Our Hustler today did not fit into the 80 hours/week job. So she started to find things that fit the life she wanted and in the journey she

🤑 Earned $9000 from her side hustle before quitting her job

🤩 Built an audience of 100K+ on Linkedin & 22K+ on Twitter

🤯 Became the Linkedin Top Voice 2022

Building a $9K writing side hustle: ​​Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi's journey

Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi has amassed a good audience on Linkedin & Twitter, where she talks about writing, audience building and side hustles. She is a writer, educator and creative entrepreneur. But the journey to this started in 2021 with a side hustle.

Pursuing writing as a side hustle

Niharikaa made her first money by writing an article for around $3 during her undergraduate in Bangalore. But she never thought of pursuing it seriously. Instead, she started blogging about her weight-loss journey. She also started travelling during her postgraduate from the University of Manchester, and her Instagram feed had solo travel stories from over 12 countries. Her niche was fitness and travel, and she grew her Instagram to 11K followers. After being an influencer for some years, in 2020, she decided to stop as she did not feel excited.

When she returned to India after her post-graduation, she joined Zomato as a Recruitment Associate. But she felt like a misfit in the 9-5 environment. Within a year, she moved to Genpact in the field of Digital Operations. But the feeling remained the same. She wanted to explore more. She began reading stories of people making side incomes. It inspired her to get started with her own side hustle as well.

For a side hustle, you want to do something you are passionate about. For Niharikka, it's been health & fitness. So she decided to start by offering fitness consultations. But after working with two clients, she felt tired, and it was not fun. She understood that her passion for fitness might not translate into a side hustle.

Next, she decided to write. And she decided to explore different channels and narrowed it down to Medium to showcase her talent. She started to write her blog on Medium and even reached out to other publications to write for them. She also started to freelance. In her first month, she made $8. Writing made her happy, and she enjoyed it too. It also allowed her to be creative and write about her experiences.

Scaling her passion for writing into a $9000 side hustle in less than a year

Soon, Niharikaa found herself editing before work and writing after work. Sometimes when she would be free in the afternoon, she applied for writing gigs online. But there were no instant results, rather many ups and downs. Despite ups and downs, she stayed consistent in her efforts.

Her highest-paying gig came from a millionaire techie who wanted to help him with his brother's university admission cover letter. The gig came months later as a result of the credibility and network built via her previous assignment. Another opportunity came to her when she created a communication strategy for a business that had given her a content assignment.

She also started to write many more articles a month. From 5-6, she went on to write 20+ articles a month. Soon her side income added up to $9000, which was 3X of her full-time job's compensation. So at 25 years of age, she decided to quit and pursue the path of solopreneurship.

Creating a life & business on her terms

Niharikka wanted a life where she enjoys the work, gets to work with people she looks up to, can pursue creative ideas and earns well. So after quitting, she decided to structure her life so that she works only 20 hours per week. She also started to actively build an audience on Twitter & Linkedin, which helped her get more clients. Soon, she diversified her income streams into

• A cohort-based course every quarter: Summit 21 is a cohort-based course where people learn how to build a sustainable system to write. The course is very customised and helps build cross-platform traction. Most people who enrol in the program have full-time jobs, and more than half of the students are also parents.

• She does not do many freelance projects. But very few related to website content and personal brand building.

• Digital products: LinkedIn guide, Medium Guide, Side Hustler's checklist and more. The products are a mix of paid and free. She made $8,420 in revenue in a year with six digital products.

Her future plans are to scale Summit 21 and launch a self-paced Linkedin course. Follow her hustle by subscribing to her newsletter here.

Hustlers Insights of the week

Building a life on your terms: The best upside of having a side hustle or various income streams is that you can build a life on your terms. Niharikaa did not enjoy corporate life, so she took a bet on herself and created a life where she works only 20 hours every week.

Don't get too attached to your interests: Your passion may not necessarily become your side hustle. Making it a business may remove the fun from it. You need to find something that is fun and can bring outputs. And you can do this only by trial and error like Niharikaa.

