Timothy Kim: Words Into Cash

Transcript

[0:00:27] CH: What’s up everybody, it’s Charlie Hoehn, the host of Author Hour where I interview authors about their new books. Today’s episode is with Timothy Kim. He is the author of Words Into Cash. We’ve all heard about passive incomes and side hustles and flexible careers that people have, that bring them wealth and success. Timothy is one of those stories. He actually epitomizes the American dream. He arrived in the US as a South Korean immigrant with only $500 in his pocket and he worked his way up the corporate ladder but after that happened, he decided to leave it all behind and pursue his dreams as an online entrepreneur. Today, he is an elite blogger and he was able to become a millionaire using the power of his online presence. In this episode, he’s going to teach you how to create a beast of a passive income through blogging. If you’ve wanted to turn your digital life into a business and create a career that you’ve always dreamed of, this is the episode for you. Now, here’s our conversation with Timothy Kim.

[0:01:52] Timothy Kim: I was born in Korea, South Korea and my parents, they moved me and my brother to Hungary Eastern Europe because they were missionaries in 1991. This was like, the last year when the Soviet troops were coming out of Hungary and that’s not really what a lot of people might be able to relate with but it’s – the reason why I share that story is because it was just a real hard life growing up as an immigrant. I immigrated here to the US in 2004 when I was 18 years old. I didn’t have a lot of money and just kind of growing up in a family where we weren’t poor or we were never – we never really went like super hungry or anything like that so we weren’t extreme poverty because I know there’s a lot of people out there in the world that are just really just getting by, some of them even just like have to look for water and stuff like that. Not to that extent but you know, I don’t think my parents ever made more than $1,500 a month on a good month. All the money that they made was through church support, they’re Christian missionaries. They’re still actually in Hungary right now, they feed the homeless, they go to – They have like a prison ministry and they also have a gypsy slum issue where they go to the gypsy slums and they preach and talk to the people, my mom gives them haircuts, stuff like that. Yeah, growing in that background, never having enough money, I think was always a point of contention for me, it was always a struggle for me and my brother and I remember, yeah, just really not liking that and telling myself, “You know what? When I grow up, I’m not going to be like this. I want more for myself and I want more for my family.” Nothing against my parents, I love them and I respect them but it’s just, it was too difficult.

[0:03:45] CH: When you say it was too difficult, a particular instance come to mind that maybe you felt the most exasperated or frustrated or embarrassed?

[0:03:58] Timothy Kim: Yeah, even the smallest things where my friends would have birthday parties, they would get presents and it’s a pretty normal thing that people take for granted but I used to never get presents. Christmas, holidays, birthdays, we were lucky to get a cake if at that. I still remember just growing up just those were luxuries and it’s just something that in my childhood, it just never was so that was kind of hard.

[0:04:30] CH: What happened next? You decided that you weren’t going to live that way when you grew up. When did things start to move down that path?

[0:04:43] Timothy Kim: When I immigrated here to the US, actually, I was naturalized as a citizen just a couple of years back. Yeah, I just wanted a different life for myself.

[0:04:51] CH: Congratulations by the way.

[0:04:52] Timothy Kim: Thank you. Yeah, it’s crazy, you know, for people who were born here in the US, it’s really easy again to just not realize how big of a blessing it is to be here in the US. At the naturalization ceremony, everybody was crying like tears of joy. Myself included. It was very emotional and it’s interesting, the group of people that were getting naturalized and again, me included, we’re the most passionate about this country, you know?

[0:05:25] CH: Yes, sorry to interrupt you Tim but I do. I want to triple down on what you’re saying. Every American I think should be required to watch the documentary Citizen USA. Have you seen this documentary?

[0:05:41] Timothy Kim: I’ve heard of it before though.

[0:05:42] CH: Yeah, you got to watch it, it’s so beautiful because this film maker traveled across all 50 states to meet brand new citizens to learn why they chose America as their new home. Even the most conservative, tough hearted person who is against immigration would just melt in this movie. It is so touching because you’re absolutely right. The people who have come over here and chosen America as their home are absolutely the most passionate, the most appreciative, the hardest working, I couldn’t agree more.

