699: Creative Side Hustles That Make Real Money - Part 8

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1:15This is normally a Thanksgiving tradition on the show, but I've seen so many fun ideas come across my desk this year. We just couldn't wait. So to help out with this round is someone who's no stranger to the side hustle world. as the CEO of Flippa.com, the number one platform to buy and sell online businesses. He's had a front row seat to thousands of profitable side projects. Blake Hutchinson, welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Hey, Nick, thank you for having me on. This is gonna be fun. I am excited to dive right in. In fact, the first example here, the first side hustle, profitable side hustle that I found that checked that creative box was a teenage entrepreneur, 17-year-old student selling 3D-printed croc charms.

1:55This is Michael Satterley of New York. His business is called Soulfully, on track to do$300 ,000 in revenue this year. We have a beginner's 3D printer downstairs that my wife and the kids have been playing around with. If I know anything about the cost of filament, the margins on these little croc charms have got to be really, really strong because it costs very little to print this stuff. Oh, wow. There we go. Yeah, we're literally talking about the Croc shoes and he's turned Croc shoes into a charm. Yeah. So he's added wheels. He's added a little V6 engine to the top of the Croc in this case.

2:30Yeah. So we bring out his website, really creative kind of stuff. A tractor, what is this? Like an excavator type of handle and a tractor tread going on underneath. So some creative designs that I'm trying to get my kids into printing stuff like this. I think there could be some demand for it. Now, I don't know if he's selling, did it start out just selling these to classmates? Like, look at these creepy toes, fake toe charms, 10 bucks for these. Yeah, that's pretty gnarly. So cool. And as you said, the margin must be high because the actual price points are relatively low. He's got one pack for$9.99 there and a two pack for$16.

3:08So the fact that he's doing them for a relatively low cost must mean that he can clearly print and fulfill for relatively low cost as well. As you said, probably quite high margin. Yeah. Estimating cost of material here, probably 25 cents, you know? So he's got some good margins there. Obviously selling through this store. I wonder if he's selling on Etsy as well. I don't know if this article says anything about that TikTok shop and Instagram have been everything for me. So he's the kind of product that has some natural virality built into it where people say, hey, I got to get that impulse buy type of price point and going to town on social media.

3:44He's clearly a very creative guy because he's got a really large number of designs. Actually, he's selling through TikTok and no doubt other social communities. He certainly has a lot of reviews. So 390 reviews of which the vast majority are a five star. So clearly doing a good job. See what the size of his Instagram following is. Yeah, he's got 109 ,000 followers, which is actually, well, very impressive. Yeah, he's done well over there. These are relatively simple designs. A 3D printer might cost$300,$400, maybe$500 if you have a higher end one capable of doing multi-colors, something like this.

4:23So somebody else could easily come up with their own designs and create something very similar here. So that was the first one that I came across for this list. Very cool. $20 ,000 a month. All right. Anything that you found? The first one that I've got here is an Amazon Kindle publishing business. So first and foremost, let's just talk about what Amazon Kindle publishing is. So within the Amazon ecosystem, you can publish digital books and those digital books can be downloaded to a Kindle. And so that's Kindle publishing. And Kindle publishing is like the rest of the Amazon ecosystem. It's a marketplace.

4:58So these are independent publishers. They pick a subject matter, they produce the content, and then they publish to the Kindle publishing store. And as a result of that, end up making revenues from when they sell via the Amazon marketplace. So the one I found is basically a Kindle publishing set of books about the outdoors and RVs and national parks and anything outdoors. It's been around for just over a year and it's actually making$4 ,000 a month in profit. So that's pretty good because the price of the goods, and this is coincidental, but the price of the goods is just short of$10. So similar to the Crocs accessories business that you just had a look at there.

5:42But I think what's really cool about this is that Amazon Kindle publishing is quite accessible. And so if you've got a passion for something, you can publish a book and then you work the Amazon ecosystem much like you would a search engine. So you optimize your titles, you optimize your content, you choose your price points, and you try to win over the customer base searching through the Kindle publishing ecosystem. So in this particular case, it's 12 titles. So they didn't just produce one title, it's 12 titles. Okay. And it said outdoor adventures, nature guides, travel books. Is he writing this stuff himself?

