How Cole K.’s Boy Scout Site Earns $6k+/Month Via SEO and Overdelivering Value

After finishing college, Cole realized he didn't want to pursue the conventional path of his peers, and instead began a journey of his own. Driven by the desire to support causes that were advancing humankind, he founded a purpose-driven blog as a way of developing his digital marketing skills.

His blog is called ScoutSmarts, and it's where he shares his extensive experience as a Boy Scout in his journey to achieving Eagle Scout rank. A combination of his ability to pivot when needed, his commitment to overdelivering value and giving unconditionally to his audience, and, of course, SEO have helped him build his site into a +$6k/month business with plenty of room for growth.

He currently holds the unofficial title for founding the largest independent Scouting website to ever exist, and he’s just getting started.

Keep reading to find out: 

• How the Boy Scouts shaped his life
• Exactly what happened after college
• Why he created his website
• How Covid affected his niche
• What he did to help his readers during Covid
• Where his income comes from
• His marketing strategy
• His thoughts on SEO and keyword research
• How he creates content
• How he nurtures his email list
• The resources and tools he uses to grow his business
• His main challenge
• His greatest accomplishment
• His biggest mistake
• His advice for other entrepreneurs

Meet Cole

Aloha! I’m Cole, a 25-year-old Eagle Scout from Hawaii. 

Growing up on the relatively small island of Oahu, I always yearned to explore, experiment, and expand my horizons.

Blessed with incredibly supportive parents and family, I was encouraged to join sports like soccer, track, or judo, take ukulele lessons, and even become a Boy Scout! Their understanding and love are truly the reasons I’ve managed to grow into the person I am today.

Toward the end of high school, after earning my Eagle Scout rank, I had the opportunity to finish my studies in Switzerland on a generous scholarship. Again, my mom and dad’s support empowered me to take the leap! 

At the Ecole d'Humanité, I was so blessed to live amongst a class of incredible, culturally-diverse peers. Outside of academics, we’d learn skills like rock climbing, ski-touring, goat milking, metalworking, and more. It was like the merit badges didn’t end, even after Scouting!

Following my junior and senior years at the Ecole, I majored in economics at UC San Diego and was fortunate enough to graduate in just 3 years. However, instead of diving headfirst into finance or management consulting like many of my econ friends, I held out hope for another path, because lifestyle + contribution > making $$$, any day.

Without a clear direction after college, I spent half a year working in startup sales and unsuccessfully trying to launch a number of Tim Ferriss-esque online businesses.

After stints in retail arbitrage, private label product development, dropshipping, and countless other plans that didn't even make it out of the ideation stage, I stumbled upon digital marketing. This discovery changed everything!

When searching for work, like many other members of Gen Z out there, my North Star was always to make a meaningful contribution to humankind. Digital marketing seemed like the holy grail because it created the opportunity to support and supercharge causes I was most passionate about. However, the only problem at the time was that I knew next to nothing about digital marketing.

Thus began my journey with ScoutSmarts…

Why He Created His Website

One of the main reasons I started ScoutSmarts was as a purpose-driven project to learn digital marketing. As a kid, being a Scout was one of the biggest influences on my life and planted the seeds for many of the positive values I hold today. 

By creating a blog and sharing my experiences around leadership, rank advancement, and growth mindsets, I figured that maybe current Scouts could learn a thing or two and make even more out of their time in Scouting.

Plus, maybe a little selfishly, I was trying to scratch teenage-me’s itch. ScoutSmarts was created for the customer avatar of younger Cole and his Scout buddies on our paths to Eagle. 

Back then, Scouting gave us the opportunity to have awesome outdoor adventures and learn legit survival skills. Meanwhile, most of our peers only knew the status quo cycle of school, sports, and video games. 

Especially in this day and age, I believe experiences like Scouting are more vital than ever, providing young people with a safe space to overcome challenges, develop confidence, and become tomorrow’s leaders.

How He Pivoted During Covid

Ultimately, the time to move beyond principles and actually walk the talk began with the rise of Covid-19. At the time, ScoutSmarts was only a few months old and had just started receiving its first flow of organic traffic. 

While I was often waking up at 4 am on weekdays or weekends to write articles, create videos, and set up a newsletter sequence, it still hadn’t occurred to me that ScoutSmarts could be anything more than a passion project. 

Primarily, since I’d recently walked away from my first “real job” in startup sales, I was putting the majority of my daily efforts into mastering digital marketing and applying for roles.

However, when Covid hit, alongside the rest of the world, the world of Scouting also changed. Camps were canceled, troop meetings were made virtual, and it seemed like a generation of Scouts might be stranded with no way to reach Eagle. 