Diversify service-based side hustle to scale: A service side hustle should be diversified to scale. You should create different streams that enable you to reduce your work hours but still get a good income. Niharikaa did this very well by reducing her freelance work and creating digital products and courses.

Resources of the week

Minimalist Hustler Daily: Join 1400+ online hustlers in receiving a daily email with three quick & valuable resources that will help you make more money online.

The Side Hustle School: Niharikaa's newsletter, where she shares insights and her experiences of side hustling.

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We have talked about side hustles for extra income, learning new skills, and exploring passion. But side hustles can also be a way to introduce novelty in your life. That's what made our hustler today start on the journey of part-time indie hacking, and since the summer of 2022, she has

⚒️Built & launched three products

💷 Generated revenue of 500 Euros on the side

😍 Built an audience of 10K+ followers on Twitter

Pauline's journey into the world of side hustles

Pauline Clavelloux is a Data Scientist at IBM, France. She graduated in engineering and has been working in the Data Science field for more than eight years. Over the years, Pauline built small projects that would help her workflows but never opened them up for others.

But it all changed when she joined Twitter in early 2022.

Building an audience & launching the first project

After eight years in Data Science, Pauline had insights & experience that she wanted to share with others. She started writing about Data on Twitter and seeing positive results. People liked her content and started to follow her and ask her questions to help them in their data science journeys. Being on Twitter, she also came in contact with the community of indie hackers. She liked how these people built products and supported each other. She has been building projects in isolation, but the community inspired her to create a business around it.

So she decided to go back to a personal crypto project. She was an active crypto trader but found it challenging to keep track of the changes as per her trading strategies. So she decided to build a tracking system that would alert her when a crypto chart matched her strategy. It was a problem for many traders, so she launched it as Cryptopy.

But the project could have gotten better traction, and she found it hard to reach out to the traders. It was a failure, but it did not deter her spirits.

Building on the AI Avatar trend

The last quarter of 2022 saw breakthroughs in the generative AI space. Image generators like Dall-E & Stable Diffusion were released. The applications became a hot topic, and it started the trend to have AI-generated avatars.

Pauline was on vacation at the time and saw these AI images everywhere. It intrigued her, and she wanted to understand how it worked. She figured it out quickly and decided to build an AI avatar generator with a friend.

They were able to build it very fast and launched Unrealme in November. With the trend everywhere, the project got traction and gendered 500 Euros in revenue.

She knew it was a trend-driven product and would not become something sustainable. Also, the cost of running the product was high, so they decided not to market.

Building and experimenting with side projects

Pauline plans to experiment and build different products in the coming months. She wants to solve various problems and focus on a product that finds the perfect fit. In line with that, she has a blog called About Startup, where she shares stories of founders.

Her recent launch is Twitter Explorer. A Twitter extension that helps to export Twitter account data to Google sheets. It's a solution that Pauline made to solve her problem. When she started on Twitter, she found the UX confusing. She could not find her bookmarks and messages easily, so she made a quick fix. Then as her followers grew, she was not able to know anything about her followers. She would also get messages from people asking her questions, the answers she already had in her tweets. But she needed help finding her tweets quickly. And to solve these problems, she decided to build Twitter Explorer.

The soft launch got a good response, and she plans to market the product in the coming days. So follow her and see how she is building it out.

Huslers Insights of the week

Share your journey on Social: Pauline has been building digital products to solve her problems for some time. But she was never sharing it with others. But getting into the Twitter community inspired her to create a business around them. And sharing her journey and products helped her build a following and get more ideas to build.

Keep an eye on the trends: Side hustles can be fun, and you can build something that does not become sustainable. But only build for trends if it excites you. Pauline did get into the AI avatar trend but quickly realised it was not for her and decided not to spend her time on it.

