This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
What's up, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 12. This is our weekly recap. And for those who pay attention, the weekly recap is now on Sunday.
That's just so we can begin the week on Monday. There is no other change in format. Since I started the show, one of my favorite things, if not my very favorite thing, has been all the notes I get from listeners. I have to say that you guys are super awesome. I hear from people all over the world with interesting stories. My favorite one this week comes from
someone who writes in to say, "Greetings from Saudi Arabia." You have in your audience a Saudi looking to do some business on the side. And my goal is to introduce Mexican cuisine to the relatively unaware Saudi society. Knowing how delicious tacos and burritos are, I think this untapped market is right for this. And just in case there's another Saudi who's interested in borrowing the idea, may we share a taco and compete to the fullest. So that made me smile. And I have to agree about Mexican food, lots of places around
the world. It really is an undeveloped market. So good luck with that project. Super fun. And thank you for listening. Today in the recap, we're going to do at least one listener
question. Going to look back on some highlights this week, preview what's to come. And I also want to let you know that we are announcing some new Side Hustle School workshops very soon. In fact, they may be up on the website already. I will be going to Boston and Chicago for sure. And probably a couple of other cities as well. And if you don't see your city listed,
there's a place for you to put your name down so that I know you're interested. And I decide where we're going to do the next workshops based on the number of people who've requested it from a specific place. If you are new to the show, welcome. This is a short daily podcast designed for people who are busy, don't have a lot of time, but do want to invest in themselves and create an income generating project without quitting their day job. So if that fits with your vision, if you think that's a good idea, if you know it's something you should have for yourself, but you're not sure how to do it, well, Side Hustle School is for you. I would
encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes whenever you can. They'll help you catch up a little and kind of set the tone for where we're going throughout the rest of the year. All right, let's see what people are wondering about. Greetings, Chris. My name is Carl. I'm from Pennsylvania. New fan, but enjoy the show.
My question is, how could I narrow down and focus on two side hustle ideas? Thank you. I appreciate any feedback. Hey, Carl, awesome question. Thank you for listening. How do you narrow down and focus
and choose between different ideas? I actually teach a whole process about this in the workshop. It is something that comes up over and over. But here's the short version. When you have a bunch of ideas, it's a good problem to have, but it is still a problem because you need to pick one, write those ideas down, and then write down ease of startup, profit potential motivation. So three things, ease of startup, profit potential motivation. And then as best
as possible, using the information that you have, compare those ideas to see which one is easier, which might be more profitable, and which one you're most excited about. Very often, probably at least 60% of the time, the answer emerges from that very quick analysis. If you have a bunch of ideas and you can see that one is easier to start, might be more profitable, and you're excited about it, that's a very clear answer. Sometimes it's not that simple, but it might lead you in the right direction. And remember as well that you're not making a decision for life, you're just making a decision for right now. How easy
is each one? How profitable might each one be? And how excited or motivated are you at this present time? Good luck, Carl. Hi, Chris, and all the side hustlers out there. My name is Erin and I'm in Vancouver, Canada.
I listen to Side Hustle School for the ideas and strategies. My question is, what are some strategies for testing pricing on a product? Here's the context. I'm working on a learning resource product. The structure and delivery were inspired by Side Hustle School episodes, and the content was inspired by listening to another podcast discussing challenges of freelancing. I'd like to test a couple of delivery methods, one free and one value added. For
the value added option, I'd like to test two or three price points. These will be digital options to start, but may include a print version down the road. Thank you. Thank you, Erin. Vancouver, Canada is right up the road for me in Portland, Oregon. I'm
glad to be your neighbor. There's a lot we can talk about this. It is a topic all of its own. I'll give you a quick answer with a resource that will link up in the show notes. To do the kind of price testing you want, you're going to need some kind of easy digital solution that allows different visitors to see different prices. This is extremely common, by the way.
Every big company does this. Airlines do this. The one that I'm familiar with is called Simple Page Tester. It installs right in WordPress. There's a free version. I think there's a
paid version as well, but you can test it out for yourself and see if you like it. One challenge sometimes for a side hustle or a very small business is you might not be getting enough customers for a while to truly have a statistically significant test. So if you're just starting with testing, if you're just starting this new project, it might be better to test a different variable first, perhaps whatever the promise is to get people to sign up for that free offer you mentioned, perhaps a different headline or just a page design rather than the actual commitment to purchase. But I could be totally wrong. I'm just mentioning that to give you a heads up. So Simple Page Tester, I will link it up in the show notes.
