previous sites I've launched from scratch.

I anticipate in the months to come the job content will be trusted more and more. That said the remote job board still gets thousands of views and is getting indexed into the Google Job Network, just need more time to get it higher up and ranking with the big boys in the space.

Besides that, the community continues to grow with email subscribers, job seeker accounts, and my overall brand searches are skyrocketing. I contribute a lot of this to getting out there in communities like this one and LinkedIn.

But the exciting part has been the revenue. I closed our first sponsorship deal, a paid remote job listing, and some minor affiliate income. I don't anticipate this to be consistent quite yet, being such a new site.

But love that I'm getting on the radar of more great brands.

This is why I love content sites and communities, because i'm able to help so many with the education and job listings, but also develop additional revenue for my family. Right now, the money that is generated is going right back into the business.

I'm also planning to hire a freelancer writer to help me knock out more of my 800+ content ideas and someone on the sales side to help get more sponsorships and job listings. It's a part I lack is outreach, which don't have time for, but I think could make a huge difference in the coming weeks/months.

Onward to August!

If you want to learn more about our community of all things remote work, check it out here: https://remoteworkjunkie.com/

As I begin month 4 of Remote Work Junkie, I've closed our first brand sponsorship deal after a few weeks of conversations! This is exactly how I made most of my income my first year with my personal finance website Invested Wallet (Acquired in 2021).

Affiliates and ads take time to ramp up, especially on a brand new site. However, if you build it as a business and work on brand in other channels, you start to get attention.

And this is exactly what happened for this brand deal!

LinkedIn is an important social media channel, especially for those in B2B or SaaS. People are looking to learn, to research businesses, find solutions, and share insights from their work.

Actively, my personal LinkedIn and the company page for Remote Work Junkie continues to be a major source of traffic, brand awareness, and driving conversations.

About two months ago, someone from this company that I'll be working with sent me a cold inMail on LinkedIn, wanting to learn more about RWJ and chat. We had scheduled time and had a great conversation. Nothing happened right away after, as It was early yet, since the company was just starting to grow their team. But I was then connected to the marketing department once they were hired.

And from there we closed a deal!

All because I was active on LinkedIn and more people were seeing my content or brand name. I'm sure this won't be the last coming from this social channel, especially as the website continues to ramp up.

First major income achieved! And every time that first income from a new project you built from scratch hits, it gives you all that dopamine once again (:

As I wrote a few weeks back Remote Work Junk was off to a wild start in June. Mostly do to Google indexing more of our remote jobs, however that tapered off after the algorithm update was complete mid-month.

But a positive sign considering the site is going into just its 4th full month since going live. So how did the overall month perform as we move into July?

• 45k+ pageviews across the RWJ website channels
  -1500+ job applications submitted
  -160+ free job seeker accounts created
  -270+ new email subscribers (over 1300 total)
  -1st brand sponsor deal in the works
  -Applied to premium ad network

Really excited with the progress considering this is a side gig and most of the content is still in this "sandbox" with Google. But continuing to write, promote, and generate ideas to help be seen as a top remote work website.

The brand name is really getting out there from social media too, it's one of the top search queries in Google as to how people find me. And if you type "remote work j," Google's autosuggest shows "Remote Work Junkie" second after "Remote Work Jobs." Always cool to see.

Lots of work to do, but this momentum is much stronger than my personal finance project, which was acquired last year. On the path to good growth and to start generating some income.

Check out the site and remote job board here: https://remoteworkjunkie.com/

We are seven days into the 3rd month of being live, and the site has generated over 14k pageviews - more than the entire month of May! Also had almost 400 people apply to remote jobs already!

Google has kicked in big, not only for the main content and guides, but the job board. This has been indexed into Google jobs recently, so a lot is being discovered there.

Additionally, huge increase in free job seeker accounts created and over 150 new email sign ups, taking the email list close to 1200.

LinkedIn also continues to be a strong channel for traffic and brand awareness. Over 3k searches for the company name in the last 30 days, approaching 700 page followers there as well.

Continued focus is on content (I have over 600 content ideas to get published. This will drive a lot more traffic, but I'm writing myself for now. So setting small publishing goals for myself). And also working toward a continued increase of the job board visibility further.

~ Recently updated the sponsorship options (Newsletter, content, etc.)
~ Tightened up job board packages (I know the rev will come here soon!)

Revenue has not been my main focus yet, but the opportunity is coming. Already having some interest and brand calls for sponsorship opps.

Next, will be applying to an ad network for main content site. I prefer Mediavine, but will be a bit short of their 50k sessions still if this month keeps going as is. So might use another called Monumetric until then. But also considering waiting too. We'll see.

Also, I will start introducing some more affiliates into the content mix. I have a few on the site right now, but will update in the coming weeks with more.

Excited about the progress, but lots more to do yet. Onward!

Time is flying by and the second full-month of the site being live, the traffic hit over 9k pageviews. I'm excited about this as I've put no budget towards marketing/promotion, just free things I can do to generate awareness.

LinkedIn has by far been the biggest traffic contributor from the company page to my personal page. It was the #1 channel, followed by direct, and then organic (Google mainly). Once Google really kicks on my content, I think traffic is going to explode.

No revenue yet, although I really am not too focused on that. Ads will be come when the traffic is past 10k views per month (ads will be sparingly to not impact user experience too much) and affiliates I will worry about a bit later. Also added some awesome sponsorship opportunities, so another potential revenue channel that worked well on my pervious media site.

But my main goal for now is to build an awesome community.

However, I would have expected some $$ from the remote job board feature, which has some amazing numbers of applicants and jobs seekers creating accounts. And some good traffic generating to the page. I did simplify the packages recently, as to of them I think were to similar and I'm working on getting the word out a bit more and writing content relevant to start attracting my target buyers of job listings.

But I do believe that job post revenue will start happening, there are just many options for people recruiting today that I need to showcase why we should be a top option to consider as well.

Cheers to a great month and onward to an even better one in June!

May has been a great month of growth, with Google traffic just starting to kick in. A huge increase of remote job seekers also joined, besides the traffic to the website.

Also, my LinkedIn strategy is working gaining almost 500 followers there and is the channel driving the most traffic currently.

Revenue will come, but now that it's growing I'm working on adding some new options for brands. So beyond the remote job board, affiliates, and eventual ads, I'm working on some sponsorship packages.

One that is live, is our most viewed webpage, Top 100 Companies Hiring Remotely. The design allows a brand to be sponsoring the list and on the top for more visibility. I've added a call out for companies to sponsor for 30 days or more.

Also I'm working on some newsletter and content sponsorships, as well as some combos. I'm excited to get these laid out and launched.