During this period, email after email began pouring in from Scouts and their families, asking for resources to support socially-distanced Scouting. Just as I’d learned on my path to becoming an Eagle Scout, this was one of those moments where I’d need to choose between being a bystander or an upstander. It was time to go all in.

Through the pandemic, ScoutSmarts transformed from a simple blog into a one-stop shop for Scouting success. Upon request, I began to offer even more helpful resources, branching into video content, creating a course, and even providing coaching and email support. 

Realizing that I didn’t need to go it alone, I also built up a small team of other Eagle Scout writers and freelancers, and together we published well over 150 articles and nearly 1 million words. Somehow, the decision to support a cause I loved had evolved into a full-time business!

How Much Money He’s Making

Today, ScoutSmarts generates over $5000 per month in ad revenue, although this amount varies quite a bit depending on the season. 

Additionally, through affiliate products, an ebook, and a course, I’m able to make close to $1000 in additional revenue each month.

It’s taken nearly 3 years to reach my current level of income, with the true growth catalyst being my acceptance into the Mediavine ad network. Outside of having better pay rates, Mediavine provides unparalleled tech support and gives site owners an enormous amount of control over the ads displayed. 

I was hesitant to join an ad network altogether as it seemed like the most lucrative ad types related to politics, gambling, and alcohol, but through Mediavine I was able to block these categories and can still make a great income off my work! 

Fun fact though, over 100 years ago in 1911, an 18-year-old named Joseph Lane co-founded the Scout Life magazine. Then, just a year later, he was able to sell the publication to the actual Boy Scouts of America for $6,100—about $1 per subscriber. However, with inflation taken into account, $6,100 in 1911 is almost $200,000 today!

I don’t plan to sell ScoutSmarts or monetize in any way that damages the site’s integrity, but it’s pretty amazing to think that my passion project might easily be worth multi-six figures!

As for traffic, ScoutSmarts has helped over 750k users this past year. If current trends hold, It’s possible we could even exceed 1 million Scouts supported in 2024!

Cole’s Top Marketing Strategy

As a marketer, while it's tempting to highlight the skills I’ve painstakingly honed in SEO, content creation, and community building, the real “secret sauce” of ScoutSmarts is likely a whole lot simpler: overdelivering value. 

My main strategy and guiding light have always been to create a resource worthy of people's attention. By helping Scouts avoid pain points and maximize their positive experiences, I’m hoping to create quality content that can naturally be shared amongst troops to increase overall success.

His Thoughts on SEO

Nearly 50% of articles on ScoutSmarts rank top 3 on Google for their primary keyword. I believe this is because the information my writers and I provide is more relevant to current Scouts than any other online resource. 

For every article, we try to go above and beyond in answering questions a Scout may have and also preempt their follow-up questions to provide a more complete answer.

Also, although Google has said that dwell time isn’t a core metric used in its ranking algorithm, I believe it’s important to keep readers on the page for as long as possible. If you can help someone so much that they read your entire article and maybe even check out some additional linked resources, there’s no way search engines won’t rank you highly. 

Keyword Research

Starting out, ScoutSmarts was written with my younger self in mind. This meant thinking back to the most pressing problems I had as a Scout and then mapping those to solutions learned along the way. 

From there, I’d use tools like SEMRush and Ubersuggest to vet the search volume of terms and find the best keywords to target for each topic.

Additionally, determining the optimal length for an article was essential. This way, ScoutSmarts could be architected around a logical structure. To do this, I’d write “pillar” pieces of long-form content that could be linked from shorter “response” types of content. 

Essentially, each topic covered had 5-10 relevant articles clustered around a core theme, allowing a reader to first discover ScoutSmarts through a long-tail query, and then navigate to more thorough guides and newsletter signups.

Cole’s Content Creation Process

My content creation process has definitely changed over time. In the early days of ScoutSmarts, I’d try to write for one or two 50-minute time blocks before work, and would usually complete at least a few articles per week. 

As traffic began to increase and the site started generating income, I started to reinvest the initial profits into collaborations with other Eagle Scout writers. They’d outline their thoughts on a topic, and afterward, I’d add some of my experiences and make the article publish-ready. This process saved a considerable amount of time and made our content even more helpful!

Today, I poll my audience for new article ideas, create videos around my best-performing topics, and target even broader keywords to help grow the impact of Scouting. However, at this point, my team and I have covered most Scouting topics to the best of our abilities, so I’m hoping to begin work on another exciting for-good project in the coming months.

His Email List

My email list currently has 2481 subscribers and is managed through ConvertKit. I grow my list through lead magnets, on-page popups, and inline “subscribe for updates” callouts. 

