Are you also thinking about a side hustle?

[Tidus]

Hello Guys,

I'm an employee for 9 years already and not dreaming to be for life. :)

Through the years of my employment, I've been laid off and fired then rehire again.

There's always a stigma when you are applying for a new job coming from laid offs and firing. Like a negative connotation.

But you still need a job to survive. We all do. We need food, family to be taken cared of, and bills to pay.

And it hit me on my 8 years of being an employee.

I asked myself, is life always be like living paycheck to paycheck?

...working for someone else?
...building someone's dreams?
...following orders and do what has been told to you to do?
...asking permissions to have off?

Things like that.

I fell like a fish out from the water who climbs a tree.


(I know it's kinda of late realization.) :)


That there's something wrong in my situation. I'm bigger than this. I kept telling that to my self.

So I decided to build my side hustle while working on my job. I'm learning the internet marketing thing. One giant animal.

It's hard to do it alone and would love to see if there are like-minded people out there doing the same or the ones who would want to start their side hustle in order replace their corporate job.

So for those who resonate with this post got few questions, especially for the beginners or just itching to build a side hustle:

When it comes to building your side hustle (online), what’s your single biggest challenge?”
Why would it be helpful for you to solve this problem?
And how would your life be different if you solve it?

Be as candid and honest as you want.

I would love to hear your stories. :)

[LPG]

I think you'll find that people striving to build side hustles are pretty darn common on this forum. Especially in the Entrepreneurship section. I get the impression that a lot of people are looking for a side hustle, and not something that they can turn into a full time gig. More like a hobby that they get paid for. Personally, I'm in that camp. I don't really want the pressure of having to get enough business from my side hustle to fully fund my life that way, and am very content to set up a few neat projects that occasionally bring in a bit of money. It seems to suit my personality.

As for me, I've been working (A bit lazily, I'll admit) to build a side hustle. I work in engineering research, figured out how to automate a huge portion of my job, and have been working to build a side gig teaching people how to do the same. I started a blog, and have ideas for digital products people might pay for, but have really struggled to get enough viewership on the blog to keep up the motivation. I've ended up making a few connections and doing a bit of data science work with people. Not quite what I was going for, but a side hustle is a side hustle!

I think my little ramble above answered your questions, but I'll spell them out directly:

• My biggest single challenge is definitely finding customers. I've had trouble with outreach, and finding people who want to pay attention and/or pay me for my help.
• I'm pretty sure the first answer also covers the second question! It would be helpful to have customers because, um, a side hustle isn't really a thing without customers.
• I'd like to see two different results from having more customers. First, I find connecting with and helping people extremely motivating. I think that it would bring much more inspiration to the work. Second, you know, money. I'd probably put most of the money straight towards my FIRE fund, and GTFO of the rat race earlier.

[davidgreams]

I buy designer clothes, rare toys, rock band tee shirts, old video games, first edition signed books, and other collectable stuff from thrift stores and flip them online.

Some items make me a lot of money. Men’s jeans are usually a good money maker. A good pair of Diesel jeans I’ll pay $5 and sell them to someone in a flyover state for $80.

Band shirts have the highest mark-up but are also the hardest to find. I once sold a Stray Cats shirt from the ’80s that I paid $2 for at a yard sale for $450.

First edition books and signed books are an easy sell too and usually super cheap.

You just have to know what to look for and I have been doing this a while. I have a rule that if I don’t make 100% profit or can’t sell an item for at least twice what I paid for it...it’s not worth my time.

[Tidus]

I think you'll find that people striving to build side hustles are pretty darn common on this forum. Especially in the Entrepreneurship section. I get the impression that a lot of people are looking for a side hustle, and not something that they can turn into a full time gig. More like a hobby that they get paid for. Personally, I'm in that camp. I don't really want the pressure of having to get enough business from my side hustle to fully fund my life that way, and am very content to set up a few neat projects that occasionally bring in a bit of money. It seems to suit my personality.

As for me, I've been working (A bit lazily, I'll admit) to build a side hustle. I work in engineering research, figured out how to automate a huge portion of my job, and have been working to build a side gig teaching people how to do the same. I started a blog, and have ideas for digital products people might pay for, but have really struggled to get enough viewership on the blog to keep up the motivation. I've ended up making a few connections and doing a bit of data science work with people. Not quite what I was going for, but a side hustle is a side hustle!

