My Physician Side Hustle, Part 5

With The Motivated M.D. celebrating it’s one year ‘blogiversary’ earlier this year, I wanted to take the time to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year.  Also, I want to discuss the direction of the website.  Since the creation of this blog, the goal has remained simple: share my journey, talk about money, and interact with the greater personal finance community.  As the site continues to gain traction, I have been able to better understand what the future may hold for The Motivated M.D., and honestly, the possibilities are big!  Here is My Physician Side Hustle, Part 5! Let’s dive in.

One year of blogging

It is hard to believe I have been posting on a weekly basis for over a year now.  Technically, at the publishing of this post, the site is 15 months old.  Approximately 6 months since My Physician Side Hustle, Part 4.  Celebrating the one-year mark was a huge accomplishment for me and I memorialized it by publishing the post Lessons Learned from One Year of Blogging.  The title states, I have learned a lot from this process! 

From honing my writing skills to (better) harnessing the power of time management, blogging as a physician side gig requires a steep learning curve.  What you likely do not know about me is that over the past year (since starting this side hustle) I have celebrated a few personal accomplishments too.  Since I have started The Motivated M.D., I have:

• Graduated from fellowship
• Started my attending career in academics
• Celebrated the birth of our second child
• Bought a home
• Bought a car (following a car accident)
• Continued to focus on debt elimination (and shared that progress here)

Whew!  Juggling a busy physician career while still playing husband, father, and entrepreneur can be exhausting. 

When I started this website, I had two goals in mind.  The first goal was to use writing and publishing as an outlet for my thoughts, commentary, and experience navigating the nuances of physician finance.  I needed a way to calm my busy mind.  Writing, and all of the subsequent opportunities that have spawned from this, have served that purpose.  Secondly, I wanted a way to expedite my financial independence.  Yes, this is also a business venture, plain and simple.  I want to create something enjoyable, entertaining, and informative for the reader.  Hopefully, by doing so, many will find value in my work and I can use this as a vehicle for monetization.  I want to be honest and transparent about this.  The Motivated M.D. is both a passion project and a business.  So far… more passion than business…but we will get there.

Is it really ‘passive’ income?

This brings me to my next point.  Is blogging, or how I personally approach blogging, actually passive income?  The honest answer is…absolutely not (yet).  For starters, there are many interpretations of the phrase ‘passive income.’  To dilute it down, the idea is to create something valuable that can produce income without further time or effort.  An example of this is an online book, or e-book.  An e-book is a digital product that is (basically) infinitely scalable and sold for a profit.  An author puts in the work for an amount of time, then publishes the e-book.  Individuals can forever purchase and download the e-book, thus producing income for the author ‘passively’ after the actual sweat equity is completed. 

Sweat equity

Now, this is an overly simplified example, but you get the picture.  Blogs and other ‘niche’ websites, can choose to operate in a similar fashion.  Through strategic content creation, authors can create works that produce traffic in the form of pageviews (visitors to the site).  The better the content, the more likely search engines (like Goggle, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) are willing to recommend that content to a larger audience based on search history and keywords.  The more traffic a website can generate, the more valuable that website becomes for advertisers as well as sponsors, affiliates, etc.  I am working to create a similar business model for The Motivated M.D…but easier said than done.

Quality content takes time

See, quality content creation takes time.  I do not utilize newer artificial intelligence software (i.e., ChatGPT) or any other third-party software to generate my posts.  I write everything the old-fashioned way.  A warm cup of coffee and about 1-2 hours of uninterrupted time affords me the ability to crank out a new post.  Now, as you likely gathered above, my life is busy.  So, I can only maintain a publication cadence of one post per week currently.  Hopefully, that can change in the future. 

For now, once a week I try to sit down, brainstorm, and ultimately produce a well-written piece of content catered just for you.  To this day that still occupies a few hours a week and thus remains not a passive endeavor.  I do foresee a time within the next year where I will focus more of my time on optimizing the site for affiliate marketing and sponsorships to increase the return on my investment.

Formation of The Motivated M.D. LLC

How could we discuss entrepreneurship and business without talking about the formation of a limited liability corporation (LLC).  Really the ‘meat’ of My Physician Side Hustle, Part 5 is all about the transition from hobby to business. I have formed The Motivated M.D. LLC to further house my business transactions.  It felt like a big achievement creating a ‘corporation’ for my small business.  In healthcare, these types of business transactions and formations are foreign to me.  Having (some) legal protection separating my physician side gig from my clinical work offered a sense of relief.  I understand that the legal protection is not impenetrable, but as a father and husband working to protect an already lucrative career while working to build another, it seemed like the right thing to do. 

