NerdWallet SEO Breakthrough
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A story about how NerdWallet's founder Tim Chen explained the importance of building an audience before monetization.
"I remember when I first started The Hustle, we got 50,000 subscribers in a short amount of time. Tim Chen, the founder of NerdWallet (now a publicly traded company), wanted to invest. I said 'I don't even know how we're gonna make money.'
He told me 'I know enough to know that if you're good at getting an audience, making money off that is actually easier.' I didn't understand at the time. But NerdWallet proved this - it took them 3 years to get to about $5 million in revenue, but in year 4 they jumped to $30 million in revenue. This happened because it took them 3 years to rank in Google for people searching 'best credit card' - one of the hardest terms to rank for.
Now I understand that if you can get an audience and eyeballs, making the product is often easier than getting the audience. It's a math equation where value equals the amount of influence you have over them times their spending power multiplied by the amount they're willing to spend. If you can maximize that equation, you can build a big business."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.