[0:06:20] Timothy Kim: Yeah, it’s just not taking it for granted, you know? I’ve been supremely blessed. I feel really blessed, when I came here, yeah, I didn’t have a whole lot, I went, I started working in the warehouse in La Palma California in Orange County and it was a wholesale garage door company. I started in Will Call and I think I made like 12 dollars an hour there when I started. Over the years, I was there for about 10 years and it’s a 60 year old company. I started in the warehouse and I ultimately became the vice president of procurement. I worked my way up and yeah, again, it’s just hustled, went in there, tried my best, working 80 hour weeks, was pretty common for me but you know, while I was doing it, I felt very blessed, I felt really good but it’s odd, it’s just one of those things where you work so long, you work so hard that you feel like you’re waking up every day asking yourself, “is this really it?” “Is this my life, all I do” and I have a kid now, you know? He’s almost three and it’s just too much time away from home, you know? From my wife, from the kid and it just felt like I was doing this daily grind and I felt kind of depressed. “Is this it? There’s nothing else?”

[0:07:49] CH: What else did you think there was?

[0:07:50] Timothy Kim: I don’t know, I just thought that it would be more fulfilling and I felt like having money and in satiating that craving for money would somehow free me and allow me to do more things and then give me more opportunities and have a life that I can enjoy but I felt like that great posh office job, that white collar job is kind of like, it felt like golden handcuffs. It’s just super depressing and I was always stressed out, taking anxiety medication because it was just, every day was just really stressful and I felt – again, money was really good and I would have never ever thought in my life that I will be making that much money but I wasn’t happy, you know? That’s when I started upon this idea of blogging because I like to read so I followed a lot of financial – personal finance blogs and just one day out of nowhere, the thought came to me, why don’t I start one and what’s there to lose? Just start one, who knows where it will go? That was kind of the beginning of me with my foray into blogging and it’s been amazing. Just looking back, I’m so thankful that that thought ever came to mind because if it didn’t, I’d be still doing the whole nine to five grind.

[0:09:11] CH: Tim, what is the name of your blog for listeners to check out and how long have you been blogging now?

[0:09:17] Timothy Kim: I’ve been blogging for about a year and a half and it’s called tubofcash.com.

[0:09:24] CH: Tubofcash.com and so, a year and a half seems like a pretty quick timeframe to be making a living doing what you love, right?

[0:09:38] Timothy Kim: Yeah. I started making, generating money from my blog right from the get go pretty much because I was putting time into social media, even before then and so I had a following even before I started my blog. I had been working on my following for about a year before I started actually writing in my blog.

[0:10:00] CH: Okay, I’d imagine some listeners might be thinking, I’ve heard this before, I’ve gotten my hopes up in the past that I can make money part time at home and I’ve heard I can make money doing things, don’t have to work at a traditional job and they’re skeptical, right? What do you say to them?

[0:10:25] Timothy Kim: I think it’s natural to think like that because it just seems like most things in life that sound too good to be true, I can understand that. Because I remember when I was kind of in those shoes as well. I’m actually very naturally skeptical so I totally understand where that kind of feeling would come from. I think to those kind of people who think like how I used to is just kind of like – think of it in a way where even then, even if it sounds too good to be true, why not just at least attempt it, you know? What’s the harm? I’ll probably say, “I can’t think of, off the top of my head anything that costs so little, so little capital, whether it’s human capital or financial capital to start. A blog is like a business.” “I can’t think of anything that’s cheaper than a blog. There’s actually ways you could start even a free blog, like blogger.com. Although they put ads on your site and they’ll basically – any traffic you get and income, they’ll take and you won’t get any of it if you do a free blog. But you can still grow a following through that and later transition to a paid version of a hosting and actually have your own platform where you could make money.” Yeah, I think, to people who are just skeptical about it is that you know, there’s really nothing to – there’s zero risk. What’s the big deal, if there’s zero risk, why not give it a try and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. In my honest opinion, I think the blogging, blogosphere is under saturated because of literally that kind of thinking. So many people think that it’s too hard and everyone thinks like this, if someone’s really successful with a blog, it’s like they just lucked out, that’s like one out of a million, you know? It’s kind of like the whole lottery kind of thing way of thinking. It can never happen to me. The funny thing is, if those exact people thought like that and they would have never started, they would have been exactly where they were before and nothing would have changed. Again, I’m very thankful and happy that I just made that decision that one fateful day like you know, why don’t I start my own, I love reading blogs, I feel like I’ve got a lot to say, why don’t I just start my own blog and just ramble online. I like to ramble anyways, might as well get paid, you know?