6:17hiring ghostwriters using AI? What do you think? Yeah, let's have a look on all copyright certificates written originally. So yeah, looks like he or she has written them himself. Could be that they've got a passion for this particular subject matter or industry. Could be that they have edited themselves, but actually got other people to write it for them. I must admit, I'm not 100 % sure on that. Well, to crank out 12 books in a year is like, that's some heads down effort. And maybe there was an existing body of content to pull from, and maybe there was some AI assistance. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

6:49I mean, you know, I think the thing is probably one subject matter to a business model and then yeah, you can figure out whether you can write the content yourself or get somebody else to write it with you. And as you said, complimented by AI. So long as people continue to buy it, then it doesn't really matter whether it's written with AI so long as you probably disclose that and so long as the readership actually continues to buy it. Yeah, and it's something somewhat of a timely or timeless topic. People are probably going to want the 25, 2026 like travel guide, travel edition. And so maybe there's some level of refreshing and republishing that has to happen here.

7:20But it's a topic, it's a subject matter that can have a long shelf life. I mean, I was listening to this interview with Robert Green. He's like, well, 48 Laws of Power came out 25 years ago, and it still sells. It's an atomic habit's another example. Even though it launched four or five years ago, maybe even longer, it still sells. It still sits on top of the chart. So there's something to self-publishing or publishing in general where a book can have a really long shelf life. One issue that you alluded to is, well, it's accessible to everyone. It's like, it's good and bad. It's like, it really floods the marketplace.

7:52It crowds the marketplace with a bunch of maybe less than optimal content. Over long periods of time, the cream rises to the top, but it's hard to get noticed if there's a lot of other books on the same topic. And that's an important point about a KDP business. In fact, probably any business really, but you've got to establish credibility. Although once you do, Nick, I'm sure you and I would both agree that it's hard to get unseated. So in this particular case, it looks like he's got 66 reviews all around the sort of four and a half to five star mark. And as we spoke about, this is mostly evergreen content because the national parks don't change that much.

8:27So as I said, the definitive RV camping guide to all 63 US national parks, he's found And a niche, which is a big niche, and there's no doubt a large community of people that are consistently looking for this type of content. Yeah. I like self-publishing as a side hustle. It's one of my longest running side hustles started in 2012. And the thrill of the first Amazon royalty direct deposit of like$42 or something in my case, but it was like, I'm a professional author. Somebody bought my book. It was really cool. I'm going to add it to the portfolio over that time. That's almost where I see people doing that.

9:02If you hit the the lottery and you find that title that sticks and continually sells, that's the dream, right? If it can generate that$4 ,000 a month through this portfolio of 10 or 12 titles, awesome. What I've seen more often is kind of this natural decay, this natural decline, this fall off. And it's like, well, I got to keep writing another title or it's a top of the funnel into my broader business. And maybe they offer RV, maybe there's some affiliate play, maybe they offer some relationships with the campgrounds or I don't know if the national park has some kind of referral program or how that might even work.

9:36But maybe it's a front end or it's a top of the funnel to a broader based business. But I absolutely love tapping into the power of Amazon as a discovery engine. Yeah, I think you're touching on a few things. So if you're looking to start a side hustle, tapping into an existing platform that has a large community is a really good way to fast track access to a customer base. And often that's the hardest thing. You and I can both come up with a few concepts, but actually winning over a community, much like your Crocs accessories fellow from before. It's difficult to build that community. Actually, he's clearly a very creative and clever guy being able to build a community of that size.

10:12If you don't think you can do that, tapping into an existing ecosystem. So there's the Amazon ecosystem. There's the Etsy ecosystem. You know, if you're looking at something that is in the content space, like a newsletter, there's the sub stack ecosystem where people are actually searching for newsletters around particular subject matter. So tapping into something to win over an audience is a good way to go. Yeah, what the Crocs guy did a good job of was kind of creating that demand, which I think is a lot harder than filling demand on particular platforms and search engines. People are already searching for this thing.

10:44I can optimize my product to get in front of those people instead of, did anybody wake up in the morning saying like, I really need a tank-themed Crocs charm excavator thing that hooks off my toes? Probably not, but once they see it, they're in for it. The next one I have, this is an older example. This is from probably 2023 and it's called the userisdrunk.com. And I'm not sure if this service is still active, but it is thousand dollar drunk website audits. The idea here is your website should be so simple. A drunk person should be able to use it. and I think he has a sister site called like the user is your mom or something where he gets his mom I don't think he gets his mom drunk but he gets his mom to like try and audit the website and figure out what am I supposed to do on this page like the user navigation flow and so I want to say it was a thousand dollars but it could this kind of had a viral moment 10 12 years ago and so I'm not sure if he's still active on it and there's like a disclaimer about like yes how healthy is this for you how many of these can you legitimately do in an evening before it gets to be you too much, but kind of a creative positioning.

11:50Because I was actually selling these five-minute website audits on Fiverr back in the day, probably around the time that this came out. And here I was charging at a minimum$5, and he's got much higher pricing power because of this kind of unique positioning and kind of this viral marketing moment. And so maybe that's the takeaway is like, what is a service that already exists that I could put a unique spin on? And not saying you should resort to alcohol for that unique spin. But it was a creative example of doing that. Plus, you know, it's a legitimately valuable service, other than the fact that he claims to be getting very drunk before he looks at your website.

