How College Info Geek Makes Money
By Richard
If you’re in your 20s, still at college and looking to earn some nice side coin, then this is a kickass case study for you!
Thomas, the dude behind the site, is a 21 year old college student who created a site on all things study/jobs/income related for students.
So you’ll find posts about good books to read, how to ace your exams, what to do to increase your chances of getting hired etc.
With over 300 posts he’s now bringing in over 20,000 monthly uniques, and we all know the young crowd is a valuable one.
So how does it make money?
Well, Thomas seems to make most of his coin from affiliate sales (eg web hosting, Amazon books, text books) etc. I couldn’t find an info product he sells or sponsored ads or even Google adsense.
Now the latter makes sense, since he can earn a lot more money in this niche with affiliate sales (eg text book affiliate sales). But no info product? I’m guessing it’s because his audience is perhaps too diverse in their interests and pains. But who knows, maybe he has one in the works about cramming for exams or getting hired.
To get back to the affiliate side of things, he’s got a really cool text book price finder widget on one page – ie it helps students find the best priced books. The widget is by SlugBooks and is a perfect example of the future of advertising on blogs (ie interactive helpful widgets).
The interactivity of the widget means it is actually a helpful tool (not trying to just sell), and is so easy to integrate into your site, usually just a simple code to embed.
To finish it’s great to see Thomas reporting that he made a delicious$17,000 dollars in the last 12-18 months. Awesome inspiration!
Visit College Info Geek or check out Million Dollar Blog Project where case study originally spotted