This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hello and welcome back. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. Got a story about an interesting little service today. And you may recall that here on the show, I try not to talk a ton about creating apps or building highly technical websites or anything else that tends to require advanced programming skills. And that's because it's a huge myth that if you want to build a website or start an online project, you have to have those skills.
I often hear from people who feel left out of the side asshole world because they don't have those skills. And I always try to make the point that I don't either. And I've been doing this my entire adult life, literally 20 years. I have another extended cut episode coming up where I'll show you more about how you can make websites or do whatever else you need to do without becoming a coder. But still, every once in a while, I do like to feature a technical service whenever it's particularly interesting.
And today's is an ideal exception because it is an interesting service that meets an emotional need, particularly of parents. And it's also kind of just getting off the ground now, but because it's interesting and has real potential, I thought we'd look at it. So you'll hear the story and then we'll look at those emotional needs, which are critical to a lot of hustling success, regardless of your project. And I'll be right back with that. [Music]
These days, most kids and adolescents grow up using the internet in a very different way than previous generations did.
I remember when I was a kid, not to date myself too much here, but I was an early adopter of online services and social networks. I used to use online bulletin boards, messaging services, a network called Prodigy, which has now been defunct for at least 10 to 15 years. Even so, nowadays, most kids are exposed or at least potentially exposed to all kinds of content and interaction that many parents are very rightly concerned about. And it's not just a matter of kids seeing something that they either shouldn't see at all or maybe just not see at a young age, but parents are rightly concerned about their kids being bullied or worse. So with that in mind, Ian Ladd had recently graduated from college with a degree in IT.
He took a day job doing project management and backend support. And he also decided to create a web-based service that allows parents to monitor what their children do on their computers and mobile devices. This service is called LiveSnoop. It's currently available through your desktop or a mobile browser, and he's in the process of making both iOS and Android versions. Basically, this service allows people to see what websites their kids are visiting as well as who they're interacting with.
They can get a daily or weekly summary of activity, or they can also get instant alerts for any dangerous activity their kids may be exposed to. Now, Ian is quick to point out that monitoring doesn't necessarily need to be spying. It's much more about helping parents feel comfortable knowing that their kids are safe. And without any monitoring solution at all, parents often feel uneasy not knowing who their kids are interacting with and how, and LiveSnoop helps to meet this need. The service is available in two tiers.
One is free, one is paid. This is a very common approach to online software. The idea is to get people in the door and then convert some of them to the paid service. Usually, a certain percentage will always be for users. They'll never pay, but that's okay because if you continue to bring in more of them and you can convert at least a decent subset, your side hustle can become profitable.
Ian and I spoke about his service just before he was planning to make some major upgrades and begin marketing it further. At that point, he had done no marketing at all except for word of mouth, but still in one week alone, he had 240 users logged in for a total of 1,250 sessions. Now, out of those 240 users, 19 were paying users, about 8%. And as I said, he planned to continue improving the service and then put out those mobile versions and then look at doing some more active marketing to increase his user base. It's not a huge success at this point, but it's already making a few hundred dollars a month and he believes it has potential for much more.
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So here's a phrase I have not used very often on the show and this phrase is recurring revenue. Almost all software is priced this way now and many other things that you buy as well. It used to be that you purchased software only once or maybe once every couple of years when they had a new version coming out, but now the industry standard is to pay monthly. Now this helps to support customer service and product improvements. And if you're skeptical, of course, it also helps to make those companies more money.
The beauty of this model is once you have paying subscribers, as long as they're using the service, they're not likely to cancel. At least most of them aren't. So as I said, Ian is making a few hundred dollars a month, which of course is not a ton of money, but his expenses are very low. And if he does nothing else, this money is likely to continue. So once he does even a small amount of marketing, it's very likely he's gonna increase that number.
What if it was $1,000 a month? That's not out of reach at all. He already has the makings of a proven service. What if it was more? What if it was four times that amount or 10 times that amount?
Maybe there's a ceiling for it somewhere, but the point is this is a very healthy start and a great sign of potential success in large part because of that recurring revenue model. Now also at the start of this episode, I mentioned emotional needs. Now this service clearly responds to a major concern of a lot of parents. Most parents don't want to completely restrict or prohibit their kids from using the internet. They understand that the world we live in requires that.
They want them to grow up with good technical skills, but of course they also want them to be safe first and foremost. So this live Snoop service at least has the potential to provide not only security, but also peace of mind, which obviously is very valuable. And as I mentioned, if Ian is able to grow this service, create those additional versions to work on Android and iOS, this hustle has real potential to create real recurring revenue for Ian, even as he works on it part-time. And as you're building your hustle this year, ask yourself if there's any potential for recurring revenue in your product or service. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.
Head over to sidehustleschool.com. You can see the show notes. You can give me a shout out. You can check out a bunch of free resources. I'm Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to Side Hustle School. I hope to see you tomorrow. [Music]
