This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, what's up? Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I guess it could be any of those depending on when you're listening or maybe even the middle of the night. That's the great thing about this show, you can listen whenever is convenient for you, but I do encourage you to make this a habit and listen regularly. Today I am in Atlanta, Georgia, made it back from London.
If you're listening in real time, I'm gonna be doing an event tomorrow night here onto Miami the next day, then to Phoenix the day after that and then to Chicago. All that information is at sidehustleschool.com/tour and I'm excited that we have recently added a couple of new cities. So if you have not been by that site recently, go and check it out, I would love to see you somewhere. And today we're talking about Snapchat, among other things. We're talking about weddings and we're talking about Snapchat.
I don't actually use Snapchat myself. I just know about it by proxy from friends and listeners, other side hustlers have been using it. We're gonna focus specifically on geo filters and how this engaged couple, now married couple, has found a way to make money making them. Now, if you're a Snapchat user, you know all about geo filters already. If you don't use Snapchat, you may have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's okay, I'm gonna explain it.
It's actually pretty simple. This couple, as I said, were getting married, looking for ways to help reduce the cost of their wedding and little did they know, they'd actually already laid the groundwork for their perfect side hustle. That story's coming right up. [Music]
Like so many couples, Xander Akok and his bride-to-be found themselves looking for answers to the question, how are we gonna pay for all this? They spent the six months leading up to their wedding, looking for ways to save and make money.
I love that focus, by the way. Don't just think about cutting costs, think about how you can make more money. That's often a great strategy for a lot of things. Xander is a digital marketer by trade and a part-time design consultant. One of the ways he saved money was by putting his design skills to use, making his own wedding program, welcome sign and rehearsal dinner invitations.
He's got a great response from the guests, but they only put a small dent in the overall wedding bill. Then after the wedding, Xander and his wife went on a honeymoon and spent their time doing what most couples do on that occasion, planning out their side hustle. They did some more research. They noticed that graphic designers were selling their services through Etsy, specifically pre-packaging their pre-made designs as finished products. That's what gave them their first idea.
Zach thought he could share the hard work he'd put into his own wedding and see what response it got. Now, the startup costs for this were virtually zero. Xander already had everything pre-designed, and it was just a matter of Etsy taking a small fee and paying 20 cents to list the product. I guess technically it's a 20-cent startup. Always good to be precise.
Within one week, the newly-founded ACOC designs made their first sale. Xander and his wife celebrated briefly, but then it was straight back to work. Each of them had sold miscellaneous items on the internet before, and they weren't yet completely convinced they'd found a winner. So the pair set about creating new printable designs for all the different facets of a wedding, seating plans, menus, signs, and gifts. Then they found a big winner.
They made use of a new social media trend to design Snapchat geofilters and then sell them. So what's a geofilter? Well, it's simply an overlay that can be added to the top of an image in Snapchat based on the geographical area that you're in when you post. So imagine you're at a sporting event, for example. If you're using Snapchat and you wanna go and post a photo, when you're within a specific geographical area, like you're at that sports stadium or arena, when you go to post that photo, you'll see a specific overlay you can use.
And it's fun, it usually gets a high usage rate because it's custom, and you feel like you're posting something that people around you are also part of. So that's a geofilter, and ACOC Designs provides a service where they create that geofilter, upload it to the app, and then mark out an area on Snapchat's virtual map for the same date as the wedding. So it's kind of a two-part process. You have to create the filter, then you upload it, and you pay Snapchat based on the area that you're marking out. The bigger the area, the higher the price.
This allows all of the guests to take beautiful pictures with the couple's custom overlay. Now, this is a trend, of course, and I don't usually talk about trends on Side Hustle School, except to highlight how you can profit from them. Well, let's say how you can profit from them and why you shouldn't build your business on them, necessarily. Still, this is interesting. You can follow a trend like this by watching hashtags or paying attention to what the power users of a social media platform are doing.
And for the record, I am not a power user. I don't even use Snapchat. Still, a lot of people do, and that's what matters. Creating these geofilters helped ACOC Designs stand out, but they also continued to offer other products. They didn't want to place a big bet on this one technology.
Naturally, this is a profitable side hustle. Their profits fluctuate depending on the wedding season, can range from anywhere from $500 to $1,400 per month, working part-time, of course. That's definitely not enough to quit their jobs, but that also wasn't their goal. The newlyweds have been able to combine these profits with some other savings toward a down payment on their new home. Congratulations.
Although Xander focuses on Facebook marketing for his day job, he's focused most of his efforts on marketing their products through Etsy itself. He admits he should probably spend more time on social media and practice what he preaches at work, especially since he has the knowledge and he knows what's effective. But for now, the current system is working and it isn't taking a ton of his time. If you're looking to start something similar, Xander's got some advice for you. He recommends you do everything you can to test your products before you go all in and design a ton of stuff.
He says it's easy to see other designers posting their work and then go crazy creating a bunch of products only to not see the same success. So instead, take the time to test and see what people want to buy, then set a goal of how many products you can make in a certain amount of time and what you hope to achieve from it. Over the next few months, Xander is looking to grow another side hustle focused on marketing, but he's gonna continue to sell wedding designs once wedding season returns, at least as long as people continue to order. So over time, this may become a completely passive or at least a mostly passive income source. [Music]
Congratulations to Xander and ACOC Designs.
I'm always a fan of selling anything that's pre-packaged or templated or something that you can create once and then people buy multiple times over. Even if you have to do a bit of customization work for it, which is often the case with Etsy, that's a very different workload than a completely original commission, which is what a lot of people think about when they start designing wedding stationery. Adding in the Snapchat Geofilter service for those who want it is also smart. It may allow him to connect with customers based just on that, but then those customers realize they can get other stuff from him too. And if they went online to look for wedding invitations, there's probably a thousand people doing that.
But in this example, looking on Etsy for Snapchat Geofilters, much smaller market. So do pay attention to trends, but don't build your business on them. Just find a way to incorporate them in what you're already doing. If you're listening to this episode much later than the time I'm recording it, these Geofilters may no longer exist or maybe they've completely evolved and moved on. Or maybe they've become so simple that you don't need a designer to create them and everyone knows how to do it.
Who knows? The point is nothing gold can stay, especially in the world of social media. But by paying attention, there's always some opportunity to profit before whatever that trend or phenomenon or just new feature or technology goes away. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.
Today's show notes, including links to ACOC designs, Etsy, and a tutorial for making your first Geofilter are at sidehustleschool.com/278. Whether you are in Atlanta, where I am today, London, where I was yesterday, or somewhere else in the world, I hope you're taking steps toward creating more freedom for yourself so that you can do what's important to you. I'll be back again tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
