This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 11 of season three. The weeks are rolling by here in the month of March.
A lot of us recently sprung forward thanks to the occasion/torture known as Daylight Saving Time. I'm actually gonna be taking off to Thailand for a few days, but of course I'll continue to bring you the program live from Southeast Asia or wherever I am. I'll also have some news for you soon about our upcoming accountability bootcamp. This is gonna be a series of check-ins that we do virtually, so anybody anywhere in the world can participate. I'm excited about this because I think it speaks directly to a need that I've been hearing from people over and over.
I need accountability. I need some help just kind of making things happen. I know what I need to do, but I just keep putting it off for whatever reason. So if there's some way that I could, you know, every single day make a little bit of progress, that would be great. And that's the whole goal with that.
In today's recap, I'm gonna talk about something known as the conversion problem. We'll also have an audio update from a previously featured story. [Music]
So the conversion problem. In yesterday's story about the math major who becomes a professional blackjack player, then goes on to create a suite of resources for aspiring card counters, I mentioned how at first he had no idea how to make a website. And, you know, he figured it out, he made a basic website, but the website wasn't very good.
When I say it wasn't good, I'm not referring to the design. I'm referring to its ability to convert visitors into customers. So in that story, I said he had no idea what he was doing. So he went to a friend who owned a small agency. The friend said, "Hey, I don't even know what you want me to do when I show up on your website." And that prompted him to start doing more research and reading some blogs, et cetera.
So that part about what his friend said, that's known as the conversion problem. Like, I don't even know what you want me to do when I show up on your website. When you have a website that sells something, you have two goals, right? Only two goals, pretty much. Like, goal number one is to get the right people to the site, and goal number two is to get them to buy.
Everything, in essence, comes down to that. You know, I should make a product called the two problems, basically. Because if you can solve these two problems, then, you know, bam, you're in business. So over time, you probably need to focus on both problems. Like, you want to make improvements in both areas.
But here's the thing, one of them is easier than the other. And guess what it is? The traffic problem is the easier one. If you know that when visitors come to your site, if they're the right visitors, a certain percentage of them will convert to buyers, and it's not that hard to get traffic to it. If nothing else, you can just go out and buy traffic.
You can buy ads on Facebook or wherever else, if you have a well-converting website. But a lot of people have the opposite problem. They aren't able to convert their website visitors. So they do have people coming to the site, but those people are confused. Those people are not persuaded.
Those people don't understand what action they're supposed to take. Or, again, as I said, they're just not persuaded. They're not willing to do it. In short, they don't believe that you have the solution to their problem, or they don't believe the solution is right for them, or whatever else. It just doesn't work.
So this is a serious issue, because it means that it's gonna be really difficult to be profitable. Imagine, for example, imagine a boat, and you're out on the lake, and the boat has a hole in the bottom. So therefore, the boat is leaking water. Now, you can keep filling buckets and emptying the boat, but your life isn't gonna get much better until you actually fix the hole. An excessive amount of your resources is devoted to solving this problem of just putting the water in the bucket and then draining it out, and then doing it over and over again, right?
So if you think about the website issue, the conversion problem, in that situation where your website is not converting visitors, in the very best case scenario, like say it is able to be a little bit profitable, in the best case scenario, you're leaving a lot of money on the table, because you could be converting a much higher percentage of those visitors, therefore making more money, therefore able to focus on bringing more visitors to the site. So my encouragement to you is, before you spend a lot of time learning about Facebook ads, or influencer marketing, or whatever else, any other strategy or tactic that's focused on attracting attention, spend some time learning about conversion first. Now, how do you do that? Well, the first and foremost thing you can do, the number one thing that affects conversion is to make sure you have a strong offer. I always encourage people to spend a lot of time thinking about their offer.
What is it exactly that's for sale? What do people receive? What is the pitch? What promise or ultimate benefit are you making? And then what is the price?
What is the call to action? How do visitors say yes? You wanna always aim for clarity. That's another thing. Read through everything that you've written, ask yourself and ask other people.
Ask somebody else to look at it and say, is this clear to you? And ask for real feedback, say no, really, I really want to know what is confusing to you? What doesn't make sense? What could be improved? Once you get a bit further along, you can do things like A/B testing, where you have two versions.
You have two different headlines, and you have two different offers, or two different checkout pages, or whatever it is, and you do this A/B testing where when people come to your website, they see one or the other of these pages, or offers, or headlines, and there are lots of tools where every time you can track which one is higher converting. Then you switch to that one, you switch to that one, you make it the control, and you introduce another variable to test. So generally speaking, we could say more about conversion, but in essence, again, conversion is super important. Think you should focus on that before you focus on traffic. Fix the hole in your boat, and then start taking passengers.