[0:12:57] CH: True. I’ll tell you Tim, I’ve been blogging here and there on my name .com, charliehoehn.com since 2008 and so 10 years but not super steadily and I had no game plan for making money to be honest. I just. Frankly, when I first started it was because it was an assignment at an internship and I really didn’t want to do it and then it ended up being one of the best career moves I’d ever made for owning google results, for having people trust me before they ever worked with me and that sort of thing. I’m a big believer in the blogs but let’s pretend I’m somebody who has come to you and I’m like man, “I’ve been doing this forever, this is such a grind. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, can you walk me through the steps that you lay out in your book on how to do this right so I don’t keep wasting more energy and time, not making any money.”

[0:14:02] Timothy Kim: There’s a lot to this but I would first take a look at the website. Just how does it even look? Because I don’t know the study behind this but in my book, I decided to study where something like 97% of traffic to a website, they decide, within a few seconds if they’re even going to stay or something like that. It has to do with design of the website. So many people tend to be perfectionists and so they try to overdo it and they think more is better.

[0:14:33] CH: What does that mean?

[0:14:35] Timothy Kim: I’ll give you an example like what is one of the most famous companies in the world? I’ll just give you the answer, it’s Apple, right? If you go to apple.com, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s just a simple website, all you see is usually just a product that they’ve just recently released, just that one product. It’s either a phone or their watch, there’s nothing else, it’s only one image and that’s it, everything else is white background and if you want to learn more information about any of their other products, they have like a menu. They have a small menu and then you go there and then you can access other parts of the website. When I usually go to –

[0:15:16] CH: Can I pause you there, Tim and share a fun fact? One of the most popular things I ever did online that went viral, it was one of the first viral things I ever did was to make a slide show of Apple’s home page all the way back from when they first started on the internet to present day. You’re absolutely right. I did it because I was stunned at how little the website had changed. It’s always been that same format of one major feature product in three or four little ones down below and a navigation bar and that’s pretty much it. You’re right, they’re a pristine, perfect example of keeping it simple.

[0:16:01] Timothy Kim: Exactly. That’s exactly where people tend to – I think the general theme about – of really, anything even my book is just people overthink things and overthinking generally leads to kind of like this analysis by – paralysis by analysis. When they do do something, it’s just over the top and another example actually that’s pretty good with this is that it’s kind of like – even their posts, people spend so much time and effort to make it just perfect and that extra 10%. Going from let’s say like 90% great content to like 100% perfect content, that extra 10%, there’s diminishing returns and I think people spend so much time in that extra 10 to 20% towards the end that they just get burnt out and if you go to YouTube or any of the blogs that are really popular and successful and you go back to like when they started, the first few videos or first few post or first years’ worth of stuff, it’s all really bad. All the really great YouTubers and bloggers, it’s usually really bad and it kind of again, another example of just don’t overthink it, do it. If it doesn’t get results, you just kind of have to do more of what works and you know, if it doesn’t work, try something else. One of the things that I see is other than the design is just the content is too difficult to digest. I think so many people who are bloggers or who like to read blogs and are motivated themselves to start a blog, they tend to try to sound real smart and so the vocabulary they use and stuff like that, it’s just too much. If you think about it, even you or anyone else, when you’re reading stuff, whether or not you have an extensive vocabulary or not, you tend to kind of gravitate towards stuff that’s more simple to digest. I think that’s just kind of a normal thing because the harder something is to read and digest, even if you’re able to comprehend it, it comes with pain and I think just inherently, human beings, I think, it’s pretty normal to say, yeah, we don’t like pain and painful reading does not really translate to traffic. Yeah, one of the – I don’t know the research but if you google it even, what is it, like the average reading grade level for the top songs –

[0:18:29] CH: Presidents?

