Online Memorial Services Are the New Funerals

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Who is going to disrupt or at least adapt the obituary business? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. These days, most people don't read newspapers, at least not in the way they used to. This change has forced a lot of industries and professions to adapt more than just journalists.

So for example, web comics have become a thing. Online classified ads and auctions have largely replaced newspaper ads. But what about obituaries? Honoring a loved one who has passed away in the form of an obituary or obit has traditionally been a service that newspapers have provided, often exclusively. But in today's story, an Australian communication strategist creates an online memorial service.

Some might say this is an overdue service. It should have happened a long time ago. But whatever you say about it, understand that it's currently bringing in more than $250,000 a year. Online memorial services are the new funerals. Stay tuned for the story.

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Andrew Ranger is a serial side hustler. He made an iPhone app that did NDA agreements. He was involved with a crowdsource website for coming up with company brand names. And somewhere in there, he developed a payments platform for cafes and restaurants. He did all these things while working his day job at an advertising agency in their marketing department.

Andrew is a strategist. He likes working hard. And while it is nine to five, he noticed the rise of publishing tributes and fan pages on Facebook for people who passed away. However, he also noticed that these pages weren't always respectful or built for a specific need. He also wondered about the people who die that aren't even on Facebook by choice.

Some of them might cringe at the thought of being on there when they die. He also saw the gradual decline of traditional newspapers where tribute notices and obituaries are commonly placed. This led him to creating the side hustle we'll look at today, Sky Memorials. Andrew said he built this platform for people to create memorial web pages for loved ones in hopes that they would remain online cherished forever. Scaling his operation, he's now built a reverse publishing platform that allows newspapers and funeral directors to white label their own online obituary sections in a modern and customizable experience.

The business is going well, very well in fact. How did he grow this side hustle into $250,000 in annual sales? Well, Andrew said he started with a simple memorial page builder that was easy to use and worked for things like signing a guest book and adding memories or life stories. He didn't realize how many people would appreciate these pages. Many of them have 150 to 200 contributing members.

At first, the pages were free. Then he began charging a small price, just $75 for a page that would be hosted indefinitely. Since his first sale in 2016, Andrew has successfully scaled Sky Memorials into that $250,000 a year juggernaut. However, he still considers himself in growth mode, which is why he's content to reinvest many of the profits back into the business. His biggest strategy for growing sales was looking at the market and seeing where he could find resellers.

In fact, he focused his efforts on building a network of salespeople who would all make commissions from his product. He was mindful of a statistic he'd seen that said 40% of money spent on new companies goes to Google and Facebook ads. So he was convinced there was a better way. Instead, he built up sales channels through funeral directors and is now moving to launch with newspapers who will use his service for their own obituary sections and for reselling Sky Memorial pages to their customers. We asked him if he faced any challenges when explaining to potential customers why they should pay money to have an online memorial for their loved ones, since this doesn't feel like something that is a common experience yet.

He said that showing people the benefit of what his service provides is key. Again, Sky Memorials isn't expensive. The $75 fee includes the building and hosting of your page indefinitely. Also, since he's working with resellers, many funeral directors give the product to customers at no charge as a value add. So in other words, they are paying the bill.

As for what's next, Andrew says he's scaling fast and he now has a goal to take him into every single country worldwide. By reworking an age-old service to honor the passing of loved ones, he's able to do well for himself while doing good for others. This was another example of an interesting product or interesting service, in fact, that I had never thought of before, but once I discovered it and read about it, it made perfect sense, right? Newspapers are dying, or at least they are transitioning, let's say, because I still read the news pretty frequently, but I don't read it through a paper newspaper. So it's only natural that just as comics have evolved to web comics and classified ads have gone into eBay and other online auctions or Craigslist, Gumtree, other local services, it's just as logical that somebody would come along and think, "How can we do a better job with obituaries?" So well done to Andrew.

I'm curious to see how this develops in the future. It definitely seems like something that can really grow. And here's a fun fact as well. Speaking of growing his business, Andrew went to Manila in the Philippines in January 2018 on a hunch. The country has a really large Catholic population and collectively is a colossal social media user, one of the biggest in Asia.

So many people in the Philippines using Facebook and other online platforms. So he figured he'd have a good market there. He set up some meetings in advance using Facebook and also just emailing people directly. And he now has offices and a full sales staff working with 35 funeral home locations in the Philippines who use his software. So really smart to consider where might be a good market for my product that I'm not thinking about.

And for all those reasons, the Philippines has indeed been a good market for him. So as we approach the end of the year, my encouragement to you is, is there something that you're thinking about? Do you have an idea for a service that could change the world or at least, if not change the world, change someone's life? Could it make somebody's life a little bit better? If so, perhaps it could be a side hustle.

Thank you so much for listening today. The show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/721. That is for episode 721. I'll be back again tomorrow as we enter our final week of 2018. Yeah, can't believe it.

So much is on the way for 2019. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.