How These High School Sweethearts Started a Six-Figure Blog in 3 Years and (Both) Quit Their Jobs

How These High School Sweethearts Started a Six-Figure Blog in 3 Years and (Both) Quit Their Jobs

This is an interview with Kelan & Brittany Kline from The Savvy Couple.

Hey, guys. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.

Hey! We are Kelan and Brittany Kline, high school sweethearts from Rochester N.Y. ad the founders and co-owners behind the personal finance blog The Savvy Couple. 

Our blog was started just over three years ago with the mission of helping families create more time and money in their lives so they have the freedom to do more of the things they love. 

We do this by creating engaging content that helps our readers learn how to budget together, pay off debt quickly, and make money online. 

What jobs did you have prior to starting an online business, and what made you want to become your own bosses?

We were your average American kids growing up. I dreamed of being a police officer and changing the world one bad guy at a time. Brittany dreamed of becoming a teacher and positively influencing our next generation. 

We both went to school together at The College at Brockport, State University of New York. I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration while Brittany graduated with a Masters in Elementary Education.

I worked as a Jail Deputy for two and a half years but I fell into a deep depression, working in a stressful environment. I had to let go of my dream of being a police officer. 

I wanted to be a family man and being in law enforcement makes that very difficult to do. So we sat down and put it all on the table. We hated what our life currently looked like and mapped out what our dream life would look like.

That’s when we came across a few personal finance bloggers making an absolute killing online working from home. We instantly decided we want the same.

We earned our first $50 nine months later!

I left my job and within two months I had completely replaced my income working as a freelance digital marketer and online English teacher.

Less than two years in we hit our first $ 10,000-month blogging! It was the most incredible feeling in the world. It was validation for everything leading up until this point in our lives. 

Less than three years after starting our blog we created our dream life. Both quitting our jobs, working from home, and spending more time as a family doing the things we love. 

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What was your first side hustle and how did it go?

I have been hustling since I was in elementary school. I always had that entrepreneur mindset and my parents were great at supporting it. 

I did just about everything when it came to side hustling from lemonade stands, car washes, selling bulk candy at school, lawn cleanup, mowing, flipping items on eBay and eventually running a drop shipping business throughout high school and college. 

Brittany also had side hustles throughout high school selling Avon, teaching dance classes, and babysitting. 

All of this side hustling really helped us develop a different mindset when it came to money. I believe all of the experience we both had previous to starting our blog really helped us find success quickly. 

Why did you choose blogging as a possible profitable side hustle?

Great question. We were actually going to start a home inspection business but came to a few realizations that pointed us towards an online business. 

Starting a blog has very little investment upfront, low overhead, flexibility to work anywhere with internet, making passive income 24/7, and unlimited potential to earn income. 

It was an easy decision once we laid everything out and saw how much potential starting a blog could really change our entire life.

When and why did you start The Savvy Couple?

We started our blog at the end of July 2016. 

How long did it take you to make your first money as a finance blogger?

We hustled our butts off for nine full months before seeing any income come in from our blog. We would wake up before work to work on the blog, stay up late, gave up weekends, etc. 

We made it a priority and cut things out of our life that were not adding value like vegging out in front of the TV. 

How did you manage your money while growing the blog?

We have always been pretty good with our money. Budgeting, saving money, investing for our future is always something we have been passionate about since college. 

Once we started our blog we made an effort to save up as much money as possible.

In those nine months, we were able to save up close to a year’s worth of salary. This made my decision to quit my job much easier knowing we had a big nest egg to rely on. 

Once I was working on the blog full-time and it was making money our next goal was to crush our remaining $25,000 of student loans we had. We looked at our budget, cut where we could, and came up with a game plan to become debt-free. 

We knew if we wanted the ultimate freedom of both quitting our jobs and working from home having debt hold us back was not an option. We were able to pay off all $25,000 in less than five months!

Read also: How Becky Started a Shopify Side Hustle a Paid Off $80K of Debt

What did you do to replace your income 2 months after quitting your job to blog full-time?

After quitting my job I knew I had to find freelance work so I had some income coming in on a regular basis.

Within a couple of weeks, I landed a remote digital marketing job through UpWork. It was a perfect position to learn digital marketing and get paid, a true win-win. 

I also got hired by VIPKID to teach English online to Chinese students. It’s a great company and you have complete control over your work schedule. This was by far my favorite side hustle I have ever had. 

Those two side hustles along with our blog starting to make money replaced my income very quickly.

How did you bring traffic to your blog in the first year?

We focused 90% of our time on learning Pinterest.

We knew this visual search engine is where our readers were hanging out and wanting their problems solved. 

We learned how to create viral content that was click-worthy, valuable, and most importantly solved our reader’s problems. 

Here is a video I put together on the Pinterest strategy we use. Make sure to subscribe to our channel! 

What role does Pinterest play in your business?

It’s extremely important to us. There is nothing better than a platform that drives free organic traffic to your blog.

Once you really dig in and realize Pinterest is just a visual search engine much like Google is a text search engine you can really start driving traffic. 

Read also: 7 Silly Pinterest Mistakes I Was Making

How did you earn your first $1,000 blogging?

The first month our blog made $1,000 on its own we earned money from three primary categories (much like we still do). Display ads, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships. 

How much is your blog currently making and in what ways?

In our third year of blogging we are averaging over $20,000/month.

Below is a rough breakdown of where it’s coming from.