This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, this is Chris Guillebeau here on Side Hustle School. Now listen, I have a great story for you today. I know sometimes I say that, but I really think a lot of our listeners are gonna be particularly interested in what I have to tell you about today. Today's story is all about passive income, and I am very careful about using that phrase. First, because it's a bit overdone, and some of us have some skepticism when we hear it, perhaps rightly so, and also because a lot of things that are described as passive income aren't really all that passive, like there's a lot of active work they have to do to receive this passive money that comes in.
So I'm careful about using that description, but today we have a great example of something that really does fit that description. Today's story is about a guy in Australia who creates an online audio-based human anatomy course that goes on to earn about $800 each month with almost no work from him. And when I say $800 a month, I'm not just talking about for a few months, I'm talking about for years and years. So I love this story, and I think you will too. It's coming right up after this brief message.
[Music]
Today's story comes from someone who lives in my favorite city in the world. People often ask me what my favorite country is. I don't actually have one. I probably have five to 10 favorite countries. I also just love the active travel itself.
But whatever the number is, Australia would definitely be on that list. And Sydney, Australia is probably my overall favorite city anywhere. And Mike Binkovich is fortunate enough to live there. Mike has done a lot of different things. He's kind of like me, or I could say I'm kind of like him.
So we could focus this episode on one of several projects that he's done. But today we're gonna look at an online audio course he made that helps medical students memorize the human anatomy. And for the past seven years, he's earned an average of $800 a month from this course, which even though I didn't finish high school, the calculator on my computer tells me that is approximately $67,000. And all this time since starting it, he has improved the project very little, nor has he done much to maintain it. As I said, his story sounds a lot like my first decade of doing online projects before I had a blog, before I wrote books.
A lot of stuff I did didn't work at all, but a few things ended up kind of being like Mike's. And I also struggled with the curse of not being interested in continuous improvement, at least not until I came to my career as an author and this new project of speaking to you each day. For some of my other random projects, I finally decided to just get over that and focus on my strengths. And it sounds like Mike has a similar model. So I'm gonna tell you about his project, of course, what it is, how he made it.
But I actually wanna flip the usual structure of the show and tell you his advice to you first. So let's start with that. And by the way, his project is called Anatomonix, or maybe it's Anatomonix, something like that. So I might struggle with pronouncing it as we go along, but don't let my struggle affect your interpretation of this awesome project. Okay, so Mike's advice, he says I can't stress enough that it's not productive to overthink things.
Since I started this project, I've received a bunch of questions asking trivial stuff, like do you use analytics on your landing page? I have to believe people who ask these questions are spinning their wheels, not going anywhere. I've launched many side projects. I really believe the most important thing is to get something up. Even if the idea isn't brilliant or world-changing, in fact, it very well may not be for a side project.
Anatomonix went from idea to revenue in less than two months. And it probably could have even been shorter. All right, so keep that advice in mind. Let's talk about his process. Anatomonix is an audio system that helps medical students memorize the human anatomy.
There are a lot of parts to the body. I don't know if you know this, but it's not just like your arm and your hand, your fingers. Apparently there's like a whole bunch of other stuff. And if you're a medical student or a physical therapist, or probably some people in other professions too, you need to know this. And it's hard because you have to memorize so much.
So as I said, Mike had done a bunch of different stuff. He wanted to create a product, wasn't sure what it would be. So he was messing around one day and he used the keyword planner tool in Google, which I've talked about before. And he started with a really broad topic, more of a skill. And that topic or skill was memorization.
He said he'd always been interested in memorization. So he figured it would be a good place to start. So he went to this tool and typed in memorize. One of the suggestions that that tool gave him, which is essentially Google telling him what people are searching for, was memorize anatomy. So it showed him a lot of people were searching this phrase.
Then after considering some different options, outlining and coming up with ideas, Mike decided that combining anatomy mnemonics with audio could be a good approach. So that was the process of coming up with the idea. Now listen to his creative process of validating the idea before he did a ton of work. So before he made an actual product, he developed a pitch, which is often a great process to follow. You really think about the people who are gonna use this, how they're gonna benefit from it, and then write down a few lines or a few paragraphs, maybe some bullet points about why your solution is valuable to them.
So Mike wrote up a whole pitch. It started with something like, since learning anatomy is such a huge and daunting task, many of us learn through the use of mnemonics. A mnemonic is simply a memory aid, one that will help you recall information. But the problem is that when it comes to anatomy, there's so much to memorize, there are literally hundreds of mnemonics. So actually finding the mnemonics for everything and then memorizing those is almost as difficult as actually memorizing the whole thing, right?
So here he's pointing out the problem, leading to his solution. His solution is I've created this audio product. By using audio, you're able to learn up to 10 times faster than you would by reading the same information. I went on to explain a bit more about what he had in mind. So he's got this idea, he's got a pitch.
Now he needs to test the process. Remember, he hasn't created the course yet, but he creates a plain text, one page website using stock photography. And since he didn't have a product people could purchase, he just added an email form that said something like to begin your order, fill in your email address. And anyone who filled out that form just got a message that said, thanks for your interest. Right now we are upgrading the anatomotic system.
So it's not available for order, but as soon as it is, we're gonna send you an email to let you know. So the whole point of developing this is to see are people really interested in it? And not just are they interested in the topic, are they willing to complete at least that first process of kind of raising their hand and providing their email and saying, yes, this sounds like something I could commit to. Now it's not like he had a flood of visitors coming to this new one page text website, but over the course of about a month, he noticed that one in 25 people expressed interest, which ended up being 30 people at the end of the month. So just about one a day.
