Product Manager Profits From Carnivorous Plants

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

Welcome to a new week of the program, and also an all new topic, something we have never before considered in more than 1,070 episodes. That topic is carnivorous plants. Yep, that's right, everybody's got a thing, and that thing can be monetized. Well, in this story, a PayPal employee turns his childhood obsession with carnivorous plants into an online resource. He then earns an income with a marketplace that doesn't leaf anyone out.

At the end of the episode, I'll also give you some tips on engaging with a micro community. So glad you're here. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School, and the story is coming up after this message from our sponsor. David Feframan takes his hobby seriously. He's the type of person that doesn't do anything halfway.

When he gets interested in something, it becomes an obsession. He's also always been business-minded, even from a young age. In fact, his very first side hustle was selling Pokemon cards to fellow students in elementary school. Around the same time he was obsessing over Pikachu, he discovered carnivorous plants. These are plants that obtain their nutrients by trapping insects and sometimes small animals instead of from soil.

The most famous, of course, is the Venus flytrap. But there are hundreds of other species. His interest began when a friend brought one to school as a science fair project. That same day, David begged his mom to take him to the nursery so he could get his own. He was instantly hooked.

Over the years, these fascinating plants became one of David's true passions. He dedicated himself to learning everything there is to know so that he could grow many different types. Sure, that Venus flytrap was the most popular, but he also ventured into sundews, pitchers, cobra lilies, and dozens of others that most people have never heard of. A community of growers helped David foster his hobby. As he got a little older, he'd attend local meetups to learn more from experienced members.

Within that group, he would sell or trade drawings of plants to obtain species he desired but didn't yet have. In time, it became a true love affair between David and these misunderstood, flesh-eating shrubs. It was a love that didn't wane over time. Fast forward to 2017, and David was doing some online research regarding the plants. But he noticed it was hard to find useful information.

Tips on how to grow the plants, what sort of nutrients they preferred, and what climate they liked were severely lacking. At the time, David was working remotely as a product manager for PayPal. Gaining technical knowledge and that ability to work remote were huge perks of the job. He decided to use his technical prowess to create an online resource. Working with easy-to-digest info about everything related to all different species of carnivorous plants.

He registered the domain carnivorousplantresource.com, and it cost him almost nothing. Since he did all the work himself, his only costs were for that domain and hosting, around $100 total. He spent the next several months filling the site with content. His goal was to make this the only resource anyone would need to learn about the topic. A sort of Wikipedia for carnivorous plants.

Something so useful that he himself would reference it when needed. A place to devour anything necessary to become a carnivorous expert. Since there were very few quality resources online for this topic, Google began to reward David for his efforts. They rewarded him with traffic through their search engine. On top of that growth, the online carnivorous plant community, such as it was, helped spread the word that David's resource was the place to go.

David puts the success down to the size of the community. As he says, niche communities are small by definition, and word travels fast in those small communities. They will share on Facebook groups and forums and recommend the site to like-minded friends. The site kept growing into 2018, but a problem emerged in David's work life. His whole team at PayPal lost their jobs due to a corporate restructuring.

Rather than jump straight back into another job, David had the luxury of taking a bit of time to explore opportunities. One of those opportunities was expanding his beloved resource site and turning it into a true side hustle, something that wouldn't just be a hobby, but would also make money. But how would he do that? He knew that he didn't want to spam his audience with product reviews. He thought they might lose faith in him if he did.

So instead, he opted to try and create a marketplace, somewhere that anyone and everyone interested in carnivorous plants could come to buy and sell their own plants and related items. To test this concept, he again used his technical knowledge to install some marketplace software on the site. To start, he went all the way back to his childhood roots and listed some artwork for sale. It would be a good way to test the software, as well as the interest of his fellow plant lovers. Would they devour the idea of a marketplace or regurgitate it?

Turned out it was the former. He quickly sold something through the site, considered the concept validated, and ended the day with a happy dance. Now that he was confident people would actually purchase the site, he had to come up with a business model. He landed on a commission-based structure. Look like this, the marketplace would function like a miniature eBay.

Users could list things like artwork, seeds, growing supplies, and appliance themselves for sale. Visitors could then purchase the items from one another, and in exchange, David would receive a small fee. Well, those small fees can really add up, because in 2019, so far David's marketplace has generated over $30,000 in sales. He's on track to earn commissions of over $6,000 and is confident that number will only grow in 2020. Again, this is all from an online marketplace focused on carnivorous plants.

From a childhood hobby to a now successful side business, David's story is proof that with a little effort and a lot of passion, anything grows. All right, as promised, I got some tips here on engaging with a micro community. These come from David, by the way. I really appreciate David helping us out with this story, telling us all about carnivorous plants. I mean, I learned something new just about every day here, at least a couple times a week that I'm like, "Wow, I had no idea this was a thing." But it is a thing.

Just as I said at the top, it's a thing that can be monetized, just like most topics, hobbies, passions, and interests. Okay, so a couple tips here. First of all, he says, "Remember that engaging with a community means that you're hopping onto a two-way street. For every request you have of your members, they'll have questions and requests for you. See everyone as you would a friend, be empathetic, responsive, enthusiastic, and helpful, just as you would hope a friend would be for you.

So many community members have answered my questions in the past, but I see it as my responsibility to pass on that kindness and help everyone who reaches out to me to learn and grow, literally and figuratively, to the best of my abilities." And then next, this is interesting, he says, "Limit your customer communication touchpoints." This sounds a bit counterintuitive because you may think that you should be everywhere your customers are at all times, but for me, going deep on a few channels has worked better. Limiting myself to a few popular options forces me to communicate more effectively, it allows for more timely responses, and reduces the switching costs associated with jumping back and forth between channels. This isn't an excuse to neglect new important platforms, but rather a guideline to keep from getting distracted by every shiny object. I think that is really interesting, we could do a whole extended cut or long-form episode just on those two things, so I hope somebody out there who's interested in a micro-community, some kind of niche topic, some kind of wild and crazy thing that nobody else understands, but you know there's a community out there that is interested, that you can serve as an expert or an authority in. Hopefully you'll think about that, how to engage, but also limit your customer communication touchpoints.

All right, lots of stuff today, lots of stuff coming up. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including all the links you could ever need for carnivorous plants, are at sidehustleschool.com/1073, episode 1,073. Thanks so much for listening, I'll be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.

from the Onward Project.