This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. Fun story for you today, once again focusing on the affiliate sales or affiliate commission model. We talked about this a bit a few days ago from a different perspective with a guy who built a directory to search the price of diamonds, among other things. Today is another creative idea.
It's actually a simple idea, but when I heard about it, I thought, wow, this is really smart. And in this episode, I'm gonna give you a simple action point, something for you to do, even if this isn't the model you want to pursue. And I'll tell you right now, that action point is gonna be to sign up as an affiliate for amazon.com. And after the story, I'll tell you how to do that and why you'll want to. But first, let's say hi to a couple of listeners.
- Hi Chris, my name is Emily. I live on Vashon Island near Seattle, Washington. And my hustle is, I started out with two businesses. I was trying to make my full-time businesses and they weren't really getting me there. So I kind of did things backwards.
I ended up getting a day job and now I'm combining my two, what used to be my regular things into one side hustle, which is yoga and weddings, which is, I'm a wedding officiant and I do yoga sessions for bridal parties at a brand new home studio in a home my husband and I just completed. So it all kind of came together at the same time. So I did it a bit backwards, but now I'm working on my side hustle, yoga for bridal parties. And officiating at weddings. Thanks, bye bye, love the show.
- Hello, my name is Jay from Los Angeles, California. And my side hustle that I've been working on, even before I've heard about your show, is I take plastic bottles that are protein powder bottles, bottles that have protein powders in it. And I make speed punk cosplay pieces like a mask or a arm band or a gun or a sword. So I make steampunk stuff. A steampunk is Victorian science fiction and most of the products are made out of leather and metal.
But I make plastic steampunk items and I sell them on Etsy. So I'm more of an artist, thank you. - You guys are awesome, thank you, Emily. Thank you, Jay. Yoga for bridal parties, how awesome is that?
What a great mashup, taking this skill, something that people are interested in, yoga, and then taking it on location to a specific event. Bridal parties like everything associated with weddings are a recurring business 'cause people are always getting married. That is super cool. And Jay, I love the steampunk cosplay pieces. I'm not a steampunk aficionado myself, but I am pretty impressed when I see people who are into it, just how dedicated they can be.
So that's super cool. Thanks again to everybody else who called in, by the way. We'll be doing this a lot more as we go along. I wanna feature a lot of folks. So if we missed you this time, please don't hesitate to try again for the next listener question.
And today's story is coming up right after this. [Music]
Randy Jensen is a busy guy. He's a web developer who provides safety certifications for short-term rentals. As one of his side projects, he and his wife recently wrote, illustrated, and produced a children's book. And around the time of this hustle story, they were also having a baby.
Now, as his wife planned her baby shower, she wanted guests to bring books instead of the greeting cards she knew she was just gonna throw away. Randy had never heard of this before, but when he started looking online, he saw there was a movement of people doing the same thing, especially gathering on Pinterest. Because he wasn't busy enough with his day job, the children's book, the upcoming child, and a couple of other things I haven't mentioned, Randy thought to himself, I need another project. Randy sounds a lot like me. With his development skills, a couple years earlier, he had built a simple website to help people learn CSS.
That website is still earning a small amount of advertising income each month. It's not a ton of money, but it's inspiring. These small amounts of money were arriving on a regular basis for something he did nothing for. How could he make this happen again? Well, even though there was the beginnings of this movement or trend of people bringing books in place of cards or other gifts to events, the process was rarely organized.
And in fact, it's still this way. Usually it's just when someone says, "Hey, bring a book of your choice. Don't get me a gift or don't bring a card." Randy's idea was to take this step further and create an online book registry similar to how other gift registries work, but tied into Amazon.com and focusing on books. After talking a bit more about it with his wife and some of their friends, it sounded like this was something many people wanted or at least they would want if they knew it existed. So that very weekend, he started a project called booksnotcards.com.
