Auto Employee Earns $100,000 Selling Stickers on Instagram

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

[Music]

Side Hustle School listeners, welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You know, every once in a while, I stumble on a Side Hustle story in which I think I must be reading this wrong. Like we have an intake form where people submit information. Then we go back and interview them, get some more answers.

And so when I looked at the notes for this one, I thought, you know, something must be wrong. Because today's Side Hustler is someone we featured last year, actually more than 200 days ago, for a totally different project. And he came across our radar again when he reported to us that he had had a bit of success selling stickers on Instagram. What is a bit of success? Well, I'll just give away the ending now because how it works is more interesting anyway.

In less than a year, this guy has sold six figures in low priced stickers, marketing almost entirely through Instagram. So again, I thought it was a typo. By a hundred thousand dollars, did you mean $1,000? 'Cause that's still cool. Like a lot of people would be happy with an extra thousand bucks selling stickers.

Or did you mean $10,000? Which would have also got my attention. Well, it turns out this story submission was no typo. This guy really has earned more than $100,000 selling low priced stickers over the past year. And in fact, it's continuing to grow at an even faster rate.

So naturally I had a lot of questions for him, including some that you might have. And after our sponsor break, you'll hear how it works. [Music]

Today's side hustle comes from Remy Silva. By day, he's a digital media manager for an auto dealership in Los Angeles. We featured Remy on episode 109, where we discussed his meal prepping service, one of his side hustles.

Well, at the time he had just started Blank Tag Co., another side hustle selling stickers. He started this one with his girlfriend Alondra after they visited Tokyo. On that trip, they went to a department store called Tokyo Hands. They noticed it had some really interesting stickers produced by a company called B Side Label. A few days later while walking through another part of town, they noticed the flagship B Side Label store.

Remy was surprised to see that a company that only sold stickers made enough money to have a physical store in downtown Tokyo, no less. So after getting back from the trip in February, 2017, Remy and Alondra decided to start their own sticker company. They invested a hundred bucks on a website and some simple plug-ins, and they went to a site called Dribble.com where they could hire designers. They tried out a few different people and finally settled on one they liked. The first few stickers they made, however, were disasters.

Remy commissioned a few pop art images as well as a zombie, a zombie dog, and a suspicious turtle. None of them sold at all, and Alondra suggested making food stickers. Blank Tag only started growing after he listened to her, so there's a lesson there for someone out there. They divide responsibilities. Remy handles the e-commerce, website management, and the marketing, while Alondra manages more of the creative and outreach side.

For marketing, they invest in Instagram ads using targeted advertising and influencer marketing, which Remy describes as social proof on steroids. But he also says that organic word of mouth is the biggest source of growth. He believes after tweaking and experimenting, they found a product that people really like. How much do they like it? Well, within three months of starting the sticker hustle, Remy was spending four hours a day on it.

But it was worth it, and we'll come back to that in a moment. The time spent includes packing stickers, talking to customers, reading reviews, developing new ideas, and making changes to the website. This is very different from the previous project he started that we featured in episode 109. In that episode, he had created a meal planning subscription service. And that site is completely automated, so it's much more of a passive income generator.

He thinks the sticker project is more scalable because almost everyone has a connection to at least one of their stickers. They touch on the value of nostalgia, especially memories of childhood. All right, so I said it was worth it. What do I mean? Well, they've been selling two to 3,000 stickers a month at an average price point of three to $5 each.

They spend about $2,500 a month in advertising, but they're getting a fantastic return on that investment. Since beginning last February, less than one year ago, these low price stickers have made more than $100,000 for Remy and Alondra. They're not cashing out their sticker profits just yet. For now, they're reinvesting, constantly looking for new images and products and other ways to market. They love stickers and bringing happiness to others.

They also hope that everyone who starts a side hustle can experience the same joy they do. [Music]

Awesome, big congratulations to our serial side hustler, Remy Silva. More than $100,000 in its first year selling a low price product with growth rates that are now projected to be even higher. What a fantastic success. And I think you should pay attention to where this idea came from because you can learn something from it.

Remy and Alondra were on this trip to Japan and they're just shopping around. They see some cool stickers. Then later they're walking in a different neighborhood. They noticed a whole store that sells only this brand right in the heart of downtown Tokyo where rent is really expensive. In other words, they noticed that people love stickers enough to sustain a major business.

And even though it's not usually good to sell such a low price product, there are exceptions and this seemed to be one of them. So then they came back home and got to work using their creativity and marketing skills. And the combination of these two things, like these are the two most important characteristics of starting profitable projects. First, the power of observation. Just kind of noticing, hey, stickers are really popular.

Even though they don't cost very much, it seems like a lot of people like them and are buying them. And then the willingness to take action. So you've got the power of observation and the willingness to take action. If you can combine these two characteristics, which I talk about in different ways all the time on the show, this really can be the key to your success. And it often takes multiple attempts.

You might have to redirect or change course as you go along. Just like in this story, Remy's first ideas for designs didn't go so well. But then when Alondra suggested, let's focus on food items, that was a hit. So you try different things as you go along. And of course, there's no guarantee that you're gonna sell $100,000 worth of stickers on Instagram or whatever it is that you're trying to do.

But these stories that I tell you every day are real. You can go and look at their websites or their social media accounts. Take a look at blank tag co on Instagram. And it really is something you can learn from each of these stories. It just might help you create a new source of income, like everybody I talk about on the show.

Well, that's my hope for you at least. That's my goal. That's what I work on every day. And as I close out this episode, I will remind you that inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to everything I mentioned are at sidehustleschool.com/380.

That's three eight zero. If you enjoyed this episode, let me know. You can say hi on Twitter or Facebook @chrisguillebeau. That's C-H-R-I-S-G-U-I-L-L-E-B-E-A-U. Or 193 countries on Instagram.

193 countries. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.