This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, friends, listeners, community? We have just finished week number 25 of season three. Program is called Silence Will School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This week featured French toast bites, cayenne pepper throat lozenges, and a natural hair care empire.
It is now a multi-million dollar operation. As always, lots of fun stuff in the mix. Lots of stuff that you have probably never thought of before. I'm pretty sure at least one or two of the stories this week are things that you never imagined somebody could go out and actually be very successful with, make a lot of money with, in some cases, even quit their job and go all in with. Whether that's true or not, in all cases, expanding their options, bringing them more security, bringing something into their life that they can be proud of.
That is ultimately what a Silence Will is all about, something that you can enjoy and look forward to, be proud of, even as it makes a meaningful and positive difference in your life. And of course, for a lot of people who are in debt or otherwise need to make extra money, well, that feels really good too. Okay, I have no problem saying that is a primary benefit of a side hustle, making extra money. Now over here, I just finished three long days in Canada, three to four, depending on how you count it. Lots of media, lots of great events and experiences with listeners and readers.
I'm now relocating back to Portland, Oregon for the next 10 days to prepare and host and facilitate the ninth annual World Domination Summit. I'm really excited about everyone coming to town. We got people coming from all over the world, per usual. And there's also a lot to be done because I've been gone the past few weeks. I've been doing book tour and focused on other stuff.
So for anyone out there who's listening, who's involved or just kind of wondering about how it works, I really do want to say a big thank you to the WDS Action Team. They have been going strong, having lots of meetings, making lots of progress while I've been doing all this other stuff. So I really couldn't do it without them. And of course, our 80 plus volunteer ambassadors who are joining us this week as well. So that's a little bit about what I'm up to.
I want to talk today in this recap. I want to answer a question really specifically, what's the easiest idea to try right now? This question has been coming up a couple of different ways on book tour. If I want to start a side hustle tomorrow, what do I do? Well, guess what?
I have a clear and direct answer for that. First though, just a quick reminder about how we choose stories for the show. Because some people have been asking about this on tour as well. The simple answer is that we need your referrals and your recommendations. Probably about, let's say 20 to 30% of the stories are coming from our listeners who have started side hustles often in the time since they've been listening to the program.
Probably another 20 to 30% are referrals of people that you know who are doing a side hustle, like the kind that we feature on the program. Maybe it's a friend of yours. Maybe it's just something that you have spotted or spied somewhere and we would like to know about it. So it's pretty simple. If you'd like to nominate yourself, just go to sidehustleschool.com/about.
You scroll down, there's a link to the survey form. And on that survey form, you can give us a bunch of information. The more information, the better. It makes it more likely that we'll be able to choose your story. And so that's if it is for yourself.
And if you've got a recommendation of somebody else, you could just write to my colleague, Whitney, who manages all of our editorial process, Whitney@sidehustleschool.com, W-H-I-T-N-E-Y. And let her know who we should talk to. We wanna feature as many broad, representative, different kinds of stories as possible in our continued quest to bring you the best possible information. The best possible actionable information, I should say. All right, so that's that.
Now let's talk about this question. What is the easiest side hustle to start right away? All right, so first of all, a more important question might be, what are your goals? Like, what are you doing this for? Why do you want to have a new source of income?
And your answer to that question might determine a next step that is different than the answer to what's the easiest idea to start right now. That's just a little bit of a preface or disclaimer. But as I said, the clear and direct answer that I promised you, the easiest thing to do right now is to resell something. So to buy and resell something or even sell something that you already own. And I'll talk about both of those options here.
So there are all kinds of platforms in which you can sell something. You know, it could be eBay, could be Etsy, Craigslist, Gumtree, Poshmark, Amazon, and of course, many more. If you're in a different part of the country or the world, there might be some other network that I didn't mention. If you're selling something that is specialized, like something to do with knitting per se, that could be Ravelry. Like lots of different topics and skills and interests and hobbies and such have their own network.
So lots of different platforms. You just need to choose one. You know, when in doubt if it's something very general, then choose eBay. Or if you want to sell it locally, choose Craigslist or whatever the equivalent is in your city. And when we talk about easy, like I really do mean easy.