Pay attention to your own experiences: Getting ideas for side hustles becomes easy when you pay attention to your problems. Both of Pauline’s ideas emerged out of a problem she faced. It also enables you to build a solution that will work best as you know the problem first-hand.

Resources of the Week

Trend VC Essentials reports: Trend VC reports are an excellent resource for understanding any topic in depth. Their reports cover topics such as building newsletters and micro Saas, which can be great starting points for your side hustle journey.

Playbook to build your first GPT-3 product: Are you interested in generative AI and want to understand how GPT-3 works? Try our latest playbook to understand the topic and learn how to build a GPT-3 powered product with no code.

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The best way to learn and improve your skills is by doing. Our hustler today started his project as a way for him to improve his writing skills. Fast forward two years, the writing side hustle has led to

🤯 55000+ subscribers

🤩 Twitter following of 13K+

😍 Writing guest posts for other popular creators like Lenny Rachitsky

Story of Ali Abouelatta’s First 1000

Ali Abouelatta is an Associate Product Manager at Duolingo and writes a popular newsletter called First 1000 on the side. His newsletter is read and loved by over 50000 people worldwide. His journey of starting it and growing it is fascinating.

Initial failed attempts of starting a side hustle

Ali graduated in 2018 and started his career in a micro-VC firm in Dubai. His work involved:

• Meeting early-stage founders.

• Filtering applications.

• Reviewing pitch decks and understanding how the portfolio companies work.

He got some great learnings into the world of startups and then joined a startup called Breadfast to lead their growth. While working with these companies, Ali tried to build two side projects.

One was a newsletter that would give the users a topic choice and send personalized content. He launched it and got some subscribers, but he soon realized he could not curate and write about many topics. Another project was an app to rent baby clothes. While he worked on it for some time with a friend, eventually, they did not launch it as they did not relate to the problem.

Quest to develop his writing skills

After working for two years, Ali decided to go to the US for a master's degree. He started the applications and gave the GRE examination. His writing score on the exam could have been better. He wanted to improve his writing skills. And the best way was to write and improve every time. He had intrinsic motivation but needed some accountability also.

During the same time, Substack (a newsletter publishing platform) raised a round of funding, and many people started to write on it. Ali was intrigued by it and wanted to give it a try. So he decided to start a newsletter on Substack.

But what will he write about?

He was starting the newsletter for himself. He wanted it to be fun, so he would not stop writing it. So the topic had to be something he loves to talk about and always intrigues him. And that was about how did the famous companies start. He always liked to know the origin story, not just the romanticized part but the actual details. He also sought out what people in startup communities asked the most about these companies and what they wanted to learn about. One thing that repeated the most was how these companies got their first thousand users.

And there, Ali got the name of his newsletter, First 1000. He would share the founding stories of famous companies and what strategies got them their first thousand users. He already had the first six companies he would write about and created the newsletter on Substack in 2020.

His first few subscribers were his close friends. And to get into double digits, he emailed some of the early startup founders he had interacted in the past few years. With about 10+ subscribers, he released the second issue on Slice, a startup that helps independent pizzerias build online businesses. He posted the story on Hackernews and went off to sleep.

When he woke up, his Slice issue was tweeted by Guy Kawasaki, a famous American author and VC. Kawasaki sharing Ali’s writing was a great confidence booster.

Growing the First 1000

Ali decided that instead of setting huge milestones, he would focus on achieving small achievable goals. Getting six subscribers in a day felt possible, and he started trying different things. He did a Product Hunt launch, posted to Hackernews, did social media posts, wrote cold emails, posted in communities and much more. In 79 days, he got 1000 subscribers, and what worked the best was Tweets by some famous accounts. The founder and corporate account Tweeted his issue on DoNotPay 

By now, Ali had started to understand a lot about growth and realized that most of his subscriber growth came from things out of his control. But now, he wanted to drive growth and decided to try the strategies he would write about.

He started working on these strategies, one of which was creating distribution products. Products that would bring some benefits to the user and make them aware of the newsletter. These mini-products and a sound referral system fueled his growth further.

