Q&A: "How can I sell flash cards to pharmacy students?"

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

How can you sell flashcards to pharmacy students? I like to hear different business ideas from our listeners. Today, a caller has made a set of flashcards to help pharmacy students. Pharmacy students have to memorize all sorts of information just like all kinds of med students, other students. In the case of pharmacy studies, they're trying to learn generic drug names, brand names, probably some other stuff as well.

But this person is having a hard time finding her market. The product is called Farmer Qs. And we've been talking from time to time about how do you find your ideal customer? How do you understand who your ideal customer is? First of all, like who is best suited for the product or service that you're gonna make.

And sometimes people worry that the market they've chosen is too small. Usually you should have the opposite worry that you're trying to reach so many people that your offer isn't specific enough. So today let's talk about this listener or let's hear their question. Let's try to figure out what she can try, like what might be helpful for her. And for you out there, if you're like, "Okay, I'm trying to figure out what my idea is, but also who's the ideal customer for it, how do I create the right service and product for them?" Hopefully this will give you a little step or a nudge in the right direction.

Detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]

Hi Chris, my name is Noor. I've been watching side hustles close since late 2017. My side hustle is Farmer Cues, which is a set of flashcards that use mnemonics and pictures to make it easier to memorize branded generic drug names. I have them up on Etsy for now just to test the waters.

My question for you is how do I find and market to a very specific and small audience? My product really only is for pharmacy and pharmacy technician students. And it's a lot harder than I thought it would be to find interested people. Do you have any advice? Thank you so much.

Bye. [Music]

So I actually think this is an interesting project with a lot of potential. And it reminds me of this story we did long ago on a guy named Mike Bincovitch. He was actually one of our writers for the show for a couple of years, I believe in the early days. And we also featured him in episode 137.

So in one of Mike's projects, he created a course on learning anatomy for pre-med students. And this course turned into long-term passive income of about $800 a month. So $800 a month is pretty significant when you don't have to do much for it, right? It just shows up, you know? It's one of those things where you're like, oh, it's not that much money.

But then like, if you could have $800 a month coming from a source in which you didn't have to do anything, I think that's pretty amazing, right? And then you're like, what could I do for my next project to get another $800, right? And if I recall correctly, that project also featured a lot of mnemonics in pictures, just like this one here. So in this situation, she's not finding initial success. So what we have is an interesting and presumably helpful product in search of its market.

What I would do next, I'd get some feedback on the cards. Assuming that Nora has some background in this field or at least knows some people in this field, I would make sure that this study aid is really helpful to them. So get some real feedback. Make sure you ask people like, hey, give it to me straight. Don't just say it's nice.

Tell me what you like and dislike. That's often the most helpful feedback you can get. And then if you feel confident in its value, then you focus your time on finding where the target audience might look for study aids. So my sense is that she's not looking in the right place. Where do pharmacy and pharmacy tech students hang out online?

I'm guessing it's not Etsy. There's probably somewhere else. There's probably some specific forum or a resource site. There might just be general web browsing. So searching on Google for pharmacy study aid or generic drug memorization guide.

Maybe it's that last term actually. Now that I think about it, drug memorization guide. What comes up when you search for those terms? Maybe even put pharmacist or pharmacy tech in. I think you want to be ranking for those terms if possible in search engine results.

And now that includes generative AI as well. You want to be in AI engines, language models like chat GPT and others so that when people search, it sends them to your websites. And that way you don't have to actually pay for ads. That way you're not dependent on another platform. You're just getting some organic traffic over time.

So first of all, let's make sure the product is solid as determined by the intended audience. And then second, let's look at getting away from Etsy into a more direct source of reaching this audience. That's my take on that. Let me know how it goes. We'd love to have an update at some point.

Listeners, sidehustleschool.com. You can access 3,400 plus episodes. Download or stream to your heart's content. New episodes come out every day, seven days a week on Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you get your shows. My name's Chris Guillebeau.

You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]