Weekend Workshop: Test, Test, and Test Again

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Weekend Workshop, test, test, and test again. Welcome friends, welcome Side Hustle School community. Thank you for tuning in, episode 3053. As part of our Weekend Workshop series, it's all about helping you learn the key steps to a new side hustle in 2025, or perhaps later, one step or concept per week. It includes activities, examples, and more, and of course it's all free.

Today we're talking about testing. Oh, and I should say we're using the book Side Hustle from idea to income in 27 days. That is our text. It's available wherever books are sold. And I'm gonna take you through those key steps.

Today we're on day 20. We've actually had 20 weeks of the year so far. So day 20 is all about test, test, and test again. If you wanna hear some of the earlier episodes in this series, you can just go to the website, sidehustleschool.com. They're all freely available there.

But today's learning objective is, discover how to test your business ideas and offers to continuously improve your results. And the key point is success in the side hustle world is not about guessing. It's about testing to find what really works. Our example today is Gabby Orcutt, who famously got paid for posting on Pinterest. Got paid a lot, got paid $40,000 a year.

Not a bad little side income, right? Also this starts back a few years ago. Maybe she's making more now, I'm not sure. Whatever the number is, she started posting images on Pinterest just for fun, just like most Pinterest users. And then when she realized she could earn money from her pins, she didn't just randomly post content.

Instead, she systematically tested different approaches. She experimented with various types of images, posting times, board organizations. And when she noticed that certain topics performed better, she created more content in those areas. By watching the data rather than making assumptions, she grew her following to over 1 million people and, as noted, began earning more than $40,000 a year from what was first a casual hobby. So how do you do it?

Well, testing doesn't have to be complicated. At its simplest, it means trying different approaches and paying attention to what works best. It could look like testing different prices to find what sells best. And one of my favorite tips in this category is sometimes a higher price will actually convert more, which is crazy, right? Like you've been selling at one price and then you charge more and you sell more.

So you're not only making more per product, you're actually making more sales. Whenever a business owner or side seller experiences that, they're always like, oh my gosh, mind blown. Also, what was I doing for all that time selling at a lower price? Could also mean testing marketing messages to see what resonates or experimenting with different product features. I mean, it could mean a lot of things, but the key is to test one thing at a time so you know exactly what caused any changes in results.

A big mistake people make is they're like, I'm gonna start testing. So they go and they change five different variables. They change their headline, they change the price, they change something else about the copy, maybe the order button color, it could be a big thing or a small thing, but they make all these changes. Then they achieve a different result, like maybe the conversion rate goes up or down, but they have no idea what actually caused it. So the key is again, test one thing at a time so that you know exactly what causes the changes in results.

Okay, let's take a quick break. When we return, how to set up your tests. We're gonna talk specifically about A/B testing, also known as split testing. [Music]

So I gave you a few examples of things that could be tested. The simplest form of testing is called A/B testing, also known as split testing, where you try two versions of something to see which performs better.

You could actually try more than two versions, but let's keep it simple. For this purpose, we're gonna call it A/B testing, split testing with just two versions. Think of it like a taste test between recipes, where you blindly taste two recipes, could be two flavors of a soda or something else, like which one do I actually like better? Like I might say I like one better or think I like one better, but what do I actually prefer? Okay, so the key is to do it blind, to not let users know necessarily that there are two different versions of something.

So you might test a headline, okay? Let's give you two different versions of a headline. Learn guitar in eight weeks. That's one headline. Another headline is master your favorite songs, okay?

Slightly different benefit, but we're still teaching guitar lessons. That's what we're trying to sell here, but two different headlines. By showing each version to different customers and tracking the results, you'll learn which message sells better. And then you've got your winner, so you go to that. Then you can test the winning version against something new.

And you can keep going with the same kind of test over the same variables, or you could be like, okay, this headline is now pretty good. I'm gonna now test another variable. You keep testing and keep optimizing. And over time, this will make a huge difference for pretty much anybody selling anything. So your action exercise, choose one element of your business to test this week.

Could be a different price point. Headline is always really easy. It's a go-to choice. That's why I use that as an example. So if you're not sure what to try, I would say either try a different price point or a different headline, but it could be any variable.

Just make sure you track your results carefully. After a week, review what you learned and plan your next test. If you use Shopify, they have some built-in tools that will help with this. If you use WordPress, there are plugins. Pretty much any e-commerce software you use should have some kind of split testing component to it.

If not, then there are some third-party solutions you can try as well. It shouldn't cost a whole lot. Each test teaches you something valuable about your customers and your business. Now last but not least, in this segment, I always say, it's better to have a simple idea you can start right away than a brilliant idea that never launches. So I guess in this case, we would say it's better to have a simple test that you actually try and move forward with than to get into the weeds of like, oh, what are 100 tests I can set up?

You don't need to set up 100 tests. One or two will show you how this works and probably also convince you of the merit of it. That's all I got for you today. Of course, new episodes coming out every single day. In one week from now, we'll have the next version of this segment, Weekend Workshop, that will be day 21.

But for now, I'm signing off. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.