Dog Stocking Hustle Earns Husky Payoff

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[Music]

The dog stocking hustle earns Husky Pay Off. Welcome friends, welcome community. Today's story, he never saw himself starting a side hustle, but when he noticed one of his marketing clients making a lot of money on seasonal pet gifts, he just couldn't roll over anymore. In fact, he had to act. There's a lot of money in Christmas stockings for dogs, something I learned in the original research for this episode.

For everybody out there who wants to be a life coach and is wondering why nobody wants to pay them, maybe you should take those motivational quotes off your social media and start putting up photos of golden retrievers in the snow. Or if nothing else, maybe you'll learn something through this story throughout side hustle school, throughout nine plus years, 3,300 plus episodes, we're all about helping you learn the skills that you need to adapt or transfer or evolve in some way to start or grow an income generating project. Sorry, that was a lot of words. I just, I want to help you make more money. That's basically what I want to help you do so that you can do more of what is important to you.

So we use these case study models and different stories to kind of show you there's all kinds of things you can do and they're probably not some of the things that you have thought of before. So often the unconventional or more interesting ideas are more profitable. It's definitely what we have here today. The agency employee that you'll hear about never saw himself starting a hustle, but then noticed one of his marketing clients doing really well, as I said. And so he decides to think, what can I do myself?

And I tell you about that in today's story, along with some actionable lessons, that story is coming right up. [Music]

Jeff Moriarty has been in marketing for 15 plus years. He's not stuck in the old ways of doing things. Over the years, he has adapted to become a master of search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, other various skills. And this combination led him to the seasonal business that would become his new side hustle.

You see, one of Jeff's clients at his agency sold dog supplies, leashes, food bowls, all that kind of stuff. You never would have guessed the top seller. The top seller was Dog Christmas Stockings. That's right, Stockings outsold everything else and by a significant margin. Jeff was the only person in the company working with the client and his SEO strategy was working.

The company was getting more and more traffic, but the owner just wasn't into it. It was getting harder and harder to compete with Amazon. Margins were already slim. So he decided to exit the business and close down his e-commerce store. Now Jeff felt like he had a secret.

None of his coworkers knew how well the store had been doing from those stockings specifically. Should he in fact go for his own Dog Christmas Stocking business? Well, Jeff didn't really see himself as a side hustler. He liked the marketing agency life. It seemed like adding another responsibility on top would just be too much, but he couldn't stop thinking about it.

Weeks and months went by. Every now and then he'd look around the search rankings to see if any other stores were dominating the Google ranks using his strategy. And every time he did, the entrepreneurial flame burned a bit brighter. Sure, there were some other stores selling Dog Christmas Stockings, but none of them seem to have a dedicated, mindful strategy. Either that, or they just didn't know how to execute.

But Jeff did. The trick that worked for his former client wasn't trying to rank for broad phrases like Dog Christmas Stockings. The trick was targeting very specific phrases like Basset Hound Christmas Stockings. And while no more than a few hundred people were searching these breed specific phrases each Christmas season, he knew that once he had a couple dozen breed options, he'd be able to bring in a significant amount of organic traffic. These people were also willing buyers.

So a full year after his client closed up shop, Jeff gave in. The opportunity was just too good, the strategy too obvious. But he didn't want to end up with tons of product in his garage. He didn't have a lot of money to invest. So he decided to go with a business model he'd been hearing about for the past few years.

The business model known as drop shipping. Rather than buying lots of product and shipping it out himself, he'd partner with a supplier who would also act as his company's fulfillment center when orders were made. That way he wouldn't have to store anything, make a big down payment or even ship the orders himself. All he had to do was build a bare bones Shopify website, which he did. And so with less than $1,000 spent, he was ready for business.

His store dogchristmastocking.com launched. It was finally time to execute that SEO strategy he'd been brooding over for the past year. And he had to do it quickly because the prime stocking buying season was just a couple months away. Jeff focused in on the individual product pages. So they would rank for those breed specific keywords.

He'd add the keywords in the URL on multiple subheadings across the page and then several times throughout the body text. These are classic SEO strategies by the way. You can use them in your business. Not anything fancy, but dog stockings not being a competitive industry, it was enough to beat the dozens of other sites. It didn't seem to be trying very hard to target these phrases.

42 product pages and a couple of weeks later, organic traffic started trickling in. As Jeff checked his search rankings daily, he became more and more excited. That November dogchristmastocking.com made its first sale and its second and its 10th. By Christmas, he'd sold over $1,000 worth of product. His own cut after the drop shipping fees was just a small portion of that, but it was more than enough for the work he put into it.

And he knew he could do better next year. He took a few weeks the following year to write new product descriptions, refine the feel of the website, and add a few additional products. And it worked, that season saw nearly 20x the growth. That's right, he sold over $20,000 worth of product, fetching himself a nice profit. He's now looking ahead to the next holiday season.

His pages are ranking higher than ever. He's crushing the competition with a couple of years of history, and he's got some extra products he's trying out. This turned out to be a great seasonal project and he likes it that way. Doesn't keep him busy most of the year, he's doing other stuff. He gets to brainstorm fun ways to grow, spend a couple of weeks hustling for those Bassett Hound orders, and then repeat the cycle of the following year.

Jeff is hilariously nonchalant about the whole thing. As he likes to say, it beats wasting the night on the couch. [Music]

He first featured an earlier version of this story several years ago, but I went back to check dogchristmastalkings.com. And guess what? It is still up and running.

Still up and running with lots of inventory for all of the Bassett Hounds and perhaps other breeds in your life. And I also think it's a great example of a seasonal business. As I briefly mentioned at the end of the episode, it reminds me of letters from Santa. We've had, I think, two different Santa letter writing businesses over the years, including one from a woman who earns $5,000 every holiday season, and somebody else who I think is skilled beyond that. And so it's just this cool thing where you can work hard for a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months, and then you go on to do other things in your life for the whole rest of the year.

So for a lot of people out there, I think it can be a good business, something like that. Consider that as you think about your own business ideas. And of course, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. So excited to bring you more stories, case studies, questions and answers, and so much more throughout the rest of the year. Of course, everything at Side Hustle School is free.

Every single episode in the archives, all of the new ones that come out every single day, seven days a week, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]