Podcast 78: How Jon Haws Built His Monthly Income to $22,000 and Email List to 40,000 Subscribers in Under a Year
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Today, I'm excited to bring you an interview with someone with amazing genes. My cousin, Jon Haws, is on the podcast today with what I think is an awesome story. That's right, there is another Haws out there that also has the entrepreneurial blood flowing through his veins.
If you don't recall, I interviewed Jon about 3 years ago on the podcast and now he's back for an update!
At the time of our previous interview, Jon was running a landscape company, but using online resources to help get customers and grow his business. Well, things have changed quite a bit for Jon since that time…but for the better.
Business Growth
Jon recently was able to just quit his full-time job (as a Nurse) and pursue his online business ventures full time. He has an email list of over 40,000 and his monthly income has topped $22,000.
In fact, he's expanding so quickly, that he is looking to hire a part time brand manager for his site NRSNG.com. If you are interested, you can apply for the brand manager job here.
Jon's Business Story…
So, what happened? How does someone go from running a landscape company, to becoming an RN (registered nurse) to running a full-time online business? If you listen to the podcast, you will get the full story.
In a nutshell, Jon realized that the lawn care business was always going to be very hands on. Luckily his wife talked him into going back to school to finish his nursing degree.
So, Jon has been working full-time as a nurse for about 3 years now…but he never let his entrepreneurial spirit die. He started creating resources for nursing students to help them study better and gain the knowledge they needed to perform their jobs better.
As he built this business on the side he created a Kindle book empire, launched a mobile app for nursing students, and has released a study/training course as well. Jon is now pulling in about $22,000 a month from his online business and his nursing audience. As a result, he quit his job at the hospital to focus on his business full-time.
Business Worksheet…
You can see Jon's site at NRSNG.com. In addition, Jon created a worksheet to help you think through what type of online business you should launch. You can get that worksheet right here.
A Few Podcast Highlights…
I have to admit, I think Jon is a pretty cool guy…and it's not just because he is my cousin! Some of the tips he has for launching and growing an online business are quite valuable.
In particular, some of his Facebook strategies for growing an email list have REALLY got me thinking. Jon was able to grow his email list from about 9,000 subscribers in June to over 40,000 subscribers this month. That's an massive increase of 30,000 subscribers in about 4 or 5 months!
I think the key to Jon's entire business is that he has been able to build up a great asset in his email list that is very targeted and valuable. Jon should have no problems in the future as he continues to grow his business by creating and offering useful products to this audience.
As we discuss during the interview, Jon has gone through quite an evolution to get where he is today with his business. However, a key takeaway has been that as soon as he really started to focus on one audience, his income has grown.
Overall, I highly recommend that you listen to the entire interview as I think Jon shares lots of great tips that can help you in your business.
So, you may not have the same DNA as Jon and I (go Haws family!); however, we don't have a monopoly on starting, launching, and growing successful businesses. This is something that any serious entrepreneur can do with the right amount of effort, no matter what your last name is :).
Free Download via LeadPages
Again, if you want to check out the worksheet that Jon has created to help you start your online business, you can download it free right here.
And again, if you are interested in working with Jon as a part-time brand manager for his blog, you can apply right here.
As always, I would love to hear any comments or questions that you have below. I'll make sure that both Jon and I are in the comments to keep the discussion going. Thanks!
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27 Comments
Conversation
Hi Jon,
Thanks for sharing! I was curious if you have some tips to share on how to get FB ads so cheaply like you are able to do? Currently I’m struggling to get any impressions unless I set my bid around $0.60 CPC.
Thanks,
Brent
This didn’t happen over night! I still have some ads that don’t do as well. My suggestion would be to hyper target. You don’t need to go for a massive audience. Even a small audience of 60,000 can be enough to grab a few emails.
Facebook also give you a “relevancy score” for each ad. The closer you get to 10 . . . the better. Keep tweaking everything!
I will run my ad copy by my wife, family, friends as I tweak. Don’t change everything at once. Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and adjust until you can drive up your relevancy score and drive down your cost.
Great article and awesome site! I’m assuming the $22k is gross profit but I assume also that expenses must be low. Congrats on the success. I think it’s amazing. I’m definitely starting to think once we focus in on one product and work on it greatly that does boost our income tremendously versus working on a ton of multiple projects at once. Thanks for the share.
fixed expenses maybe $1000 variables vary a lot depending on projects
Awesome podcast. Very motivating. Thanks for sharing Jon and Spencer.
I gotta create mt cheat sheet asap so that I can start a fb campaign to see how it goes.
Good luck!
Right on man! just get it up there . . . see how it goes!
