This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Weekend workshop, make it easy to get paid. Welcome listeners, welcome friends. Thanks for tuning in to Side Hustle School. It's your host, Chris Guillebeau. Today's episode is part of a segment we're doing all throughout 2025.
It's about helping you learn the key steps to a new side hustle, one step or concept per week. We'll be using the book Side Hustle from idea to income in 27 days as our text. That's available wherever books are sold, including an audio version. But if you don't have the book, I'm gonna take you through the key steps along with listener stories, activities and examples all throughout the year. And of course it is completely free.
Now today's episode comes from day 14, which is in fact about how to make it easy to get paid. This is a simple concept. It's not gonna take long to explain, but yet it is critical to the success of your side hustle. So your learning objective here is to set up simple, reliable payment systems so customers can easily give you money. You don't wanna make it hard for customers to give you money.
In fact, I'll just start off with a story. I had to pay an invoice recently for about $500. And it was so difficult for me to pay this invoice. I had already agreed to pay it. I had no complaint with the vendor.
I was like, here, take my money. We already made a deal. But yet it was so difficult to pay the invoice because they had this convoluted system. I think it was from some other country and I had to register and the registration didn't work. Then I had to verify the registration by text message and by email.
Then I had to wait for my bank account to get linked and it took days. This was all for, as I said, a relatively small transaction about $500. And I was like, man, it would just be so much easier if I could just click a button and pay this company the money that I owed. And so if you're setting up a small business, you don't want that system. You want it to be really simple for people to pay you.
In this case, we had already made a commitment and closed the deal. But if the payment had been on the front end and I had to actually make the payment in advance, I might not have continued. Like I might've given up. And this happens a lot. If you have a complicated payment system, people will give up.
So just keep that in mind. A business really isn't a business until money can change hands. Yet a lot of entrepreneurs and new side hustlers, they spend weeks perfecting their product or service, months sometimes while neglecting the most important part, arguably, which is making it easy to get paid. So just think about your own purchasing habits. Maybe you've had a similar experience as I did, or maybe you just kind of abandoned an online purchase because the checkout process was difficult.
Or maybe you've given up on hiring someone even because you couldn't figure out how to pay them. A complicated payment process can kill an otherwise successful business. Now the good news is that accepting payments is easier than ever. You really just need two things, right? You need a way to accept money and you need a place to put that money.
Okay, and most of the time we aren't dealing in cash these days. So for most new businesses, this means a payment processing system. It could be PayPal or Square or Stripe. Stripe is super common these days. Could be something else, there are others.
And a separate bank account for business income. I mean, really, you just need a bank account. I always encourage people to have a dedicated bank account for your side hustle income, but basically for the essentials, you just need some place where the money can go, okay? So you don't need merchant accounts, complex invoicing software, multiple payment processors, point of sale systems, all this stuff is additive and it may be helpful at some point or for some businesses. But to get going, you need again, a payment processing system and some place where that money goes.
So in the book I tell the story about Parker. He starts recording voiceovers from home. He does this as a side hustle. He actually ended up earning over $8,000 a month from this business. He had really kind of built a name for himself there or a voice for himself, I should say.
And he kept it simple. He made a free account on a freelance platform. He let the platform handle payments. So he didn't have to worry about that. Obviously they took a commission and a cut of that.
But then he had his earnings deposited directly to his bank account. So no fuss, no hassle, super simple. Every day he can look in and see that the money has been deposited. And so he did that, again, built it to over $8,000 a month without any sort of complicated payment system or expensive software. All right, that's one example.
But let's talk about what might work for you. Let's take a quick break. When we return, choosing your payment systems, getting this going so that you can be taking money in as well. [Music]
All right, we'll go quick here. And I already gave you a couple of options.
But here's the principle. The best payment system is one that's easy for both you and your customers to use. Okay, both are important. Just like I told you that story about how it was difficult for me as a customer or a client to pay this company, you want to have a system that is great for you but also great for your customers. So digital products or services, you have lots of options.
Stripe, probably the number one payment processor, anywhere these days. You go to stripe.com, they have a simple process. You can actually embed forms on your website. You can do wholesale integration where everything looks like it's built directly in your website, but it's actually being processed through them. Or they'll just give you a checkout form.
And nothing wrong with using a checkout form. We are all familiar with that these days. Square is good for in-person and can be online as well. Lots of food establishments, restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, they're using Square or something similar. There often is a point of sale system for that.
But again, we're just trying to give you the essentials here. For other products, Shopify is great. They have an all-in-one shopping cart. You just click some buttons, it's good to go. If you're selling online courses, then often your course platform will have a system of its own.
So think if it, Kajabi, Teachable, they all have their own systems and they also integrate with Stripe, Shopify, others. Now those are just a few of the most common options. There are dozens, but of course, Side Hustle School, we are about giving you simple solutions. So I wanna keep it to that. And by the way, if you're doing a service, then QuickBooks or similar accounting or bookkeeping software will often have an invoicing system that works as well.
Typically that's built in with payment. So what you wanna do for your action exercise, you'll never guess, basically your action today is to set up your basic payment system. What does that look like for you? Choose a primary payment method. You could have more than one, but let's just start with choosing one.
Decide on your bank account. If you have an existing bank account for your Side Hustle already, that's great. You've solved that problem. If not, consider opening a separate bank account. Once you get things set up on your website or wherever you're gonna be taking these payments, test the complete payment process.
I can't stress that enough. Really important to test the checkout. Do it with a test transaction. They often have like a test mode you can switch to, but then also do it with a real transaction, like spend your own money and you can either refund it later or just leave it in there. Be sure you test the process.
You'll often find something that doesn't work or some kind of messaging or copy that you need to update that you would have missed otherwise. And then create simple instructions for customers. So those instructions are basically go here, pay here, complete this form, check out by clicking this button, whatever it is. So again, choosing a primary payment method, choosing a bank account where funds will be eventually delivered, test the complete payment process. I guarantee you're gonna notice something that you would have missed otherwise, or most likely you will, I always do.
And then create simple instructions for customers. Our whole objective here, again, is to make it easy for customers to pay you, making the payment process simple. If you overthink the process, if you overcomplicate it, you're gonna be losing sales. This is a simple thing you can do that will help you make more money. And that's good, right?
Don't let perfect be the enemy of paid. You know, that old quote, I just modified it a little bit there. Again, start with one simple payment method and add others as needed. Last but not least, it's always better to have a simple idea. You can start immediately than a brilliant idea that never launches.
Thanks for tuning in to this weekend workshop episode. Next one comes out in a week. And in the meantime, of course, new episode every day. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
