This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Do you ever want to disappear from the internet? Well, maybe if you're happy with your role on the internet, any profiles you have, could helping people vanish from the internet be a viable business? This is today's episode, it might sound like an ad, but no, this is in fact a listener question. Who's wondering, like I've got this idea, the world is obsessed or any world obsessed with gaining followers, going viral, et cetera. What about the opposite?
People out there who want less online attention, not more. And there definitely are a lot of people who fit that description. So she's wondering, instead of helping people grow their online presence, you know, there's lots of businesses that do that, she wants to help them erase it or at least minimize it. I want to go away on the internet. I want to disappear, vanish, et cetera.
For those people, could this side hustler, in fact, create a service? I guess you could call it, what, disappearance as a service? Something like that. How would you structure a business around something that requires so much trust? Because obviously, you're going to have to trust the person who does this as a service.
Anyway, let's look at it. Let's consider pros and cons of this idea. We've got lots of people out there doing all kinds of interesting things. And we use these questions as proxies. Maybe there's something else you want to do.
How do you evaluate what is the best choice for you? Consider that as you hear today's question and my answer coming up right after this. [Music]
Hey, Chris, it's Serena. You know, I've been fascinated for a while now with the idea of online privacy and digital minimalism. I've noticed a lot of people seem overwhelmed by how much personal information is out there.
Old social media profiles, random blog posts. I can't say totally forgot existed. And I was wondering if I could turn this into a service, helping people clean up their digital footprints, delete old accounts and basically disappear from the internet or at least shrink their presence. Is this something people would actually pay for? And if so, how would you package and position a service like this?
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When we think about different business ideas, it's helpful to first think like who is the market? Like who is the ideal customer? What need does this solve? Is this a need that people will pay for? Or maybe even first, let's say how painful is the problem that they're experiencing?
And I do think it's true that digital privacy concerns are at an all time high. There are people that just wanna disappear. If you've seen Black Mirror, like any episodes or seasons of Black Mirror, maybe you're like, hey, technology is awesome in some ways, but it also can be a little bit scary. So there are people of all parts of the spectrum on that. So there's definitely a market or at least there's an interest or at least there's a problem.
But like any trust heavy service, it also presents some challenges. So maybe it's helpful to look at what other services out there are doing something like this. And I took a quick look and there's some called Delete Me, Reputation Defender and OneRep. Those are for the industry of reputation management, which is kind of like a little sub category in the world of PR. But part of what they offer, at least claim to offer is scrubbing various information from your online profile or creating other information that will rank higher and therefore push those other things down and such.
So at least hypothetically, you could create a service that specializes only in helping people like remove themselves from the internet. I think it might be helpful more to do like an audit, like a one-time audit, a checklist or consultation that identifies vulnerabilities, maybe make some suggestions and so on. It could involve ongoing monitoring or guides, DIY resources, paid digital products for people who want to handle some of the work themselves. It is pretty hard to disappear from the internet unless you have a pretty common name. That can be helpful if you have a name like Chris Guillebeau, probably not so much.
But my suggestion is focus on the peace of mind that people are looking for who have this problem or who are troubled in this way and consider what else you could do to offer that peace of mind. Like ultimately that's what they're seeking. They're seeking relief in the form of absence. So position yourself perhaps not just as a cleanup person, but more of a privacy advocate, like somebody who empowers people to reclaim control over their digital lives. And I do think that's good, right?
Like even if you don't wanna disappear from the internet, it is nice to have some agency over how you are represented in this world that we live in, where so many people are chasing fame, chasing followers and virality, all those things. It's also okay to opt out. So interesting idea. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Listeners, let me know your ideas, what you're working on, what's going well, what's not, we'd love to continue to discuss it, sidehustleschool.com.
Wanna be as helpful as possible. We've got notes pages for every episode. You can download the entire history of the podcast, the entire archives, more than 3000 episodes there at the website or just subscribe and follow for more. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