I also send out a weekly newsletter called the ScoutSmarts Scribe, where I run giveaways, share new content, and provide “real world” bits of guidance.

Running a newsletter has been a great opportunity to test and improve my digital marketing skill set, especially because results tend to appear in real time. 

By A/B testing email subject lines and sharing exclusive new content, I’ve kept my open rates above 55%, despite the average newsletter open rate being around 21%.

Cole’s Work Schedule

At this point, I’m fortunate to be able to work as little or as much as I want. In fact, I recently took a 1-month long vacation with my family to Japan and did virtually no work, as I’d set up the automation and systems beforehand. 

However, some weeks I can spend upwards of 50 hours working since my ideal schedule is waking up around 4 or 5 am. It's a balance for sure.

His Top Resources

I’m a huge fan of Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and Seth Godin. 

For specific digital marketing resources, I’ve mainly followed Income School, Pat Flynn, and Alex Hormozi. 

Some mindset books I’d recommend for people trying to build something similar are The Surrender Experiment, The Four-Hour Workweek, and The Millionaire Fastlane.

His Go-To Tools

The tools I use to grow my business are:

Dragon Dictation, for recording ideas and writing articles at lightning speed. Using Dragon has saved so much time and helped me to overcome heaps of initial resistance when starting a new article.

Notion, for staying organized and planning out the next steps. Notion has been my organizational home for the last year thanks to its versatility and ease of use. Everything I do gets copied and stored there.

ChatGPT, for idea generation and overcoming blank-page syndrome. While ChatGPT is by no means perfect, it’s a great way to go from nothing to something. Generating lists of ideas and having the AI critique existing work is also a fantastic starting point for creating exceptional articles.

His Greatest Challenge

Maintaining quality with scale has been a tough one. Originally, I’d write every article myself and spend as much time as necessary to create the best resource possible. 

However, as time went on I began outsourcing projects and paying Eagle Scouts who wanted to contribute to the site. Looking back, I went overboard in CEO mode, thinking that to be successful, I needed to hire and scale. 

Ultimately, this strategy backfired when I realized that much of the joy and flow I experienced in my day-to-day came from focused periods of writing. These days, I’m trying to return to my roots by spending more time writing and polishing articles.

His Most Important Accomplishment

My career is just beginning, but being a student of marketing has already helped empower me to amplify the voices of businesses and movements, making humanity’s future a brighter place. I guess you could say that I’m proud of how far I’ve come and how far I have yet to go to actualize myself as a marketer and human being. 

The joy is in the journey.

What He Wishes He Knew When He Started

Wow, it’s mind-boggling to think how little I knew when starting out! However, just like I say again and again throughout ScoutSmarts, it's all about the journey, not the destination. 

I guess, if anything, I’d tell my younger self to relax, remain in love with the process, and know that everything will be alright.

His Main Mistake

Trying to make growth happen all at once was probably my biggest mistake as an entrepreneur. When just starting ScoutSmarts, I always wrote out of enjoyment and not obligation. Whether I published 1 article per week or five didn’t matter, as I genuinely loved the process and was trying to give as much as I possibly could.

However, once I started earning some money, I thought I needed to pick up the pace. I’d self-impose timelines, and while, in the short term, I was able to get more done, in the long run, this pressure took away a lot of enjoyment from my work. 

What solved this problem was the act of giving unconditionally. I set up my newsletter and created resources that would never be monetized but were genuinely helpful for Scouts. In time, I regained my balance and now once again enjoy the raw process of creating.

His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

If you’re trying to build a similar business, look for your greatest source of contribution, then go all in. 

So, identify what makes you unique, play to your strengths, and keep iterating until traction builds. Once you have lift-off, don’t take your foot off the gas. Never stop doing the top 20% of ROI-producing actions, and build your success into a process where your victories can compound on themselves. 

The next stage is growth. For this, get obsessed with your customers and discover even better ways to serve them. These days, building a following is the greatest moat an online business can have. So, give, give, give! Foster relationships and try to lift your audience up through whatever you do. 

Once your business is thriving, having a foundation built on trust and value will allow you to scale even further and give even more!

Related Posts

How Ali Van Straten’s Fitness and Recipe Blog Earns $5k+/Month from SEO and Ads

How Aaron and Susan Von Frank’s Gardening & Homestead Blog Earns $7k/Month From SEO

How Cristina Ehm’s Fashion Blog Earns $17k+ Per Month Through SEO and Pinterest

How Nick English’s Footwear Site Earns 5 Figures Per Month From SEO and Link Building

How Ofer Tirosh Built One of His Country’s Fastest Growing Companies of 2023 with 95k+ Customers