This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Greetings and welcome to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau, your host, bringing you new stories every day of people creating freedom. They're creating freedom for themselves, and they're often doing it in pretty unconventional ways. Now, speaking of unconventional, I don't think we've ever talked about Bitcoin on the show or cryptocurrency in general. Maybe we've had some brief mention of it, but I don't think we've ever had a feature on it.
That's probably because I don't totally understand it, to be perfectly candid with you. I almost feel like some of this is like an emperor has no closed situation. And I know that a lot of our listeners are much smarter than me, and they get it, and it makes perfect sense. I mean, I understand that there's a digital currency. I just don't know quite how it works.
I saw a joke that said the IRS is gonna start taxing Bitcoin transfers, but first they have to hire someone to explain Bitcoin. And I thought, well, yeah, they're making fun of the IRS, but I think a lot of us are actually in that boat. At the same time, whether you understand it or not, you probably know that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general is really hot right now. And whenever something like this takes off, there's lots of ways to make money kind of around the periphery of it. So in other words, you don't necessarily have to become a Bitcoin miner or otherwise traffic in Bitcoin itself.
And today's side hustler makes money from the industry itself without having a lot of money of his own to invest. And we're calling it Bitcoin YouTuber earns thousands in affiliate commissions. I think you'll like this story, and it's coming right up. [Music]
If you've consumed any form of media recently, it's been hard to avoid the conversation about cryptocurrencies. But despite all the hype and chatter, it can be a confusing topic.
How do these currencies work? What are people actually investing their money in? And if I drop my Bitcoins behind the couch, will I find them later while cleaning and realize I'm rich? Anyway, here's a super short primer. Bitcoin is a digital currency with no physical form that's used to make payments without fees and is more or less anonymous.
These highly secure payments are made and recorded using a technology called Blockchain. In some other show, we'll talk about Blockchain. But here we're talking about side hustling. And so let's talk about today's side hustler, Alexander Von Dill. He is a Bitcoin YouTuber and owner of the Netherlands-based website Bitcoin Update.
Over the past few years, Alex developed an interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, dabbling in investing and mining, and he felt a pull to spend more time and effort on it. He decided he would produce and broadcast daily video updates where he'd provide information and case studies for the Dutch Bitcoin community. It would be simple to arrange around his day job where he operates an information service and he thought it could be a fun way to connect with people who had similar interests. It cost almost nothing to get started. Alex already had an internet hosting plan.
He was able to pick up a new domain name for a few dollars and he used a basic free theme to make his website look presentable. Uploading videos to YouTube was free and his website was mainly used to refer people to his YouTube channel, so he didn't need anything elaborate. He already owned a webcam and used free software to make the videos. So in other words, his startup cost came to a grand total of about $10 for that domain name. He then set out creating daily updates on what was happening in the Bitcoin world, which is indeed fast moving.
Stuff does happen every day. He'd also give actionable tips about how people could mine for new Bitcoins or smartly invest their non-digital money. Alex noticed that his audience loved reviews of specific tools and resources, so he began to double down on this kind of content. And that's when he saw the opportunity to start making real money. He became a member of the affiliate programs for some of his favorite tools and then promoted them through the videos.
He'd do so simply by placing the affiliate links in the video descriptions or the blog posts associated with them. In his evenings and weekends, he'd sign up for new tools with affiliate programs, testing their products and creating honest reviews about the ones he felt would be of most benefit to his viewers. He has a strict policy to only recommend tools he himself would use. Now, this has been a well-paying endeavor. Some visitors have been known to spend up to $7,000 after clicking through his links.
So in the case of that $7,000 purchase, Alex earned $700, and he earned that money just by referring one of his viewers. Alex says finding the affiliate programs was easy. You can usually Google a product's name with the words affiliate program after it, or you can go directly to their website and see if they have a signup link somewhere in the footer. You don't usually have to develop a relationship with the product staff. Most of the time, you just have to wait for approval from their team via email.
In the Bitcoin world, there's always a new product, change, or observation to be discussed. So Alex enjoys the process of creating daily content. Many of his new viewers arrive at his Bitcoin update videos organically through YouTube search, but it does help to have a specific blog link to refer people back to whenever someone asks him about his videos. If you wanna do something similar, Alex's advice is to start a free YouTube channel on one niche topic you'd like to talk about. Don't deviate from this topic.
Don't be tempted to go broad. Instead, go as deep as you can with that single topic and provide as much interesting and entertaining information as you can. Since starting his YouTube channel just a few months ago, Alex has been able to grow the side hustle income to consistently more than $1,000 a month. But that's just the average. Sometimes he can make that in one week with a big affiliate sale.
And he projects that if it keeps growing at the same rate, at some point next year, it will become a six-figure business. Oh, and he's not getting paid in digital currency. Those affiliate commissions are paid in money that goes straight to his bank account. [Music]
Interesting stuff, huh? As I said, I know very little about cryptocurrency, but what I do know is we need experts to explain these things to us.
Whenever a new industry gets formed, which is essentially what's happened here, we need people to come along and decipher it, explain it to us, show us how we can benefit, what we need to know, et cetera. And so for those who'd like to learn to mine Bitcoin or another digital currency, which could be a side hustle of its own, we need tools and resources. And in the Netherlands, Alex is getting paid by referring his visitors and viewers to those tools. So it's a win-win. I would imagine there are many other peripheral ways to make money with this industry.
And I also wouldn't be surprised if Alex's hustle ramps up to well beyond its current point, because without getting into the nuts and bolts and various arguments about this overall topic, I don't think that anyone would dispute that these digital currencies are gonna continue generating a lot of interest. Like I'm pretty sure they're here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. So that's great for anyone who has the knowledge, who understands this well, and not just has the knowledge, but knows how to communicate it well, because they're just gonna be more and more and more prospective customers or YouTube viewers or blog readers, whatever translates into income, they're gonna be more and more of those people. And the experts will be positioned to serve them. Well, this concludes our first ever episode on Bitcoin.
Perhaps more to come in 2018. I will learn along with you. Don't forget, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to all this stuff, are at sidehustleschool.com/361. Thanks so much for listening.
I'll be back tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