I think my little ramble above answered your questions, but I'll spell them out directly:

• My biggest single challenge is definitely finding customers. I've had trouble with outreach, and finding people who want to pay attention and/or pay me for my help.
• I'm pretty sure the first answer also covers the second question! It would be helpful to have customers because, um, a side hustle isn't really a thing without customers.
• I'd like to see two different results from having more customers. First, I find connecting with and helping people extremely motivating. I think that it would bring much more inspiration to the work. Second, you know, money. I'd probably put most of the money straight towards my FIRE fund, and GTFO of the rat race earlier.

Hey @LPG!

Really glad hearing your story. When did you start your side hustle? Are you a programmer?

It's really much more rewarding when you get to monetize your hobby. You just have to dive deeper on how you will look for your customers. FB ads is one of the best ways to do that. You just have to learn more a little bit of it by enrolling courses.

Thanks for sharing as well as your struggles. Really admire people showing their vulnerability regardless of what others might say. Besides, we are not here to please everyone.

I love the part where you mentioned: " I find connecting with and helping people extremely motivating".

Darn!

That feeling, when it always hit me, I wanna die already! LOL!

Being helpful to people is very underrated feeling. It's more than that.

Never really know that FIRE and GTFO means though. :D

What does it mean btw?

Also, can I see your blog? Would love to check it out. Hope you don't mind. You can message me or best share it here so other people can look at it and might as well help them. :)

I buy designer clothes, rare toys, rock band tee shirts, old video games, first edition signed books, and other collectable stuff from thrift stores and flip them online.

Some items make me a lot of money. Men’s jeans are usually a good money maker. A good pair of Diesel jeans I’ll pay $5 and sell them to someone in a flyover state for $80.

Band shirts have the highest mark-up but are also the hardest to find. I once sold a Stray Cats shirt from the ’80s that I paid $2 for at a yard sale for $450.

First edition books and signed books are an easy sell too and usually super cheap.

You just have to know what to look for and I have been doing this a while. I have a rule that if I don’t make 100% profit or can’t sell an item for at least twice what I paid for it...it’s not worth my time.

Hi @davidgreams ,

Seems you're more on the ecommerce side. How long you've been doing it?

Do you also do it on the side while having a job?

[HipGnosis]

... FIRE and GTFO ...  What does it mean btw?

FIRE means  Financially Independent and Retired Early

GTFO  means  Get The F___ Out

[LPG]

Hi @Tidus,

Yeah, you're absolutely welcome. Vulnerability is the path to human connection in my experience, and we all want more human connection (The good kind, anyway).

I started my side hustle over the summer, and was pretty dedicated to it for a while. I was focusing on one new post each week, writing detailed tutorials on some aspect of what I'm trying to teach people. I'd announce the new posts on LinkedIn and Facebook hoping that people I've connected to on those platforms would be interested (Pretty reasonable assumption, since a lot of them are doing similar work to me). Eventually I kind of...ran out of things to say. I had written posts teaching people what I knew. I didn't have any challenges pushing me to innovate and create new solutions that I could teach. Combine that with the low readership, and low income and I hit a listless period.

Fortunately, I've found a bit of inspiration again and have started a new series of blog posts. I also have plans for how to monetize these posts (Eventually), and have found a few new communities where I can hope to find more consulting work. More consulting work coould lead to new challenges, new methods to develop, and new blog posts. So maybe I'll get a bit more traction this time!

I'm quite happy to share my blog! Anything I can do to get more eyes on it is fantastic in my opinion, so long as I'm not being that annoying guy who's spamming a world that doesn't want it. But, since you asked... www.1000x-faster.com/blog

Oh, missed one of your questions. Not a programmer per-se. I'm a research engineer, who focuses on using laboratory data to develop computer simulation models. This way people can predict how a piece of equipment will function for them after investing a few hours into a computer program (Usually developed using government funding, and available to use for free) rather than investing thousands of dollars to buy and install the equipment. But you're not far off with your guess of me being a programmer. Modern engineering involves a TON of programming. We're just worse at it because we're more focused on and knowledgeable of the technologies we're studying than the code itself.

[Tidus]

Hi @LPG!

Thanks for sharing your blog! You've got nice site there. Though I'm so Alienated with the information inside ('cuz I'm not the target audience :P ) I can feel you are pouring your heart with tons of information there.

To make more people subscribe to you, why not give a FREE quick ebook, audio book, mini video course or anything that easily consume yet valuable. We all want FREE and fun stuff. :)

What I suggest to have your audience is to join technology forums like virtualdr.com and tech-tips.com and Facebook group like Research Method & Data Analysis, Online Statistical Research and Data Analysis, similar to your interest. There you can share your tips and tips and they will see you as a valuable member so peeps will trust you.