Navigating the nuances of business creation and management has been, by far, one of the hardest challenges with this entire process.  There is minimal guidance for this entire process.  I honestly felt like I was in school again.  Trying to sieve through a textbook searching for the answer to a question I hardly understood.  I just don’t speak the ‘business’ language yet, but I am learning…slowly but surely.  With the formation of The Motivated M.D. LLC, I feel more legitimate. 

Featured content

As the site continues to grow, so too does the recognition.  I am always embarrassed to publish this, as the imposter syndrome remains real and the blog in its infancy, but the accolades the website receives remain important.  To date our content has been published on the following platforms:

• KevinMD
• The White Coat Investor
• The Physician on FIRE
• Financial Success M.D.
• Personal Finance Blogs
• Listed as one of the Top 20 Physician Finance Blogs on Blogspot

Given that The Motivated M.D. remains a ‘one man band,’ it is difficult determining if my new writings should be published on my website, or a larger platform.  I obviously want my content distributed to a larger audience, but I do prefer my work remaining on ‘my site.’ 

However, I really enjoy creating guest content.  The interactions I have had with Leif Dahleen at Physician on Fire, Kevin Pho with KevinMD.com, and the publishing team at The White Coat Investor have helped me realize the importance of community while you grow your business.  I hope to continually offer regular guest posting to these platforms and others.  If you find yourself reading this and have a platform or website that you think would benefit from a guest post… please reach out to me!  I am always eager to collaborate with others in personal finance. 

OK, onto our most updated site statistics!

Blogging statistics

Age of the website: 15 months

Total (Google) impressions: 145,000

Total pageviews: 22,300

Average monthly pageviews: 1800-3000

Users: 13,000

Countries reached: 113

Top posts:

1. Top 5 Financial Mistakes New Attendings Make
2. The Pros and Cons of Academic Medicine
3. Plan for Forever, Live for Now
4. 52 Best Ways to Improve Your Personal Finances
5. 11 Money Lessons for My Children

Goals for 2023

What a year.  As cliché as it sounds, the blogging process has its highs and lows.  As a busy full-time physician, it can be a real struggle trying to publish a post one a week.  My priorities remain my marriage, my family, and my profession.  Though I am very much dedicated to getting this business off the ground, it will always remain second to my family.  I am working tirelessly to rid myself of debt and create financial freedom as fast as possible, but I don’t want this to come at the expense of what is most precious in my life.  With that said, I have some lofty goals for the blog’s second year.

Continue to publish once per week

For starters, I want to continue to post and article once a week.  Though my work may not be published exactly every 7 days, I will make sure there is enough quality content to average ‘about once a week.’ 

Creation of a digital product

Secondly, I want to create a digital product that is valuable to my viewership.  I am unclear exactly what this will be.  Maybe it manifests as an ebook?  Perhaps it will take the form of an online course?  Who knows?  No matter what it is, I am ready to tackle a different project that can be a resource for those who visit The Motivated M.D.

Increase my ROI

Lastly, I would love for the site to optimize its earning potential.  If I had the income to confidently support the site for the foreseeable future, then I would likely employ more help.  If I had an individual managing my social media accounts, then they would get the ‘TLC’ they deserve.  This could help amplify my reach.  Also, if I could hire a freelance writer, this would allow me to more confidently keep my writing cadence, or allow me to publish more frequently!  I think these are achievable goals for the coming year. 

Take home points

My Physician Side Hustle, Part 5 is the most ‘business’ of my updates to date. The transition from hobby or side gig to a full-fledged business has required a steep learning curve.  I continue to have a hunger for writing, sharing, and discussing personal finance and its application to high-incomes in healthcare professions.  One of my goals is to continue to provide quality content while branching out to a wider audience.  Yes, there are nuances associated with physician finance, but so many of the skills and habits that lead to financial success are applicable to all!  Live below your means, save, invest, keep a budget, have an emergency fund, etc.  These are habits everyone should have.

As I look forward to next year, I hope to engage my current audience while offering something to newcomers as well!  To any and all who have visited the website or personally reach out… from the bottom of my heart, thank you.  Thank you for making this dream possible.  I sincerely thank each and every one of you.  As always…

Stay motivated!

The Motivated M.D.

I hope you enjoyed the latest installment of the My Physician Side Hustle series with My Physician Side Hustle, Part 5!  If you did, please share it with others using the ‘share’ buttons located on the left-hand sidebar (on desktop) or below this article.  It would also be very helpful if you would follow us on social media!  Instagram and Twitter accounts can be found using the right-handed sidebar (on desktop) or below (on mobile devices).  Thank you!

Have you started a side gig? If so, how is it going?  Let us know in the comments below regarding our article on My Physician Side Hustle, Part 5!  We love to hear from you.

Standard Disclaimer: None of the information on this website is meant as individualized financial or medical advice.  These posts may contain affiliate links.