Exclusive Interview with Amol Chavan Founder of GrowthFunda

Hello bloggers, I invited Amol Chavan who is a side hustler who is making decent income.

Everyone want to earn money but due to lack of knowledge and desire they did not achieve success.

This interview with Amol Chavan is really helpful and inspiring for all the bloggers and people who want to earn money online by doing side hustle.

So let’s start.

1. Tell our readers about yourself and your blog?

First, I am glad to share my journey here and thanks to Ayush for this opportunity.

I am Amol Chavan, the founder of Side Hustle Blog Growthfunda a blog that curates contents on a side hustle to create awareness about becoming your own boss and live freedom lifestyle.

I am a Software Engineer by profession, and alongside, I am passionate about Blogging, Side Hustles and Online Business.

2. Describe how did you first get into blogging?

My Side hustle journey started when I used to work with a big MNC IT company in India.

After spending quiet time in the IT industry and running in a RAT RACE of 9-5 job I realized that it is not actual life.

Over the years of working in the IT industry, I have seenexperienced so many ups and downs, high work pressure, monotonous life. Every year I used to work hard in the hope to get a good salary hike and live a good life but you all know how corporate life sucks. 

That triggered a self-realization in my mind, and I started looking for side hustle ideas.

Initially, I have picked up a few business ideas along with Job to start, but I failed miserably in four business attempts like Flipkart Seller, Export-import, and Real Estate franchisee. 

Despite this, my burning desire for entrepreneurship did not vanish.
During Dec 2017, I got to know about Digital Marketing, so I took an offline course on Digital marketing in my area and then I never looked back. 

To practice my Digital Marketing learnings I grabbed Web Hosting and Domain. After spending 9 months on this blog customization, learning WordPress, on 1 Jan 2018, I launched blog Growthfunda.

Fast forward, while writing this interview and in the last 3 years I have learned, experiments with many different side hustles like Affiliate Marketing, Selling Info Products, Content Marketing, Consulting, etc.
This is how my blogging and online business journey started.

3. Please describe your Niche and why you choose this Niche?

Everyone is talking about how to start blogging, how to make money, but very few blogs talk about the real problem that the end audience is getting.
There is an abundance of information available on niche topics like Blogging, Technology, Make Money, and Health.

Today I can see that many folks are just running in the Rat Race and stagnant in careers, they do not know where to start, what are side hustles, they are stuck in taking decisions, demotivated, and then finally they are attracted towards shining object syndrome (fake money making
Scams). That is where I wanted to create awareness about what are the opportunities available apart from Job to make a living out of it.

So considering all the above, I thought to share my knowledge and add value on Side Hustles and Online Business Niche. To know about Side Hustles, one should refer to my epic guide here Side Hustle.

4. What do you find the most frustrating aspect of blogging?

From my point of view, there is no frustrating aspect of blogging. If one is frustrated with whatever task heshe is doing for blogging, it means that person is not passionate about blogging.

So one should do any work related to blogging considering it as a learningopportunity rather than frustration.

5. How do you manage time to run your blog efficiently?

I am a part time Side Hustle Blogger. Here is how I manage time:

● I try to start a day early around 6-7 am.
● Post that straight I jump on to the blogging activity & morning rituals.
● After that, I start my office work at around 10 am and work until 7 pm.
● Later in the night, I try to spend 1-2 hrs on the Side Hustles activities.
● Over the Weekend, I focus on Content writing, Promotion, and experimenting new Side Hustles opportunities.

6. Share some blogging tips for newbies.

Some tips:

● Patience and Consistency is the Key.
● Stay away from Shining objects syndrome.
● Money comes when one provides Value to the audience. So if someone is willing to
pursue Blogging as a career, then they should commit to providing value first.
● Blogging is an excellent career option, it does not need any degree and one can scale it like a business.
● Learn SEO and focus on topical authority than running behind backlinks.
● An email list is the only traffic source that you own, so start building email lists from the
first day.

● Diversify traffic across different channels like Social Media, Organic, Email marketing. Do not depend only on SEO and Google.
● Start Monetizing blog from Day 1 with affiliate marketing, Amazon associate program.
● Affiliate marketing is not the only way to earn money from Blogs. You can earn via Sponsorship post, Ads, Running services like content writing, Selling info products like eBookcourses, e.g My a beginner’s course, “Side Hustle Beta”
● Initially, do not invest too much Time and Money in the Website look and feel. Getting started and publishing blog posts is more important.
● Pick up a good Niche before starting a blog. Do not write on multiple topics at the same time. One can even pick a micro-niche.
● Networking with other fellow bloggers can grow a blog very quickly and brings many opportunities to the table.

7. What are some must-have WordPress themes and plugins and what are the plugins and themes you are using on your blog?

Must to have Plugins that I use:

● Lead capture plugin: Like Thrive Leads
● SEO plugins: Rank Math or Yoast SEO
● Social sharing plugin: Social Snap

Theme:

● GeneratePress (I use on Growthfunda)
● Astra Pro
● Newspaper

8. Share some tips for beginners to rank on Google?

● Content is the king, so make sure the content you write is engaging and covers the topics.
● Do not run behind high volume keywords initially. Look for the long tail, medium volume, and Low difficulty keywords around the topic to rank.
● Do not depend too much on the tool to get the Keyword. The best tool is the Google Keyword Planner and Google Search console. These two are fine to find good keywords.
● Create a SILO structure on the blog. That helps the Google Crawl website easily and helps in navigation. Ultimately, it gives a good signal to rank.
● Reduce the bound rate. For that write long-form content, include Videos inside the article.

● Interlink the article to give extra SEO boost and build Topical authority.
● Dont much run behind the backlinks. Try to get the backlinks naturally and focus on
getting links from high authority websites. Quality matter than the quantity.
● Make Website loads fast. Google & audiences does not love slow websites.

9. Feedback or Suggestions for BloggersDesire.

BloggersDesire blog by Ayush is a good resource to learn about blogging. Ayush is a good emerging Blogger. He creates content that is easy to understand for newbies. Along with this, he shares good tips and tricks about Blogging. If you are also a newbie blogger, do not know where to start then follow BloggersDesire blog by Ayush. I wish him all the best for the future.