This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's listener is looking for a template to make a website that has some specific functionality. Now in her case, she's looking for something that's kind of a combination of Craigslist and Airbnb. She'll explain it a bit more in her question. But she's wondering where can she find something like this? Does a template exist?
Is there a way to not reinvent the wheel? Or I guess, you know, reinvent Craigslist and Airbnb in this case. Now I want to address this question from, you know, first of all, her specific question, but also just more generally speaking, you know, do these kinds of templates or pre-made, I don't know, software functionality, do they exist? Now longtime listeners know that I'm careful about saying that anything is easy. I never want to say, oh, this is so easy, anybody can do it.
I think things can be simplified. I think this is worth doing, et cetera, but it's not so easy. Especially when it comes to programming or doing something technical that will require long-term support. However, in this case, at least in terms of this direct question of what we're trying to do, there might actually be an easy way. Okay, so I'm excited to share the answer with our listener and with you.
I mean, it also kind of reminded me just maybe a lesson for myself that I pass on to you as well, if you're doing any kind of online course or any kind of teaching education broadly speaking. The lesson, which I'm applying to myself here, is to be careful about skipping steps. You know, sometimes we make assumptions and we're like, I don't know, we just kind of say something without realizing that there's actually multiple layers to it. And somebody who's not familiar or doesn't have a background in whatever topic, you know, we're talking about is actually going to be like, wait a second, you missed something there. So I'll talk a little bit more about that in the answer to her question.
It's a really good question, so let me get out of the way and let her ask it. Message from our sponsor, first of all, and then Audra's question, and then my attempt at a helpful answer. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Audras from Los Angeles, California, and I've been listening to your podcast for several years now. I've been thinking about starting a side hustle, but my main roadblock is setting up a website with functionality for listing rooms for rent, writing reviews, and possibly exchanging payment. Think of it as a hybrid between Craigslist and Airbnb.
In episode 1291, you showcased a different Chris who scoured the web looking for a pre-made piece of software that he could simply purchase as is for his side hustle, which was similar to Upwork. You said that you can find a lot of these different sites that allow you to pay to create a clone of an existing site's functions using your own branding. I was wondering, what specifically are these softwares that you are referring to? Is there a specific term I should be googling? I don't have any coding experience and have only dabbled recently in using Wix to make a website, but I don't think that's what you were referring to.
A pointer in the right direction would be super helpful. I look forward to hearing your response. Thanks Chris for sharing inspiring and motivational stories daily. - All right, thank you so much, Audris. Yeah, first of all, thank you so much.
I appreciate that. I'm glad you're out there. And the question is really good because basically you're kind of holding me accountable here to what I mentioned in terms of not skipping steps. And for our listeners, if you didn't hear the previous episode that she refers to, that's okay, you don't need to. What she's talking about here is her goal of setting up a website, as she described, for listing rooms, writing reviews, and maybe exchanging payment.
Okay, so how would you go about doing that if you don't want to build it from scratch and you're not a coder? So let's do a couple of examples here. First of all, imagine a forum. Okay, now I know Audris doesn't wanna make a forum, but this is a good example that might be easier to start with. If you wanted to have your own forum, you could hire a programmer to build it from scratch, but with so many forums already out there, like many of which look similar in terms of layout and user experience for all kinds of different topics, don't you think that there is an existing structure or template that you can use to customize and obviously modify in your own way, and indeed there is.
So the way that you find that is, I just did this to kind of verify it, and in fact it works, if you search forum software, then you'll find lots of options, like lots of results of review sites, the top 10 applications for starting your own forum, lots of companies trying to sell their software, like some low-price stuff, some free stuff, some high-end stuff, as I said, lots of options. So the same is true for other things, such as job boards or online auctions or app templates. For any of those ideas, like if you wanna make a job board, there's lots of other job boards out there, so there are services you can license to build your own, so search for that, job board software basically, or start my own job board, something like that. You might also wanna search for private label or white label, followed by what you're actually looking for. Now these aren't one size fits all, of course, so whether your idea will fit entirely within the constraints of the system or template is something you'll need to look at.
So for Audra specifically, we think about what she is looking for, I have two suggestions. First one is to look for classified ad software. Classified ad sounds like an old newspaper thing, but classified ad is basically kind of built on this Craigslist model, and there are a lot of options for that. There are classified WordPress templates, which are very customizable, you know, and that might be a good starting point. The other thing you can do is just search, make a site like, and then followed by, you know, the site that you're trying to emulate.
Make a site like Airbnb, make a site like eBay, and for each of these things and many others, you're gonna find a lot of resources. Now it's not necessarily going to be simple, it's not like the answer that you need is gonna be the number one answer there, right, because you might have to do further research, but I think that's gonna be a good direction to go down. So when you're not sure what to do or how to find something like this, I think that is your starting point. So I hope that is helpful to Audra and somebody else out there, and remember, don't skip steps. All right, thank you so much for listening, everybody, and remember, if you have a question, well, you just go to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
We'd love to hear from you and know what you're up to. Thank you so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from The Onward Project.