And that's when he decided to develop the course. Now at this point, I don't wanna suggest that everything in this process can be fast tracked. Mike was pretty smart and creative, but at this point he comes to this place in the process that actually does require a bit of work because he has to create this advanced pneumonic system. So he said that took about two months overall. He used upwork.com to hire a researcher and a voice artist.
We've talked about Upwork before, I'll link it up today in the notes. So the researcher's job is to go and collect all of the data according to the parameters that Mike has set. And then the voice actor's job is to record the pneumonics from the list compiled by the researcher and ultimately reviewed and completed by Mike. He built out that basic site a bit more, still pretty simple. He used WordPress to make the site and PayPal to take payments.
Those were both free. And after about two months of working off and on with the researcher and the voice artist, he then had his course ready for sale, an actual one, not the non-existent one that the website was describing before. And by the way, not only does he have a course for sale, he also has a list of people who had expressed interest. Remember those 30 people, those one in 25 site visitors that chose to complete the email form. Well, rather than just forget about those people and move on, he started with emailing them all with a 50% off offer.
And he basically said, "Thanks for your patience. "The newly upgraded course is now ready. "As a thank you for waiting, "you can purchase it for half off." And 10 of those 30 people made a purchase. That was about five or $600 right away. And very smart to capture some of those people before focusing on a more sustainable approach.
Now, after the launch, he took a few actions that had long-term results. And when I say long-term, I mean really long-term, like seven years later. He posted some videos on YouTube. He did some search engine optimization work. He wrote a few blog posts and other articles for different websites.
He also went from having one price for his system to having three prices. So he gave customers three options to choose from. And that decision increased his average order something like $25 or $30 without affecting the conversion rate at all. So just think about that. If you have a product that sells for $100 and you sell one a day, all of a sudden you can tweak it to where your average order is $125 and you're still selling the same amount, well, all of a sudden you're making 25% more money.
And of course you can extrapolate that and say, "Well, what if I had three sales a day or five "or whatever it was?" So all this was wonderful and smart, as I said. And guess what he did next? I know you're on Pens and Needles. Well, next he got a little bored. Mike is hardwired to create things.
It's really fun to go through the discovery process, figure out what a good market is. He enjoyed making that simple website and seeing that people were interested. Then he actually liked that two month process of creating the course. It was fun to put it out there. He was motivated for a while to improve marketing and figure out how to get more people to the site in the first place, then how to make more money from them.
But after that, he was kind of like, "Well, what's my next project?" Because that's how he's oriented. So he moved on to other things. But before he got bored, he had arrived at this plateau, which has never changed, at least not significantly in all these years. So here we are, seven years later, the course sales can vary a bit seasonally because students are more active in their studies during certain times of year, but $800 a month is the average. And the profit margin for this is approximately 100% because there are basically zero expenses in this business.
Maybe I'm exaggerating slightly. There are PayPal fees, so that's 2.5%. There's whatever he pays to host his website, let's say $15 or $20 a month, maybe some other small things. But it's probably safe to say, if a student buys his course for $85, he's making at least $75 off that sale. So it's pretty hard to top that.
And notice as well that this product helps people. It's not just an arbitrage thing. It's not just a random internet marketing thing. Medical students are able to learn more or learn faster. And naturally that's very valuable to them.
So I wanted to go into some detail with the story because I'm well aware that some people would look at it and say, oh, oh, he had such a great thing. He should have invested more time in it. He could have grown it much more. But my response is maybe, but you never know. And also he went on to do other stuff.
And probably most important of all, again, $800 a month times seven years and counting, would you be happy with $67,000 that arrived over time for something you did once? I mean, honestly, if not, you should probably unsubscribe from the show. Because to me, this is a huge success that exemplifies the values of what I'm trying to show you every day. Figure out what people want, find a way to give it to them, see what happens, determine that initial response, and then tweak or refine it so that it's more successful. When Mike and I talked, he said, it's rare that I look back on my own work and career objectively.
And he mentioned this in the context of not just this project, but some of the others. And he said, even spending 10 minutes mulling it over makes me realize how fortunate I've been. Well, this is another perspective that I share with Mike. I also feel very fortunate. And I also know that people like Mike made deliberate choices to say yes to this idea and to try the crazy experiment and see what happened.
So presumably he'll be earning money from this project for years to come. But even if it's stopped tomorrow, for some reason, it's been a pretty awesome ride. [Music]
All right, I know I went on a bit longer than usual in the actual story portion. I'll try to be brief here. I just thought it was such an awesome story.
Wanted to make sure you understood the full context. So I'll just say for now, I second Mike's advice that I mentioned at the top of the show about how it's not productive to overthink things. Don't get hung up on trivial details. Focus on your idea. Focus on making your idea an offer.
Focus on creating a basic structure for your idea, whether it's a simple website or some other format, depending on what the idea is. Get it out to the world and see what happens. Well, you know that already. That's the gospel according to Silaso School. And just one note before I wrap up, I promised I'd refer back to that keyword planner tool.
When I mentioned it in a previous episode, I got a bunch of emails from listeners who said they couldn't access it or they thought they had to pay for it. So I went back and looked at it myself to make sure I was correct. I'm not always correct, but in this case I was. You do not have to pay for it, it is free. Google is probably pretty good at nudging people into paying for advertising, so that might be what you're seeing.
But all you need to do is set up an account with Google Analytics, which is free, and then you're able to access that keyword planner tool. And we're out of time for today, but in a future episode, we'll look at it a bit more and I'll show you some examples of how it can be helpful. Well, my friends, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Do take Mike's example and his advice to heart. I mentioned several things today, if you'd like to learn about any of them, just come over to the show notes page at sidehustleschool.com/137.
So much more is on the way. I'll be cheering you on. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
