I Spent $299 on a Niche Blogging Program — Here’s What I Learned

The moves I’m making to jumpstart my niche website

I spent $299 on a niche blogging program — here’s what I learned.

After a year of following Morton Storgaard on YouTube, I happily dropped nearly three days of income for his Passive Income Geek Blogging Program (Link opens to my website).

By the way, none of the links in this article are affiliate links. These are just my personal thoughts, feelings, and insights.

Was the program worth it? What has changed with my approach to blogging? What results am I getting so far? This article is about the answers to those questions.

This is my personal journey. I’m glad you’re along for the ride.

Unboxing The Program: My Initial Response

As soon as I paid, I gained access to the Passive Income Geek program. I was worried that I’d have to jump through a bunch of hoops (email confirmations, click this, download that, etc).

But, thankfully, Morton streamlined the process.

Within minutes, I stared at the 9 current modules of the course. I already knew what to expect from his YouTube videos and the course overview on his website.

However, now I accessed the actual material, not the marketing hype. If I’m honest, a part of me feared that I’d be disappointed. Two years ago, I paid for another course called Income School.

It’s actually a great course. I learned tons but, ultimately, didn’t follow through with all the steps necessary to find success. Not the program’s fault.

But Income School is close to $500 just to get access, then a yearly membership fee to a course community and course updates. Worth the money, but I didn’t feel like spending another $500 for mostly the same information.

So I took a chance on Morton.

Currently, I’m 70% through the course, so I can only speak to the content I’ve covered so far:

• Choosing a Good Niche
• Topic Research
• Finding a Good Domain Name
• Setting Up Your Website
• Writing Awesome Content
• SEO Tips

To me, the program is already absolutely worth the money I spent ($299). I like it so much that I added it to my most Recommended Tools for writers list on my website.

Here are my initial thoughts after going through 70% of the program:

• This is a goldmine of practical information.
• I know some of this works because it’s close to what I’ve been doing — with a few interesting tweaks.
• I never thought about doing it that way. Fascinating!
• I can’t wait to start implementing these strategies.

What I like most is how practical the system is for building out successful niche websites.

I immediately started implementing tactics from the course.

5 Important Lessons I’ve Learned So Far

The program so far is simple and clear. I found Income School very helpful, but overwhelming. The Passive Income Geek program has some of the same information, but much more streamlined.

Here are my five biggest takeaways so far.

1. Your niche is everything

I already have an existing website, so I’m applying the lessons of the program to it before launching a second website from scratch.

My current website is focused on writing for beginners. Thankfully, it matches most of the elements of a good niche from the program. The only challenge — and it’s a big one — is competition.

For my second website, I’m going to be very intentional about choosing a niche that is:

• Less competitive
• Broad (not too narrow)
• Focused on middle-class to upper-middle-class Americans (where most bloggers make most of their money)
• Easy to monetize with display ads and $100-$300 affiliate products
• Not seasonal
• Full of low-competition search phrases on Google

2. SEO has changed

I still love my keyword search tool of preference (Ahrefs), but I’m leaning heavier on Google autocomplete to find low-competition topics with thin content.

Great content is ever more important.

Keywords still matter, but Google is much smarter now about ferreting out the information in your article. Some articles rank on the first page of Google search results without the specific keyword in the title OR the article.

Which is crazy to me, but true.

3. I hate the technical side of website building

WordPress and hosting sites (like Bluehost, which I currently use) make building and maintaining cheap but professional websites super easy.

But I still hate it.

I’m not a tech genius, so figuring out how to update my website correctly in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, updating plugins and themes — it’s not my jam.

While this part of the Passive Income Geek Program is just as streamlined and practical as the rest of what I’ve covered so far, I still get confused every time.

Thankfully, I believe I somehow figured it all out late last night.

There will always be something more to do to maintain a website. It’s not 100% passive income, although it’s about as close to it as one can get.

4. Topic research is a skill that takes time to master

I first learned to find topics in Google autosuggest from the Income School program.

Morton, I thought, explained it much better. He also gave me specific words to help find better topics — what he calls “underserved topics.” These are topics with little to no competition because no one has written a blog post about them yet.

Typically, these end up being simple beginner questions about your niche.