[0:18:31] Timothy Kim: No, top like songs even, it’s like – I think it’s a third grade level and for rap, it’s first grade level. The thing is though, those are what sells but I don’t know what it is but when it comes to authors and writers and the content creators that actually write and not like sing or like verbal, it tends to be super dense and hard to digest. I really don’t know what it is. I think something to do with authors and writers. People tend to just overcomplicate – use really hard vocabulary and just hard to follow. I use slang, if a third grader can’t understand my blog post, I have to change it because that’s just how people communicate, you have to write your blog in a way like kind of like you’re talking to the person. A lot of people make that mistake and they don’t do that.

[0:19:22] CH: Yeah, you're absolutely right, there’s a lot of research backing up what you said. It’s a great book called Words That Work. Written by I believe a speech writer or a consultant to politicians. That’s his advice as well is you have to not dumb things down but it can’t be too intelligent because it hurts our brain and our brains are still designed very primal, you have to get through the amygdala which is a very lazy mechanism once it starts to get confronted with boredom. It checks out with stuff that’s too painful or highbrow and so you’re absolutely right. I think authors probably tend to do that because it signals. Hey, I’m a smart person, right? That they’re writing from almost academic standpoint and trying to sound super smart. Hey, I’m one of you guys but yeah, readers hate that.

[0:20:22] Timothy Kim: I’ll tell you what though, if that’s your audience, go ahead but you’re not going to make any money. You know?

[0:20:28] CH: Right, you got to be Jordan Peterson and that’s about it.

[0:20:31] Timothy Kim: Yeah. You know, I get it but you have to understand, what’s – how many people from this – what’s the average person and how much of the population is made up of the average person versus the scholar, you know?

[0:20:46] CH: Exactly.

[0:20:47] Timothy Kim: The way you got to look at it.

[0:20:49] CH: Okay, sorry to interrupt. I’m curious, I want to jump to a chapter in your book of building social proof. Now, you had a big social media following before you started this blog. Is that what you’re talking about? To build your social media audience or is this something different?

[0:21:09] Timothy Kim: It’s a little different, social proof is kind of – I like psychology. I think a lot of really – any business, it comes down to understanding how human beings think and so that chapter’s about building social proof where you kind of that authority thing that we’re talking about earlier. You don’t have to sound smart to be an authority figure for somebody. There are many other ways to portray an authority type figure. Where people see you as an authority figure to go to and listen to without sounding dry. That’s kind of what I talk about there but as far as like social –

[0:21:47] CH: Could you give an example?

[0:21:48] Timothy Kim: Yeah, even social media, I would say, if you have more than 10,000 followers which is very easy to do, you’re automatically like a semi influencer.

[0:21:58] CH: People listening to this might be like, did he just say 10,000 followers is easy to do? How do you think it’s easy to do?

