This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, I would tell my younger self three things. First of all, I would say, don't be so afraid. Like, it's gonna be okay, 'cause I didn't have the greatest childhood and such, so I'd be like, hey, don't be so afraid. You're gonna get through this. Some of this isn't so great, but eventually, you're gonna have a really good life, right?
And even now, there's lots of good stuff about life. That's the first thing. Second thing is, I would say, don't let them take the edge off your rebellious side. Like, don't lose that element. You don't need to tone it down.
You just need to find a way to channel it, right? So don't lose the rebellion. And then number three, of course, I would say, as soon as you can, put all your money into Bitcoin. Younger self, put all your money into Bitcoin. Unfortunately, my future self was not able to convey that message to my younger self, so sadly, I am not a Bitcoin billionaire.
But yes, if we could all go back, what, you know, five or six years, or however many years it's been now, maybe closer to 10 or more, since Bitcoin, the first, or at least the most popularly known cryptocurrency, you know, now it's worth something like $12,000, I think. So anyway, today's listener is wondering about this in terms of how it affects his side hustle. He's got an app set up. He's wondering, should I actually accept this as payment? I'm gonna take credit cards, but should I also accept a payment in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency?
That's what we're gonna talk about in this episode. So stay tuned, shout out from our sponsor, and then all about crypto. [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Nick from Salem. I recently found your show after a friend recommended it, and I'm really enjoying all the side hustle stories. I'm getting ready to launch a new app that will be available for Android devices.
I'm going to apply for listing in the Google Play Store, as well as several other online directories, but I also wanna offer it for direct sale on my own website. That way I can sell to people who discovered there without paying commission to a third party. I can even offer a discount for direct sales and come out still ahead by splitting the commission savings between me and my customer. But of course, to sell directly, I need a way to accept payment. PayPal is easy enough, but a friend suggested that I offer an option to take Bitcoin as well.
I'm not sure if that's a good idea or even how I would go about doing it, since there's not really a Bitcoin bank on every corner, at least not where I live. Also, what do you think about cryptocurrency in general? Thanks, and I look forward to hearing your response. - Hey, thanks, Nick. I appreciate you calling in and let us try to stay on topic here.
I could probably talk about cryptocurrency for a long time, but I don't know that I'm really an expert. So I wanna focus on a question of accepting it as a payment option for your side hustle. Oh, and by the way, I did wanna say that Nick's idea of selling directly on his website in general, leaving aside the payment option thing, that is really smart because as he said, he can even offer a discount, encouraging people to come directly to his website and still come out ahead because Google Play and the App Store, the Apple App Store, they take a significant commission, okay? So definitely a good idea there. Now in terms of whether you wanna take Bitcoin or Ethereum or some other cryptocurrency, I think you offer it as an option if your customers want it.
And chances are, unless you're selling something in the security or IT industries, maybe there's some other stuff I haven't thought about, but unless it's something kind of specialized there, most of your customers won't. Like I don't think you're gonna have an avalanche of customers just beating on your door saying, "I would love to buy from you, "but if only you took Bitcoin," who knows? But I would say if you do it, and it is possible to do that, market services like CoinWallet, and there are different ways that you can essentially take this as an option in addition to PayPal. But if you do offer it, here's one tip. Look up the listings of other sites that accept Bitcoin as a currency.
They have some directories, for people who are actually really into this and want to shop, like buy and sell goods using crypto. If nothing else, you can probably get some links from them because they're compiling directories of merchants that take it. So it might actually not be a bad SEO strategy when you're starting out to get links, whether or not you get a lot of purchases from it. I would just say, don't expect a lot of takers because the number of people who use Bitcoin to buy and sell common items, not talking about like trading or talking about your savings and all that stuff, but the number of people who use Bitcoin to buy and sell common items is pretty small, at least right now, and who knows? Maybe that will change.
I think I said in the introduction that the price of a Bitcoin is currently about $12,000, but you know, you could be listening to this, a month or two in the future, even just even a short time, and it could be totally different, let alone a year from now or something. So who knows what's going to happen there, but Nick, good luck with your side hustle. Everybody else, thank you so much for listening. If you've got a question of your own, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. It's free, you don't have to pay Bitcoin or PayPal or anything.
All right, wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a wonderful day. I'll be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