Continuing to build it as a side hustle

Ali was pursuing his Masters while working on the newsletter. And time management was complex, but for Ali, the newsletter took precedence as he saw this experience opening doors to many opportunities for him. He was known by people he looked up to. He built a network of excellent founders and makers on Twitter and developed his writing and company-building skills.

While working full-time at Duolingo, he continues to grow his newsletter. He had the vision to get to 100K subscribers in five years. He is at 55000 at the start of the third year and will reach his goal soon.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Start a side hustle for yourself: Side hustles bring freedom to explore your interests. They allow you an outlet where you can do anything you want without having to achieve goals. You can have fun and rejuvenate yourself with your side hustle. Ali truly enjoys researching and writing about how companies got their first 1000 users. 

Set lofty vision and small goals: Often, we overestimate and set goals that are hard to achieve. Instead, establish a vision and set small goals you can achieve daily. Ali's five-year vision and mindset to have small goals helped him grow his newsletters.

A sandbox to upskill: Side hustles can serve as a sandbox to help you learn new skills or level up in skills. Ali wanted to improve his writing skills, and writing the First 1000 newsletter for three years helped him achieve his upskilling goals.

Resources of the week

First 1000

Weekly case studies on how companies like Uber, Doordash, Tinder, Morning Brew & Spotify got their first 1000 customers

www.first1000.co/welcome

Growing First 1000 (this newsletter) to 10k Subscribers

Today's case study is about how I grew this newsletter. We talk about every strategy I tried, what worked and what didn't .

read.first1000.co/p/growing-first-1000-this-newsletter

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We are often talking about side hustlesopening multiple doorways to opportunities.But getting started with your side hustles can be daunting in the face of a lack of ideas, skills or time. Our hustler today exemplifies how determination and willingness to learn can lead to getting started with side hustles and eventually find success. Today's hustler has

💸 Built a product that made $10,000 in revenue

🤩Grew Twitter audience from scratch to 3K+ followers in a year

🌟Breaking into Web3 space

Akhil's journey of earning money on the side, building a strong network & accelerating his career growth in a niche industry via side hustles

Akhil BVS, like many Indians, enrolled into computer science engineering back in 2016. But soon he realized his true passion was in design. He taught himself about design in his free time, and his love for design grew stronger.

As fate would have it, his passion led him to become the Head of Creatives for his college's media wing. He led a team of 6 designers, and together they created some stunning designs for events etc. He also did some freelance work on the side, building an impressive portfolio which led him to land a Designer position at an Edtech startup during his final year of college.

Despite starting his career as a designer, Akhil still felt like something was missing. He had always been fascinated with building digital products but felt restrained by his lack of coding skills.

Being in the middle of a startup space, he wanted to take action and do something about it. He enrolled in Build’s first cohort to learn to ideate and launch side projects in 4 weeks.

And so began Akhil's journey of building and shipping side projects that profoundly impacted his skills, career, and outlook on building. Let's dive deep into it!

Building with the goal of learning & solving problems

When Akhil joined Build, he had already worked as a designer for over a year. In his experience, he had difficulty finding design inspiration for creating digital ads.

He wanted to solve this problem by creating an ads repository of best-performing ads for marketers and designers. He got to work and built a basic prototype of his product using a simple Notion page and received positive feedback from the community. He also was introduced to no-code tools he could use to build his product.

This journey took work, as collecting ads from different companies and building an extensive repository was a manual task that took time and effort. But Akhil was determined, and with the help of some other community builders, he found a way to scrape the ads and build the final product using Airtable and Softr.

Finally, in early September 2021, nearly four weeks after joining Build, Akhil launched his first product, Adsets, a platform that allows users to browse the best-performing ads from top companies in different domains and gain insights against their competitors.

While he didn't have any specific goals for users, to his surprise, the product caught fire and became the first product of the day and the fourth product of the week on Product Hunt 🔥. Shipping his first product changed his outlook on building.

