French Engineer Makes Silver-Wear in Mexico

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

In today's story, a French engineer seeks his fortune in custom silver jewelry. His first attempts end in failure, but he discovers a creative SEO strategy that changes everything. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Setasle School. I'm so glad you're here.

My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. I have the privilege of bringing you these stories. I've been doing it every single day since January 1, 2017. That was approximately or exactly 1,585 days ago. And throughout so many of these stories, what I'm trying to do is teach you the power of observation and the benefits of taking action.

That's why I have this little tagline that I say in some of the stories, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I really hope that people will be inspired and then do something about it. So by telling you the stories and just kind of walking through the case study model of how somebody creates this project and what it looks like and what's the outcome, just trying to get really specific. Sometimes you hear strategies that will only work for one particular project, but as much as possible, we're trying to highlight strategies that can work all sorts of ways, all sorts of ways for all sorts of people in different industries and fields and such. And I mentioned that because in this story, as alluded to, this guy discovers a creative SEO strategy that kind of turns things around for him.

Now, of course, I'm gonna tell you exactly what it is. This is really clever and also replicable across different industries. So if you're trying to figure out, hey, what's my idea? Well, you might get an idea from this story. It's called "French engineer makes silverware," silverware with a hyphen, you get it?

In Mexico, stories coming up in just 30 seconds. Stay tuned. [Music]

In 2009, Nicolas Tranchant was living in France with his Mexican girlfriend, Reyna. Although they were young and in love, that isn't always enough to eliminate all of life's problems. You see, Nicolas had a well-paying job as an aerospace engineer, but Reyna was unable to work.

She was a highly qualified doctor, but unfortunately her credentials were not recognized in France. Nicolas broached the idea of side hustling, or would it be broached, as a way to make some extra money. It didn't take long to find something that sparkled. Well, you might know where I'm going with this, right? They clasped onto the concept of an online store selling silver jewelry, not out of passion, but rather opportunity.

Reyna had contacts in Mexico who could act as suppliers, so they decided to go for it. The couple placed an order for 2,000 euros worth of different silver pieces. It was a risk, as they didn't see high resolution photos of the items in advance and had no real idea of which designs would be popular with customers. On top of that, they didn't know how to create an online store, but Nicolas took it upon himself to research e-commerce solutions and came across something called OS Commerce, a software product that allowed anyone to create their own store. Sadly, all that glitters is not gold, or even silver, in the world of software.

It had to be installed, configured, updated, and modified. It took Nicolas months to work it out, only to be hacked the day before launching. At some point, he stumbled across a better option called Shopify. It made setting up the store dead simple, and Viva Latina Jewelry was forged. He quickly moved their products over and waited for the gold rush, or is there such a thing as a silver rush?

I'm not sure what the best metaphor is. Regardless, there wasn't even a bronze medal waiting for them. For the next year, $2,000 in inventory and a website lay dormant. Nicolas became busy with work, and he and Reyna were close to abandoning the project altogether. Until, that is, PayPal sent an unexpected ping.

They had sold a bracelet, one of the most expensive they offered. This sale gave Nicolas a renewed interest in the project, and it was just in the nick of time, because now it was his turn to be out of work. He and Reyna decided to move to Mexico so that she could practice medicine again. Nicolas was now determined to spend 100% of his time forging ahead and making the jewelry store a success. The first step was to find new suppliers, ones that sold what customers actually wanted.

And being in Mexico made this easier. For a year, Nicolas tried out different suppliers, paying attention to what moved via the trickle of sales that came through the site. Step two was to get serious about online marketing. And here's where I want you to pay attention, because this is the key part. A lucky coincidence helped Nicolas develop a simple yet powerful technique for driving targeted website visitors to the site.

It came about when a customer asked for a customized piece of jewelry to be made, something they couldn't find anywhere else. Since Nicolas knew local designers, he was happy to oblige. But he also wondered how many other people out there were looking for specific types of jewelry they couldn't find. In searching for answers to that question, he developed a solid SEO strategy, and it went like this. Nicolas would go to the Google keyword tool, which shows how many searches of a particular keyword happen each month.

There, he would look for jewelry related keywords that had at least 100 searches per month and were classified as low to medium difficulty. And that basically just means there weren't too many websites to compete with. The jewel in the crown, I guess that would be the crown jewels, was if he found similar products at the $500 price range. So he's got these three criteria here. Lots of searches, or at least a good number of searches.

Not much competition, but similar products at the $500 price range. So he's not looking for low price stuff. And if those three criteria were met, Nicolas would then move on to the next phase of the plan. As an engineer, he was experienced with 3D modeling software like AutoCAD. Using that, he would make a design that matched the keyword and listed it on the site.

He made sure to title the product to match the keyword closely. Then when customers eventually found it via Google, he would make it. So did you follow that there? He didn't actually make the product until an order came in. The strategy worked well and turned the business around.

Sales went from a trickle to a flood. And finally, it was going so well, Nicolas opened a small workshop and hired his first employee. That meant he would no longer have to rely on suppliers that could manufacture all of his own items for a much higher profit margin. This on-demand jewelry making alongside custom orders is really what helped the side hustle grow into a full-time business that now employs three people and earned $160,000 in 2020. And by the way, this is a figure Nicolas hopes to double in the next two years.

[Music]

So if you didn't understand quite what Nicolas was doing there, maybe listen to that story again. Because as I said, if you're trying to figure out, especially in the e-commerce world, what am I going to sell? Or if it's in some broad category like jewelry, because jewelry can be a lot of things. And even silver jewelry can be a lot of things. But this SEO strategy will one, help you understand what people are really searching for, what they're searching for and what they want to buy, which is key.

And then depending on your product line, you might be able to do something just like Nicolas has done. So very smart, as I said, clever strategy still works today in lots of different fields. So check it out, take something from that. By the way, Nicolas says, "Not taking action is worse than failure." Those who take action and sometimes fail are happy people who live without regrets. So I appreciate and agree with that French philosophy.

Thank you, Nicolas, appreciate it. Listeners, today's show notes, including links to Viva Latina jewelry, anything else I mentioned in the episode as well, will be at sidehustleschool.com/1585, 1585. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you have a comment or question for the show, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Hope you'll come back tomorrow.

I'm excited for all this to come. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From the Onward Project.