[0:22:04] Timothy Kim: It’s so easy to do. I would say, I have about 900,000 followers across all my social media and that took about two and a half years so it was pretty quick but 10,000. I could – anybody that I talked to or mentored in 10,000, that’s not hard to do. You just start, you have to start somewhere and so most people, when they’re on Instagram or actually, most people that I know that are not like millennials or older, a lot of them actually don’t have Instagram and don’t have Snapchat. The Snapchat is so big and I feel like a lot of people are missing their opportunity because so much traffic can come from Snapchat because all you need to do is swipe up and it will go directly to your blog. A lot of people I think, older millennial and Gen X tend to stick with Facebook and Twitter and that’s not too smart. Again, the 10,000 followers thing, I kind of give this example. If you can, like martial arts, a lot of times, if I say, “you know, if given enough time, can you progress from being a newbie white belt to becoming, I don’t know, brown belt or blue belt or black belt even. Over a long period of time. As long as you can just stick to it, can you do it?" I think most people would say “yeah, it’s just all a matter of time. It has nothing to do with like your – I don’t know, abilities really even – it’s just how long can you stick with it?” “Can you really grit it out and all it is, some people who are more gifted for example, physically or athletically might be able to get that black belt sooner but even the least gifted genetically person can eventually become black belt for example if they can just stick to it year after year.” Social media, it’s exactly the same thing. It’s, you start – most people have, if you’re on Facebook and all your, like high school friends and relatives, friends, all of that included, most people have over a hundred people that are following them on their social media so that is where you start and just putting out content and engaging with people for example, one of the good ways to do this is if you start your blog and let us say it is in some makeup blog or fashion blog, all you need to do is go to influencers within your niche and start engaging with people in the comment section of your favorite influencer like top 10 influencers and these people are already a warm audience. This isn’t something like your cold calling people and trying to get them to buy something from you. These people are already interested in whatever you are doing like whether it is fashion or makeup and so there is a lot of easy avenues to get directly into contact with people that are in your niche even people who are influencers like I remember when I first started I DM-ed which is direct messaging if you are new to social media. I DM-ed more than a thousand people like influencers or people who are somewhat known with personal finance and business and entrepreneurship and I just pretty much DM-ed the same template. I just message everybody the same thing pretty much, two of them agreed to me guest posting for them on their website.

[0:25:28] CH: Two out of a thousand?

[0:25:29] Timothy Kim: Yeah, two out of a thousand but the thing is these people already have hundreds of thousands of followers so that paid off for me. So I was able to get in front of hundreds of thousands of people for pretty much just sweat equity. It wasn’t even that –

[0:25:45] CH: So did you individually send those messages by the way or did you automate it?

[0:25:50] Timothy Kim: No, I don’t even know how to automate it to be honest with you on Instagram there are ways but you can get blocked, you can get banned, stuff like that but I literally went from influencer to influencer and just direct message them or even email. Like I have emailed, I did both email and direct message. That is just one way of doing it and it is inevitable like I am telling you someone is going to say yes, it is like the biggest guarantee. It’s just you do it for long enough someone out there is going to say yes to you and as long as what you are offering somewhat at least makes sense and I think there are ways to make it a little bit easier for them to say yes. For example, you email them at the same time and just pretty much give them the exact like give them two or three word documents attach the exact blog post that you are going to do and so they can choose and just make it super easy. Again everybody is really busy so you just want to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes, don’t make it painful. That is what I did, I just send them in and some people are just really odd. I remember some people would say like, “Well what if they steal my idea” or my blog. Dude trust me, no one thinks like that, you know what I mean? And even if they were they don’t have much to lose – I mean you have more to lose. If you are starting off you really want to get yourself out there, there are a ton of things you can do and again, it is just little by little, block by block, you can grow your social media and the fun thing about social media is and it’s blogs there’s a tipping point once you get to a certain point followers will just follow you just because you have more followers and that’s another thing to do a social proof as well. It is just how human beings operate like because I have hundreds of thousands of followers I bet you if someone comes across my post or whatever, they will look at it. And say, “Oh well look at how many people are following this guy, there must be a reason why maybe I should follow him and that is where it just gets easier and easier. It is hard to start but it only gets easier overtime and it starts with just a hundred or 200 followers and over time it is really easy to do and especially if you have at least some money to put towards things like cash giveaways. I do a lot of giveaways because people inherently operate out of incentivizations. So if you really don’t have anybody following you, you want to get some excitement going with your blog, I would say any type of giveaway is a real easy way to get some buzz going.

[0:28:22] CH: Totally, now let us transition a bit into the actual monetization part because I have a bunch of questions for you but I am sure listeners want to know this part. So give us the 80-20 in the book like if somebody opened up your book and you are looking at the chapters, what is the one chapter if they’re ready to monetize their blog, they’ve got a following and everything, where do you point them, what should they do?

