This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, listeners, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. So glad you're here. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I just get so excited about talking through different ideas, different things that people are trying to do to create extra money, to pursue a creative idea, just to be a little bit more empowered, just to find some hopefulness.
I've been using that word a bit this year. How can we find hopefulness, creativity, pursue our passion such as they are, pursue our passion and also our proficiency? Been thinking about that too. What are we good at? What do we like to do?
Often these things are aligned. So today in our listener question, a listener is all crossed up. She's all crossed up in her quest to make and sell crossword puzzles. Millions of people complete crossword puzzles every day. It is the original Pokemon.
In fact, this is true before Pokemon existed. There were, in fact, crosswords. So what are the business opportunities for someone who's one of these hobbyists? And what are the obstacles she might need to overcome? You always want to think about those things in tandem, like what's the opportunity, what's the challenge?
Or you could reverse that and say, what's the challenge? And therefore, what's the opportunity? In fact, in this remarkable coincidence, one of our listeners is asking this very question today. So how can you sell your own crossword puzzles? Let's hear from her and then dive into some ideas, or at least some interpretation.
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Hi, Chris, this is Jessica, and I love crossword puzzles. After many years of completing them every day, I'm ready to design my own. There are lots of resources that explain how to do this, and I think I've got that part figured out, or at least I'm on track. What I don't know, though, is how to sell them. The New York Times and USA Today crosswords are completed by millions of people every day, and my sense is that they have a near monopoly on the market.
I can't compete with them. Is there another path to getting my crosswords out to a dedicated fan base? Thanks, Chris, and looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Jessica, thank you so much for listening. Congratulations on figuring out the process of how to make a crossword puzzle.
That does sound tough. I would have no idea how to go about doing it. But even though that sounds tough, I do actually think this question of how to sell them is going to be harder, right? Because, you know, as you said, it's a big market, which is good news. It's good news.
It's a big market. Not everyone likes the seriousness of the New York Times puzzle. I know it's the gold standard. There are also a lot of people who like, I don't know, let's call them lowbrow crosswords. But still, there are a lot of resources for those already.
There are a lot of low priced or free crosswords. So I think the question to look at here is, let's just kind of take a step back. Where do crossword fans congregate? Like where is the Ravelry.com of crossword puzzles? When I say Ravelry.com, I'm referring to the website that every knitter knows about.
If you are into knitting and probably some other fabric arts, you know about Ravelry. Is there a site like that for crossword puzzles? Like one big fan site. There's probably multiple fan sites, but is there one big resource or maybe two or three big resources or communities? If nothing else, look at the communities on Reddit.
I wonder what they would say if you just posted a question and said, basically what you said here. Look, I've been working on this a long time. I would like to get these out more. What's the best way to do it? And of course not everyone's gonna be able to give you qualified advice, but you might hear something interesting.
And then speaking of interesting, now that you're ready to design your own crosswords, you may have already thought about what will make them interesting, but I think that's really key. Like I think it's just as important to be able to brand them in a memorable way because it is such a crowded market. So maybe you need a trick or a gimmick, like a jumbo crossword puzzle that I recently purchased as a gift. And in doing some searching, when I was doing that, I also saw there were some thematic puzzles, including an adults only series, which for the record I did not purchase. And I'm not suggesting that that's what you want to make either.
I just think maybe you need a trick or a gimmick. Now, last but not least, also consider sharing your puzzles for free, at least some of them. Because speaking of the New York Times, that's what they do every day with the mini puzzle. To get the full puzzle in addition to all the archives, of course, you have to pay to subscribe. And clearly that works for them since they have so many subscribers.
Here I'm talking about the app, the New York Times crossword puzzle app. So the mini puzzle is free every day. I think you can get a few selected sample full puzzles, but to get the daily edition and to get the archives of all the others, that's what you have to pay for. So clearly that works for them. I'm sure there's a way to do it.
I don't know exactly what it is, but that's kind of where I would start. I would go to these communities, start poking around and see what stands out from there. And of course, if you come up with a better answer, if you've got a solution that I haven't thought of, then come back to me, let me know so I can update others as well. Anyway, thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you listeners.
So glad you're out there. If you have a question of your own, if you want to update me on your project, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature them throughout the year, along with new stories and of course, so much more. All right, I'm signing off for the day. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
