How Sean Russell Monetized His Passion & Built a 6-Figure Blog Doing What He Loves

“To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach.”

It was a phrase I read in a fortune cookie in 2012 and it turned out that I ended up building a profitable online business around it.

My name is Sean Russell and I’m just a regular dude who has a passion for learning and sharing positive information. 

I don’t claim to be an expert in everything. But what I am good at is researching information, learning, and packaging it in a way that is easy for other people to understand and use.

When I get good enough at something, I can progress to teaching - as I am now.

Although it comes with a responsibility to get it right, It’s something anyone can do.

It’s my way of becoming my best.

My way of learning, knowing, and mastering every area of my life.

The fact that I can make money doing it is a nice added bonus.

In this article, I am going to share my story of how I built menprovement.com into a brand that has reached over 30 million men over 10 years and generates thousands of dollars a month and give you an inside look at how I run and monetize my blog.

So if you want, you can do the same.

1. How I Chose My Niche

We’ve all got a passion in life. Mine happens to be personal development (as well as soccer).

Growing up as an athlete, I was always fascinated with supplements and techniques to improve my performance. 

After college, my professional career didn’t pan out as I hoped. So my passion for increased sports performance transferred to increased human performance.

Supplements, diets, herbs, biohacking. I love it all.

The point is, that this topic is something I have endless curiosity in. It’s something I will never get bored of researching, learning, and teaching.

Everyone’s got this in their life.

Maybe it’s fishing, yoga, or human sexuality. Whatever it is, if you want to start an online business in the blogging sector - then build it around what you love.

A lot of experts will tell you to find any niche that is low in competition, but if you don’t love what you are writing about day in and day out - then you’re not going to go the distance.

Or, you’re going to see it as work - instead of talking about what you love to talk about.

So the first step is to figure out what your passion is, and start your blog or build your brand around this topic. This is your niche. 

You are the expert who is there to help educate others.

2. Fine Tuning Your Niche

When I started my blog Menprovement, it was 2013 and the blogging market was nothing like it is now. You could write about pretty much anything, and have a shot at ranking on Google.

Getting your article ranking on Google is the goal. You want people to search for something and for your article to pop up on the first page and for them to click your link.

That’s a visit and a potential customer. And it used to be easy.

That’s not the case anymore.

There is so much competition - and Google has changed its algorithm drastically.

My advice for anyone who is going to start a content-based website is to choose the most specific niche possible.

For example: 

“Self-improvement for men,” is the niche I started in 2013. 

That was fine back then, and luckily I’ve had 10 years to build it up since then, but as we’ll talk about later - one of the most important factors in being able to rank on Google is topical authority - so I would never start with a niche this large today.

Topical authority means that Google sees you as an expert on a certain topic.

In order to gain topical authority, you need to cover a single topic extensively.

So back in 2013, I could have a broad niche link “self-improvement for men,” now, unless you have a huge budget and army of writers, this is not a good idea.

Think about the main niche - it’s huge.

In my niche there are dozens of sub-niches:

• Sex
• Dating
• Fashion
• Fitness
• Health
• Biohacking
• Brain Health

I could write 100 sub-niches here.  

In order to have complete topical authority in the self-improvement niche, I would need 100-200 articles in each sub-niche. In the past, I could write 1-5 in each and still rank. But not anymore.

So what I’ve done niched down and chosen 4 sub-niches to focus on:

• Sex
• Dating
• Fitness
• Mental Performance

And it is still very broad, to be honest…

Some of my best-performing articles/videos are on fertility and learning how to lose weight, while others are on spicy AI chatbots and attracting women.

So what have I done?

I’ve not only stopped writing about everything else, but I’ve deleted all those articles. Over 200 to be exact.

This may sound crazy, but after doing this traffic actually went up.

I want Google to know EXACTLY what I am claiming to be an expert in by having 100-200 articles on each of these topics. 

