This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Oh snap! Today we're going to talk about a photography site that turns into a passive income hustle. Now right off the bat let me just address something. Sometimes people say hey why don't you talk about stories that don't work or a story that has some pretty major challenges to it. Well my response is I actually do that all the time. Like story
after story there are all kinds of challenges and sometimes things don't work and then the person usually turns it around and does something different. I believe that adaptability and being willing to make a change is a predictor of success much more than just persistence. So with that in mind welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau and that story today that photography site story is all about a traffic engineer who begins shooting wedding photography himself. His goal is to make some cash on the side but then it is his niche tutorial website that earns the real money. And real money is in fact what he earns for
a while at least until it crashes and burns. So I'm going to tell you about that. I'm going to remind you don't build your business on someone else's platform unless you can accept the risks. So two important lessons there and also talk about why it's okay sometimes to not be strategic. All of that is illustrated well throughout the story. I think you'll
like this one. So do stay tuned. Let me say thank you to today's sponsor and on with the show. Ryan Oakley is a man who loves his day job. He's a traffic engineer which means he helps to set speed limits, build strategic crosswalks and make intersections safer. But
while he loves the steady income a few years ago he wanted a bit more. A thousand dollars more to be precise. He had a goal. He also had a hobby one that is constantly evolving with all sorts of new technology coming out every year. That hobby is photography and a new camera lens had come out that Ryan was captivated by. The only thing was there wasn't
an extra thousand dollars in the family budget to splurge on his hobby. So naturally he found a way to make that extra thousand dollars. First he started advertising himself to his friends and family as a part-time wedding photographer. It turned out he was pretty good at it and he shot just over a dozen weddings over a couple of years. Enough to pay for that lens many times over which he eventually got. But that's not our story because something
else happened along the way that Ryan didn't expect and that something turned out to be a lot more profitable. Ryan had received some requests from other photographers about how he made his website. So he made a video tutorial for the program he used SmugMug and published it on a blog for anyone else to learn from. When he wrote that blog he attached some affiliate links for people interested in buying the product. He didn't anticipate much to happen there. But if people visited and clicked through and then made a purchase he'd earn a commission.
Well something happened. In fact a lot of things happened. Ryan still remembers the rich satisfaction he felt when a complete stranger left a comment on the blog saying how grateful they were for his tutorial. He can also remember the satisfaction of that first affiliate sale. Within a few months Ryan's video tutorial was ranking number one on both Google and YouTube for a few popular search terms. His monthly affiliate earnings
jumped to $500 a month then $1,000 a month and they just kept growing. Ryan quickly learned all he could about affiliate marketing. Clearly it was something he should focus on. A couple more years and dozens of popular tutorials on photography business tools later Ryan was making upwards of $10,000 a month on the side through this affiliate income and nearly all of it was profit. Sounds amazing right? Well it was amazing at least until disaster struck.
One day Ryan received an email from Smugmug the software program he was promoting as an affiliate. By that time he had a relationship with some of the folks at the business so he anticipated a friendly hello. But what he discovered in the email wasn't friendly and it wasn't good news at all. Smugmug was altering its affiliate agreement significantly. Instead of allowing affiliates to take commissions from people already signed up for their free trial the company would only pay out for a hundred percent new leads. This was a huge
hit to Ryan's income many of his readers were coming for help after they had signed up for the free trial and they realized they needed some help to get things going. That made perfect sense to Ryan but Smugmug didn't see it the same way. Just like that Ryan's side project went from earning at least several thousand dollars a month to earning more like several hundred. He was furious but he also knew he had no control over the situation. He realized he would have to reframe that situation and see his affiliate income as a bonus rather than something he was entitled to. It took some time but that realization helped him move
forward without a lot of bitterness. He looked back at all the money he made and he said well you know I'd like to keep it going of course but that was still pretty good. His blog and his website are still up. Ryan is still creating video tutorials once in a while for tools and software that photographers use in their business. Most of his content still ranks high on Google and YouTube. He admits he's not done a great job with scaling
the hustle since losing those big bonus paychecks. It's always been an on the side thing for him whenever he had time and he imagines it'll stay that way. He still appreciates the positive feedback he gets from viewers and he says that the best part of the whole thing is well it's gravy money. That's what he calls this affiliate income. Outside of his paycheck from the day job and with very little hands-on work Ryan is building an emergency fund for his family and helping his ex-wife pay for nursing school. It's not ten thousand dollars
a month anymore but it's still making a real difference. Okay there are a lot of things to take away from this story. And they're all kind of related. They're kind of lessons in gratitude. Lessons in side hustling. Lessons in not counting on anything. Just to kind
of start with an overall framing point you know just because something works for a while doesn't mean it's gonna work forever. And that can be okay you know so as I was working on the story I was reminded of a similar one we did by episode 472. We called that the Netflix of restaurants side hustle earns $50,000 a year. That was a story of a guy who built his business on Google search rankings. And then one day Google changed its algorithm and he lost more than half of his business. Like the value of his business was cut in
half essentially because Google stopped sending so many people to his website. And just like today's story he ended up okay too. He had to retool his model. He had to get to work and do some things differently. But it certainly was a bad day to wake up and realize oh like you've just lost half the value of this thing that you've been building. So there are two
different perspectives here and they're both accurate. It just kind of depends on what you want to do. You know first lesson and first perspective is if you build your business on someone else's platform be prepared to be disappointed when it's all taken away from you. Like this guy in today's story Ryan you know he was making up to $10,000 a month and all of a sudden it went to several hundred dollars a month. Bam you know just like that.
And I've heard this same kind of story over and over with different platforms with people who build their business on Facebook or Instagram or even a direct selling site like eBay or some kind of affiliate story like we had today. If there are some key elements of your business that you don't have control over and somebody else can take them away well it does happen that they actually do come and take it away. That's what these companies can do. So if you want to insulate yourself from this risk then you need a different business model or in this case maybe he could have had some different affiliate partners. I don't know if that would have been possible given the niche that he was working in and the reason why people were visiting his site etc. But that might have been a way to kind of mitigate
that risk. The second lesson or the second perspective is just to say you know what it's okay that this happened because he made all that money in the first place like that was great. No it didn't continue forever but still you know nice work while you can get it. And I often use this phrase like if you see money lying under a rock you should pick it up. You don't have to ask yourself a thousand questions about it. Like if you see an opportunity
to make some money using your skills. You know you've got the time you're able to make it work. Does it matter if it's not sustainable? Does it matter if it's not scalable? I would say for a lot of people in a lot of situations it doesn't matter at all. So the reframing
that he did at the end was really key because instead of being bitter and saying like oh why is this company taking away this this opportunity for me to make money. He said you know what like I wish it was still going of course but you know here we are and let's look back and I've been able to save this money and I'm still making some money just not as much maybe I can find a different way to make money next. That is my overall perspective but of course I also empathize and appreciate the pain point of seeing something taken away you know all of a sudden just like that. Maybe that's why you need a side hustle for your side hustle. You know that gives me an idea maybe I should start side hustle side hustle school which might get a little meta so perhaps that's not one of my greatest ideas perhaps I should stop here and sign off. Thank you so much for listening today. Thanks for being
part of this community. Don't forget inspiration is good but inspiration with action is better and today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/544. That is for episode 544. Much more is on the way. I hope you will continue to join me. Do subscribe, do tell your friends. I'll be
here for you every day with a different story. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
