This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hello and welcome. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number eight. If it is your weekend, I hope it's a good one for you.
Over here, I am packing my bags to head out around the world. I will eventually be in London for an event on March 6th. First, I am heading to Colombo, Sri Lanka via Boston and Doha. You can follow me or say hi on Twitter or Instagram. Now, obviously, the show will continue every day as I travel. In today's weekly recap, I've got listener questions,
possibly even an answer or two, as well as a few lessons and look back on the week. Hi, Chris. This is Kathleen from Atlanta, Georgia. Thank you so much for your podcast. It's something that I look forward to every morning to start my day off in a kind of inspiring way.
My question for you today is, for Side Hustles, how do you go about declaring any kind of revenue? What kind of paperwork do you have to do? That's part of why I haven't necessarily launched into anything because even the idea of trying to figure out the tax situation just stresses me out. If you have any advice there, greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much.
Hey, Kathleen. Thanks so much. You're awesome. First, I am neither an accountant nor a lawyer, therefore not qualified to give legal advice. But I can tell you, in general terms, when you have a new business or a new income generating project, you don't usually have to pay taxes on that until the following year when you file your normal tax return. After that,
in the second year and going forward, in a lot of cases, you'll need to make estimated payments that you file every quarter. As you go along, you'll definitely want to get some advice about that, but it's usually not difficult in the beginning. As a general rule, I would also suggest that you set aside a good portion of your side hustle earnings. 25% is a good approximate number so that when the time comes to pay taxes, you're not caught by surprise because you've already spent that money or done something else with it. So good luck and let us know how it goes.
Hey, Chris. My name is John and I'm from San Antonio, Texas. I've been working on starting a side hustle of my own, so it was really great when I stumbled on the side hustle school. Really loving all the stories so far. So I'm looking to get my woodworking side hustle to a larger audience, but I'm not sure if I should get a store page on site like Etsy or get my own domain.
What are the pros and cons for purchasing a domain and how do you know which route is best for you? Thanks in advance for helping. John, what's up? Thanks so much for listening. Excited to hear about your woodworks hustle. So you asked specifically about getting a domain.
A domain is different from a website. You can get a domain online for about $10 a year. It doesn't really matter where you get it from. Maybe for simplicity's sake, you should get it from the same web host you're going to use for your actual site. But if you don't, it doesn't really matter. It's easy to transfer it. And a general rule is if you find a domain you like, you might
as well go ahead and buy it because again, it's really cheap. And then the whole question of whether you have a profile on Etsy or another platform or you actually build a site, that's almost a whole separate conversation. In the long term, it probably is best to build your own website. I definitely encourage people to begin working on that as soon as they're ready. But of course, Etsy and those other platforms are super simple to just go on, make a profile and get going.
So it's totally fine to do that. And it doesn't preclude you from doing the other thing. But if you think of a domain name you like, and it is available, definitely snap it up. So when we look back on the week, a few things stand out. Episode 50 was about an American living in Belgium for more than a decade who returns home and starts making fine chocolate. Now,
in this episode, I also made that point about mentorship, shared my opinion that it's important to focus on what you need to know. You don't necessarily need a general mentor. You certainly don't need a guru and you can improve your skills by learning the skill of learning, which is very valuable. Episode 51 was about the cheap plane ticket site that becomes a million dollar hustle. So as you know, I feature a range of stories on the show. It's totally awesome when
someone makes $200 a month for the first time. I think that's wonderful. I remember the first time I did it. It really did feel pretty awesome. But it's also cool to see how a side hustle really can grow into something much more substantial. Now, Scott, the guy featured in this story,
he has almost an obsession with finding cheap plane tickets. And that word obsession, I was thinking about it because obsession has this negative connotation. But in the side hustle world, this kind of obsession can be really healthy. It's what has enabled him to be an expert and a trusted authority by all those people, almost 300,000 people who subscribe to his list. Now, presumably most of those people, we could say a tremendous majority of those people actually are not obsessed with finding cheap plane tickets. But that's okay because they know he is. They
don't have to worry about getting the best deal. They just trust Scott to provide it for them. So there's the obsession for social good observation of the day. Episode 52, an art teacher who creates non-toxic face paint eventually gets on the Today Show. I feel like it's no surprise that she made it on national TV because the story writes itself in the headline. Some projects are just much better than others for generating that kind
of free publicity. And as I said in that episode, the project is profitable, but it's not making anywhere near the kind of money that we saw in the previous episode 51. But this is a missional choice for Adrian, that art teacher. So it's really important as always to choose your values, choose your goals, let those things guide your decisions. And also, as I mentioned last week about Madhavi, the woman who's reinventing the bra, I think this project is ideal for crowdfunding.