So for anyone just getting started in this modern age, I recommend narrowing your niche down as small as possible, without going too small that there’s not enough to write about.

For example:

• Self Improvement (Too Big)
• Dating (OK)
• Online Dating (Good)
• Tinder (Great)
• Online Dating For Men Over 50 (Too Small)

3. How I do Keyword Research

Once you have a niche selected, it’s time to figure out what to write about.

There’s no point in writing an article if no one is searching for what you’re writing about.

You need to find “keywords” that people are searching for every month in Google and tailor your articles to these keywords.

Let’s say your niche is “online dating”

What I would do is break this niche down into as many sub-niches as possible. Each of these sub-niches would be a “keyword cluster.”

Online Dating Clusters:

• Profile Creation
• Messaging
• Tinder
• Plenty of Fish
• Bumble
• Ok Cupid
• Etc.

If your niche is just Tinder, then you would simply use that as your main cluster because it can not be divided into smaller clusters. 

From here I would use AHREF’s matching terms tool to get a list of all the possible target keywords I can write for. To narrow it down, I would filter the results to show only keywords with over 250 Volumes. 

This gave us 1,125 keywords with the word Tinder in them that get over 250 searches per month in the U.S. That’s a strong cluster with a lot of options.

I would now sort that by KD (Keyword Difficulty) from lowest to highest.

I then go through and create a keyword list of all the keywords I thought were good, and omit all the ones that don’t make sense.

Now I’ll have a list of 500-700 keywords, and start from the least competitive. 

Look at the first one:

“Why is my Tinder account under review” - KD: 0 - Volume: 700. 

This is an epic keyword. That means 700 people search that every month and the competition to rank for this is 0/100. I would probably create a comprehensive guide for why your Tinder account may be under review, covering EVERY possibility. 

Then, get links & move on to the next one.

Patience is the name of the game here. At first, your site will be new and Google won’t rank you. You need time, and backlinks to get to a better domain authority. 

Maybe 3 - 6 months. Just keep at it. You’ve got 500-700 articles to write. There is no rush.

Pro Tip: One thing I do is, look at competitor websites in the same niche as me. I look at small sites, with low DRs that are getting traffic and see what they are ranking for. These KW’s must be easy to pick. 

Even better I can see which of these they are ranking for with 0 backlinks. 

These are what I call Golden Nuggets.

4. My Content Creation Strategy

Content creation is where you can break away from the pack. My content creation strategy is simple - create better content than everyone else.

My motto is - do it once. do it right.

Every article has to be an absolute masterpiece. With Google’s latest “helpful content update,” it no longer matters how many articles you pump out. It’s about the quality. And you are only as good as your worst piece of content.

This has stopped everyone from pumping out 100 AI-generated articles a day and ranking for them. Rightfully so. You can use AI, but only to fill in the gaps or help optimize your content.

Your content should be at least partially human-generated and better than everyone else’s.

If you’re gonna spend time writing an article, spend a little more time and make it the best.

That means:

• More in-depth
• More engaging
• More actionable

What I tend to do is, when I target a keyword - I will break down the top 5 results on Google for that keyword. 

• What do they talk about?
• What headings do they use?
• How long is the content?
• How many pictures, links, etc.?

Then I will do my research to be able to answer the question fully, visualize the article in my mind - and create a general outline while I do so.

The end result is that the article is not only longer, but much more useful for the reader. I include loads of images, GIFs to make it entertaining, and any applicable graphs and charts.

I also back everything I talk about with links to studies when necessary.

I link out a lot. I want people to get the full picture. If I mention something that goes down a deep rabbit hole, I will find the best resource and let them know where they can go to learn more. 

I also link internally a lot, under the same principle. If I touch on something that I have a full article on, I will link to it in some keyword-rich anchor text.

That’s the human side of it. Now it’s time to optimize that article for search engines, so humans will actually find it when they search.

5. My SEO Strategy

My SEO strategy is quite simple as well.

