This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
One of the greatest things about a side hustle is that you don't need to depend upon it for your livelihood. This gives you some space to enjoy the process and make something you believe in, or just something that you're excited about. Now, I do think it's important to align that project with something that can make money, at least for our purposes. That's what we're all about here on Side Hustle School. But again, by doing it part-time, you greatly reduce the risk.
In today's story, for example, it took a long time for this person to make money. At first, he was just experimenting, and then over time, it turned into a real business. But even now, the money fluctuates quite a bit, which of course is nice when it's up, but concerning when it's down. Today, we'll look at a systems administrator and lifelong guitar player who generates an average of $7,000 per month writing about his musical hobby. So still a pretty good average, even though it's up and down. He's an Amazon affiliate that earns real money.
There are some of those out there. And he's also building a future for himself away from Amazon. But it all begins when he sells his first ceramic chicken. That's right. He sells a ceramic chicken, guitar player, systems administrator. How does it all tie together?
Let's turn it up to 11 right after this message from our sponsor. Stay tuned. Bobby Kittleberger loves to play guitar. And although every guitarist wants to rock the stage like Slash or The Edge, only a few can live out that fantasy. For Bobby, thrashing out in front of thousands of fans wasn't part of his life's plan.
Instead, he pursued a career in IT as a systems administrator for a law firm. But he never let go of his love of guitar. He played often and would geek out over new equipment and tech. On top of that, he taught part-time and sometimes wrote his own music. One day, way back in 2012, jamming away at his day job, Bobby felt the urge to start playing a different song.
His desire was driven by a friend of his who had been making a little money online. Bobby knew nothing about this brave new world. But what his friend was doing to earn a few dollars was so simple, it seemed anyone could do it. His friend's project involved writing movie reviews on a personal blog and referring visitors to Netflix subscriptions, in exchange for a small commission. Like a classic three-chord song, the process appeared easy to replicate in a different market.
Instead of movies, Bobby decided to build a website around his favorite hobby, playing guitar. Since he was starting from Ground Zero, he kept things simple and made a site on blogger.com. This was big back in 2012. He called it Guitar Chalk, a play on the old chalkboard in a teacher's classroom. A good guitar teacher will advise students to start slow and build up their skills before tackling the third solo in November rain.
That's what Bobby did with Guitar Chalk. His end goal was to build up enough traffic through Google to make affiliate commissions on Amazon.com. But to start, he began writing about the basics of guitar playing. And just like playing the guitar, one has to love the process of learning itself to get to the point of being good. Bobby found a lot of similarities between music and working on the site.
He discovered he enjoyed the process of building out the pages of a website. He found himself learning new skills and not so much caring whether the site was successful or not, at least at first. He just loved the guitar, he loved the act of writing, and he enjoyed learning about SEO, or search engine optimization. By appreciating the process, tuning up Guitar Chalk never felt like work. If he found something interesting, he'd write about it. If he discovered a cool piece of gear, he'd post a review.
Then, one day, he actually did make some money. Hilariously, it wasn't from guitar parts or anything to do with music. It was for a ceramic chicken that someone purchased from Amazon, which brought in a grand total of 17 cents to his bank account. You see, if your site refers somebody to Amazon, you'll actually make commission from any item that visitor purchases, even if it's not the specific product you send them to. So for Bobby, that first ceramic chicken commission showed him that it was possible to make money online.
Following this small 17-cent success, he knew it was time to take the site more seriously. He eventually moved it from Blogger.com to its own domain at GuitarChalk.com. This was the first startup cost he incurred, and by this stage, he was earning enough to cover the expenses. A big part of his plan to attract website visitors was to rank well in Google. He realized that topical, non-time-specific content performed the best, so he opted to focus Guitar Chalk on high-quality, evergreen posts and articles.
By doing that, instead of writing about current events or something in the news, he'd have a repository of writing that would attract visitors over time. He chose to specialize or funnel his content into four categories, online guitar lesson reviews, guitar gear, education, and music production. By using that technique and targeting specific keywords, Bobby has been able to create hundreds of pages of valuable content that attracts a large number of visitors from Google. And because they're coming from search results, he doesn't have to pay for any advertising. He also didn't have to do it alone. Over time, he built a group of contributors to the site.
He had professional musicians and fellow guitar enthusiasts write content on his blog, which helped build the site's credibility. He found these contributors by reaching out to musicians who had written books or developed guitar courses. By selecting those types of people, he knew he had a great shot at finding quality writers. This was one problem in the beginning. Not every musician is a good writer, just like not every writer is a good musician.
Over time, Bobby learned more about how to make his site rank in Google. One of the most important things for that is to have links from other websites. He contributed to other sites, which allowed him to link back to his own. This led to higher rankings and more affiliate commissions. But rankings and making money took time.
It was actually four years into the process, 2016, when he had his first $1,000 month. The next year, revenue grew more rapidly to several thousand dollars per month. The change was mainly chalked up to promoting fewer Amazon products and more online guitar lessons that had affiliate programs. These programs offered higher commissions and good conversion rates. Any good music career has ups and downs, and Bobby's time with guitar chalk is no exception.
For one, his revenue is anything but steady. Some months he earns a lot, others not so much. Although, these days, when averaged out, it does equate to $7,000 per month. Just remember, it took a while to get there. His search rankings also fluctuate quite a bit.
Old content that used to do well tends to fade out and fall in Google rankings. He plans to refresh some of those old articles in hopes of better performance. Regardless, the crescendo to this whole project for Bobby isn't the money, although that's great. The process itself has given his life a creative purpose outside of his day job. He says it's improved his well-being.
He also says every day he looks forward to putting a little more work into guitar chalk. This kind of content marketing project is going to take time. It's definitely not going to be an overnight success. It is the kind of project that has potential to do well over time. If you really love the process, just like he did in this story, and if you really choose the right topic in the first place, that matters quite a bit, too.
Bobby's advice, he said, "I picked the topic of guitars because it's just something I liked. I'd advise doing a lot of research up front. That way, when you get started, you can be confident about the monetary value of your topic." Some topics are definitely going to be easier than others. I always suggest choosing a topic where it's impossible to pursue that hobby or that activity, whatever it is, without spending money. I was thinking about episode 500 of the show we did long ago.
"Married couple goes from crash drone to soaring side hustle." This is a guy who, together with his wife, had built this multiple six-figure business now. In fact, I think it may actually be a million-dollar business, all about drone reviews and education. He also started as an affiliate, if I'm not mistaken, and then eventually started creating his own courses and has really built that out. If you think about it, if you're interested in drones, if you want to go and have a drone to do photography or whatever else, there's no way to participate in that hobby without spending money. In fact, a lot of the hobby consists of reading about different drones and different equipment and accessories and all this kind of stuff.
If you do want to go down this road, first of all, choose something that you're actively interested in, not just doing it because you hope it'll make money one day, although that's good, too. But there's a lot of work involved, so it helps to like the process. And then also make sure the topic you choose is connected, in some form, to something that people pay for. Because if you want to have both things, your passion and your money, there needs to be that connection. All right, that's my encouragement for you today.
Thanks so much to Bobby for letting us take a look at Guitar Chalk. I'm going to link that up in the show notes, along with anything else that I mentioned. Those notes are at sidehustleschool.com/839, episode 839. I hope you enjoyed this one, and much more is on the way, so do come back. Be sure you're subscribed.
It's all free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
