This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, what's up? Chris Guillebeau here with Side Hustle School. Thanks for tuning in today. I've got a listener question about making more money. Wait a second, that's what every episode is about, one way or another.
Not just making money, of course, but growing your side hustle, growing your small business, doing something to produce more options and possibility for you. But of course, there's so many different ways to look at that question. So today, let's see what we've got here. Hmm, okay. Working with a partner, today's caller has built her side hustle to a thriving brand.
They're actually doing really well. They're earning about $50,000 a year in net income on about $180,000 in sales, okay? So it's two people. So even though it's great that they're earning $50,000 a year, they would like to earn a lot more. They would like their side hustle to grow into a sustainable business that is growing and hopefully providing even more of an income.
So basically what we have here is a common problem. It is a problem of plateauing. You know, you can start something well, it grows well for a while, but then it comes to this point where it doesn't really grow beyond. I've actually seen this in my own businesses over the years. Like you're good at building to a certain level, but then you get stuck.
So what to do? What do you do in this situation? I'm gonna give a quick shout out to our sponsor. Thank you so much sponsors. And then our listeners detailed question.
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Hi, my name's Melissa. I'm from Naperville, Illinois. My partner and I have built our side hustle brand to where last year we earned about $180,000 in revenue and about $50,000 in profit, which is great, but there's two of us. And the year before we earned very similar numbers. We'd love to get something like $200,000 in profit, which would be about $100,000 for each of us.
And most likely it would require annual sales of half a million or maybe even $600,000. So my question is, how do we get there? It feels like we've plateaued. So obviously something needs to change, but we're not quite sure what it is. So I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions.
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All right, all right. Well, congratulations on getting to where you are so far. Definitely sounds like the business has been successful, but of course our listener wants to take it to the next level. I respect that as well. So let's talk about a couple of strategies you can use to help increase your revenue and get to that goal of $200,000 in profit.
Okay, so one way or another, most likely you're going to need to expand your product or service offering. One way to increase your revenue is to offer more products or services. So it kind of depends on what you are offering and what makes sense. There's all kinds of different directions you could go in, but I think you're going to need to, as I said, introduce new products or diversify into related areas. For example, if you currently sell clothing, you might consider adding accessories or home decor items.
Next, you want to explore new channels for selling your products, right? We want to sell more products, but let's also sell to more people. Maybe there's another channel. I assume you've got your own website. Are you also selling through Amazon?
Pros and cons to doing that, of course, but there could be an additional channel, something totally different. That can help you reach new customers and increase your overall sales. Next, you want to really focus on customer retention and loyalty. In fact, I probably should have said that first because people are always thinking about how can I get new customers, more customers, but it's a lot easier to sell to existing customers. So maybe that ties back into the new products, new services.
Let's try to serve our existing customers better, make sure we keep them around, but hopefully also offer them something else. Now, finally, what you're going to need to do with all this stuff together, it's not meant to be a long list. It's meant to be things that kind of work together in tandem. But one big thing here to wrap around all of it is investing in marketing and advertising. If you've got something that works, if you do have a conversion rate that is profitable, why would you not want to invest in getting more people in to see those offers?
So lots of stuff can go wrong there as well. There's lots of ways to do it, but I think this is the big picture goal of going from $50,000 in profit to $200,000 through this growing side hustle brand. I would love to know if you do it. We'll come back and do a whole case study with you. Let us know, of course, what happens, and listeners, let me know what's on your mind.
If you've got a question or a comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're going to be featuring them all throughout the year, just like we did last year. We're also going to have more updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thanks so much for tuning in today. My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.
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- From the Onward Project.