Some projects are much better for crowdfunding than others. And anything that you manufacture that has real hard costs, where you can make a pitch that says, "Hey, I've already done part of this. I really believe in this, but I need these resources to get it out to more people." That tends to go over really well. So I know that Adrian is incredibly busy, but I was glad to hear that sometime in the future, she's planning for that. Episode 53 was about the queer punk artist who starts personal finance workshops.
Now, there are a lot of topics that are really important, like personal finance, but have underserved audiences. And we all need personal finance skills. We all need to build good habits, but some of us might feel intimidated by that entire industry. So Hadassah is demystifying it for a group of people who identify with her. And we could say a lot about that. It's really all about identity and trust.
So are you part of a group? A clique? A generation? Anything that's important for people to know about but can feel inaccessible to some people? Lots of opportunity there.
Episode 54, how penny portraits of Abe Lincoln turned into $30,000. Yet another example of something you would never know would work until you tried it. So the next time you have a side hustle idea and someone says, "How are you validating that idea? What's your business plan? What makes you think it's going to work?" Remember stories like these because there's no way to validate it before you do it.
You just try and see what happens. And it's good that Morrie tried because, as I said, it's been really successful. And a fun practical lesson from this is if you're selling something in one channel, see if you can sell it on another channel. Because in his case, Morrie noticed that sales picked up when he chose to list his item on amazon.com. And this is a great segue to our final story of the week, how t-shirts on Amazon make $17,000 in a month. Now, this just came out yesterday, but I know that it's going to get
a bunch of interest. So remember, if you have questions about this or anything else, go to the site and learn more. You can find resources there. And of course, you can also ask me a question, which we may play on the show. The main thing that I want to take away from this and conclude this wrap up with is that side hustles do not have to be sustainable. It'd be very easy from a traditional business or a
startup perspective to criticize things like this and say, "Oh, well, it's great that she made that money, but is this really sustainable? Other people are going to enter the market. It's something that's going to evolve." Now, all those things may be true, or they may not be. She may actually be able to keep doing this for years to come. Only time will tell. Second, here's the bigger thing.
Even if it went away tomorrow, wouldn't it have been worth it? Elaine made more than $50,000 on this project last year, leading up to that big $17,000 month in December. So presumably, she's going to keep making money from this, which is great. But as I said, if it ends at one point, it doesn't really matter because she's already been very successful with it. So remember that too, if somebody asks you, "Is your project sustainable? Are you going to be able to scale it? Are you going
to have an exit plan?" These are questions that may very well not apply to what you're doing, and that's okay. All right. So coming up this week, I've got a bunch of stories, including several that I think you're going to like. There is a Microsoft employee who creates a hula hooping class. There will be a special adults-only edition of Cytosol School that features someone who creates a product based off the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon. Now, when that story
appears, I will provide a disclaimer. I know we have some families listening together, some people listening with their kids, which is awesome, but I don't want to be responsible for any awkward conversations in your household. So you'll get some advance warning. And then there's a fun, all ages story of a guy named Goldpan Pete who moves to New Zealand to pan for gold and now makes something like $40,000 a year on the side. Now, he doesn't actually make that money from panning for gold. That project didn't turn out too well, as you'll hear, but it did lead him to something
much better that is very successful. And of course, much more. I'm currently recording the second extended cut episode. Last month I did one called The Power of Observation, where I talked in more depth about some of these topics. You can go back and download that one if you haven't listened already. This one is going to focus on starter platforms, and I'm going to
show you at least eight starter platforms that you can use right away where you can create an account and begin making money within a very short period of time. And the reason I'm making this episode is this really comes directly from hearing from many of you. I've heard from a lot of you that you want to hear a bit more about sites like Fulfilled by Amazon, Etsy, Fiverr, Creative Market, etc., including their strengths and weaknesses, and why some of them might be better for you than others. So we're going to delve into that in a lot of detail in this special episode, which should arrive in a few days. I hope you enjoy that and the other stories. You're awesome. If you're
subscribed, the episodes will come straight to your phone, tablet, or computer. You can do that in iTunes. You can do that on the website. You can do that in Spotify. And I only ask once a week.
Here's my ask. If you're enjoying the show, I'd be very grateful if you'd go and leave a quick rating in iTunes, which just takes a couple of seconds. And if you want to go above and beyond, you can also write a quick review. Just say why you're listening to Side Hustle School. It doesn't take long, but it means a lot and it will help other people discover the show. You can always
find resources at sidehustleschool.com, see where I'm going next for the workshop series, and probably some other fun stuff. Now in every episode, I mentioned that inspiration is good, but action is even better. I want you to take action. I want to feature your story here. I look forward to hearing about what you're doing in the side of the world. I hope to see you tomorrow and every day
next week with more fun stories and actionable ideas. New story is uploaded every day at 601 Eastern Time. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
