This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Testing one, two, three. Hello, hello out there. What's up? It's Chris Guillebeau with Side Hustle School. So glad you made it.
We have just finished week number 24 of season three, episode 897 here for you. This week featured college students who earn millions, millions of dollars helping people place ads on their cars. A seven-year-old and her mom who create a better hair barrette. Perhaps the best hair barrette of all time, or at least I might say that since I don't know a lot about them, but their business is doing really well. Two Aussies who start an unbelievable food business, featuring of course healthy bowls and more.
Now over here in my world, I have been on the road, Boston, New York City, San Francisco week number two of the 100 Side Hustles tour with a whirlwind trip from the West Coast to the East Coast and now back again. I'm actually gonna be doing it one more time this coming week and then things will be slowing down on that front as I prepare for some other stuff, world domination summit, et cetera. But first, two events in Vancouver and Toronto coming up that I'm very excited about. Now, as I've been going along, I've been sharing stories from the new book, which I know that many of our listeners have picked up at their local bookstore or on Amazon or whatever online retailer you prefer. I'm very, very grateful for that.
Thank you so, so much. Also, if you have a chance to leave me a review on Amazon, it makes a huge, huge difference. So thank you for that. Anyway, enough about that. But on the tour, I've been sharing some stories from our community of people who've been listening for a while and started projects of their own.
This is actually one of my favorite things about the program, about side hustle school, the community, really about life in general. Nothing makes me happier than hearing about how people are taking initiative and making things happen. I personally find it inspiring to get emails from our listeners saying like, hey, you know, I've been following along for a while and decided to try this out for myself and here's what's happening. Now, some of these projects have become very successful, including the tote bag titans, who we featured in episode 759. These two teachers earned $100,000 in less than one year.
Love that story because neither teacher is a business teacher. I think one of them is an elementary school teacher, and the other one is teaching high school math or something, as well as the real soap influencers of Instagram, as I've taken to calling them. This is from episode 594, a couple who earns tens of thousands of dollars a month. That's right, a month by selling soap through social media ads. Really, really fun story.
There are, of course, many more, and those are just a couple that I've been highlighting as I've been going from city to city. And just to be clear, this is key. It's just as exciting when someone is getting started for the first time and earns $1,000, or even just a few hundred dollars. We like to highlight these big successes, but I honestly am just as excited when someone's like, hey, I'm doing this for the first time, and I made my first $1,000, or my first $500, or even just my first $50. My goal is for everybody who reads the new book, anyone who listens to the show, or otherwise considers themselves to be part of the community, to be able to do this in their own way.
And my hope is that you'll be able to be in a place, looking back a month from now, six months from now, a year from now, whatever the time is, and you'll say, I'm so glad that I took action. I'm so glad that I had that idea and did something about it, as opposed to just having an idea and just letting it sit there because I'm busy, or because it might not work, or because some other obstacle is standing in my way. I really, really believe if you fast forward in time and look back, you're gonna feel better off, you're gonna feel more satisfied if you move forward with your ideas, as opposed to just sitting on them. And I think that is true regardless of the outcome of the idea as well, like even if it doesn't work, I honestly think you're gonna feel better about having tried. So that's my encouragement to you.
I've been kind of talking about it every night as I go along, so it's all fresh in my mind, but I really do see that people are better off when they move forward with their ideas, regardless of the outcome. And I've experienced this myself when I've held back or when I have moved forward. I said the other day on Instagram, I'm nervous often before talks, and I finally just realized the way to get over that is to just schedule the talk, basically, then I can't do anything about it 'cause there it's there, it's gonna happen, and I can spend hours, days, weeks, whatever, beforehand stressing out about it, or I can just try to prepare well, do the best job I can, and know that regardless, one way or another, it's gonna be over the next day. So I didn't mean to get into a tangent about public speaking. This is more about following your ideas.
But I think the same is true in terms of scheduling your idea. If you set a deadline for yourself, this is gonna happen. This project is gonna launch. This thing is gonna go out. I'm gonna announce it to people.
Maybe I'm gonna announce it to them now and say it's coming in 30 days or whatever it is. So just scheduling that and saying, whatever happens, there's gonna be this dividing point between whatever that time is and then whatever happens next. All right, we have got an update, an audio update from a previously featured side hustler, a guy who is doing YouTube videos about Bitcoin, which you shall hear about in just a moment. But first, I have a message on behalf of our sponsor. And just wanna say that I really appreciate our sponsors.
They do allow the show to be completely free for our listeners. We just have to sponsor messages per episode. We try to keep it light, relevant, and of course, a lot of them have special offers that can be valuable. All right, so message from them, and then let's hear from, I believe his name is Alexander. [Music]
Hi, this is Alexander from the Netherlands.
My side hustle project was a YouTube channel around Bitcoin featured in show 361. And boy, so much has changed since then. The affiliate marketing world is something that I've been really, really, really enjoying. And I've changed my Bitcoin YouTube channel and added another YouTube channel. The Bitcoin channel is still going fine, but I've made a new one, which is about AliExpress, a Chinese web shop.
And that has really taken off. Back in the Bitcoin days, I was making a thousand, maybe $1,500 a month. I'm now getting up to three, sometimes $4,000 a month on my new project while the Bitcoin is still going. And that's just amazing. It's amazing how these side hustle projects can just work.
