This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey everybody, what's up? Just wanted to make sure as we get started here that you are following me on Pinterest. I got all kinds of cool pins I'm posting, my crochet art, my plants, some inspirational quotes. Okay, not really, I actually do not have a Pinterest account. I never got into pinning myself, but I've always thought it's an interesting network.
I like the idea, I just, you know, kind of got caught up in other things. But I recently listened to a podcast outlining its origin, how the founder and his team weren't really respected by traditional investors because their mission was so different from other platforms and social networks. They deliberately targeted moms living in the Midwest as opposed to tech savvy millennials in New York and San Francisco. Or actually they kind of evolved to do that. This is also what's interesting is they started trying to target tech savvy millennials.
And then they realized that moms living in the Midwest were this huge market for them. So they wisely chose to kind of switch their attention to what was actually happening as opposed to what they initially envisioned. Furthermore, the social components of the platform were quite minimal compared to others. Mostly you just pinned a bunch of images, right? And people loved it.
Maybe you were really into Pinterest, maybe you still are. Maybe you never got into it like me, but you admired it from a distance or you didn't. But anyway, that's what we're talking about here today. Today's caller is wondering if this is still a thing, at least in the side of the world, right? So we're gonna talk about, you know, making money using a platform like this.
An early Side Hustle School episode, I think it was actually episode four, featured a woman who earned $40,000, basically pinning images on Pinterest. Pretty cool, pretty crazy, wild and crazy, but true. Is this business model still feasible? That's what our caller wants to know. So that's what we'll talk about in this episode.
Quick message from our sponsor, then we'll hear from her. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Susan. I've been listening to your show since episode one. So thank you for these four years of puns and great advice. In the first week of side hustle school, you told a story about a woman who got paid $1,000 a month to post pins on Pinterest.
And it sounded totally crazy to me, but I looked it up and it was true. But that was three years ago. So is this kind of thing still viable? I'm also wondering just more generally about how often these opportunities come and go. So if Pinterest or whatever is hot today, is it not going to be hot tomorrow?
So if I only have time to look at one or two different options, how do I decide what those options should be? Thanks so much, love your podcast. - Hey Susan, thank you so much. I'm so glad you're out there. Thank you for listening all this time.
Thank you as well to all of our listeners who've been with us for a while. And of course, if you've just joined, that's awesome too. It's a community. You can just jump right in and you can always check out the archives for older episodes, but you can also just keep going day by day. I want it to be good for you.
All right, so Pinterest has always been a bit of an odd duck. I think what it comes down to here is the way companies look at what is valuable to them, how they determine potential value. For something like this, it's like how much influence do you have? How many followers do you have? How much engagement is on that platform?
Whatever it is. And so to this broader question, I don't think that Pinterest is necessarily the best thing for most people to get into now, unless they're actually interested in the user experience of it. I mean, if you like doing it, that's cool. If you're trying to figure out is this my next side us all, probably not. That episode was four years ago, episode number four, and not really an evergreen topic by nature.
And most of what I try to teach is not just like, hey, here go and sign up for this thing and see what you can do. It's more what is the skillset you need to be able to spot these opportunities and to jump on them, because opportunities are always coming and going. And Susan is absolutely right. You can't pursue everything. You've got limited time out there.
I try to make this program for busy people who can only pursue a couple of things. So if you don't have an active account on Pinterest or any particular network with a lot of followers right now, this isn't something you should chase after. In fact, if I recall correctly, here's the thing, the woman in that story, episode four, she really loved Pinterest. Like she was good at it. She enjoyed spending time on it.
And she also got in fairly early. So those are the characteristics that led to her big success making $40,000 or whatever it was, pinning images. Those are the characteristics to think about for your next opportunity. What quirky thing do you love? What are you good at?
What are you kind of learning about that you feel like you're learning about ahead of a lot of other people? Also, develop the skill of turning ideas into offers because ultimately even the Pinterest influencer had to come up with prices for brands and make them an offer and all that kind of stuff. So idea to offer, I talk about that a lot. I wrote about it a lot in the "Side Hustle" book. What can you make and sell?
I don't know what the next Pinterest will be, but I know that if you develop these skills, you'll be well-prepared when it comes along. So that's my two cents there. Thank you again for the question. And listeners, thank you. You're awesome. I'm so glad you're out there.
Let me know what's going on. Let me know what your struggles are, as well as what's going well, so that we can make sure to provide the most helpful information to our whole community. Just come to www.sidehustleschool.com/questions. You can also hit me up on social media, but not Pinterest because I'm not there. I will be here tomorrow though.
So be sure you subscribe. My name is Chris Guillebeau. The podcast is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
