This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome back. This is Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Now, first of all, how about that chicken saddle story from yesterday? I'm aware that you're a busy person.
You could be listening to a lot of podcasts, all about politics, the news, all sorts of other topics, but really, where are you gonna hear about something like that? It's only on Side Hustle School. So if you wanna do me a quick favor, head to iTunes and leave a rating for the show. Now, that just takes a few seconds. All you have to do is basically click a button.
And if you're able to spend more than a few seconds, you could also leave a review. Obviously, you can say anything you want in your review, but ratings and reviews help other people discover the show. So I'll be very grateful for your endorsement. And I also think you'll like today's story. It's about how a specialized diet led to an eager fan base and a $2,000 a month side hustle.
[Music]
From the pastoral Gwibben Valley in Western Massachusetts, Amanda MacArthur runs a content marketing agency with her husband. She's been doing this for six years, managing a team and serving software companies worldwide. Amanda also loves to cook, and she has a special diet known as ketogenic, which is like paleo, but no starch or sugar, so even more hardcore. And a few years ago, she began posting recipes on a website, mostly so that she could keep up with them. Since she had a day job managing websites, she couldn't help but add a little bit of marketing zest to that free site, installing an email signup form.
But there wasn't a business model at all. It really was just a place where she posted her recipes and everything on the site was free. Without paying much attention, one day, Amanda noticed that more than 3,000 people had subscribed through that email signup form she'd installed. She thought that was interesting, but she was also busy at work, and she considered this a strictly personal project. But finally, when this number of subscribers reached 6,000, she sent out the first email to them.
She told them she was working on an ebook that included many of her recipes. Would some of them like to pre-order? Now, before we go on, I wanna make sure you understand why this is so unusual. Most people who are starting out trying to build a platform and an email list of interested prospects or readers, they would love to have 3,000 email signups. So this was definitely an untapped asset for Amanda that she began to pay attention to at this point.
So guess what happens after she sends that first email to the 6,000 people on the list? Well, to her surprise, but probably not to ours, a lot of them took her up on the offer to pre-order. By the end of the day, she'd made more than $1,000. Now, for the next few weeks, she lived in fear that everyone would call her a fraud and ask for a refund. But instead, the email she received were full of praise and thanks.
People said things like, I've received a lot of help through your site and I'm glad that I had the chance to pay it back, even a little, by picking up the ebook. Amanda began to more actively sell the ebook to website visitors and new subscribers. And then as the website continued to grow in popularity, Amanda was approached by a publisher who wanted to do a print book featuring more of her recipes and reaching a different audience. Now, between that and the original ebook, she's now making at least $2,000 a month from the project. She feels like she could invest more time in it and see it take off even further, but she's also happy with the day job.
So she does both. [Music]
So what can we learn from Amanda's success story? Well, first, specialized diets are huge markets. There are lots of specialized diets like paleo, vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, kosher, halal, raw foods, and people who follow these diets or traditions have very clear needs. For some of them, it might be a lifestyle choice, but a lot of them have legitimate medical or religious reasons why it's so important for them to follow these diets.
So for them, it's not something that they can be flexible about, it's a need. Now next, because they have this need, because they have this specific diet, these people also identify it with one another, and they're willing to spend money to support their beliefs and habits. So when they run into a website like Amanda's, it's almost like running into an old friend. And in this case, Amanda wasn't just marketing to the group of people who follow the ketogenic lifestyle, it was her way of life as well. She had the experience from her practice, and when she first began posting the recipes, it was initially for her own benefit.
And naturally, she built trust and goodwill with all of those subscribers, and when the time came to gently sell a collection of recipes, she was worried about it, but they responded well. A lot of them had just been waiting to purchase all this time. And the last thing I want to point out is that Amanda had a background in content management, so she did know a lot about things like search engine optimization and websites, but the way she constructed this project was actually quite simple. She used a platform called Gumroad to sell the eBooks, and Gumroad is a very easy resource. You can sign up for an account today and have the ability to sell all kinds of digital products right away.
So even though she had that expertise, she deliberately chose to make this project really simple, and it is something that anyone can set up and anyone can create. So once again, you have a specialized, fanatical group of people who all have the shared identity. You have the right person to provide solutions to those people, because this has been her life experience as well, and just a few hours a week, uploading recipes and maintaining the website. Well, it may not happen exactly like that for you, but these lessons are replicable. They apply in a lot of different markets, and to a lot of different side hustle ideas.
Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. So I hope you do one thing today to get closer to that freedom you're working toward. Now, by the way, the show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/11, and they include links to Gumroad, that same service that Amanda used, as well as her website, and if you're trying to figure out how to put together your website, I also have an offer for a $5 a month website host, and the same email service that I use. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau.
I hope to see you tomorrow with another awesome episode. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
