This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
A bird watching app flocks to success. Love this one. I'm excited to bring it to you. Welcome to Side Hustle School. It's Chris Guillebeau here, your host, in this week's first $1,000 segment.
That would be where we hear how somebody makes their first $1,000 and off and beyond. In this segment, we're gonna hear from a tech savvy side hustler who combined their love for coding and bird watching. That is two different things. Coding and bird watching, they combined these skills and these hobbies to create a unique mobile app, learn how they monetize their passion project through ads and premium features. So you can already tell here you have a few elements.
You have a hobby, a skill, something that you like to do. You focus on a hobby and skill that is not only interesting to you, but also interesting and valuable to other people. So we've taken the skill of coding and the love of bird watching, put them together. They then created a product. In this case, it is a unique mobile app, a product or a service, depending on how you think about it.
And then there is monetization. So here's where it all comes together. You've got the skill and hobby. You've got the product or service and then you have monetization. And the way that they've done it is through ads and premium features.
I'm not sure exactly how much money they have made. I think they've had here, just scanning through my notes. Oh, around $5,000 a month. So that's even better than $1,000. How about that? $5,000 a month.
How did they get going? Let's hear the story. I'll be back at the end with a super quick wrap up. And by the way, thanks for being out there. [Music]
Hey everyone, I'm Justin.
And I wanted to share my story of how I turned my passion for coding into a profitable side hustle. As a tech enthusiast, I've always loved exploring new programming languages and finding creative ways to solve problems. One day, while talking with a friend who's an avid bird watcher, I realized there was a gap in the market for a mobile app that could help birders identify species and connect with others in the community. I started by researching the most popular bird identification apps and found that many were cluttered, difficult to use, and were missing social features. So I set out to create a sleek, user-friendly app that would not only help users identify birds quickly, but also allow them to share their sightings and connect with fellow enthusiasts.
I spent my evenings and weekends designing the interface, coding the app, and testing it with a group of beta users. One of the biggest challenges I faced was creating an algorithm to accurately identify the birds. I collaborated with a local ornithologist to develop a robust database of bird species and trained a machine learning model to recognize birds based on user-submitted photos. It took countless hours of work, but the end result was a very accurate identification tool that users loved. And to be honest, I really enjoy doing it.
To monetize the app, I implemented a banner ad system and partnered with relevant advertisers, such as bird feed companies and outdoor gear retailers. I also offered a premium ad-free version of the app for a small annual fee. Within the first month of launching, the app had over 10,000 downloads and was generating a steady stream of ad revenue. One of my favorite moments was when I received an email from a user who had recently taken up bird watching during the pandemic. She shared how the app had not only helped her identify birds, but also connected her with a supportive community that brought her joy during that tough time.
It was a powerful reminder of the impact that technology can have on people's lives. As the app gained popularity, I started receiving feature requests and bug reports from users around the world. One user even reached out with an idea for a gamification feature that rewarded users for completing bird spotting challenges. I loved the idea so much that I implemented it in the next update and it quickly became one of the app's most popular features. Over the course of a year, the app grew to over 100,000 active users and was generating around $5,000 per month in ad revenue and premium subscriptions.
While it started as a side hustle, I'm now considering turning it into a full-time venture and expanding into other nature-related apps. Looking back, I'm grateful for that initial conversation with my friend that sparked the idea for the app. It just goes to show that inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. All right, thanks so much for sharing the story. Not just $1,000, but all the way to $5,000 a month.
That is great and we'll see. Maybe it could go beyond, but even if not, that is pretty fantastic. As I said, you need a skill or a hobby. You need something that's not just interesting to you, but interesting to other people as well. You then need to create a service or product, turn it into an offer of some kind.
In this case, the offer is like, I get the app, I start using it, there's gonna be ads, which brings us to the last crucial element of monetization, in this case, ads, and I believe there's premium subscriptions as well. So a diversified revenue stream, even better. All right, listeners, I hope you enjoyed the story of the bird-watching app, Flocking to Success. If you have a question and update for us about your hustle, www.sidehustleschool.com. This has been episode 2,718.
I'll be back tomorrow with more. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
