Why We’re Here

We’ve got another website, familyonstandby.com, and a YouTube channel that we started as a hobby. Brittany works for an airline, so we travel the world for free with no plans with our kids. It’s one of those things that started sort of organically… we wanted a hobby to combine our love of travel and photography along with a desire to document our family’s growth and travels. And if it eventually made some money for us, great! If not, well, we have a fun thing to do as a family.

Well, it’s gained some traction! We added a blog, and that’s taking off. So what’s next? How do we make our hobby something more without becoming spammy or “selling out” or any of the other negative feelings toward bloggers. And that’s why we’re here! We’re going to figure that out.
 

The Experiment

We get asked all the time “how are you growing your channel”, “what’s your strategy”, “how do you not have more subscribers”, and the like. And honestly, the answer until now has been “yeah, we have no idea.” Being that both of us are content creators and marketers in our real life job, we figured we should have a better answer than that!

So what are we going to do? We’re going to do what any good marketer does. We’re going to establish a process, set up goals, and document the wins and losses as we go. And you’re coming with us! This website (or whatever it becomes) is going to document how we’re growing our Family on Standby hobby into a business, or at least making it profitable.

But Why?

Our hobby is no different than yours. Maybe you’re a great baker and people have told you to open a bakery. Or you can cook and you’ve been told you need a food truck. Not a chance, you say, I have kids and a career and and and and. We’re in the same boat! We don’t want a photo studio, that’s not our goal. We want to enjoy our hobby and share it! If you are like us, you’re looking for a way to have a side hustle without a huge investment or quitting your job right now. So maybe you could bake amazing cakes and teach people how to do it. Or you could write recipes to share with the world. Whatever your thing is, you can turn it into an online side hustle.

Our Challenge

We’re setting some goals/milestones for our hobby and we are inviting you to join in! Pick whatever it is that you think could be your “thing” and follow the same steps we’re doing in real time. Now, we have a bit of a head start, but really… we’re going to kind of start over! We’re niching down to something very specific, doing the research we could have done at the beginning, and acting with real intent.

All of our strategies will be tested as we go. We’ll share analytics and earnings, our tools, our successes, and especially our failures. Who knows how this is going to work out, but we’re going to give it the ol’ college try!

Let’s get started!