[0:28:50] Timothy Kim: The first thing, I think it is chapter – I am not sure if it is chapter seven. It looks like it is chapter seven, creating income streams. So as long as you have, I would say the easiest thing is starting off with something like Google Ad Sense because there are really no minimal requirements unless you live in some of the countries like you have to have your website up for six months at least for Google ad sense to prove but if you are in the US there is really no – It will take you a couple of weeks for them to approve you and automatically you have a method to generate income as long as you have something like Google ad sense and you can use some sort of very easy widget to just built it into your website. You don’t have to know coding or anything and that is again one of the things that I learned in my processes that a lot of this is I am so happy that I created my blog in today’s day even five years ago this would have been hard. I think the last two years it just became so much more easier because Instagram, Snapchat, all the social media has made it so much easier than having to focus on SEO because search engine optimization is really old school and so many people still marketing people talk about SEO and I just laugh that off because that will take you 10 years but yeah, just going back to the monetization part, it is real easy. All you need is something like Google ad sense at the start and later as you get more traffic you can have something like media vine or at thrive. Where they give you a lot more money for every thousand impressions or click through. You get higher payouts and there’s also Amazon associates which is an affiliate type program and it doesn’t cost you anything. You just sign up with Amazon affiliates and whatever you niche is so again if you are into makeup and your blog is about makeup or if you are into supplements. So you are going to write a blog about your top three weigh protein brands you can link it to amazon.com. Which is again, a lot of trust factor like people aren’t going to go to Amazon and be like, “What kind of website is this?” no this is Amazon. Most people buy from Amazon and a lot of people have Prime. So as long as you link it properly and a lot of people don’t know this about Amazon but Amazon Associates is that about 60% of your income from Amazon Associates won’t even be from the product that you link on your blog. It is actually it will be from people from stuff that they put in their cart. That they buy that you just get commission off of if that makes sense like does that make sense, it is called the universal cookie and for 24 hours, so they can close out their browser or they can close out everything, they can go on a tablet, they can go on a different phone or a different computer and within 24 hours whatever you put in that cart and people mostly, if you are like me, I am buying stuff off at amazon like all the time every day. So if I clicked on your link now suddenly, you are going to get commissioned off all the stuff that I was normally going to buy anyways. So people don’t know that. It is just a very interesting thing where you can actually make a lot of money just by writing posts and having people click on stuff even if they close out of it and then it is something that as long as they click on it, it will save it, the cookie will be saved for something like a year. So if they buy it eventually even if they just go into their browser the cookie is saved so you get commissioned for that. Things like that, there’s a lot of things that people don’t know that it is really easy to monetize and I am not talking about a ton of money. I would say anything over six figures is a little tough to do with just primarily ads. You would have to do a lot of it.

[0:32:36] CH: Or Amazon as well because Amazon’s affiliate payout is what 5%?

[0:32:42] Timothy Kim: It used to be higher so they are really lowering it now every category is different. For books it is something like 10% digital. Anything digital usually get higher payouts. So yeah it is different, there is click banks as well which is similar. You get higher payouts but that is just the start. I would say anything more than if you are looking to make six figures or more, you have to start getting into proprietary product and affiliate partnerships that give you higher payouts. And usually those kind partnerships they require you to have at least a certain amount of traffic. One of the ones that I found very successful from the get go was Bluehost. It’s an affiliate program and as long as someone uses your link to create a website, you get a certain amount of commission and the more you sell their product, later they bump you up to different tiers and you get higher payouts. There is a lot of stuff.

[0:33:35] CH: Right, you and Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas all make I believe a huge chunk of monthly income from Bluehost particularly. They pay bloggers very well.

[0:33:49] Timothy Kim: Right and the other part of it is your Snapchat and your Instagram or whatever other social media platforms you’re on, that page can be its own blog. So as long as you can get a following, you can make money, you don’t even have to have a website. I mean I would recommend a website because you never know. It is good to build your own land if that makes sense but you could still make money on different platforms because they made it so easy now. Yeah, it is a lot easier to make money.