Since you are pretty damn good on what you do, you can create a 3-module course that you can offer on your site so you can monetize your blog. You can start with a 3-module course which discusses the top 3 priorities you want to solve on your market's problem. :)

[LPG]

Hiya Tidus,

Thanks for the tips! And you'll be glad to hear that this conversation has already given me renewed motivation to keep plugging away, and keep giving it a try. Some notes (You'll notice that many of them are pretty similar to what you mentioned...):

• In the last few weeks, I've really dedicated to making a new series of blog posts. This series will really dive into the details teaching people step by step, line of code by line of code, how to do this using an example I've created. The original posts were more high level and conceptual, so I think this will help true beginners get started and broaden my potential reader base.
• I've been advertising my blog in several different online communities. Several are FB groups dedicated to people learning to code in Python. Others are online communities for data scientists, energy experts, etc. This is something I had dabbled in before, but not really dedicated myself to. My renewed efforts are proving successful! I expect my readership this month to be 3x the readership I got last month.
• I'm in the process of converting some of my blog posts to Medium articles. I can publicize those Medium articles through the Towards Data Science (TDS) blog. TDS have >100k unique readers every month, meaning that far more people will at least see my headlines than I'm used to. Publicity! And Medium pays authors based on the amount of time that people spend reading their articles, so there's potential for income there too.
• I've also started working on a "cheat sheet" providing short answers to the process. It'll introduce each step, provide some high level pointers, and point people to specific blog posts with more detailed information . I'm not sure if I'll provide this for free as a way to get people to sign up or charge some minimal price (Say, $1) to start testing out direct monetization efforts.
• Video guides! This is a "project to be" so to speak. I discussed this with somebody else in the industry back in December, and we're planning on making and EdX course together. He said he was swamped with other things until late February, so we may get started on it in the next few weeks.
• I'm also in the process of writing an eBook to sell. Actually, it STARTED as an eBook. But the main piece of feedback I got on it was that I needed more examples so I'm waiting until I finish the current tutorial, will turn those posts into examples, and intend to start selling the eBook then. I'll probably put it both on my website and on Amazon.
• Another monetization method that I have in mind is what I call "companion data sets." An example: The current tutorial walks the reader through the process of automating analysis of a certain data set line of code by line of code. They can see how I do it. But they can't do it themselves because they don't have the data. If they did they could write the program themselves, test it with the data set to make sure they get the right result, change the program/experiment to try doing things differently, etc. And maybe they'll pay for that opportunity. I can't currently do that because of some political issues, but maybe soon...
• I've also thought about making and selling extremely detailed guides to using different Python packages written in everyday language. The documentation for these packages if often written in "computer scientest-ese", if you know what I mean. So I figure that somebody would pay a few bucks to get a detailed guide written in a more reader friendly format.

Phew! That's a lot of work I have going on in my first-ever entrepreneurial venture. Fortunately, I automated my day job (As you've read a bit about!) and have plenty of spare time available ;-)

What are you up to in the internet marketing world?

[Tidus]

Hey @LPG ,

Soory for the late reply. What a week.

Anyway, looks like you've got goals already set. Awesome! Congrats to your expanding readership!

And it's nice to know you already found your audience. It would be easy now to offer something to them.

If you need to monetize your blog, you have a to provide something valuable that your audience will very much happy to have. Like your cheat sheet. You can give it for free in exchange of their email address. Just make sure that consuming that cheat sheet, which I think you will use as a lead magnet, will want your audience to have more about your topic and later on you can offer some kind of ebook for sale. I'm very sure that once your audience knows that they need to pay at $1 for that kind of information, they will hesitate to grab that. Besides, $1 is petty value. Look on the bigger picture which is your ebook or course to offer. Those stuff you can charge something higher.

For me, I suggest putting your ebook or course on your website. When you put your ebook on other platforms, you have no control. Especially on the price. They always take something out from your effort. Unlike, if you put it on your site, you have full value from your offers. Just saying. :)

If you want I can teach you how I sold my ebook when I was on dating niche even I was not a writer (and not dreaming of to be one). I can teach you the basics and some little advanced stuff. Though my target market is IT guys who want to create side hustle selling digital products like ebook, I'll be honored to teach you what I know for FREE! I can create a course for you. There's no catch here. I just want to help people like you. Let me know your thoughts. Have a beautiful day! :)