This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Do you belong to any subscription boxes? Do you have a box of stuff that comes every month? That's what most people call monthly clubs that used to be called of the month clubs, like the book of the month, the plant of the month, the wine of the month. There are actually many different versions of each of those. If you go and search for wine of the month club, you're gonna see a whole bunch of different businesses.
A listener today is gonna tell us about pickles of the month, cigars. There's just everything, right? So many different versions. And so with so many of these clubs or subscriptions around, does that mean the market is saturated? Or does it mean there's tremendous demand for yet another one?
Or does it perhaps mean something in the middle? That's what we're gonna look at today in our listener question. And welcome to Side Hustle School, by the way. My name's Chris Guillebeau, your host. Today, the caller who's seen all of these of the month clubs and subscription boxes and such, what should they do?
Should they, in fact, start a subscription box? I'll try to give a couple of helpful tips in this episode for our caller and maybe for you. All right, stay tuned for that question and my answer. [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Yvette from Long Beach. And I've been listening to the show for a couple of years.
I started looking at a wine club that sends out monthly wines. And I stumbled onto a ton of other clubs. You can get everything from unique cigars to the latest and fresh pickles delivered to your door. Do all of these of the month clubs make money? I'd like to start one of my own.
Also, how is the monthly club model different from subscription boxes? It seems like subscription boxes are the cool new thing, but the monthly clubs are still around and doing fine from what I can tell. Looking forward to what you have to say about this. Thanks. [Music]
Well, you know, I don't think there's wild and crazy demand for another club that's just like all the others.
You know, I don't know that there is so much demand for another pickle club, for example. Don't just sell pickles to anyone, of course. You need to narrow it down more. At the same time, these of the month clubs are basically the forerunners of what are now called subscription boxes. So if you have ever subscribed to a subscription box for toys, for face masks, for cigars, as our caller mentioned, anything else, like we've actually had a number of episodes on different subscription boxes.
We had one called Consecrate. That was one of my favorites. It was started by a minister, and we've had just all kinds of others as well. Most of the advice and best practices there will apply. So if you're thinking of doing an of the month club, go back and listen in the archives.
You can go and search on the website for subscriptions, and you'll probably find a bunch of episodes. Really, your goal with anything like that is to build to a sustainable level, because to make it work, really has to have a certain scale. If you have four customers a month, that's pretty tough for your subscription business, for actually sending out boxes. If you've got 40, that's getting better. If you've got 400, then you've got a full-time business, or at least it could be.
And it's pretty cool when people have been able to build this kind of full-time business. They do still tend to struggle in the long term with churn, with people unsubscribing, because most people, as much as they love cigars or wine or pickles, they don't want to endlessly get another box in the mail from the same club. They might want to try something different. But at least for a while, it can definitely be profitable. So I do think having more specificity about both your product and the market fit would help a lot, just because it is a crowded field.
So definitely do some research and check out CrateJoy as well, cratejoy.com. They have a bunch of resources there, and they have a whole service that makes this process easier if you decide to go down that route. Let us know how it goes. And listeners, if you have a question or comment, come to sidehustleschool.com. We'll continue to feature content from our listeners, along with updates as they launch and grow their projects.
Hey, by the way, this was episode 3,300, 3,300 episodes of "Side Hustle School." Thank you for making it possible. Thank you for being out there. The whole community, all of the content, all of the archives, it's all completely free. Check it out at the website. And of course, subscribe and follow and come back for more.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