He understood the importance of finding and solving a problem in the simplest way possible. He also got to see the response a well-made product can get, and it kickstarted his Twitter audience building as well 🌟.

The next product got to $4000 in revenue in 2 months

When you're in a community of builders, ideas are popping up everywhere. One day, there was a discussion about a problem that B2B marketers often face - finding channels with relevant audiences for marketing. Based on the discussion, it was clear that realised that newsletters have emerged as an exciting channel to reach relevant audiences, but finding the right newsletter and reaching out to the authors takes a lot of time.

This problem excited Akhil and Madan. They both wanted to solve it and decided to team up to build Letterhunt. With the help of Abhash K, a mentor at Build and the VP of Marketing at Springworks, they built Letterhunt into an extensive directory of 10k+ active newsletters from 20+ categories, offered as an Airtable database.

The journey to building Letterhunt was not easy, and it took significant time and effort to collate the database. But the collaboration helped Akhil not only learn some tricks of scraping data and building a product that serves user needs but also get an opportunity to learn from Madan's experiences as a seasoned marketer.

The success of Adsets fueled Letterhunt, and by the end of September, it was launched to the public. And what a launch it was! Letterhunt became the product of the day and week on Product Hunt, receiving 1.7K upvotes 🚀.

The newsletter database saw over 520 purchases (notable companies being Softr, Growthx, Penguin Random House, Nasdaq Entrepreneurial center) in two months, translating to over $4,000 💰.

By the time they stopped actively working on the product, Letterhunt had reached a cumulative revenue of $10,000.

Building Web3 product and making a career transition in Web3

Akhil had another interest area that he was very passionate about, Web3. He would diligently learn about the space and keep up with the trends. By the time he launched two side projects, he was sure he wanted to move from his current job and take on a new challenge in Web3.

While thinking of making a move, he was stuck with an idea to make a BuyMeACoffee version for Crypto. He got the idea while trying to add a BuyMeACoffee widget to Adsets. He wanted a similar thing that accepts Crypto. He shared the idea in the Build community and soon got collaborators Utkarsh, Abhishek, and Ajinkya to build it with him.

Akhil designed the product, and together they launched BuyMeACryptoCoffee in December 2021. As with his other two launches, this also became the number one product on Product Hunt. It received a bounty of $1,500 from Superteam DAO and won Polygon's 'Build it Hackathon.'

But the most impactful outcome was that it made Akhil a known name in the Web3 space and led to him getting an opportunity to join Asset Money, an NFT-based startup, as a Product Lead. He achieved more than what he dreamt of, all because he built a side project in a field that excited him. 🌟

Paying-it-forward by mentoring more builders & building in Web3

Currently, Akhil is laser-focused in his work at Asset Money. As of now, he isn't actively involved in any side project, but in the last year, he started to mentor new builders at Build. He's been instrumental in helping them understand the no-code, design and launch strategies.

You can also follow Akhil on Twitter to learn from his experience of building in Web3.

Hustlers Insight of the Week

Identify problems worth solving: When getting started with projects, look for problems worth solving. Identifying a genuine problem can make all the difference between success and failure. Akhil's products did well because he could identify the problem precisely and and get validation for the problem from others in the community

The power of community: Akhil's journey shows how a community of like-minded individuals like Build can act as a catalyst to your journey. Joining Build allowed him to receive feedback on his ideas, collaborate with other builders, and learn from experienced mentors. This helped him to validate his ideas, learn new skills and get support throughout his journey.

Build to learn: We live in a world that is fast changing and there is always avenues to learn and grow. And building side hustles can be a great way to learn. Building can accelerate your learning as we saw with Akhil. He started to build to learn product development, and the learn about Web3. His projects served as a learning sandbox for him.

Side Hustle Stack of the week

• Softr: Softr lets you create client portals and internal tools for your business in minutes without code. It works with Airtable as the database layer.

