Mom Finds Love As Dating App Ghostwriter

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

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What's up, greetings. Welcome to a brand new week on the program. The program is called Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Every day I'm bringing you a different story of someone who does something a little bit different to make extra money.

It's not only about money, it's also about doing something for yourself that you're excited about, that you believe in. Maybe you never considered yourself an entrepreneur, but there is a project out there waiting for you. You can pursue that project by using a skill you already have without spending a lot of money. Today's story fits well within that model. When a stay-at-home mom displays a talent for helping her friends with online dating, she swipes right on a side hustle that becomes a perfect match.

So much so that she's now on track to earning six figures from dating app Ghost Writing. That's correct, six figures from dating app Ghost Writing. You'll hear the whole story very soon, but listen to this part first. She said, "You know, I was nervous about doing something new and I had common fears like what if it fails? But at the end of the day, I knew fear of failure wasn't a reason not to try.

So my advice to everyone is to try it. Whatever your idea is, worst case scenario, it doesn't work out. Better to try than not and have regrets later." So listen, as we begin this week, I know there's somebody out there thinking this way. They're thinking like, what if it fails? And that's the reason why they're not actually starting.

But as you just heard, and as you'll hear in this story, and as I try to illustrate every day in one way or another, failure isn't a reason not to try. So take this to heart as we jump into the new week, Mom Finds Love as Dating App Ghost Writer. That story is coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]

In 2015, Meredith Golden was a stay-at-home mom living in New York City. With two young sons to take care of, her life was busy.

And living in a bustling city didn't make things any easier. Meredith's friends, however, had problems of a different kind, the dating kind. Meredith herself had been married for over 10 years, so she was out of the scene. In fact, smartphones and dating apps weren't even a thing the last time she was single. Even so, she had her own way of communicating and her flirting skills were on point.

These were talents her friends loved to tap into. They'd often found themselves asking for advice on how to proceed with someone they'd matched with on a dating app. Meredith always seemed to have the right banter or flirty comment at the ready. By following her advice, her friends often found dating success. After receiving praise, Meredith wondered if this specialized skill of hers could be useful outside her circle of friends.

Luckily, she was about to enter a period of life where she could test the idea. Her youngest son had just started preschool, which freed up a few hours every day. So she decided to try offering dating app ghost writing. On a whim, she wrote a Facebook post. Within three days, Meredith felt like the bell of the ball.

The response was tremendous. She received 8,700 likes and comments. The post had gone semi-viral and spread well beyond the people she knew. It seemed like a lot of people out there needed help navigating the treacherous world of dating apps. With that many likes rushing through, Meredith felt like it could be love at first sight between her and her idea.

She was definitely onto something and had tapped into an unmet need in the dating world. She thought it might even be worth turning the idea into a serious relationship. She launched her service and called it Spoon Meat Spoon. She already had her first client through that viral Facebook post, so she started working on what she'd actually do for them. At first, Meredith would merely try to replicate what she did for her friends.

It went a little something like this. She would review the client's dating app profile and offer advice on improving it. That might be by updating their bio or improving the photos. Then Meredith would take control of the profile and handle all of the back and forth messaging with their matches. Soon enough, that first client was going on more dates and having a great time.

Word of mouth spread, and before she knew it, she had too many clients to handle. It was often working up to 12 hours a day. That was awesome at first, until she realized she wasn't valuing her time enough and charging too little for what it took. Now to be clear, it was fun. She enjoyed the work.

In fact, she couldn't believe that people were paying her to do it. But she also knew the honeymoon period would wear off soon. And she didn't want to be stressed or overworked. So she came up with a system of packages to maximize her time and offer the best possible service. Her top tier clients would pay $2,000 a month for a face-to-face meeting and then daily communication about the engagement and success of their profiles.

You heard me right, $2,000 a month. Alternatively, clients could pay a smaller fee for one-off advice about their profiles as well as some messaging tips. The former is a complete full service, while the latter is more of an online dating profile tune-up. While these prices may seem high, Meredith only chose to work with relatively wealthy professionals. That was her market, those who had the money to spend.

She decided she would much rather work with a few clients paying her a lot than a lot of clients paying her a little. Now, some of this may seem a little unromantic at first, but Meredith works very closely with her clients to make sure she is authentic and genuine. She does this by learning in detail about who they are, their likes, their dislikes, et cetera. She also spends a lot of time going back and forth, keeping them up to date about communication with the matches. Now, so far, all of her clients and their romantic matches have been very happy.

Meredith has been featured in several media publications, including the New York Times, and of course, Satasil School. She's moving up now. The exposure continues to bring in clients on a regular basis, and by only taking on 10 to 12 clients at any one time, she's able to remain focused and provide the best possible ghostwriting quality. She still finds herself incredibly busy, sometimes working all day and into the evening. On the bright side, this romantic side hustle has proven to be quite lucrative.

Meredith is on track to easily clear six figures this year. What started as a hobby helping friends has become a money-making project she loves. [Music]

Like I said recently, we're more than 1,000 episodes in continuing to find ideas that most people have never thought about in terms of making money, in terms of doing something different, different for yourself that's going to help you get ahead and also help other people at the same time, especially with a project like this, which is, of course, a smart idea, followed by, I think, even smarter tweaks, especially those pricing tiers, making those packages. Look, this is the number one thing you can do with any service business. Whatever it is that you're selling, whether it's online dating, ghostwriting, or something more conventional, offering a limited choice, not a huge amount of choice, but a couple of options, two, three, four options of packages.

It's the number one thing you can do to increase revenue and also handle that whole situation of scale, of how you don't want to be working 12 hours a day, you also want to have a life. Another story also reminds me of Vowmuse, a feature we did long ago, episode 271. Writing Duo makes a vow to improve wedding speeches. This is like a ghostwriting service for wedding speeches or toasts. So maybe they could team up.

First of all, you find your match with the dating app, Ghostwriter. And then when it comes time to make a speech at the wedding, you've got this other partnership to hire somebody to write your wedding speech. Just a thought. All right, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

We've got more stories coming up each day. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1024, 1024. That's it for me, but I will be back tomorrow and I hope you will join in. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.

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- From the Onward Project.