Copywriter Carves 140 Characters into $50,000 in Cash

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

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Hey, what's up, greetings. This is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School," and today is April the 1st. And you should be very skeptical at everything you hear today and everything you encounter online, because all over the internet today, people are gonna be messing with you, but not "Side Hustle School," because as I told you recently, every story you hear is true. You can look it up, and not only is it legit and verifiable, there's also something you can learn from it.

So today, you'll hear about a creative director and copywriter who makes an April Fool's joke that actually turns into a non-foolish, long-term source of income. Pretty cool story right after this. [Music]

Ever since high school, Brian Thompson was an aspirational entrepreneur. He had no shortage of ideas, and he dutifully wrote them down in a growing stack of notebooks. Sometimes he'd even buy a domain name, but then lose interest and move on to something else.

After he'd settled down and had kids, something clicked, and he began to take more action on his ideas. He created a line of Valentine's Day cards for people who hate Valentine's Day. A Kickstarter project for passive-aggressive notepads was successful in meeting its crowdfunding goal. These projects were small but encouraging, and as he continued to experiment in the off hours from his day job in advertising, he grew bolder and began looking back at those notebooks he'd filled up years earlier. His greatest idea to date started as a complete joke.

On April 1, 2014, Brian launched a site called permanentretweet.com, offering to turn digital tweets, those short posts on Twitter, into physical works of art. He hoped that people would have a laugh and share the site, but he didn't think anyone would truly value having their 140-character message engraved on a plaque, or at least he didn't think they'd value it enough to shell out real money for it. But they did. The site was picked up by several design blogs, and people began placing orders. Some as a gift for a friend or office mate, and others for themselves.

Without much publicity, all of a sudden he was making several hundred dollars a week. Even better, the orders didn't stop after the initial buzz died down. It helped that the finished pieces were essentially a marketing campaign. Most people displayed them on their desk or in another prominent location, and anyone who walked by would take notice and ask, "Hey, what's that?" After the site had been up for a while, Brian realized that the one-off sales were nice, but the real potential for this hustle came from doing larger orders for brands and events like weddings and bar mitzvahs. So he created a section on the site offering batch orders.

This took a lot of work since the production time for each piece was significant. So he started thinking about a big decision, choosing to invest in his own laser engraving machine. The machine cost $15,000, and Brian went back and forth over making the decision to purchase it. He finally asked himself, "What's the worst thing that could happen if this doesn't work out?" Since he already had some events booked, he decided to take the risk. Did it work out right from the beginning?

Nope. He had a big scare when he couldn't get the machine to work at his very first event. He says the 60 minutes he spent on the phone with the manufacturer felt like days, but they finally figured out the problem, the machine worked from there on out, and he continued to book events. Now, interestingly, around this time, Twitter itself got involved, first by sending him what he calls the world's nicest cease and desist letter. They didn't tell him to stop the project.

They just asked him to modify the name, so he changed it from permanentretweet.com to permanent140.com. They were actually so supportive that a few months later, they even hired him to work at one of their events. I mentioned that Brian started this hustle on April 1, 2014. We are now exactly three years later, and he is still operating the hustle in addition to other projects. How much is it worth to him?

Well, Brian keeps really good records, which makes my life easier because then I can give you specific figures. In 2016, he made $53,352.22. As I said, really specific records. Probably a simpler way to remember it is that this part-time April Fool's Day project brought in more than $50,000 in net income last year. That, my friends, is no joke.

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Side hustle school listeners, remember, be safe out there today. Everyone is trying to mess with you, and I love telling you fun stories, but even more than that, I love hearing about your projects and your ideas and how these stories might not only inspire you, but also help you to take action to create your own additional source of income. There is nothing foolish about that. If you'd like to learn more about Brian and laser engraving in general, you can see the detailed show notes that we have for every episode. Today's are at sidehustleschool.com/91.

On that site, you can also get a free Five Steps to Hustle course. I wanna make sure you feel well supported as you work on your hustle, and I look forward to telling your story on the show. Until then, I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is side hustle school, and I hope to see you tomorrow. [Music]