Wow, amazing. Verry difficult build email list 40.000. Exactly be appreciate anda nice income.
Thanks John!
Jon, since setting up a domain and all that is pretty darn cheap would you suggest setting up a different domain for every different idea?
I have a few ideas in my niche to grab email address but they are not all related.
Should I set up a unique domain name and leadpages landing page for giving away a Cheat Sheet for each idea?
So if at the moment I don’t have any website setup and I have an idea for these : (just made these up examples)
Download cheat sheet for curing Dry Hands
Download cheat sheet for curing nail fungus
So would I rather have two domains setup to grab emails and offer different cheat sheets? Each domain with a one-page Leadpages landing page?
Thank you so much in advance for taking the time.
So this is an interesting conversation . . . I have set up several domains for various cheat sheets in the same niche if my content will be a podcast or youtube video.
I think that in this format it is much easier for the listener/viewer to remember garlicpressforkids.com verus bestgarlicpress.com/garlicpressforkids . . . if that makes sense???
However, when setting up FB ads you can put your leadpage on ANY page name you want with ease without the need to set up a new domain . . . etc. The root domain will appear in your ad but the user will be directed to the page with the leadpage.
Am I making sense? If you are creating ads to your leadpage I would simply place them on pages within your site, it’s much easier, faster, and less confusing for you (less to manage).
If you are creating content (videos or podcast) it might help to have easy to remember domains . . . even with those domains I usually just reroute them to my main page so as to not have to manage so many WP installs etc . . .
Awesome, thank you Jon.
Amazing Podcast, thanks Jon for sharing so much! I’m on my second time listening to it.
Has any of your FB Ads ever gone viral, do they get a lot of shares and likes?
Have you tried other advertisement routes like AdWords?
Thanks!
i guess it depends on what you consider viral. with the wording “share with a buddy” etc they seem to get a fair amount of shares and likes (thousands). with highly pertinent content and being very helpful it will be shared pretty well. on your thank you page you can also include a link for users to share with a friend. this helps too . . . i don’t have any metrics to say HOW MUCH that helps but we get several tweets a day with people pointing to our landing pages.
my experience with adwords is that it is pretty costly . . . especially with the markets i have tried. maybe i’m just not good at it? twitter hasn’t proven very successful either . . . I’m experimenting with pinterest now.
Jon, thank you for your reply.
I am totally taking this to heart. I downloaded your guide (amazing) and took a couple days soaking all this in and how I can apply this toward my own projects.
I’m in the middle of putting together my first email list system and just finished the first Link Bait. It’s a guide on the five steps on how to sell an app idea (which correlates with my software site). The guide is based on two very popular articles I wrote for my site, of which I am kicking myself for not doing this earlier and the lost potential email list. Hindsight right?
If you have a chance, could you check out my first link bait? I would appreciate any constructive criticism!
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/app-market-analyzer/guide-to-selling-an-app-idea-in-five-easy-steps.pdf
I still need to create a landing page, FB Ad and initial emails. But like you said, if the Link Bait is not awesome then you won’t garner that needed trust for the follow-up emails. Just want to ensure I’m doing this right ; )
Thanks Jon!
Awesome!!!!! Sounds like you have a good plan. Yes . . . make sure you have something that really helps the subscribers.
thanks so much for listening!
Loved this episode Jon and Spencer! I have my hands in so much and sometimes it leaves my head spinning. In 2016, I need to start cleaning up what I have and marketing existing products as well. We need a Dallas get together, cannot find anyone else in this space out here.
Thanks Becca…and good luck!
Lol . . . I had the exact same conversation with Spencer. It is very hard to keep your mind organized and moving with so much going on. Yes a Dallas get together would be fun. This is certainly not an online entrepreneur haven!
Hi Jon, great podcast. Thanks the for the cheat sheet. Can I ask, what platform is your academy built on?
Sorry guys, silly question. Listened to the whole thing again. Teachable.com
yep!
Hey thanks for this post! I found it at a great time. I am looking to do something similar to your cousin. is there any way I can find out what theme or software he is using for the courses? I am in search of some sinilar set up. Thanks in advance and for the great blog
sounds a bit like me. Ive been building a lawn care business in my spare time the past 4 years but the online passive income fascinates me.
Great podcast, Jon and Spencer. I’m already an AWeber subscriber (for about a year), and have been slowly building my email list a few trickles at a time.
I’m not opposed to also purchasing LeadPages…but why would I do so if I already have AWeber and a WordPress site. What would LeadPages be providing for me that I dont already have? I guess I do not understand the difference between AWeber and Leadpages.
Leadpages just offers more flexible opt in forms, pop ups, webinar pages, all kinds of other “lead pages”. You would still need aweber though.