Build multiple projects and use them for cross-promotion — Rob Hope of One Page Love

@robhope of One Page Love has a long list of current (and sunsetted) projects, and he's making over $100K per year from them. I caught up with him to find out how he manages to juggle so much.

If you take away one thing, it should probably be the 18-minute nap at 3pm, followed by an espresso. Sounds like a good way to make the most of an afternoon. 😃

On scratching multiple itches

Rob: A lot of the time I'm scratching my own itch.

For example, I built caseconverter.com in 2008 (now sold) to help clean up my clients' poorly formatted Word Docs of content. One Page Love was created to help collect references to One Page websites, after I couldn't find any good references to them online.

Another reason I might start a project is to learn something new. It feels amazing diving into the unknown. Like the products above, AudioNotes was built to help send faster Landing Page feedback to One Page Love users, but also green-lit it because I had never built a macOS menu bar app before.

I also totally suffer from shiny object syndrome. I'm bad. I'll see a slight gap or a poorly curated popular site, and I'll lose hours on domain searches while daydreaming of what I could cook up.

Right now, my main project is One Page Love, which allowed me to ultimately quit freelance about 4yrs ago. I'm also working on Email Love, UX Love (launching soon), Yo! podcast, and my ebook Landing page Hot Tips. I also have dozens of ideas that I no longer work on — some sold, but most failed (forward).

Also, because of earnings increasing over the past couple of years, I was forced into VAT land here in South Africa. So I decided to wrap all my side-projects into one parent brand called Love Curated that is now a Pty Ltd. I am CEO and 100% shareholder, which doesn't mean much, to be honest.

On growing his projects

Rob: The short of it is I grow these projects by keeping curation high, saving people time. And I keep trying to add value to the network by writing what is special about the content, adding good search tags, and making the site fast.

The more nuanced answer is cross-promotion between sites, tagging people we feature on Twitter, ensuring pages are coded clean (no pop-ups, min-scripts), and cached fast for Google.

Create the sites you'd appreciate visiting.

On schedules

A huge breakthrough this year, due to hiring, is having a publishing schedule in Notion. We now aim to post 1 bit of content on One Page Love a week day.

It's super difficult to shift attention so many times a day. Without a schedule, I can blink and I havent posted on Email Love in 2 weeks.

The ideal goal is to spend about an hour adding content to each site per day. Then the rest is improving the network. These daily content habits really add up.

On the tools he uses to stay organized

Rob: After years of using Trello I'm now all-in on Notion. I have one team account for Love Curated shared with one other person. Then I have another team account with my wife to keep track of home loans, finances, upcoming trips etc. I dig being organized.

Then iA Writer for light lists/writing (sync'd with Dropbox). Clear app (think I bought it 8yrs ago for $5) on the iPhone for shopping and temporary lists.

My desktop icons often act as a to-do list too and I'm always trying to clear those out.

On naps

Rob: I start working around 7am and finish up at 7pm every day. I can honestly say every day at 7am I am frothing at the mouth to start working on my network of sites and side projects. I have had this for 10 years and it hasn't gone away.

I take tons of breaks, of course, to surf and run. I also nap for 18 minutes every day around 3pm.

Why an 18-minute nap? Man, I’ve been trying to perfect this strategy for years. So, 20+ has a longer wake-time and at 30+ you are almost grumpy having to wake up. An 18 minute afternoon nap, followed by an espresso, banks me easy 2+ hours of super productive screen time.

Side projects are never “finished”

Rob:

I am learning to accept that side-projects can never be finished.

There is unlimited optimization and marketing to do. The only true time it's done is when it's sold or the domain expires.

So most evenings I try to shut off, cook, and watch a series with my wife. I rarely work late anymore and it's awesome. I am 39 now and I dig sleeping, ha. At the same time, my wife accepts my chosen path of building online and knows sometimes we need to focus on getting it done. No matter what.