This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome back to Side Hustle School, Chris Guillebeau here. How can you start a digital side hustle with no experience? That is today's topic. We're gonna hear from Mark. He is starting fresh with no digital experience, but eager to launch an online side hustle.
Now, not every business needs to be online, of course. There's all kinds of offline services that we have featured over the years, but it's also true that these days there's just so many tools and platforms and opportunities, low cost opportunities, I should say, maybe even free opportunities. Why wouldn't you do something digital, at least if you're looking for your first or your next side hustle? So I'm gonna give Mark a couple of ideas and anybody else out there who's starting fresh, if you're looking for what's the best thing I do to get online, build an audience, or set up some kind of product or service I can use to make money, right? That's what it's all about, economic empowerment, so that you can do more of what's important to you.
That's what it's ultimately about, but money is the engine to that. So detailed question for Mark, it's coming right up along with my answer. [Music]
Hi, this is Mark from Chicago. I'm starting fresh with no real experience in the digital space, but I'm eager to launch a side hustle that uses online platforms. With so many options out there, I'm just not sure where to begin.
What are the first steps I should take to get started? And what are the best things I can do to set myself up for success? Should I focus on building a website, growing a social media following, or something else entirely? Give it to me straight, I need help. - Mark, thanks for the question.
The thing is, we are all new to anything but to everything, I should say, at one point or another. Okay, so the good news is, you don't have to master everything right away. In fact, you're gonna do better by focusing and just being specific. So I think you're asking really good questions. Let's break it down into some of the best first steps for someone with no experience.
First of all, pick one platform and learn it well. When you say, should I focus on building a website? Well, that can be good. You can do something like WordPress or Squarespace, Wix, any number of these platforms. They make it really easy to build a website.
You don't actually have to become a coder. Growing a social media following, I wouldn't do that right now. If we're not sure exactly what you need to do, I would focus much more on, what is my category? Let me ask myself, what are the skills and knowledge and experience that I have acquired throughout my life? And then what is therefore the category or the topic, the industry that I want to do something in?
From there, it often emerges, okay, well, here could be some potential services or potential products, and what are the best ways to then productize or create specific offers based on that knowledge, those skills, that experience and so on. That's kind of the process that I try to teach. The book "Side Hustle from Idea to Income in 27 Days" basically walks you through it one step a day. And that book is at every library. I'm not trying to get people to buy the book, although it is cheap, it should be helpful, but wherever you can get it, fine by me.
And then as you do these things, focus on learning and experimenting. So it's not just book knowledge that you need, you really need to experiment, you need to get that first website up. You need to experiment and see what happens. You need to have an offer, you need to have something for sale, something that people can pay for. An offer is essentially this promise that you make, it is a pitch, here's why you should buy it, it is a price.
And the offer costs $27 or $2,700 or $27,000, whatever it is, that is your offer. So I would get to that point as quickly as possible without trying to learn everything. So as soon as possible, go from that book knowledge to that experiential knowledge. Kevin, there's so many things you could do. I understand that, it does feel overwhelming, but I encourage you to maybe focus on that, your skills, your knowledge, experience, choose a category and industry, and then think about how you could, in fact, build that first website.
I do think that's a good idea. And don't worry about social media. That's my take for our listener, and for anybody else out there who is new to this world, hey, welcome, I'm so glad you're listening. Thank you, I make the podcast every day. It is always completely free.
There are a wealth of free resources and notes pages for every single episode, all on the website. And of course, I hope you subscribe, follow for more. My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from The Onward Project.
