This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Movie industry friends rewrite the credits, earn $20,000 a month. Welcome friends and welcome back to the podcast, episode 3175 for you today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. The podcast is called Side Hustle School. And in this story, we're gonna talk about those long credit sequences that you see at the ends of movies.
Those sequences can include a lot of names. They also take a lot of time for producers to coordinate. There are lots of steps involved. So these guys, two industry friends, they team up to simplify the process and crawl their way to a highly profitable side hustle. Well, what do you mean by crawl?
You're gonna hear more about that in the episode. How are those hundreds of lines of text actually organized and collected? They have found a way to make it much easier for movie producers and it's turned into a highly profitable business for them. Excited to bring you this story. Stick around, coming up right after this quick message from our sponsor.
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When it comes to business models, software has to be one of the most profitable. Huge companies like Microsoft make their billions by selling software to customers worldwide. But is it possible to create a software business as a side hustle? Well, introducing EndCrawl, a software product built by John Aramic, who's also known as Pliny and his co-founder Allen. This tool serves a very specific purpose.
It creates in-credit sequences for movies. You know, the type that you see scrolling along in black and white as you're leaving the cinema or getting ready to turn something else on Netflix or HBO, where every person had a hand in making the film gets their credit. Well, each of these names has to be added to a list at some point. Usually it's sent to a typographer, then sent to a videographer who would compile and edit. The sequence then needs to be rendered for film so that it can go on the silver screen, or of course your home screen.
EndCrawl completely automates that process using software, and aspiring and professional filmmakers the world over are paying for the privilege of using it. So let's take a look at how this came to be. Well, like many projects, it started with a couple of drinks. The two guys both worked in the film industry. They had brainstormed different ideas in the past, but never committed.
And one night at a party, they decided to actually commit to building a project together, solving a problem they'd long knew existed, that time consuming and painstaking task of creating end credits. Planning and Alan each threw $1,000 at the project to get started. That would allow them to get a server and the tech required to run, as well as cover any small expenses that might crop up. Alan had a coding background and was able to whip up what he says is a very basic version of the first software EndCrawl, and his words, very, very basic. They had a program script that would run on their laptop.
Customers would email them a spreadsheet that they would feed into the script. That script would automatically generate the credits and send it back to them in 15 minutes. Now, even with this manual process, it was still a big improvement because that process used to take 24 hours using the old methods. And customers loved it. The fact that it was a crude version and wasn't automated didn't matter much in the beginning.
They were able to charge $500 each, $500 for each of those end credit sequences. And even with this super basic, in their words, janky proof of concept software, they served their first 100 customers using this system for $50,000 in income. As the money started coming in, they reinvested everything into further development of the product. They added features like automated processing, a user dashboard, just improving the overall experience. And these improvements helped to drive even more customers.
But since they'd been reinvesting their earnings, an increasing number of sales were needed if end crawl was going to become long-term profitable. After they found a few marketing channels and served more and more customers, things began to grow organically. Revenue climbed and after a few years, they began making significant money from the project. How much money? Well, they had a great dinner out to celebrate when they hit the milestone of $500,000 in sales.
That's right, half a million dollars in just a few years. Now, before you get too excited, a large portion of that money was reinvested back in the business. It funded customer support staff, some extra development, as well as their large storage and server costs. Each end crawl sequence is 250 gigabytes. That takes a lot of storage.
At the time we first ran this story, things had begun to ramp up. They were generating $20,000 a month. And after expenses were factored in, it was getting really close for John and Alan to be able to quit their day jobs. Their plan is to double revenue while holding down the job. And if everything goes well, look at dedicating the full-time commitment to end crawl.
And at that point, it's gonna be paying them both a livable wage. So is it possible to build a software-based business as a side hustle? Of course, it's not easy. It takes hard work, but end crawl proves it can be done. From an idea conceived over a couple drinks, to a script running on one laptop, to now generating end credits for films like "Moonlight," "Snowden," "Lady Bird," and "The Big Sick," end crawl's days of crawling have dramatically sped up.
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Well, we first ran a version of this story in 2018. I went to take a look. And endcrawl.com is still up and running, endcrawl.com. I am curious about how AI and machine learning and other advancements will affect this process, but I'm sure they thought about that. I'm sure they're ahead of things over there.
So glad to know it's still out there. We also got this quote from John, speaking of hard work. He said, "Early growth was 100% organic, but what we found is that as we progressed, growth got harder, not easier. There's this fallacy that as you grow, everything starts flowing downhill. But we found that actually once the low-hanging fruit was picked, the real work of selling starts." So as I said, it takes work, but it sounds like it had a pretty incredible outcome for them.
So listeners, I want you to think, what is your idea? What is your first or your next side hustle? As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. There's something out there that you can do. And of course, I hope you'll continue to listen to new episodes every day.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
