This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
It is hard to believe we are halfway through June, at least in real time, if you're listening in real time to the podcast, we are halfway through June of 2022. This is episode 1992, eight episodes away from episode 2000. Where has the time gone? I'm sure in your life as well, things have been frantic or at least busy, right? Because we make this podcast for busy people who are trying to get ahead, trying to get ahead and create something for themselves.
All right, if you're trying to make extra income, because inflation is crazy or just because you don't want to depend on your paycheck from an employer, all kinds of reasons to make extra income. I don't need to tell you, at least if you've been listening for a while. Now we have featured a couple of stories of people over the years using the platform Nextdoor. You might be familiar with this, perhaps you use it in your neighborhood. It's basically a hyper local social network.
We've had episode 245, man sells $1,400 in coffee to neighbors with Nextdoor app. We had episode 342, environmental scientist starts a cat only pet sitting business and probably some others as well. Now Nextdoor is not primarily designed as a platform for you to go crazy and sell a bunch of stuff. So if you do want to sell there and crucially if you do have a product or service, whether it's coffee or cat sitting or perhaps something else, a service or product that might work well there, what do you need to know? That is our listener question for today.
You'll hear from our listener and then my answer right after this. [Music]
Hi there, Chris. This is Tara from San Diego and I've been following the show for a while. I've seen a lot of people selling Girl Scout cookies and other fundraising goods on Nextdoor. There are also a lot of one-off sales of people selling the same kinds of stuff they might sell at a yard sale or on Facebook.
I'd like to use the app as a primary sales channel. I like the idea of selling locally and it seems like a good way to diversify from other channels. Do you think this would be an effective use of my time? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about this. Thanks.
- Hey Tara, thanks for listening. Thanks for being out there. Do I think that using Nextdoor can be a good way to diversify from other sales channels? Absolutely, at least depending on what you were selling. But if you were successfully selling in person through another marketplace like Facebook or Gumtree or Craigslist, something else, then definitely I would look at Nextdoor.
And speaking of selling on Nextdoor, okay, what do you need to know? Well, this may be changing. I did some research because historically it wasn't really about selling. Initially it was much more just a way of connecting and sharing information and such. But I think it's changing because the app's developers understand that people want this.
So I went to look and I found a lot more features for selling than I'd seen before. Now, some of the tips for selling on Nextdoor are gonna be the same as selling on any other platform. You wanna take good photos. You wanna write detailed descriptions. You wanna clearly point out any flaws or defects.
You want to build a good reputation over time. I mean, that's basically it. You can also give away items for free on Nextdoor. That might be a good thing to do because then you have some stuff for free as well as, of course, the stuff that you want to sell. Again, it depends on what you were selling.
But increasingly I would say, Nextdoor is looking a lot like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, those other platforms that allow you to sell directly to your neighbors. One difference, of course, is that Nextdoor is focused hyper-locally, like very, very local on your actual neighborhood and very close by. So in this regard, assuming you're selling a physical product, like the guy selling coffee or whatever else, pickup or delivery, those are usually pretty simple. Compared to even selling somewhere else in your city, depending on where you live, that could be a pretty big area, whereas Nextdoor focused on your actual neighborhood. Just a couple of tips there.
I do think it's worth looking at, again, if you've got the right kind of platform or service. So good luck, Tara, good luck to all of our listeners. And if you have a question, something you're trying to explore or you're looking for an idea, wondering if your idea is good or just trying to go to the next level, let me know what's going on. sidehustleschool.com/questions will continue this dialogue as we progress throughout the rest of the year. All right, wow, almost an episode, 2000.
Thank you for being part of this community. Hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