12:28Getting someone to actually review your site from a usability standpoint is something that more site and business owners should actually be doing. Yeah, totally. So valuable service. Oh, yeah, here it is. Userismymom.com. So a couple of a couple of different ones on there. What we've done in the past is like, if you're looking for different services, you could just go onto Fiverr, you can go onto Upwork and just like scroll through. There's like hundreds and hundreds of categories. So if I hit like talent marketplace, I'll see all specializations. Yeah. And you can pop open each one of these and it's like, there's dozens under each one.

13:06So it's a brainstorming tool to be like, well, shoot, dude, I could do that. And then maybe you pair that. What's a unique spin or what's a unique target demographic that I could offer that service to? Yeah, I think this is an important point because side hustle is side income. So if you're listening in, you're a bookkeeper and you're working for someone as a bookkeeper, you could in theory, as Nick just said, list yourself as a bookkeeping specialist on Upwork or Fiverr and no doubt earn some side income. Similarly, if you're a copywriter at a digital agency, you can list yourself on a marketplace like this and actually earn side income.

13:42So it's important to tap into the skill set you already have. Yeah, drunk bookkeeping, probably not the one that people want to sign up for, but maybe pivot that one to do a different, you know, I do bookkeeping for Amazon sellers, for KDP author, you know, for something, you know, some specific user. All right, that was number three for me. What's next for you? More creative side hustles with Blake in just a moment, including faceless YouTube channels, the profitable claw machine player, and more right after this. Are you still overpaying for wireless? It's time to say yes to saying no. At our partner Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no.

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16:05I want to invite you to get started for free. Plus, Side Hustle Show listeners get 20 % off your first six months at quo.com slash side hustle. That's q-u-o.com slash side hustle. Look at them getting that three-letter domain, quo.com slash side hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over at no extra charge. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. Yeah, so YouTube channels, I think important piece, again, to think about this from a platform standpoint. So YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And so as a result of that, you've got a very large user base searching for content across absolutely everything from news and politics to sport and travel.

16:51And as a result of that, it has spawned a massive creator ecosystem. And if you are able to produce content, obviously either shooting content and or yourself, much like Nick and I are doing here, talking about subject matter, you can find that in short order, you can amass a community of followers and then start to earn income from the YouTube ad engine. So the one that I wanted to show here today is called Latest Hoops. And I'm sure you can probably all guess what that's going to be about. But Latest Hoops is a YouTube channel here, which is all about basketball, claims to be the best basketball channel on YouTube.

17:37You can see here the ultimate hub for all things NBA and WNBA, stay ahead with the latest possible news, exclusive gossip, et cetera. And basically what they are then doing is producing and pulling together content about either, in this particular case, they've pulled together some content from NBA legends. In this particular case, they've got Michael Jordan versus Larry Bird. They've talked about NBA players' careers that have been destroyed by girlfriends. NBA players react to their NBA 2K22 ratings. So it's all sorts of content that he's curated. It's not original content. He's cut it to fit within a particular topic.

18:14And so you can do that as well for something that you're particularly passionate about. Now, the critical thing in here is what he's trying to do is drive video views. So you can see here the NBA Legends won 8.6 million views. So you're talking about serious scale here, published three years ago. And as a result of that, he'll be earning ad income. So it's a really, really fast-growing asset class for want of a better description. We actually see a lot of these now exiting on Flippa, Nick. So it's something which not only is lucrative to build, but then lucrative to exit as well. Yeah, it looks like this is a faceless channel where it's just pulling in existing clips, existing content, repackaging them in a unique way and trying to hit that viral wave.

18:57Yeah, totally. And it's important that people understand you have to start from something small. even the stuff that this individual, he or she is posting. It's not like he's getting amassing amazing view counts on his new stuff. So it's not like it instantly goes viral. He has to work on the content and figure out the algorithms over time and then resurface it and advertise it through his other videos too. So his first, his most recent video here, three weeks ago, it's only got 327 views. Some of his more popular videos have got two and three million views. So you've got to work at that algorithm totally one strategy that we've seen is looking at what videos have done well for other similar creators and trying to create something tighter better funnier you know fill in the blank but trying to look instead of coming up with something completely on my own like the algorithm's already spoken this was a hit like let's let's try and uh tap into that and then maybe even uh draft or ride the coattails off of that existing content so i'm I pulled up Social Blade as an estimator for latest hoops and says it can be earning up to$40 ,000 a year in ad revenue from that type of content.

