Philadelphia Lover Maps Out $35,000/Year Side Hustle

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

Oh, hi there. What's up? Welcome. This is Side Hustle School. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau, bringing you interesting, unconventional, and sometimes unexpected success stories every day of people with day jobs creating side hustles, not just part-time jobs, but creating assets for themselves. It's all about the pursuit of freedom and opportunity even if

you love your job. Today, I've got an interesting, unconventional, unexpected success story. It is of a neuroscientist, turned marketing director, who earns $35,000 on the side selling her art on Instagram with basically no marketing. Did you get all of that? There's definitely a lot going on here. I was really impressed with this project. So if you like art, the

city of Philadelphia, or just interesting case studies, I think you'll like this one. That story is coming up in just a moment. After an unconventional career jump, from neuroscientist to marketing director, and also a few bad breakups, Emma Fried-Castrolet found herself in the midst of an existential crisis. She loved her new job, but felt a strong urge to make something that showed off her artistic side. In order to force herself into extracurricular creative activities, Emma set herself a challenge. She would create a paper cut map of the city of Philadelphia.

Now, if you don't know what a paper cut map is, you've probably seen them. Basically, like a series of precise incisions into paper to remove all the sections of the paper that don't look like what you're trying to make. It's kind of like sculpting, but with paper. Emma had spent a lot of time with a scalpel performing experiments as a neuroscientist and felt her skills would transfer across perfectly. How is that for using a skill you already know? This is going to be my new go-to example.

For the next three months, Emma spent her evenings and weekends working on the project. She documented the progress on her Philadelphia-centric blog called Philly Love Notes and through its associated Instagram account. Once the project was completed and on the recommendation of a friend, she scanned the finished work into her computer. Well, little did she know that this labor of love would go on to become the backbone of her entire side hustle. In the next few weeks, Emma generated some buzz around the project by offering a giveaway where people could enter to win the original map. She also shared some smaller maps she'd

made for friends by lasering her design onto pieces of wood. The response was overwhelming and strangers began requesting their own custom maps directly through Instagram comments and messages. To manage this influx of orders in what was suddenly a new business, Emma set up shop on Etsy. This is the only real app or platform she uses to run the business because it lets her handle all of the front and back ends of things in one easy-to-manage platform. On one side it's the storefront she can refer people to with a simple link and on the other it allows her to process and handle all of the sales that are coming in. But being a thorough scientist at heart, she does have a spreadsheet that she makes

herself to keep as backup documentation. Custom maps make up around 95% of Emma's monthly orders, but she's managed to refine it to a relatively painless process. In her own words, Emma says she basically makes the same map over and over again. The original design that she scanned into a computer forms the basis of all her orders. She can use it, edit it, chop it up, and change it to meet the needs of any custom order without having to spend months hunched over a piece of paper. These custom files are then taken to her local

art space, called NextFab, where they're lasered onto pieces of wood and then sanded down to be ready to ship. The ease of this process also helped Emma keep her startup costs extremely low. She has a 70-90% profit margin on all her orders, she invests $129 a month for that NextFab membership, then an additional $15-$35 an hour for laser time. In other words, it doesn't cost a lot to make these and each piece retails in the range of $50 for the smallest size, on up to $350 for the largest size. Now get this, the sales of these maps, all stemming from that initial three months of work she did back in 2014, has earned her an extra $35,000 a year, three years in a row so far. Her work is marketed

almost exclusively through Instagram, and when I say marketed, it's pretty soft marketing. Emma has 55,000 followers, which she's curated through creating a niche feed solely about Philadelphia. Mostly she shares photographs that local people and travelers alike would love and she uploads images of her maps only once every two weeks. When she does that she says it's almost guaranteed to create a spike in sales. The second biggest driver of sales is word of mouth. Because of the uniqueness of her

designs and how many people have bought them so far, she has a constant stream of people coming to her to see how much it would cost to have their own map made. So this means that aside from that update every two weeks on Instagram, Emma has to put little effort into getting her maps in front of new customers. They really are almost selling themselves. Being a lover of the city for the past 31 years has helped Emma keep this side hustle focused. Because she views her side hustle as a project, not a full-time focus, she's been able to avoid the pressures of entrepreneurship and the need to feel like she has to constantly expand. That happens to be the same advice she'd give to anyone else looking to start

a side hustle. She says view it as a long-term project. Don't get caught up too much in the fact that you're now a "business owner" or entrepreneur. Focus on your own motivations, your own reasons for doing something. Now that said, Emma would like to expand her brand and its designs to other cities at some point. And she's also looking at other forms of artwork that can serve as a love note to

people's favorite cities. So who knows? If you've got a request, maybe check out her Instagram account and let her know where you live. Wow, this is pretty awesome. Congratulations to Emma. Just a quick note that this is obviously

a very visual project. So if you're having a hard time picturing it, you're not sure what a paper cut map is. Or if you're thinking like, "How can somebody earn $35,000 a year off something they designed three years ago?" Well, you might want to see it for yourself. I'd encourage you to come to the show notes page where we'll link up for Etsy shop and her Instagram account. You can check it out from there at sidehustleschool.com/347. That

is for episode 347 today. So just sidehustleschool.com/347. And my other comment is it will be interesting to see if she can expand elsewhere and how that works. Like there's definitely a lot of potential, obviously, but because the initial project is so closely connected to Philadelphia, I wouldn't automatically assume that her existing fan base and platform would naturally generate the same amount of sales elsewhere. So it's probably not the case where she can go from $35,000 focused on Philadelphia, and all of a sudden add one city, and then she's making $70,000 from it. But at the same time, there are these obvious expansion opportunities.

So I'm curious myself. I guess we'll see what happens. Regardless of what happens there, huge success so far. Always love when people are able to make art, do something that they find meaningful, and also find a way to sell it. Today's story illustrates that very well.

Thank you for listening. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I'll be back tomorrow with another story I'm Chris Guillebeau for Sideustleschool.