This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Here are a few questions you need to ask whenever you have a potential side hustle idea. And to be precise, you should probably have an answer for them, not just ask them. But ask, answer, who is this for? What's it all about? Can I explain it in one sentence?
Can I explain my side hustle idea in one sentence? If you've read the money tree, you might be familiar with what I call the grandparent test. Next question, is there sufficient demand? And as I wrote that out, I realized that's kind of business speak, which I try to avoid. So let's call it, do people want this?
Pretty simple, right? Do people want this? And last but not least, do they want it enough to pay for it? So to recap, who is this for? Can I explain it in one sentence?
Do people want this? And do they want it enough to pay for it? And that last question is key because parting with our money often feels painful. We don't want to spend money. Our default mode is to not buy something.
So for a marketer, which that would be you, to overcome that resistance, you need a compelling offer. And in today's story, a listener is wondering about her crafty side hustle idea. Is it worth trying? If so, what's the next step to making it reality? We'll look at this question with a bit of that model in mind, just kind of breaking it down.
Do people want it? Do they want it enough to pay for it, et cetera? So we're gonna hear from our caller in just a moment after this shout out to our sponsor. Thanks, sponsor, and thanks, listeners. [Music]
Hi, this is Nadi from Sacramento, California.
I just started listening and I love the show. I'm afraid to start a side hustle, but I know I need to start before I'm ready. So here it goes. My side hustle idea is a user website for crafters to exchange craft projects so crafters can finish their unfinished objects, UFOs, in order to move on to other creative projects. I also want to provide a service where master crafters, myself included, can offer to finish, start, or fast forward projects for a fee.
My question for Chris, is this a good side hustle? How do I monetize? Could I start something like this on WordPress? How do I get users for the site? Google advertising?
Let me know, Chris, if I'm barking up the wrong side hustle tree. Thanks and onward with the revolution. [Music]
Hey, Nadi, thank you so much for the question. Thank you as well for listening in Sacramento. This is a really interesting question, actually.
And the short version, which we will go into some more detail here, but the short version is I can see strengths and weaknesses of this idea. I'd be really curious to see what happens, actually. So on the strength side, this is a large, active, committed market, crafters are passionate. They spend a lot of hours, they spend a lot of time, a lot of attention on their hobbies, so that's good. Now the weakness is, at least one of them, and there's probably more strength as well, the weakness is I know this market will spend money on supplies.
I also know that they have a lot of those UFOs, unfinished objects, but will they spend money on master crafters completing those projects for them? That's what I'm not sure about. And Nadi knows the crafter world much better than me. Probably some of our listeners do as well. So if you're in that group, maybe you have a sense of it.
I am not sure myself. I tend to think people get frustrated with their projects. Yes, they would be happy for someone to finish them, but are they going to go through the effort of actually paying for it and then presumably mailing that project off or otherwise connecting with someone to take it over in some fashion? I don't know. It almost seems like some kind of virtual help or assistance might be better, but then of course I realize that's problematic as well.
So I don't know. I guess between the two ideas or the two parts of the idea, I think the exchange part is a little bit more interesting. What Nadi was saying about a user website for crafters to exchange craft projects. That feels like there could be a few different ways to structure it. And as for the technology, yes, it absolutely could run on WordPress.
WordPress is very versatile. You can do a lot of stuff with WordPress. The bigger question though is how? Like, yes, it can run on WordPress, but it's like pointing to a plot of land and saying, can you build a house on this land? Well, yes, you can, but there's still a lot of stuff to figure out at that point, right?
So you gotta make sure you think through that and get some, I would get some specific advice from a web developer before proceeding. It's the kind of thing where it could be easy with the right plugin or service, or it could be a ton of work and also a ton of cost trying to build it custom. So it really just depends on what you're trying to do there and what the best solution for it is. As for where users come from, and by the way, Nadi asked a lot of good questions. So really smart to do that.
If you're leaving a question, feel free to leave more than one. And I might not be able to get to all of them, but in this case, they all kind of work together. So in an ideal world, users should come from existing craft networks. There are a lot of craft networks like Ravelry. I mean, Etsy is an e-commerce platform that's selling handcrafted items, but a lot of crafters are there.
There's probably many others that I just don't know the names of. I think that's where those users should come from in an ideal world. I don't think you should spend money on Google ads, certainly not at first, but maybe ever for this kind of project. With that kind of online advertising, you wanna have a really clear connection between what you're spending and what people are purchasing. So you wanna be able to say, hopefully I'm spending $100 and I'm making $120, or at least I'm spending $100 and I'm making $100 and I'm building up my user base.
And at least in terms of how the idea has been explained thus far, I don't think that's the right approach. So like I said, I'm curious to know what will happen with it. I can see strengths, weaknesses, pros, cons, et cetera, which is often true, of course. So a lot of it depends on your motivation. Like how much do you want to see this happen?
Is it one of many ideas or is it the idea that you are excited about and keep thinking about at night and you wake up and you're thinking about that idea? If so, it doesn't matter what I think or what anybody else thinks. Like why not try it out and see how far you can take it? Or at least see what happens. Thank you again, Naughty.
Keep us posted. And listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch or make progress on their projects. Thank you so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