Does that metaphor work? Well, even if it's not perfect, I hope you know what I mean. [Music]
All right, our listener updates, or actually our case study update, our audio update from someone that we have featured on the show before, comes from a guy named Chris, and he actually speaks really well to this conversion issue as it relates to profit margins, and he's got some good advice for you too. He's actually got some advice that I'm gonna take myself. So without further ado, let's hear from him.
[Music]
Hey, this is Chris from Cincinnati, Ohio, creator of 513kicks.com. My side hustle project is sneaker fan flips shoes for $1,000 a month, and it was featured on episode 290. Since then, I've doubled my average monthly profit to over $2,000 a month without putting any more time or effort into this hustle. In other words, I've been able to increase my margins significantly. Since the last episode, I've been able to use my profits to source new inventory from retail stores and sneaker collectors at a much faster rate, which has promoted my overall profit growth.
For example, when selling a pair for someone else on consignment, I might profit $20, but when buying that same pair along with others in bulk, my profit on that pair might be around $50 or more. The same amount of work is required, but the margin is more than doubled, and this has been great for me this past year. Something that I've learned recently is to move quickly when something isn't working. I had an issue with one of my payment processors over the last year, and I didn't kill it quickly enough, and it resulted in a few chargebacks and lost money in inventory, but I did gain some valuable lessons in the process. Next up, I'm planning on hiring an intern or two to help with sourcing new inventory, website updates, and social media management to help take 513kicks.com to the next level in 2019 and beyond.
[Music]
Awesome, Chris, thank you so much. We appreciate that update. I'm glad to hear about the increasing margins, which does directly relate to conversion, like I was just talking about. In his situation, he used the sentence how he found a way to do something where the same amount of work is required, but the margin is double. As you make improvements in conversion, you're gonna see results like that, which is just fantastic.
Again, his episode was "Sneaker Fan Flips Shoes" for $1,000 a month, which is now more than $1,000 a month, episode 290, if you wanna go back and listen to it. And I really love his advice as well. I actually wrote this down myself. Move quickly when something isn't working. All right, I need to take this myself because I often just spend a lot of time stuck.
I spend a lot of time out on the lake with my boat, and there's a hole in the bottom of the boat, and I'm just emptying the boat without actually addressing the hole. So thank you, Chris, for that reminder. I appreciate it. And everyone, you can follow along with Chris at 513kicks.com, or just check out what he's doing. More of these to come.
And of course, we love to hear from our listeners as well. You can always send me a note, podcast@sidehustleschool.com. If you're on the website, you can write directly from there. Again, sidehustleschool.com. We also have the Hustle Hotline, 8449 Hustle, 8449487853.
Give me a call sometime. Leave a message. [Music]
Since I'll be traveling, I already did quite a bit of work on the episodes for next week. I think you're gonna like them, especially an episode all about Rosary Beads, the Rosary Bead reseller, who's actually doing really well for herself, building a full-time income as a stay-at-home mom. And there was also a story about a guy in Chicago who starts a series of pizza tours, like tours to different pizza parlors, also doing well in building something really sustainable for the long term.
Those are just two examples. Of course, much more is on the way. Before I head out for the week, I just wanna say a couple of thank yous. First of all, I wanna thank you, our listeners. You are awesome.
You're the reason we make this show. I'm so excited for 806 days and counting. Every day I've been getting up and saying like, "What's on Side Hustle School today? How are we gonna support our listeners?" Just our amazing group of people out there who are really trying to make something for themselves. And I know you're doing that in the face of all sorts of obstacles and challenges and limited time and stress and responsibility, just all the kind of stuff of life that you have to deal with.
I hope you're proud of yourself for choosing to invest in yourself by just asking, you know, how can I improve my circumstances? What can I do to learn about website conversions that I can make a product or a service that people buy? And that will help me with other areas of my life, no matter what my situation is, whether I am a stay-at-home mom or whether I am perfectly happy in my corporate career or whatever the case may be, whatever your situation, Side Hustle School is here for you. So thanks for being part of it. Thanks for supporting our sponsors.
Thanks for telling your friends. Also wanna thank producer Chuck Reed, content manager Whitney Karinek, editorial review James Johnson, community liaison Jed Chang, cat herder Tina Hart, and the official show cat, not connected to Tina, Libby Gilbout. We are part of the Onward Project curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. This is a free listener supported show. If you're enjoying it, I'd be super grateful if you'd leave us a quick five-star rating and review in Apple podcasts.
It just takes a second and it helps other people discover the show. You can also tell your friends or even better show them how to subscribe. If you know somebody who needs another source of income, send them to us, we'll take care of them. Okay, I look forward to hearing about you taking action. I hope to see you tomorrow and every day next week, or at least I hope you'll join me tomorrow, even though you can't see me.
Got a lot more stories and actionable ideas coming up. Our episodes go online every day, 601 a.m. Eastern time. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