20:06We've done a couple episodes on faceless YouTube channels. And what's kind of interesting now is we did one and then we did an update like a year later, peak AI wave. And it's like script writing is AI. Pulling in video editing is clear. Idea generation, you've got to seed it, but that's AI. It was like thumbnail design, AI. It was kind of really interesting to see like pretty low overhead type of business. Now, of course, like the Kindle publishing example, low overhead equals lots of competition. So you think, well, what's the secret sauce that I'm bringing to the table? Particular passion about basketball, particular insider secret, like, you know, can I do this game better than everybody else who's trying to do this game?

20:47And I think that's how you're going to win. And it's a really important point because side hustle doesn't mean no work or passive income. You've got to continually produce this content. Now, as you said, it's faceless. He's just taking clips and editing and cutting them, but you've got to know how to edit and cut. Absolutely. All right. Next one up for me is a headline that I found. It was called, I made$40 ,000 selling plush dolls that I get out of claw machines, which Wow. The skill tester first. Yes. So this guy apparently became very adept at winning claw machines. And here's how I turned this into a profitable hobby.

21:28Now, the first thing that comes to mind is like, if you're going to resell these things anyway, like you could probably get them on Alibaba or you could probably get them somewhere else from some wholesaler, like for about what you're paying in claw machine. So without having to go spend hours at the arcade thing, he's like, okay, I sell average $20 in sales per day, and it costs me$3 to$7 per win. So if I sell that for$25, the ROI is significant. I'm not debating the ROI. I'm saying there might be a simpler inventory acquisition method. I think this is hilarious. My average arcade session costs between$150 to$200.

22:04So you'd have to know that you're very good at the game, and clearly he does. He's probably spent a lot to get to this point. But as you say, Nick, there's probably easier ways to get access to be a plush choice. However, it could be that the reason he's selling them and having the success selling them is the story behind how he gets them. Sure. Yeah, maybe so. Or if it's like a unique collector's item type of thing, you could only win it in a claw machine. And I happen to be very good at that. Yes, I spend$150 to$200 in a session and it takes sometimes hours. I don't know what sounds like it's time consuming, but I can walk away with$300 to$500 in resale value.

22:43So yes, this, uh, this pencils out to be a profitable gig. And, um, you know, maybe this was your hobby. Maybe you, you know, you learned this skill and you really enjoy the thrill of doing it and beating the system here. So good. So good. These people are so creative in their ability to make money. Yeah. I love a bringing down the house, you know, beating the casino type of story. Like I feel like these claw machines are rigged against you. So I do like how he's getting one up on the arcade. All right. What else have you got? So the next one I've got is just the newsletter ecosystem is alive and well.

23:17So this one's called Remote Work Opportunities, and it's a Beehive newsletter. So Beehive is a platform that enables you to publish. It's like Substack, and both Substack and Beehive make publishing newsletters very, very simple. So you don't need to know how to use a CRM or anything like that. You basically create a post and then it'll allow you to set up a subscription form, i.e. what is your email address? And then people will subscribe and you can either charge them and they have an inbuilt merchant layer, or you can make it free and then earn added income so long as you get a massive following.

23:55And this is a classic case of do something that you know and do something that you are passionate about. In this particular example, I found a newsletter which is just about remote work opportunities. Now, clearly remote work right now is very much flavor du jour. It's a big industry. People want to work from different parts of the world, different parts of the country, depending on where you are. And this particular newsletter is all about remote jobs and tips to help you hustle remotely and grow your career. And so it's set up on Beats. He's publishing, or maybe two or three times a month. And so, find work at jubal.com, use microtransitions to save you from burnout.

24:36This one is find works at the MUM project, knowing the value of friction mapping, discover remote friendly jobs on the MUM project. And also, there are lots of services now that you can curate together to publish this content and actually appeal to a large audience looking for one distinct place where they can go and find out a bit of this stuff. So, I found this quite interesting. Now, he's making money from ad revenue. And so, it's a combination of ad revenue plus affiliate revenue. So, when people click off to one of these job sites to get the job, he'll be making money from those affiliate clicks when they convert into leads and to actual job applications.

25:15So, clever and right within the sphere of the remote work industry, which is very big right now. Are you seeing any newsletters like this one sell through the Flippa platform? Yes. I think publishing, generally speaking, is still very attractive. You and I are very familiar with the blog and the blogger environment. And blogs are a little bit on the nose just as a function of not quite knowing how the Google search, the SEO realm is going to work, not necessarily trusting the ad revenue streams that have historically been so promising and evergreen. So between YouTube channels, KDP and newsletters, they are three fast-growing categories generally in the world, but also for Flippa.