And Randy works fast because that very weekend, he launched the project. Remember, Randy was a developer by trade, so he was able to sit down with his wife and ask her exactly what she wanted, then build it on the fly. Naturally, he tied the book purchasing process to his Amazon affiliate account, where he'd receive a small commission when people clicked through to buy the books. He got his first registration for the site that same weekend and woke up to the notification of a new user. He didn't do anything to celebrate, but it helped enforce the fact that this was a product people wanted.
The site has been live for less than two months and he's already made $500 in Amazon affiliate sales from it. The great thing is the more people that start directories on it, the more people that will see it and potentially spread the word. Booksnotcards started for his wife's baby shower, but this book registry can be used for all sorts of events, really anything that involves a gift registry or anything where people might traditionally bring a gift or card. On his website, he highlights this fact and encourages it by listing a variety of possible events. Weddings, birthdays, bar and bat mitzvahs, housewarmings, and a nice all-encompassing category he calls anything you can think of.
Nice touch. Randy says whether it's this project or another one, time is always his biggest challenge. And waking up at 4 a.m. apparently just isn't early enough. I know that feeling too.
This is a side hustle, not his main work, not his main side hustle, maybe not even his side side hustle. It gets a little meta after a while. So he's not focusing on this. He'll just keep working on it whenever he has a bit of spare time. His goal is to get the revenue above a few thousand dollars a month.
Now that is an ambitious goal, but it's also not impossible. If you have enough people using this gift registry and then sharing it with their friends and family, who all make purchases through Amazon.com, Randy's gonna be earning a lot of small amounts of money each month. So what a fun creative idea. First of all, I just love the idea in general of people bringing books instead of other gifts to parties or events or showers or whatever. I know I'm biased since I write books, but before I wrote books, I was a big reader and of course still am.
But second, what a creative profitable idea. Now I get a lot of questions on a regular basis about affiliate marketing. So just to make sure you understand, affiliate marketing is when you're part of a program that gives you a specific tracking link. You put that link on your website or your blog or you share it on social media. When people click that link, go through to the merchant and make a purchase, you get paid a commission.
Now, one of the oldest and largest affiliate programs belongs to Amazon.com. Now I said, I'd give you an action point. If you are not an Amazon.com affiliate, I would encourage you to take about two minutes and go and sign up. I'll provide a link to that in the show notes. If you're listening from outside the US or Canada, you may need to go through your local Amazon.com site.
But if they don't have one that way, then you can just go through the regular Amazon.com. Now, why should you do this if you're not gonna build a website that is an online book registry? Well, you should do it because it is essentially free money. And whenever you link to anything on Amazon.com, in any fashion, you can use that link. And you may say, well, I don't actually ever go to Amazon.com and get a link and share it somewhere.
Well, that's fine. Do you ever shop there? Does someone in your household shop there? Do your friends shop at Amazon? Does your book club shop at Amazon?
By the way, the side hustle book is coming out September 19th for any book clubs looking for a fall reading selection. Just throwing that out there. Those are just a few ideas. The point is it's a very simple process. It is free.
And even if you don't make a lot of money doing it, I would be amazed if over time you can't make at least some money. I don't use it actively, but once in a while I'll log into my account and I'll see $50 or $100, sometimes more there. And this is just completely passive. Like I'm not actively going out there and trying to be an Amazon.com affiliate. I haven't built a site like that.
So it's basically free money. Unfortunately, there is no affiliate referral program. So I don't benefit in any way by telling you to do this. I just think it's a quick little action step you can take. And then once you get that tracking link, save it in your Evernote or your Google Docs or however you keep up with information online.
And whenever you make a purchase or whenever you share a link to an Amazon product, use that link. I give you an action point because inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. So be inspired and go take that action. Today's show notes, including a link to Randy's site, as well as the Amazon.com affiliate program are at sidehustleschool.com/154. Thanks again to all the listeners who called in this week to tell us about your projects.
I really enjoyed that. Got a whole other set of responses coming up next week. And tomorrow I might even have a different question for you for the following week. You don't wanna miss that, but mostly you don't wanna miss living your life on your terms. This is all about you.
It's about your independence and creating economic empowerment for yourself. That's my mission for you. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
