This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Friends, community listeners, welcome to Side Hustle School. It's Chris Guillebeau, your host. In today's episode, we're gonna meet a digital marketer who finds a sweet spot between technical skill and small business demand, specifically in the dental and orthodontic world. He was working with a larger agency, but then noticed a pattern. Local orthodontists were often years behind in their online presence, which makes sense, right?
They're good at fixing teeth with braces and Invisalign, all that fun stuff. But in terms of digital marketing, they got no idea what's going on. They have outdated business listings, duplicate map entries, missing photos, reviews that never get a reply. And yet at the same time, these same practices rely heavily on search visibility to bring in new patients. So basically if this guy can fix their problem, it's actually very valuable to the orthodontists.
So he's gonna tell you how he did it. He made more than $1,000. That's the whole point of this series, first $1,000. And I think he's still earning with this project. It's a good example of a high trust, high value niche side hustle.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to solve a visible problem that somebody else doesn't know how to fix. All right, gonna pass the microphone to Dennis. He's gonna share the story. I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up.
[Music]
My name is Dennis. I work in digital marketing and SEO, mostly for medium sized companies. But during one agency project for a dental client, I noticed something wild. Local orthodontists had terrible online visibility. Their Google business listings were broken.
Locations weren't mapped correctly. And most of them had zero idea how reviews, categories, or even photos influence search results. They weren't competing on a national level. They just wanted to show up when someone searched prices near me, but they were getting buried. That gave me an idea.
I decided to offer local SEO tune up, a one time fixed price service, write cleanup of practices online presence. That meant fixing or merging duplicate Google listings, clearing up citations on Yelp, health grades, and other directories, upgrading geo tag photos and choosing better categories, writing an SEO friendly business description, giving the front desk team a cheat sheet for asking for reviews. I priced it at $300. If they wanted a training session and done for you email templates, I added $200. To get my first client, I literally opened Google maps and typed orthodontist Orange County.
I clicked through listings until I found one with obvious issues, duplicate entries, no photos, outdated business hours. I emailed them saying, "Hey, I help local orthodontists clean up their Google listings and get better map visibility. I noticed a few problems with yours. Want a free audit?" The office manager replied the next day. She said she'd been trying to fix their listing forever, but didn't know how.
I sent over a short loom video showing exactly what was wrong. She hired me immediately. After I delivered the fixes and a walkthrough guide, I asked if she knew anyone who might need help. She referred me to two more offices. One paid $300 and the other wanted me to train their staff, which turned into a $500 job.
That brought me to $1,100 in a few weeks. All while I was still just testing something out. It helped that I delivered fast. Most tuneups took less than three hours once I had access. It was also easy for me.
This is a skill I've had for a long time and the work isn't terribly challenging. Looking back, I didn't need a website, a brand, or a huge portfolio. I just needed to solve a specific problem with real business value. And I explained it clearly. I still do this on the side.
And if I ever go freelance full-time, this is exactly the kind of service I'd scale, I trust, and low overhead. [Music]
Hey Dennis, thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing the story. There's so many different ways out there that people can take a skill, adapt, evolve, transform it into something that generates money for them and also makes the world a better place or otherwise helps people like exactly what Dennis has done. So Dennis, congratulations.
Listeners, I'm rooting you on. I'm cheering for you as well. I wanna hear your story at some point, sidehustleschool.com. Lots of resources there. You can download or stream the entire archive of more than 3,100 episodes and counting.
And of course, you can continue to listen to new episodes as they come out seven days a week, always completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
