FictionLit

While working in finance, Harrison Alley knew that he always wanted something more. He undertook several different ventures, dabbling in e-commerce for example, but nothing really panned out. Meanwhile, his wife Jasmine had taken an interest in travel. When she moved to Harrison’s hometown of Dallas, she began documenting life in the city and beyond, eventually developing a successful brand.

It was then when Harrison realized that he could partner with Jasmine to expand her reach, helping behind the scenes with the technical aspects of her budding influencer career. With the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns resulting in work from home mandates at companies across the world, Harrison gained some flexibility to work on Jasmine’s web presence, spending his free time sharpening his SEO and display ad skills.

“One year later, the income from display ads was greater than the salary at my job,” Harrison says.

Harrison soon found writers for FictionLit through Instagram, searching for people who were interested in the genre of fan fiction and asking them if they’d be open to writing about it.

Many responded positively. Harrison published 300 blog posts before his website got much traction, a risk he took hoping that it would pay off.

“It’s always scary when you’re investing money upfront,” he explains. “But I stuck with it, and about a year later, traffic really started to increase.”

One of FictionLit’s most popular posts is “11 of the Best Dramione Fanfic Stories,” fanfiction based on a romance between characters Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter universe. “I think this has been so popular because my wife, who is a big fan of this fanfic genre, really put a lot of effort into making this the best post online about Dramione fanfic,” Harrison recalls.

To keep Fiction Lit running with new content, Harrison uses several tools to make the process seamless.

“Google Analytics and Google Search Console are both indispensable for tracking information on my website to see what works and what isn't working,” he explains. “I also use Google Sheets and Google Docs to do research for my articles and coordinate with my freelancers.”

Harrison continues to work on maintaining and growing Jasmine’s web and social media presence, along with FictionLit. He hopes to continue to expand his blog portfolio.

“If there’s a topic that I’m interested in, I’d be open to having a website in that category,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity in this space and people get myopically focused on social media but to me, you have a better chance of earning a living from a website. I’m optimistic about websites and content.”