This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What's up my friends? Hello and welcome to the weekly recap of Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau and we have just finished week number 34 of our third season, episode 967 today. This week featured a college student who pays for school by baking cheesecakes, a Spanish teacher who hustles on the side and a blogger who earns $140,000 from her real estate course before it even launches. We'll talk about that a bit more today.
Very popular story and a tremendous success, of course. Now I've also got an audio update for you from a good friend of mine named Joel Runyon and I want to dive deeper into that big online course success story specifically to answer the question, if it's so successful, like if it's done so well, everybody loves it, you know, it's making lots of money, why not keep it open all the time? Because when she did her product launch, she only kept it open for a week and then closed it down. She's getting ready to do it again, but I think this time will also be a, you know, pretty short five day window and it's gonna close down once more for six more months. So why do it that way?
But also I got one more thing for you. I found an interesting article this week all about the world of phone farming, which I just found fascinating. Like I say often, there's just so many crazy things happening in this new economy, people making money. So phone farming, this is a vice article that we will link up in the show notes. Basically the way this works and like truth is stranger than fiction, on your phone, if you visit websites or use certain apps or play games, you're probably used to seeing a lot of ads.
And typically you as a consumer don't get paid for watching those ads, but an ecosystem of websites and apps kind of flips that idea on its head. This is from that article, it says with a marketing strategy called incentivized traffic, app developers take advertisements or other content that companies want to get in front of an attentive audience and then pay that audience to watch or interact with them. So you think, okay, so far so good, that's not so unusual. If you watch a bunch of ads, you can get paid a fraction of a penny for each one. You typically get paid a very, very tiny amount for watching those ads.
So it's not really a lucrative thing to jump into. But the question becomes, like if you just think about this logically, what if you could create an automated process where your phone is set up to play ads all day? And then the next question is why limit it to only one phone? Okay, so this is the world of, as I said, phone farming. Thus, the phone farm, where people buy dozens or sometimes hundreds of cheap Android phones, which can cost as little as 10 to $15, and then set them up using this elaborate system and all these different networks to play ads all day.
And if it works well, the phone farmers get paid every month, sometimes a few hundred dollars. And in the case of one guy mentioned in the article, around $2,000 a month. Now I am not necessarily endorsing this, just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and do this. I just found it to be a fascinating look, again, at the bizarre economy and strange incentives that come about because of technology and online advertising. And I also found, in addition to the article, a detailed YouTube video where you can learn the basics of how to set up your first phone farm in like 20 minutes or something.
I think I watched about half of it before my ADD brain kicked in. You know, like I've never actually seen a whole TED Talk. I've seen like the first seven minutes of a lot of TED Talks. But I'll link that up just in case anybody wants to see it as well. So my main comment on all of this is, this is a lot of work.
Like if you have the ability to oversee a phone farm of 80 phones set up on this rack, we've got some incredible pictures of people doing this, like in your house and like you figured out how to have the phones playing ads all day, how else could you harness your creativity in a more effective way? It kind of reminds me of network marketing in a lot of ways where 98% of people fail in that business. So it's not a good thing. And I often say that and I always get complaints from the one person in a hundred who is successful. And I always say to that person, well, you know, good for you, but your case, your experience is not at all representative of what most people experience in that field.
And so if you have found a way to be the one or 2% that's successful, good for you. But how much more successful could you be in doing something different? Like this whole game is rigged against you. So if you found a way to overcome, you know, what else could you do that would probably bring you a lot more success? Anyway, didn't mean to get sidetracked there, but the world of phone farming, I thought it was interesting.
We'll link it up at sidehustleschool.com/967. All right, let's talk more about Paula Pant from episode 961 this week. Big success story. Really big story of Paula, who again, made something like, you know, $140,000 before the course was actually open through this paid beta program she did. And then once she opened for her first official launch, more than $200,000.
Okay, it was a $1,000 course and more than 200 people signed up for it. And at that point, all of the development costs had already been paid for, essentially. So, you know, if 200 people sign up, she's basically making $200,000, which is pretty cool, right? And it kind of begs the question, you know, if you've been able to create this, you know, incredible product that has so much demand, you're an authority in this space, like Paula has done everything right, essentially, why just have it open for a few days? And, you know, what's the whole point of like, closing it down for six months and then doing it again?
Why not have it open every single day? Because chances are, you know, even if you're not gonna sign up a ton of people every day, if you could get it to where one person a day is buying your $1,000 course, you know, that's pretty good. Well, obviously there is a reason, and I'm sure some of our listeners figured it out. But basically it's that, you know, by doing this product launch, you know, once a year, or in her case, I think she's gonna do it twice a year, so by annual, it just creates so much more momentum. It creates a sense of scarcity.