Since I use WordPress, I have the Rankmath Pro plugin installed - which gives my content a score right in the WordPress editor. 

Based on the score and the suggestions, I optimized the content to include the main keyword throughout, in headlines, image ALT text and I included variations of the keyword throughout.

Rankmath will suggest what variations to use and how many times to use them.

I then optimized the title tags, permalink, and meta description as suggested by Rankmath.

Once I get a score above 90/100 then I have a solid base that has the potential to rank with some solid backlinks.

6. How I Build Backlinks?

Link building is by far the hardest part of the entire process. 

After you’ve put so much time into creating the perfect piece of content, there is so much temptation to just leave it and move on to the next. But if you do that, it’s very likely that no one will ever see your article.

Links are signals to Google that your article is legit. The more (real) links, the better.

To get links, you have to do outreach. But before you start:

Don’t waste your time on spammy links

You can pay for links, but you don’t have to

What I like to do is the old-fashioned skyscraper technique.

I figure out (using AHREF’s), who is linking to all of my competitors. I then contact these websites and I offer a mutually beneficial exchange.

Mutually beneficial is the key. 

I get so many emails from people asking me to link to their content, but they offer nothing in return. I deleted these really fast.

When I connect with people I ask them to link to my content, in place of what they currently link to (or in addition to it), and in exchange I will link to their site from one of my next guest posts. 

An ABC link exchange.

They usually agree, because I show them all of the guest posts I have on very high-quality sites, and for them to get an easy link just for swapping out an old link in their article for a better one is a no-brainer.

So on top of my outreach for getting links, I have to actively do outreach to get guest posts on other high-value sites, like this one. 

So when someone agrees to my outreach, I have sites that I can submit a guest post on to get them their link and to also get myself a few links.

This combination gets me the most contextual links on high-value sites over anything else I’ve tried. But it’s super time-consuming.

So I have a VA who I hired on upward who takes care of all the outreach for $10/hour. All I have to do is write the guest posts.

7. Capturing Emails & Email Marketing

Once you start getting some traffic, you have to start converting these visits into customers.

What I do is create a free eBook - something like: 

“Tinder Cheat Codes: How to Get Noticed And 10X Your Dates.”

I’d offer it for free with an email capture form, and get people on my email list. When they sign up - they automatically get the free book which is loaded with epic information.

I use ActiveCampaign to automate all of this.

Now I market to these guys over email every 1-3 days. Giving them free wisdom, and stories and eventually offering them a service. Either a video course or a mentoring/coaching program.

And if you don’t have one, you can offer someone else's!

Find the best one out there, contact the owner, and become an affiliate. Then tell everyone on your list how this changed your life and got you hundreds of dates. Link to their sales page and collect commissions every time someone signs up.

This is what I do with Menprovement.

I have 4 categories:

• Sex
• Dating
• Fitness
• Mental Performance

I have a free giveaway for each category, and I sell either a course I made or I sell someone else’s as an affiliate through email marketing.

It’s simple but effective.

And once it’s done, it’s all automated so I can just focus on creating more content and getting more traffic.

8. Additional Income Streams

My income from Menprovement.com is broken down into:

• 50% From Course Sales
• 30% From Affiliate Marketing
• 20% Ad Sales

In addition to selling courses via email marketing, I write a lot of informational articles and a lot of best articles. Everything from the best pre-workout powder to the best AI girlfriend app.

Ranking these articles is a goldmine.

On top of that, we sometimes sell advertising spots in articles or emails. And if you rank for a top post article, you can often sell that top spot for hundreds of dollars a month. 

As long as the product is worthy of the course.

All in all, I love running my business. It’s like a video game to me and allows me the freedom to work from anywhere in the world. Plus there is no limit to how much money I can make.

My Final Words

I hope you got some inspiration from my story. 

If I can leave you with one thing, it’s just to be consistent and play the long game. Success takes time. 

Most people quit after a year, but if you do it right and lay one brick at a time - eventually you will have a castle.

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