The good news is that I love topic research. Unlike maintaining my website, I can easily spend hours searching for good underserved topics.

A few of the articles I’ve written with this approach so far:

• How Do I Write My First Beauty Blog Post? (Step-by-Step for Beginners)
• Do You Italicize Article Titles? (11 Quick Answers for Beginners)
• Passive Income Geek Review (21 Answers From a Course Insider)

5. The course community is one of my favorite benefits

There is just something about being part of a passionate community. The course is only around 5–6 months old at this point, so the community is still a manageable size.

I even added a shortcut to the community message board to the home screen on my phone.

Usually, I check for new messages (or old messages I may have missed) several times a day. I’ve been inspired, intrigued, and informed by many of the posts.

Morton, himself, is also very active in the community. I don’t know if this will continue as the course grows bigger over time, but I’m very pleased with the community forum right now.

I’m glad I joined when I did.

3 Moves I’ve Made So Far

Since I already have a website, there is a bunch of the program I haven’t been able to specifically apply yet.

However, I have made a few moves already to up my blogging game.

1. I’ve shuffled the plugins on my website to more closely match the ones suggested by the program. Plugins are essentially apps on a website.
2. I’ve doubled down on Google autosuggest topic research. I have an excel spreadsheet where I track topics, competitor difficulty, estimated search volumes from my keyword tool, and a general outline of the article subheadings.
3. I’ve consistently written and published new content. Right now, I’m averaging around 3–4 blog posts per week. I hope to be up to 100+ by the end of the year.

My Biggest Challenges

In my opinion, my biggest challenges include trying to apply the program to an existing website (instead of building one from scratch), time constraints, and topic research.

When I say “time constraints,” I mean my own impatience.

Blogging and writing never quite go as fast I as prefer. My plan is to steadily publish new content based on underserved topics. It will take some time, which is hard for me, but nothing I haven’t handled before.

Topic research is also a hurdle.

Although I love it, my niche is pretty competitive, so finding underserved topics with low competition is challenging.

However, I also realize that topic (and keyword) research is a skill that improves over time. I’ve also found a few ways to “hack” topic research that seems to work for me.

How to hack topic research:

• Doppelganger Sites — I can see the keywords any website ranks for using keyword search tools. By finding a writing niche website as new as mine, I can ethically “steal” their topic research.
• Glossary Method — You can find a list of glossary terms for any niche. You can use those terms as seed keywords in Google autosuggest or keyword tools. I’ve found many terms I would have never thought of on my own.
• Reddit Method — You can also plug subreddit URLs into a keyword “site explorer” tool to find underserved topics in any niche with low competition.

How My Stats Look Right Now (Data Examples)

As of April 2021, I am getting close to 8K page views per month. My page views have trended upwards for the last few months and definitely improved since joining the Passive Income Geek Program.

My website is still in what bloggers call “The Google Sandbox” where many of my articles haven’t ranked or reached their peak performance.

Although I’m not making much money (yet), I’m right on track according to the blogging “experts”. I have around 60–70 articles on my website, but the majority of my views come from my newer articles.

I’m very happy with the trend in my statistics.

For now, I’m going to focus on creating content, replicating success, and following the program. I’ll share more updates along the way.

My 12-Month Blogging Plan (Fully Laid Bare)

For transparency (and personal accountability), I thought I would share my blogging plan for the next year.

My 12-month blogging plan:

• Write at least 3 new articles on underserved topics per week.
• Reach out to HARO to build natural backlinks to my website.
• Join Ezoic to double or triple my ad revenue (you get free early access to Ezoic and a Site Speed Tool as part of the course).
• As soon as I hit $500 per month, I’m going to start a second website from scratch in a different niche to diversify my income streams.
• Develop 1–3 informational products to sell on my writing website (I already have much of this already created).
• I will start outsourcing some (but not all) content writing. This will allow me to easily double or triple the content I publish on my site.

Final Thoughts

Excited doesn’t quite describe how I feel about my blogging journey. I can’t wait to keep experimenting, growing, and pushing myself to improve.

I can’t wait to share what happens with you.

While I wrote a much more detailed deep dive into the Passive Income Geek course on my website, I’m hoping this post shared some interesting insights from my personal perspective.

Thanks for reading!

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