Thank you for listening. So when we look back on this week, a few things stand out. Episode 78 is about making jewelry for profit and for social good. I hear from a lot of social entrepreneurs or people who are just interested in doing good and doing well. Well, this is a great example and I'll have more of them as we go along. They also have a really well done website and they built
that website using Shopify, which is a partner of the show. If you'd like to get a 21-day free trial to set up your own e-commerce site, see if it works for you, just go to Shopify.com/sidehustle. Right after that, we had quite a different episode, The Worm Composting Empire, which brings in $400 a month. Okay, admittedly $400 a month is not really an empire, but it just seemed to fit. I like the headline. As I said in that episode, be sure you visit wormcompostingHQ.com
to give that guy the most traffic he's ever received in a week. And no, I am not a worm affiliate. They're not a sponsor of the show, at least not yet. Episode 80 was about a South Carolina man who learns to make candles by watching YouTube. When Mark walked into an upscale men's store and saw a candle for sale for $85, at first he thought, "That's ridiculous." And then he thought, "I need to learn to do that." And so he did, just as our ancestors did, sitting around by candlelight, watching YouTube videos. And in a short period of time, he's making more than $1,000 a month with what
seems to be a realistic goal of getting that to $5,000 a month just through selling on Amazon. We had a story about an artist, a freelance illustrator, who is helping to solve the very real need that many other artists have of not being able to sell their work. Now, there are some other people working in this space. And I think one of the reasons Chris is successful, the guy featured in that story, is because he is legit. He's not teaching other people to do something that he hasn't done himself. He actually is a successful
working artist. And he's been writing about his process, his behind the scenes for a long time. And out of the many requests he had to share more, that's when he created an informational guide, which then turned into a course. Speaking of guides, the next episode was about a bartender in Colorado who writes a statewide marijuana guide. The recreational cannabis industry is enormous, not just in Colorado, but also in my state of Oregon, in Washington state, Washington DC, cities and provinces in Canada that are also coming online. So whenever there's a new industry, or something
that has radically changed or shifted, there are usually a lot of ways to make money from it. And that's what Johnny figured out in that story. Now, several episodes this week were very popular. Probably the most popular one of all was episode 83, a bridesmaid for hire who posts on Craigslist and earns $20,000 a month. If you have not heard that episode yet, definitely download or stream it to see how Jen followed up on this crazy idea, which became profitable and successful. There is a reason why I featured
crazy ideas on the show is because you never know what's going to happen with something until you experiment just like Jen did. The new week starts tomorrow. There's a new set of stories won every single day. I think the quality of the stories and the submissions I'm getting just keeps getting better and better. So this week there's a college student who starts a house cleaning service that makes five figures a month. He's actually able to travel to Japan and operate the business remotely.
Pretty awesome. There's a busy father of nine children who creates a website to match tutors. He now calls it the Uber for tutoring business with more than 100,000 people registered. And among others, a project that started as an April Fool's joke that became a $53,000 part time profit last year. So lots of stuff to look forward to. You definitely want to
make sure you're subscribed in iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. As we close out this week, I want to give credit where credit is due. I'm the voice you hear, but I'm not the only one working on the show. Side Hustle School is recorded on location at world domination headquarters in Portland, Oregon. It then travels through those same internet tubes that allow us to watch YouTube tutorials all the way to Brooklyn, New York, where it is produced at the Panoply studios. Production team is Jason De Leon,
AC Valdez and Laura Mayer back in Portland. I am assisted by Whitney Karinek who makes all those wonderful show notes. Among other things, Shauna Noah is the tour manager for Side Hustle School workshops. My cat Liberia Guillebeau works the 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. shift
almost every night. She's very reliable during those hours. And we Side Hustle School are part of the onward imprint founded by Gretchen Rubin, a dear friend of mine who is the author of the happiness project better than before and other mega bestselling books. New book coming in September. I'll be sure to tell you about later. Last but definitely not least,
I want to thank you the listener. This is a free listener supported show with just a single sponsor per episode. Thank you for telling your friends about it. If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to leave a quick review on iTunes. That will definitely help spread the Side Hustle School message. Way back when we started, I said that if you make
the commitment to make this part of your team, I too commit to supporting you in your quest to create that new source of income. We have so much more on the way. The best is yet to come. You can always write me directly at chris@sidehustleschool.com. New episodes are uploaded at 6 0 1 a.m. Eastern time every single day. No worms or any other animal was harmed in
the making of Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. I hope you have a super awesome day and I hope to see you again tomorrow.