• Airtable: ​​Airtable allows you to easily create a database that holds the information that matters for your work, then use it to power the visualisations, processes, and integrations that make up a custom application that's truly unique to you

• Gumroad: Gumroad is a self-publishing online digital marketplace where anyone can buy and sell products or services

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You can also share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Resources of the Week

Side Project Stack: Get the best tech stack to make your next side hustle

Leverage Information: A podcast on how to leverage knowledge from your current field to create digital products.

Scholarship to join the upcoming Build Cohort in February

Building and launching side projects may not seem easy. Still, with structured guidance and a meticulously crafted community of developers, marketers, designers, no-coders, and more, there is no way you will not succeed.

At the start of this year, we pledged that we would do what it takes from our end to ensure when we find someone who has what it takes to build & ship side projects, we get them there. So we are making it more accessible + affordable for you to join us on this journey by announcing a scholarship that reduces the investment to $350 or INR 30,000

We are offering this to 20 builders from around the world on a first come, first serve basis. Want to get started Building? Please do drop in your application & we will reach out to you super quick.

The story of our featured hustler is quite different from the stories we have shared with you so far. Sai never had a conventional career; instead, he has built multiple products and is a indie-hacker life. There is much to learn from his journey on how micro-SaaS can be viable side hustles.

⚒️Built around 40 products since 2011

🤯Product built during college reached 1Mn+ users in less than a year

🤑Current product is generating $2300+ MRR

Building a sustainable lifestyle as a micro-SaaS entrepreneur

Sai Krishna hails from a small town in Andhra Pradesh in, India. He is a Computer Science graduate who has always loved blogging and solving complex problems. So much so that by the time he graduated from college, he skipped placements as his suite of products was generating a good income. Since then, he has built multiple products, generated sustainable income through his products and has had an exciting detour in the world of startups.

It all started in college with the need to get WiFi

In 2011, the internet in India was not easy to access, and WiFi technology was in its nascent stage. Internet could be accessed via a wired modem. Sai wanted a way to access the internet on other devices. To solve Wifi accessibility problem, he built a product called mHotspot, which could ​​turn your windows laptop into a WiFi hotspot and make a virtual WiFi router.

The product immediately caught fire, with it getting lots of users and media traction. By the end of 2012, mHotspot reached 1 million users. As users used the product and Sai started to get feedback, he kept building complimentary products like mHotspot for Andriod and file sharing between laptop & phone. The different use cases helped him monetize the products.

By 2013, when he graduated, he did not want to go for a full-time job as his products were generating sustainable income for him. Instead, he decided to become an Indie Hacker (an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team) and keep building products. From 2013-2015, he made close to 40 products which included mobile apps and games. He built good SEO for most of his products and generated organic traffic, which helped him reach a revenue of $100K.

Taking the next step into the world of startups

Sai's products were doing well, and financially also, he was stable, but he recognized that he needed more business knowledge. He needed to learn how to scale products and build a company. He decided to move to Bangalore and enrolled into Startup Leadership Program. In the year-long program, he learnt how to build a company, talk to investors, learnt what GTM is and much more. By the end of it, a batchmate and he decided to build a startup together. Their idea was to make mHotspot a hardware device as a solution for companies to provide WiFi to their customers, like in cabs & flights.

It was called SpotPlay, and they got accepted to startup incubators and programs in India & USA. For two years, they devoted their time to building the product but could not get users, and with the launch of Jio, their idea became obsolete. Sai was in Chile when they decided to shut their startup. He decided to take a break and do a trip around the States. But a developer cannot be away from his passion for long. He wanted to listen to music during his journey, but Gaana (music streaming app) was unavailable. He decided to build an open-source project called Rey. Rey takes youtube as the data source and converts it into a simple and intuitive UI. He wrote a Reddit thread about it, and many users loved the product.

His friend was building a serverless alternative to WordPress and asked Sai to contribute to the project. Sai created React and Firebase versions of it, and then a mobile app and much more. He kept building and soon was one of the top two contributors to that GitHub repository. But then, he decided to come to India and take a six-month break for personal reasons.

