This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
>> Hey there, what's up my friends? It's a little school community, so glad you're out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of bringing you these different stories every day, and stories, questions, and answers. Throwback Thursday, a classroom series that we debuted at the beginning of the year.
Speaking of that classroom series, it's been going out every Monday for the first six months of the year, and for the second half of the year, we're going to make a change and do that classroom series every other week. Just a heads up on that, the classroom series continues, but it will now be bi-monthly, is it bi-weekly? I always get that confused. It's not going to be twice a week, it's going to be every other week. Those listening in real-time today is Monday.
It is the 6th of July, episode 1283, and guess what? Listen, I want you to be able to start something. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We'll talk about it more in some upcoming episodes. But I really want to know if you're stuck, what are your reasons for being stuck?
Why have you not started? Why have you not started your project? If you fit that description, if you're like, "Yeah, I've been trying, but I haven't been able to make progress." I would love to know why, and I hope we can do something to work through those obstacles, those challenges, whatever is in your way. More of that as we go along. In today's episode, a listener has an idea to sell gift boxes to new moms.
Should she start selling on Etsy? Should she make her own website or do something else? That's what we're going to talk about. Got a shout out from our sponsor, then we're going to hear from Sarah, and then dive into the question, "How should I launch a gift box service for new moms?" Hi, Chris. This is Sarah from Florida, and I've been listening to your show for a while.
I finally had an idea I'm passionate about based on my personal experience. I'm thinking about starting a side hustle in the gift box market to appeal to new moms. Oftentimes, people forget that not only is a baby born, but the mom is born too, and she could also use some TLC. My question as I begin my research process is, do you think it's wise to start a new venture on a platform such as Etsy with a captive audience, or do you think it makes more sense to build your own website and work to drive traffic through social media ads, etc? Or is it perhaps both?
Thanks and look forward to hearing your answers as I build out my idea. Hey, Sarah, what's up? Thank you so much for listening. I think this is a great idea. We had a story recently about someone doing something like this.
Episode 915, the mom box subscription offers postpartum recovery products. Just as a reminder, in case anybody is new, when I say somebody has been doing this before, that doesn't mean don't do it. It often means, there's a market for this. There are people willing to pay for it. It's great that there's one service out there.
I'm going to provide something that is a little bit different, or at least to different customers, and so on. As to which path is best here in terms of the Etsy versus website thing, it's a yes and. I think you said something like, should it be both? I do think it could be both. I think experimenting on Etsy is worth it.
It's very low cost. You might learn something, you'll probably improve your skill in terms of copywriting, maybe in terms of images, maybe pricing, whatever it is, you'll learn something. But I also think in the long run, you definitely want your own website. That's because in the long run, you don't want to be dependent on Etsy or any other platform. Now, I don't necessarily believe that means that you should focus on social media ads, however, at least not at first.
A lot of people lose money doing that. I've had a bunch of questions recently about this, so you'll probably hear this and some other questions as well going forward. The time to spend money on advertising is when you want to amplify a successful product or just get more reach for something that's already working, like when your conversion rate is high. It's not usually a great way to introduce a new product and then sell that product and then grow your initial following all at once. Those are just too many goals to accomplish, unless you have an unlimited budget and even there, you're going to end up wasting a lot of that money.
So not necessarily social media ads, but I do think it would be good to experiment on Etsy and as well build out your own website. So good luck, let us know what happens. Listeners, if you have a question of your own, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Thank you so much for listening wherever you are in the world.
Don't stop believing. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. >> From the Onward Project.