Okay, I'm not talking about setting up a proper business with all that entails. I'm not talking about trying to create a sustainable income. I'm talking about a two-step process, okay? Step number one is to sell something you already own, which again is really simple. Like look around your house, look at your apartment, your dorm room, wherever you live, pick up something you haven't used in a while.
If you have clothes you haven't worn in a year, that's always a good option. Like go through your closet periodically, and if you got something you haven't worn in a year, like do you really need it? If you have old electronics or computer equipment, also that you haven't used in a few months even, perhaps it might be time to let that go. Books, kitchen items, really anything that has value, don't make it too complicated. Take a photo of that thing, write a few sentences about it, and then list it on one of those platforms.
They are usually really intuitive to figure out how to do it. Even if you have never made a profile before on that platform or site, the process to register, make your profile, list your item, all of that should take you less than an hour maximum. And then within a few days or a week or so, you're gonna see a result come from that action. And if you haven't done this before, it can be really fun. It can kind of light you up and get you into something else.
So speaking of something else, step two is basically buy something else and resell it. Now, ultimately, this is gonna be more sustainable because you can't just keep selling your own stuff unless you wanna end up like one of those minimalists who has a coffee table that they use as a bed because they don't wanna own anything. So assuming that's not you, where do you find what to sell for this all-important step two? Couple options for that as well, probably a lot of options actually. I'll just give you a couple of them.
First of all, you can look locally. So you can look at flea markets or yard sales, anywhere that something is for sale, essentially. You can go out on a Saturday or a Sunday or go to wherever used items are for sale. You can also go much broader and look on the same platforms that you're gonna sell on and study the auction listings that close or just notice what is frequently posted. Notice what gets a lot of bids.
Notice what is selling for a relatively high price. In some cases, you'll be able to buy and resell on the same platform. Like there's a lot of people out there actually even making a living or at least making a good second income, buying and selling on eBay. And I have a little tip for you, by the way, if you're gonna do that, get a second profile. So it's not super obvious that you're using the same account to buy a bunch of stuff and then resell it for a higher price.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's perfectly legal and ethical. You just might wanna have some separation between the account that's doing most of the selling versus the account that's doing the buying. If you know what you wanna specialize in, look for wholesale items or bulk lots of stuff. You can take it up another level and go to Alibaba or AliExpress.
Just look at those websites. I'll link them up in the show notes. And there you can find wholesale items direct from factories. And just to be clear, if you're buying something there, you wanna make sure you're, at least you wanna be fairly certain that there's a market for what you're buying. Otherwise you could end up with 100 camera cases or baby blankets or whatever it is you stumble upon.
But it certainly can be an option if you really get into reselling and you lack the whole process of it. So those are a couple of quick steps to really get into something right away. There are certainly other approaches. And like I said, your decisions should be driven by your overall goals. But if you are looking for the quickest and easiest and most accessible thing to try, like really anyone can do this, try reselling.
If nothing else, I can tell you from experience, it's an important skill to learn. You can probably end up applying it in other ways once you move on from it. Okay, I've got a really good audio update for you from a previously featured side hustler. He's got some really interesting observations and a big change that he made, which has allowed him to be much more successful. I'll let him tell you about it in his words.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsor. Really appreciate them helping us keep the lights on. So here is a message on their behalf and then you'll hear from Andrew. [Music]
Hey, this is Andrew Bliss, originally from Cincinnati, now stationed abroad in Tainan, Taiwan. My side hustle is the Adventurous mailbox and it was featured on episode 276.
Over the past couple of months, we've launched a new website and completely redesigned our packages. Our website, it seems, was rather horrible. For some reason, I thought having pretty artwork and volumes of text was much more important than actually making sales. Our new site has reduced our wordage by over half and we have simplified our ordering procedure. Now a customer can come to our site and within five minutes get what we're all about and complete a purchase.
If I can offer any advice to people starting their own side hustle, it's to keep the possibility open that you have something completely wrong. Ask for feedback and really listen to it and make sure you ask people who will be honest and direct with you. The phrase that changed the direction of my business, "Andrew, it's pretty and all, but it's about the worst commercial site I've ever seen. I mean, do you even wanna make money? I'm truly, honestly forever grateful to that person." In addition to this change, something really great came from my side hustle episode.