In early 2019, his previous co-founder reached out to him to join a new startup team. The product was called Digibooster, building an influencer marketing platform. He joined them as CTO. While he built the product, the company needed to raise more money and was eventually overtaken by the lead investor. Sai did not want to continue and took an exit.

Building an alternative to WordPress and Medium blogs

After the exit, Sai took time to consider his next venture. 

SEO has played a vital role in all his endeavours. Sai had mastered the art of optimizing his content for best practices. But he observed that even though he was spending close to $400 on WordPress, the SEO optimization could have been more optimal, and he always had to do more. 

This sparked the idea to build Superblog- a blazing-fast alternative to WordPress and Medium blogs which is auto-optimized for SEO and speed with zero setup and maintenance. He launched it at the end of 2020. The initial response was good, and Sai decided to go all on to grow the product.

He took the organic route, focusing on content, building in public and also leveraging side projects. He created three side projects to grow Superblog- 

• Featured Image Creator: create stunning social sharing images for your blog posts

• SEO Analyzer Tool: Free SEO analyzer tool to find common issues in your website, landing pages, and blogs

• Supershots: Create Beautiful Screenshots

Superblog is growing steadily, reaching $2300+ MRR and brands like Swiggy are its user.

Sai plans to grow it to $100K ARR this year while also exploring a new side project called SuperTranslate with two other Indie Hackers.

A piece of great advice, tweet it out and share the knowledge.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Build side hustles to solve your problems: A significant roadblock we have to start a side hustle is how to get ideas. The most effective way to get ideas is to solve your own problems. Every product that Sai has built has been a solution to a problem he faced. When you solve your problem, you become the first customer, which helps you build a user-friendly product.

Don't get comfortable: We tend to get comfortable with things we know and leverage our strengths. But that hinders our ability to upskill and grow. So if you are getting comfortable with your side hustle, find the areas you lack and upskill in them. Sai's products were doing great, but he understood he needed more business knowledge. He decided to join a startup program to improve.

Have a giver mindset: We often shy away from helping others with our skills if we don't know what we will get in return. But if we have an attitude to help others, we will eventually win. Sai contributed to many open-source projects, one being an alternative to WordPress. And that helped him a lot to create the first version of Superblog.

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Share your learnings on Twitter and let more people know how they can build a micro-SaaS.

You can also share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

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Resources of the week

Trends VC Report on Micro-SaaS: Learn more about what micro-SaaS is, how the space is evolving and why you should build one.

Read here

MarktStash: A weekly newsletter to discover growth strategies from Indie Founders.

Subscribe here

We're off to Dharamshala in April!

After the success of our first-ever BuildCamps in Goa, we have announced our second season in Dharamshala. It will be seven days vacation in the hills where you will build & launch a side project with 30 like-minded builders.

Interested? You can learn more and apply here.

Happy New Year! We hope you had a great start to the year. We celebrated our new year’s eve with 30 incredible builders in Goa. In 7 days, we built friendships for life, participated in fun activities, roamed the streets of Goa, and, most importantly, built incredible products. And today, we are bringing you the story of the Hustler who was in Goa with us and has:

🤑 Sold a side-project for $5000

🤩 Got into the highly selective Antler India Residency program

💫 Switched from a mechanical engineer to a full-stack developer

Hustling his way into entrepreneurship: Shadab’s journey

Shadab, like many, had chosen a conventional path and enrolled for a Mechanical Engineering degree. But he always had a passion for solving problems and soon realised that his heart lies in software development. His journey from a Mechanical Engineer graduate to an entrepreneur today is full of hustles and him trying out different ideas to reach his goal.

Being observant and solving the problem of notes in college

Shadab noticed that his classmates had trouble obtaining notes for their courses in the first year of college. To help them, he contemplated creating a website where students could upload notes in PDF format for others to access. He enlisted the help of a friend who had web development experience. Together, they compiled a collection of notes from various engineering courses and uploaded them to the site.

