Stay-At-Home Mom Helps Immigrants Gain Citizenship with YouTube Tutorials

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Side hustle school listeners, welcome back. I'm Chris Guillebeau. Have something really cool for you today. Couple weeks ago, I told you a social good story of someone who makes money while making a positive difference in the world. That story was about an attorney for a baseball team in Detroit who starts a jewelry making hustle that employs disadvantaged women, teaches them new skills.

Well, I have another one today that I really like, comes to us from Washington, DC. It's all about a stay-at-home mom and former teacher who helps immigrants gain citizenship with YouTube tutorials. It's a wonderful project that helps people and is profitable for her. I'll tell you all about it in just a moment. [Music]

Danielle Feng was a stay-at-home mom with two kids in school when she decided to start volunteering.

She had previously taught elementary school for 10 years, but she also enjoyed working with adults. And this time for her volunteer work, she chose to lead a literacy course. While she was doing the course, she met a woman in process of getting her citizenship. Danielle did everything she could to assist, researching the system, accompanying her to the interview, and even observing the swearing-in ceremony. Surrounded by the enthusiastic, soon-to-be citizens echoing the oath of allegiance, Danielle was deeply moved.

Soon after, she started teaching civics, citizenship, and ESL classes to help others through the same process. One of her first students was a Tibetan refugee who had escaped Tibet by walking through the Himalayan mountains to India before finally making it to the U.S. Listening to that student's story and meeting others from around the world with similar tales further inspired Danielle. She'd found something she really believed in. What does this have to do with side hustling?

Well, keep listening. Danielle lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area, which has a large immigrant and refugee population. She saw a huge need in her community for the kind of support that her classes were providing, but she could only be in one place at one time, and the classes usually ran for nine to 12 weeks. With each class being up to three hours long, she found that many of her students didn't have time to make the full commitment.

They were usually working full time, had other responsibilities, so sometimes they would miss a class which put them at a disadvantage. That's when she came up with a simple solution. She decided to post all the information and lessons online so that people could catch up in their own time, and with that decision, her accidental side hustle was born. Danielle's idea was to simplify the overwhelming process of U.S. naturalization.

She says government websites can often be confusing, so in July 2015, she built a basic website with the most crucial information. That was fine, but what really changed things was in December of that year, she launched a citizenship YouTube channel, calling it ESSA Group, which is short for Educational Support Services for Adults. She started making and posting videos on everything from citizenship interview preparation to English-speaking practice. Though she originally had no intention of making money from the videos, it was impossible not to notice all the traffic this new YouTube channel was getting. Right away, her videos were getting 1,000 views a day with an upward trend of about 250 new views every day, and that number multiplied over time.

Monetizing a successful YouTube channel isn't that difficult. All you do is make a Google AdSense account, which is free, connect it to your channel, and then as people click on ads, either before or after they watch your video, you'll get paid a commission. So that's what she did. She decided to see what would happen, and she began increasing the number of videos posted, using what she'd already taught in her class, as well as information from government websites and experts, just making it simpler and more accessible. Less than one month later, she was making a steady profit.

About six months later, the channel was generating around $1,800 to $2,000 each month. And it's important to understand that her users, her customers, people who are viewing the videos, don't pay anything at all for them. They get these video lessons completely for free. It helps them prepare. Danielle is paid through those third-party advertisers that come in via Google AdSense.

From her couch at home, Danielle now invests about six hours a week in creating a new video, and about two hours a week to respond to questions from subscribers, do some basic admin work. And even though a number of competitors have sprung up, she's been able to stay ahead of them by providing the most up-to-date information about fees, regulations, and process. Her kids are a bit older now, but Danielle says she hasn't wanted to go back to full-time work. This accidental success has allowed her and her husband to make some large purchases, as well as start savings accounts for their daughters. It has also allowed Danielle to help her community financially by purchasing books, household items, and clothing for new refugee families that arrive in the area.

Danielle has become a crusader for side hustles. She says she loves sharing her experience, and she's hard at work convincing her friends, especially other stay-at-home parents, that starting an income-generating hustle while giving back is entirely within reach. [Music]

So what an awesome story. I would encourage you to go take a look at her YouTube channel. It's called Essa Group.

I'll link it up today on the site. So far, her videos have more than 4 million views, so this has obviously been a wonderful resource to a lot of people. And it's also a shining example that you can make something that is helpful, that is useful, that benefits others, and still get paid for it. And not only that, but as you can see in the story, the people you help don't necessarily have to be the ones who pay for it. In this case, it's an advertiser-supported model, so the advertisers are third parties to the exchange of information that takes place between Danielle and her users.

It really is a win-win solution, and I, for one, am so glad that she's doing it. If you like this story, I hope it helps you think about your own story. I hope it gives you some motivation to keep working away. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration, combined with action, is so much better. To learn more about this meaningful project, and also, if you'd like to see how you would score on the U.S. Citizenship Test,

come to sidehustleschool.com/94. We will link up all those things. There are many more stories on the way. Thank you for listening. You are awesome.

I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]