Our educational packages now proudly contain a top secret instruction manual teaching kids how to write the computer code to create some really awesome projects. Our new partner, Codespeak Labs, reached out to me after hearing the episode, thinking we could create a more dynamic overall package together. This has allowed us to more confidently approach schools and homeschoolers as we really do tick off about all the educational buzzword boxes now. So after a difficult couple of years, the Adventurous mailbox has wind in its sails again and now has a smarter captain sail in it. [Music]
Well, you heard it from Andrew.
A pretty site that doesn't convert well is a death trap for your business. Very wise decision in reducing the copy on his site by half and optimizing his checkout process. I mean, here's another thing you should do, by the way, if you sell any kind of product, go through your own shopping process, try to do it as independently and objectively as possible and ask yourself how easy is it or how difficult is it, let's say. And if it is at all difficult or if you are at all annoyed or frustrated by the process or think, you know, it's gotta be a simpler way to do this, just imagine what your potential customer thinks, all right? So it really, really pays to be just brutally honest with yourself or get somebody else to do it, you know, get somebody else to go through the process and kind of observe how they feel and how intuitive is it and, you know, what could be improved upon, et cetera.
Also, when it comes to conversion, here's just a practical tip. Google Optimize can help you make a lot of these decisions if you're trying to figure out, well, how much text should I have? And is this the right photo or is this other one the right photo? Google Optimize will basically do this kind of split testing for you. So there's a tool for that.
I will link it up in the show notes. But however you do it, maintain clarity as one of your most important values when it comes to designing your website. So thank you, Andrew, for that honest update and I'm so glad as well that some great stuff has come from your episode. Everybody, you can follow along with Andrew or check out what he's doing at TheAdventurousMailbox.com. In fact, go and take a look at his updated newly reconfigured website.
[Music]
Coming up on the program, lots of episodes, so many episodes. In fact, we might even have one episode a day. You never know. I mean, it is a daily podcast, you know, seven days a week. So I'm guessing the odds are actually pretty good.
But I'm excited to tell you tomorrow about the eco-friendly candles that produce a smoldering profit. That profit is on fire, depositing something like $15,000 a month in the bank account of the couple who makes these candles. So I'll tell you all about that. Also got another cool story. Software Engineer sells 64,000 copies of Anif Green Gables e-books.
If you ever read Anif Green Gables, or if you like any of the classics, many of those works are in the public domain, meaning that anyone can create a version of them and offer them for sale. So a number of people have done this in different ways with Amazon. And I will tell you one big success of a guy who's done particularly well with it. And of course, much more is on the way. Here we are at the end of the week.
I just want to say a big thank you to the folks who work on this show, as well as to you, the listener. This is a community. It's a global community of people who are all interested in doing something for themselves, sometimes by making the world a better place at the same time, which I think is good. I don't think these are mutually exclusive goals. So if you're out there listening, you are the reason we make this show.
If you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I too commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create that new source of income. Perhaps you've got an idea you've been thinking about, but you haven't turned it into reality. Well, let's make it a reality. Come on, let's do it. Let's do this together.
And of course, it's not just me. A whole bunch of other folks working on the program, including producer Chuck Reed, content manager, Whitney Karinek, community liaison, Jed Ching, cat herder, Tina Hart, our network partners from Cadence 13, and the official show cat, Libby Gillipo. Now all of us at Team Cytosol School are also part of the OMR project, which is curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. Be sure to check out her show, "Happy with Gretchen Rubin," as well as "Happier in Hollywood," and a new program from Melissa Urban, "Do the Thing." All of these shows are free and listener supported. If you're enjoying Cytosol School, I would be so grateful if you'd give us a quick little rating and review in Apple Podcasts.
It just takes a second and it helps other people discover the show. Also, if you got the new book, "100 Cytosols, A Review on Amazon, Which Is Rock My World," I'd be so thankful. If you enjoyed the book, go and do that. I'm very appreciative of those who take the time to do that. But most importantly, I want you to take the time to take care of yourself.
That's what it's all about. Consider this a little investment in yourself every day, 10 minutes or so, short daily investment. Hopefully you'll learn something every day or at least several days a week. That's my goal. We put our episodes up at 6.01 a.m. Eastern every day.
So do come back, do tell your friends, make sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Cytosol School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