[0:34:28] CH: So Tim, let me ask you how many hours per week you work, how hard do you work because I am imagining some listeners are thinking, “Gosh I wasn’t brought up by hard working Korean parents and I have all these terrible lazy habits” how much effort are you putting into this?

[0:34:46] Timothy Kim: You know in the beginning I spend a lot of time. For example, as I was growing my social media, I was spending all day interacting with people, interacting with influencers trying to do as much as I can to get my name out there but today, I can go even a month without writing a blog post. It is not one of those things that’s forced anymore like all the blog post that I made in the past still make money. So that’s the beauty about having your own website. Your blog isn’t just an income stream, every single blog post is an income stream. So even if you are making a penny a day from your posts then it’s within your control that if you want to make more money, just write more posts and the cool thing is if you are starting out and you have zero audience, none of the effort that you put in the beginning is a waste because let’s say a year or two years later you actually have an audience they are going to go read the stuff that you published in the past. So none of it goes to waste that’s what I would say and then with social media, I am always putting up the same thing. Let’s say I have a 100 posts, I keep recycling posts and some people think that that’s a bad idea but I think that’s just dumb, why wouldn’t you? Every time I recycle a post and say, “Hey you know…” and all I do is #repost, it doesn’t upset anybody. Every time I do a repost I get traffic and you would think that the amount of times I did – Here is how I think, I would rather be spamy than forgotten about at the end of the day and that is how I get traffic and it works you know? And people tend to over think it. I would say in the beginning I would spend at least an hour and a half a week which is not a lot. 30 minutes three times a week just to start and then you do that.

[0:36:33] CH: Yeah, it’s nothing.

[0:36:33] Timothy Kim: I would be so surprised if you can’t make money after a year’s worth of being consistent. It would blow my mind like how are you not making money, yeah it doesn’t make any sense to me especially if you are coupling it with social media. If you are not coupling it with social media and you are trying to deal with SEO and then I would understand. That would take you 10 years but in today’s day where again you have swipe up stories and stuff like that it’s just how are you not getting someone to – Especially if you know how to write your titles because that is another thing that I talk about in my book. I talk about the value added click bait, you write titles in certain ways where I don’t know about you but I see click bait stuff and I know it’s click bait, I still have to click on it. So you just have to know how to formulate these titles and it is not hard. It is almost impossible to not get people to click. It is like a human thing.

[0:37:26] CH: I mean there’s so many actually. There’s so many questions I want to ask but we won’t have time for, the thing is this book, Words into Cash is full of hard earned wisdom that has allowed you to go from working in a job that you hated to working to – not in a job that you hated but wondering is there any more to life and now able to blog and write and earn a full-time living and now you are helping others to do it too. What I am curious about is of the people that you’ve helped and shown them your ways, are there any success stories and transformations that really standout in your mind?