It creates a sense of like, oh, you know, I've been reading Paula's work for a long time, but this is my only chance, you know, to buy this course. And also she really wants to focus on the students who sign up, so by introducing them in cohorts, essentially that's preferable to having them come in every single day. Because if you have a cohort, like let's say her next launch also brings in 200 people, well, then she can focus on that group of 200 before she prepares for, you know, the next group that is to follow, okay? And a lot of people follow this model. I mean, Marie Forleo, another friend of mine, has a product or a course, I should say, B-School.
And if you have been on the internet in the past 10 years, especially in certain circles, you've probably heard of B-School. Well, B-School is open for registration one time a year, pretty much in the spring for a few weeks. There's a whole, you know, detailed, incredibly elaborate free launch process that goes into it. And, you know, B-School could probably sell every day if it was open or available every day, but it's far more effective by becoming an event, by becoming something that people look forward to. And there's just so much more momentum and anticipation around it.
B-School is now a multi-million dollar business, mostly because Marie has done a great job in investing in her students and creating a quality product, but also because of this marketing approach of scarcity, of creating an event, anticipation, momentum, et cetera. Okay, lots to take away from that. Let us jump now and hear from Joel. We're actually in a moment, we're gonna do a shout out to our sponsor, sponsor shout out, and then an audio update from Joel, who does the impossible. I'll come back and have some commentary about him as well.
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Hi, this is Joel from Austin, Texas. My side hustle is MoveWell app, and I was featured on episode number 381. MoveWell is a movement and mobility coaching app. So we show you how to stretch and foam roll for your specific goals, whether you're an athlete or you're just sitting down and have back pain all day. When I was first on side hustle school, I had a partner in the app and we had only shot a few different routines for a few different goals.
Since then, I've bought out my partner. We are in different stages of life, in different stages of entrepreneurship. And I bought him out in order to be able to focus more on the app and continue to scale it. And since that happened, we've been able to do another video shoot and basically double the number of movements and routines in the app. And we've also built out a feature where we were able to schedule out routines for release in the future.
So we can continue to be consistent and create new routines for people's goals no matter what they are. And that's really important since we have a paid subscriber base and they're always looking for new content. What I'm working on next is just continuing to create more routines, more movements, and more content. What's nice about the app at this point is that from a feature set is we've got most of the features in the app that we want to add. From here on out, it's just adding more content, adding more routines, adding more tutorials, and adding more value to our customers.
And so that's what we're really focused on and we're pretty good at that at this point. So it's great. That's my update. If you want to check out MoveWell app, it's at movewellapp.com. Thanks.
Awesome, thank you so much, Joel. Appreciate that update. And by the way, the app that he's talking about, MoveWell app, this is just one of his projects. Joel is kind of like me. He's a serial side hustler.
The episode that we featured him on, number 381, was entitled Side Hustler Gets Paid to Run Seven Ultra Marathons on Seven Continents. So that's one of the things he's known for. Foam rolling is so important. I use my foam roller every day, or at least I intend to. It's one of those things that I've got the foam roller right here in my office.
And most days I use it and I always feel better when I do. So get a foam roller and Joel, keep creating content. Everyone, in addition to MoveWell app, you can follow along with him at impossiblehq.com or jolrunyon.com. All of which we will link up on the notes page. [Music]
More updates to come, more stories to come, more fun surprises to come.
Actually working on a bunch of stuff for the fall that I am looking forward to sharing with you. I am most grateful for everyone listening to this program every day from all over the world. Tens of thousands of people tuning in every day to hear stories, perhaps to get some inspiration, perhaps to get some practical guidance and also to understand that if you're out there and you've got an idea of doing something that's different or doing something that maybe other people don't understand, but you want to do it because you want to invest in yourself and you want to create some kind of project that earns money apart from your day job. Well, that's a good thing. It is a wonderful thing that is worth your effort.
So I'm honored to be able to produce this program for you every day. I also want to say a big thanks to some of the folks on our team, including producer Chuck Reed, content manager, Whitney Kerinek, community liaison, Jed Chang. I think he's in Hawaii this week. Mahalo, Jed, for all your hard work. Cat Herder, Tina Hart, and the official show cat Libby Gillibow.
All of us together are part of the Onward Project curated by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. Be sure to check out her show, "Happier with Gretchen Rubin," as well as "Happier in Hollywood" and "Do the Thing" from Melissa Urban. If you're enjoying the program, I'd be grateful for a quick rating and review in Apple Podcasts. Just takes a second and it helps other people discover the show. In most episodes, I mentioned that inspiration is good, but action is better.
It's because I hope that you'll take action. I hope that this will be helpful to you in a practical, specific way. I look forward to hearing about what you're up to and I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week. Consider this, as I said, a short daily investment in yourself. Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time.
My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