So since the episode has aired, I've quit my job. I've actually started a new job, which is more of a volunteer thing than anything else. And as an advice to any listener, make sure you do your side hustle. The moment it's making more than your day job, make sure you help other people and get other people to do the same. And have fun.
Have fun is the main goal. All right, thank you so much, Alexander. Appreciate that update. Yeah, and so it's great that he's been able to continue the Bitcoin channel, earn some passive income from that. At least it sounds mostly passive while starting this new one, all about the topic of AliExpress, which Alibaba is like one of the world's leading directories of manufacturers, connecting overseas, manufacturers with people in the US and Europe and elsewhere who are trying to import products.
And AliExpress is more of an online retailer, also based in China, also connected to Alibaba. They have all kinds of products that people can buy and purchase and resell and so on. So anyway, the point about that, not to get too much into the weeds, but the point is Bitcoin, cryptocurrency in general, Alibaba, AliExpress, all that kind of stuff. These are topics that a lot of people are interested in. Like they've heard a lot about them, they're referenced a lot, but they aren't necessarily the easiest things to understand 'cause there's a whole lot of information out there.
It's not all simplified. And therefore, in these situations, there's real value for people like Alexander, and maybe you, who knows, depends on the topic, to serve as a guide. So if you do have some knowledge in a specialized field like that, especially something that is new and trending and connecting to money in some way, because Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, it's all about money, a different form of money, or different form of currency or an asset, whereas Alibaba, AliExpress, et cetera, are different ways of importing products, buying stuff, reselling it, and so on, also connected to money. So if there's anything else like that, could be a web development language or social media, as long as it's specialized, not just general social media, but something that's really specific and targeted that a lot of people don't know a lot about, or something like that, perhaps there could be some value for you as well. Anyway, we will see if we can link up Alexander's site or YouTube channel in the show notes.
I believe his original YouTube channel is in Dutch, so you can go and practice your Dutch, or we'll see if we've got something else from him. Regardless, I appreciate that update. And his episode, again, was number 361, if you wanna go back and hear it. [Music]
Got a lot of great stuff coming up on the show, including an episode tomorrow that I'm really excited about. Back Pain Supper brings profits home to roost.
This is a tremendous, tremendous crowdfunding success that has a lot of lessons. Really enjoyed working on that one, so you'll have that tomorrow in your podcast feed, your RSS feed, or your inbox, or directly on sidehustleschool.com, wherever you choose to listen. And then, of course, all kinds of stuff coming up every single day. Really excited as the book tour continues, as the summer continues, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere. We still have a lot of things to share and learn.
I, myself, am learning alongside you. As I work on these stories, there's all kinds of stuff that I did not know about. We've been doing this a while, so I have a certain amount of expertise, but I'm certainly not an expert in 896 side hustles. You know, the new book is called 100 Side Hustles, but we've actually had 896 episodes of the show. Maybe the next book will be 1,000 side hustles, but that'll be a really, really big book.
So, probably not, probably gonna stick with 100. But it is a joy to work on the show. It is really fun to bring this to you each day. So, as I sign off for the week, I just wanna say thank you to, first of all, the folks who are working on the program, producer Chuck Reed, other folks from Cadence 13, our network partner, content manager Whitney Karinek, who's been with me for all 896 episodes and counting, community liaison, Jed Chang, our cat herder, Tina Hart. She's been working with a lot of the people who are featured in the book, especially as they're getting a lot of attention this month, and the official show cat who is not with me on the road.
I'm getting all these pics and videos, you know, but she's like, "Where are you? Where have you been?" That would be Libby Gillibow. All of us at Team Side Hustle School are part of the Onward Project. That is led by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. Check out her show, "Happier," as well as "Happier in Hollywood," and the new exciting, awesome program from Melissa Urban, which is called "Do the Thing." It's all about helping you do the thing.
What kind of thing? Well, everybody's got a thing that they need to work on that they're struggling with, they're procrastinating, they're putting it off. Kind of like I said at the beginning of the episode, don't do that. But you need strategies, you need tactics, you need to know, like, how can I move forward? So Melissa's got different tips and conversations for you all the time on that program.
So be sure you're subscribed, or at least check it out. I'm pretty sure you're gonna like it. If you know somebody who would enjoy Side Hustle School, well, tell them about it. Or even better, show them how to subscribe. On Book Tour, I've been asking, you know, how many people subscribe to the podcast?
And then I started asking, I got this tip from Gretchen, actually. She taught me to ask how many people would like to subscribe or would like to listen to it, but don't know how. And, you know, a lot of people each night are raising their hands. And so then I kind of pair up, you know, that person with somebody who does listen, and hopefully we're getting more people in the community that way. But if you're out there and you know somebody who needs another source of income, well, that's our market.
So show them how to subscribe. We will take care of them. In most episodes, I say that inspiration is good, but action's better. We've been talking about action a lot today. That's because that's the theme of the entire program.
I look forward to hearing about you taking action. I would love to feature your story one day. And I hope you'll join me tomorrow and each day next week for more stories and actionable ideas. Consider this a short daily and free investment in yourself. Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time.
Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
