She Established a Six-Figure Business by Discussing Goats - Side Hustle Nation

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      Can you create a genuine business centered around a specific animal? Deborah Niemann has devoted nearly 20 years to doing just that. She operates ThriftyHomesteader.com, a goat-centric media business featuring a podcast, a YouTube channel, six online courses, and a membership program with 150 members. This October, she is also organizing her first overseas goat tour to Portugal, where some of her most dedicated followers are paying to explore goat farms alongside her.

      Deborah didn’t originally intend for any of this. She relocated to the countryside in 2002 to grow her own food, made numerous beginner mistakes, and began teaching classes on her farm to help others avoid the same errors.

      Tune in to Episode 757 of the Side Hustle Show to discover: how Deborah diversifies six different income sources within a small niche; why her course sales declined while her membership thrived; how a simple switch in her ad network boosted her revenue from $1 to $100 per month through video.

      How Deborah’s Goat Business Began

      It all started on the farm. Deborah raised and sold goats, offering buyers a complimentary class to educate them on goat care. Eventually, demand for the class outstripped the desire for goats, prompting her to start charging for on-farm goat classes.

      From 2006 to 2016, she also maintained an online journal at antiquityoaks.blogspot.com, documenting her family’s activities with various animals: sheep, goats, cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and even llamas. This blog led a publisher to discover her when they found a link to it on the Mother Earth News Fair website, attended her talk at the fair in 2010, and offered her the chance to write books.

      Why Writing Books Wasn’t the Financial Windfall She Anticipated

      Deborah accepted the offer to write books. When her publisher requested an 80,000-word book within three months, she agreed, working seven days a week for 12 to 14 hours daily. Homegrown and Handmade became her best seller, with the initial print run of 5,000 copies selling out in about nine months, much to her publisher's delight.

      However, upon calculating her earnings, she found that while the book retailed for $20, she earned only 10% of the wholesale price, approximately $1 per copy, alongside a $3,000 advance. “I would have made more working at a fast-food restaurant,” she remarked.

      Her other titles include:

      - EcoThrifty

      - Raising Goats Naturally

      - Goats Giving Birth

      Across her books, she has sold about 25,000 copies. While these books opened many doors, including speaking engagements from Washington State to Virginia, they did not provide a significant hourly wage.

      Transforming a Book into an Online Course

      After publishing three books in three years, Deborah sought a more lucrative way to monetize her passion. In 2013, she began teaching online for the University of Massachusetts, where students paid $1,500 for the course, but her share was still minimal.

      Around 2015, she observed others creating online courses and decided her goat book could serve as a syllabus. However, she soon realized she had much more information than could fit into a single course.

      Books are constrained by physical limits, but online, she discovered no such ceiling. “The nutrition chapter in this book might be around 15 pages, but my goat nutrition course online is like seven or eight hours long. I even discuss copper for two hours.”

      Her First Course

      Deborah launched her inaugural course, Goats 101, in early 2017 to her 2,000-person email list. A few hundred people enrolled, yielding a conversion rate of roughly 10%.

      She credits Jeff Walker’s book with her strategy of keeping her audience informed about her progress, emailing them for six months about the delayed course. Approximately 75% of those who purchased did so the moment the cart opened.

      How People Discover Her Content

      Deborah advises to “be everywhere.” She boasts over 700 articles, more than 800 YouTube videos, and around 180 podcast episodes. Her YouTube channel and podcast are both titled For the Love of Goats.

      Her articles specifically address the questions goat owners frequently search for, such as:

      - How much does a goat eat per day?

      - What to do about an overweight goat?

      - When does a goat need a C-section?

      The Impact of Google AI Summaries

      About two years ago, Google introduced AI summaries at the top of search results, allowing people to find answers without clicking through. This change caused