[0:38:09] Timothy Kim: So I have a club which is again, another thing where when I think about proprietary product that is when you can start getting into a lot of money. So everybody that I talk to and teach, I always tell them start with something like Google ad sense but later on, if you want to make a lot more like there’s a mid-tier amount of making money like I say again, if the analogy of martial arts, the brown belt level of income from blogging would be once you start getting into affiliate income. But then the black belt level is when you start doing your proprietary products and so I have a club where I am teaching new beginners or beginners who are just blogging how to blog and so that’s a proprietary service and product that I give for people and so off the top of my head, I don’t know, like I have about 500 people in my blogging club, I can’t think of a specific site but I do know like most people are making some money and not a lot of money. I would say the average is $100 a month. So that is not a lot of money but there are outliers that are making a few thousand dollars a month and there is also one website, one company where some big chain national company contacted them about acquiring their online store. It started off as some sort of Etsy thing and because they actually had a website and some sort of platform they were noticed by a big company, national company and so they are looking into acquiring that website. And so it just goes back to what I keep saying as like I would say the biggest problem for anybody whether you’re a business person or you’re looking to make some side income or whatever, it’s just that no one knows that you exists. So the whole obscurity is everybody that is trying to make money, that’s your biggest enemy, obscurity. No one knows that you exist. Just by having something out there, you know, it gives you a leg up than almost anybody else out there who isn’t doing anything on Instagram, who isn’t doing anything on Snapchat, who isn’t doing anything on Twitter. Who doesn’t have their own blog. People who have that, automatically have a leg up and now, you at least have some method of reaching people. If someone googles your name for example, do you want random things to come up about you or do you want to cater your own persona and have your own platform where people can see who you are and what you’re about. Another example I like to give is, if you google my name for example, I have either CNBC, business insider or Huffington post or some of these other articles that come up about me. The way that I was able to get featured on these big, prominent national publications is just these haphazard random occurrences where for example, my CNBC one, the contributor for that was Ruth Omo and she saw my blogpost on LinkedIn. No blogger I know, I don’t know of any blogger, I’m sure there are some out there, put their - they put their blogpost on LinkedIn, they might do it on Twitter or some of these other, more like traditional social media outlets where LinkedIn isn’t really considered social media and it was formerly but I don’t care. For me, if one extra person sees my thing, that’s good enough. I try to get my thing out there and as many avenues as possible and somehow some way, Ruth saw my blog post on LinkedIn and she contacted me about doing a feature. Now, if you google my name, that’s where it started and then I have all these other things that come up because it started there and it opened new doors for me to be able to get featured on other places whether it’s MS and money, Yahoo Finance, all these other national publications.

[0:41:57] CH: Well, like I said, there’s just so much in this book that’s valuable to writers who want to earn either a full time living or even just bring in some extra money on the side through blogging. This is really fascinating. I know at least one person who I will be giving your book directly to, right after this. Thank you for writing it and I’ve got two more questions for you Tim, the first one is, what is the best way for people to follow you, I know you’re on all of the channels, what’s the central location where they can go and find t hem all?

[0:42:31] Timothy Kim: I’m most active on Instagram, it’s kind of the king of social media platforms right now. You can find me @timothyskim.

[0:42:41] CH: Timothy Skim, perfect. The final question is, give our listeners a challenge, what is the one thing that they can do this week from your book that will have a positive impact.

[0:42:54] Timothy Kim: I would say, everybody who is listening to this should at least give it a go and when I say that, I’m not talking about my book. I’m talking about blogging in general. I give an example where it’s just crazy to me. If you go to YouTube right now and type in ant farm or something similar to that, you’ll come across this kid who has like 1.5 million subscribers and all he talks about is his ant farm. Personally, I don’t know about you but I don’t know a single person in my vicinity or like, people that I know that actually loves ants but there must be 1.5 million people out there who actually love ants and that’s just an example that I like to give is that so many people think that no one wants to listen to them, no one cares what they have to say or like they have to be Einstein or like the super smart or know a lot about what they’re talking about. As long as you’re passionate about something, whether it’s ant farms or like worm farming, again, it doesn’t matter what you care about, there’s somebody out there that’s willing to listen to your story or the things that you’re already passionate about. Don’t think of it like it’s work, it’s not, you already like it. Think of it like you’re going to make money off of something that you already like and enjoy to do so it shouldn’t even be that difficult so similar to what I did, I started my blog the day that I thought about it. I didn’t wait. I just started. Thank god that I started it that day because I wouldn’t be where I’m at. Anybody who is listening to this, I would say, just give it a try, there’s nothing to lose, you know? I would say, start right now, go on google, type in any word, you don’t have to use blue host, you can just do a web host provider and just start your blog today.

[0:44:37] CH: Perfect. Great advice, the book is Words Into Cash. Timothy Kim, thank you so much for being on this show.

[0:44:45] Timothy Kim: I appreciate it, thank you.

[0:44:47] CH: Thank again to Timothy Kim for being on the show. You can but his book, Words Into Cash, on Amazon. Be sure to check out authorhour.co for show notes and the transcript for this show and be sure to leave us a review on iTunes. It means a lot and we love reading your comments. Thanks for tuning in on today’s show. If you liked what you heard, here is what I want you to do next. Open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews”. Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.