This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Side Hustle School listeners, welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau. Guess what? This is episode number 150, 150. We are just cruising right along.
I would love to stop and reflect and meditate on how far we've come, but there's no time for that. We've got so much more coming up. Now today's story is an affiliate story, or to be precise, it's a story about using the affiliate model to make money. We've talked about this a couple of times in the past, and whenever I do, I get a lot of emails about it. So I know some people are interested in affiliate programs, in affiliate marketing, and these kinds of projects, they're good for people with a certain personality and skill.
So today's story illustrates it really well. It's about a software engineer who encounters the world of jewelry, initially for his personal needs, and then decides to kind of put two and two together and take what he's good at and combine it with something that he's learning about to create a profitable side hustle. Now I'm gonna make a prediction about this project. Not to get ahead of things, but on the show, I try to feature a diverse array of projects, people doing all kinds of really interesting things, and some of those things make a lot of money, like six figures or more, part time, and others make $500 a month or $1,000 a month, which is also pretty awesome, especially the first time that you've done it. Well, this story is in the lower range right now, at least of profit, but my prediction is that it's actually gonna go way up.
I don't usually make predictions, I'm not a futurist, but we'll see if I'm right. Be curious to know what you think, and of course, you have to hear the story. Now all week long, I'm asking, what's your side hustle idea? What are you working on? We are playing responses from listeners.
Let's hear from a couple listeners, then we'll jump into the story. - Hey, Chris, this is Susan Colling from Texas. Love the podcast. I have one side hustle that I took full-time several years ago. I'm a freelance writer, and because I hustle for my day job every single day getting new freelance clients, I wanted another hustle that wouldn't require quite so much hustling.
So my other side hustle is that I work as a party princess, and I work for someone else's company, so they do a lot of the marketing and the scheduling, and I just get to show up dressed up as a princess and give the birthday girl or other party attendees a really fun time when you sing along with balloons, temporary tattoos, really, really fun. And the hustle part, though, is that I can do, I can work when I want to, which is great. It gives me some flexibility, and I can also come up with little value ads that will hopefully get me a bigger tip. So it's been really fun. It's a great work.
- Hi, Chris. My name is Marie. I'm calling from Flushing, Queens in New York City. I'm working on a side hustle. I have a hobby that went a little crazy with plants, and so I was thinking I'm having trouble giving them away, so I thought I would rent a plant, 'cause a lot of people don't like to take care of them or can't take care of them or don't know how.
So I would rent the plants maybe 10 per month and then come every month and switch them and give you 10 new plants. And this way I don't have to give away my plants, and then I can have my plants make me money. So I'm working on that, but I have a few customers that I do it for free, but I need to start getting paid for it because it is taking up lots more time. But anyway, thank you, bye. - Susan and Maria, thank you for calling in.
Dressing up as a princess, that's pretty awesome, Susan. And I love that you highlighted the flexibility of the project. That is an important benefit of a lot of side hustles. And Maria in New York City, plant rental is pretty cool. I don't think I've ever heard of that.
I don't live in New York City, but if I did, I would love to sign up for that right now. We'll have more listener call-ins every day this week, and today's story is coming up right after this. [Music]
In June 2016, Tony Florida knew it was time to propose to his girlfriend of nine years. So he did what a lot of guys do. He began researching engagement rings.
His girlfriend, Jenna, had hinted at what she wanted. Okay, it was actually less hinting and much more specific instruction. She wanted a 1.5 carat round, solitary gold engagement ring. Oh, and she wanted it to be super sparkly. Naturally, Tony wanted to get the best bang for his buck, so he set to work learning all about diamonds.
And he quickly discovered that not all diamonds are created equal and not all diamonds sparkle the same. He also learned that buying a loose diamond online was much cheaper than buying it in a physical store. Now, Tony didn't stop there. He dove deep into the world of diamonds. He learned about the standard four Cs, which are color, cut, clarity, and carat.
But he also found there were other factors that contribute to the sparkle of a diamond. There were certain angles and ratios, depth percentage, crown angle, all kinds of stuff that affects how sparkly a diamond appears, as does the polish and symmetry. Now, all of this research led him to come up with some ideal ranges for the diamond to be as radiant, brilliant, and sparkly as possible. Now, I think I may have mentioned it in the introduction, but either way, you probably wouldn't be surprised at this point to learn that Tony is an engineer. And as a software engineer, once he had this range, this ideal range that he had come up with, he saw an opportunity to write a software program that analyzed the diamond specifications to figure out if that particular diamond would in fact be sparkly.
So he wrote what he called a sparkly program, and then realized that other people might find it useful as well. Now, it was around this time that he also learned about the world of affiliate marketing. And one of the diamond websites he was using, Blue Nile, pays a 5% commission on affiliate sales. So just a quick recap, affiliate marketing is where you get paid a commission when you send people to a specific website and they make a purchase. So Blue Nile, this diamond website, was willing to pay a 5% commission.
So he signed up to be an affiliate, they accepted his application, and he was officially started on his side hustle. Oh, but wait, at this point, he still hadn't gotten around to picking out his own engagement ring, or hopefully one that would belong to his soon-to-be fiance. And that was the whole reason he even got started on this project. So using his own program, he picked out the perfect diamond, the most sparkle he could get for what he was able to spend, and naturally this was a big purchase, the most expensive purchase of his life. And so he thought about it for a couple of days to make sure it was really the one he wanted.
Then on the 29th day of August, 2016, he woke up, he checked on that diamond, and he saw that the price had dropped more than $600. This dip in price gave him the confidence to buy that morning. And even better, because he was already accepted as an affiliate, he made the purchase through his own affiliate link and made a commission on himself. Tony and Jenna then went to St. Lucia where he proposed with the diamond.
She accepted, they lived happily ever after, et cetera, et cetera. Now back to the side hustle focus. While they were on vacation, he kept thinking about how the price of that diamond had dropped so much in one night. Diamond prices weren't as fixed as he had thought. So with that new information, he saw another opportunity.
Not only could his program help people find the sparkliest diamond for their price range, he could also help them track diamond prices so they are assured they're getting the best deal. He wanted to help people find the same confidence that he did that morning when he finally bought his diamond. So the day after he got home from their vacation, he did some quick research to make sure something like this didn't already exist, and he bought a domain name for $10, the diamondapp.com, and got to work building a price tracking program for diamonds. From September to December, he spent a few hours most evenings after work working on the website. He had to go back and forth with Blue Nile and a couple of other vendors that he had become an affiliate for, download the information to a database he was creating, and set up the program to automatically download future updates, which will ensure it stays current.
Users on this website, the diamondapp, can search the database by their desired ranges of the four Cs, once again, cut, color, clarity, caret, and their personal price point to find diamonds that meet all their criteria. And because he has historical price data, you can also show users how good of a deal the current price is. If this sounds complicated, Tony actually kept it pretty simple. He just named the price categories bad, fair, good, great, and rock bottom, with rock bottom being the lowest price the diamond has ever been. He also added a feature where people can sign up for an account and track the price of a specific diamond.
When the prices change, they get an email alert letting them know. Then, if they come back to his website and click through and make a purchase, he earns a commission. Now, this is a very new project. He's just launched a website recently, and most of his costs have been related to marketing. He spent about $1,000 on Fiverr for a 2D animation video that explains in detail what his website does.
He also set up an email subscription to the Diamond and Diamonds subreddit on the popular forum, Reddit. This way, whenever anyone posts asking for advice, he can respond with specific advice and a link to his website so they can track the diamond price themselves. Now, as I said, it's still early, but his marketing efforts have been slowly paying off. Each month, he's had one affiliate sale, and thanks to the high price point of diamonds, each sale brings him an average of $350 commission. Last month, he had two sales, so that bumped him up to something like $700 in commission.
And so far, this revenue that the website has generated has gone straight back into marketing. Tony really wants to grow this and see what can happen. And beyond the potential income, Tony is passionate about the project itself. I love the language he uses when he describes it. Listen to this sentence.
He says, "I feel ownership over my website "because I built it from scratch. "I invested so much time on it. "I can work on it for hours at a time, and it flies by. "Even though I enjoy my day job, "I rarely have this type of experience with it. "With this project, I also have complete control "of the direction it goes, whereas at my job, "I don't have that much authority." Could not have said that better myself.
Thanks, Tony. Now, speaking of marketing, marketing is his main focus for the coming months. He knows he has this useful tool to offer. Now he's focused on getting the word out. So he's gonna dive deeper into Facebook ads, start targeting more specifically by gender, relationship status, and interests.
He's also getting ready to start a blog on the website to share useful information that will educate diamond shoppers on how to get the best bang for their buck. And of course, hopefully, when they're ready to get the best bang for their buck, they're gonna come back to his website and make a purchase, and Tony will get paid. [Music]
All right, so I was especially excited about this story, even though it's not making a ton of money yet. One, because I love the ownership that Tony expresses about it. I know that's why a lot of people are listening to Side Hustle School so that they can have something like that themselves.
They can look and say, you know, I made this, I have control over it. It's a beautiful thing. But also, just in terms of the specific project, like I alluded to in the introduction, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, this has a lot of potential. And just imagine, he has one affiliate sale a month right now. What if he had one a week?
What if he had one a day? Like, that's not unusual. It's not abnormal at all. So it really is just a question of how he's gonna grow this. How is he gonna reach other people?
How is he gonna build this as an authority site, potentially compete with anybody else who starts up doing the same thing? Like, those are the interesting parts that I'm curious about. And so this is on my list of potential stories to follow up on. And I think he's wise to focus on marketing because he knows he has a good product. So now it's about bringing the right people to it.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this Powerpacked episode number 150. Don't be easily distracted by shiny objects. Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/150. Next week, we'll be hearing from listeners about failure stories.
If you have a side hustle failure or just something that didn't work out, tell me about it. Give me a call, 844-9-HUSTLE, or make a little voice memo with your phone and email that to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. Most important of all, don't let anyone steal your sparkle. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." I'll see you tomorrow.
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