Facing failure & hustling to become a full-stack developer

As someone always interested in the latest tech trends, Shahdab was eager to learn about VR reaction videos, a new phenomenon, in 2016. Although the technology was expensive and not widely available, he was fortunate to know a classmate who owned a VR headset. The classmate explained about Google Cardboard, a budget-friendly option that uses a mobile phone to provide a VR experience. Shadab learned about VR roller coaster apps through this conversation and was struck with new ideas.

He set up a small stall at a city fair in Aligarh to validate his idea. Despite the challenges, the VR roller coaster was a success, and he earned a total of $46 over three days by charging people $0.02 to try the game for one minute. It prompted him to start his VR-based startup. And to take the first step, he decided to open a store in Aligarh. After resolving financial & regulatory issues, he did open the store. But after running it for about six months, he decided to close it as it was not a financially viable venture.

Following his interest in the latest tech trends, he got excited about cryptocurrencies and began mining Ethereum. He turned approximately $2000 worth of cryptocurrency into $16000 in just a few months. This success sparked an interest in the technology behind cryptocurrency, specifically blockchain and the programming language used for smart contracts. Shadab was now interested in exploring potential career opportunities in blockchain development. However, after learning more about the field, he realised that blockchain was essentially just a database rather than necessarily a new technology. He then focused on understanding the basics of web development, starting with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and took a course on Udemy.

At the time, his degree was coming to an end, and campus placements started. He was sure he wanted to switch his career to software development and applied to the only software company and the only company interviewing non-CS students, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). After three interviews, he was selected from a talent pool of 150 students.

After joining TCS, he kept upskilling himself. He started joining coding communities. He was introduced to a like-minded collaborator, and they started building a book-lending system.

He kept hustling to get a job at a startup but could not find a breakthrough. In 2020, he applied and got accepted at Pesto, a Bootcamp that trains experienced software developers and helps them secure jobs, typically at product-based startups. The training covered topics such as clean code practices, in-depth knowledge of JavaScript, and practical communication skills for working in a team. After the boot camp, he secured a job at a startup with an excellent salary hike.

Building products & getting into the Antler India residency program

While the startup job was in line with Shahdab’s career goals, the entrepreneurship bug in him was still looking to solve new problems. He started to get active in indie hacker groups, and in one of the groups, he found a collaborator for a Twitter-based product. The idea was to make it easy to save tweets and organise them.

With his collaborator, he built and launched Tweetflick on Product Hunt (#6 of the day). Tweetflick was well received and initially got around 1000 users. While the product was well built and got initial traction, help was required in design and retention to scale the product further. As both the makers had demanding full-time jobs, eventually, they lost interest and decided to sell it. In a serendipitous turn of events, Shadab and his co-maker came across a good deal, and Tweetflick was acquired for $5000.

Shadab knew he could build anything. He realised that he needed to learn the art of business and find a co-founder to realise his entrepreneurial dreams. He applied for Antler India Residency program. His hustles, side projects and entrepreneurial mindset got him selected. And currently, he is building his startup and has also found a co-founder.

Building at BuildCamps

Shadab was one of 30 builders who participated in the first edition of BuildCamps in Goa. He, with his teammates, built a Slack app to split restaurant bills with colleagues right from the company’s workspace. They got validation for the product from many people, and the output in two days blew everyone’s mind. The product will be launched soon, but you can get a sneak peek in Build Demo Day scheduled for tomorrow.

Hustlers Insight of the Week

Be a risk taker: We have often talked about side hustles being a safe way to explore your interests, but sometimes you can also be a risk taker. Shadab has always been true to his interests and did not shy away from taking risks, be it with the VR store or giving up his job to participate in Antler India residency.

Do not give up: When we face failures or obstacles, we tend to give up and find an easy way out. But to build things that make an impact, you must be persistent and not give up easily. Be it the VR store or finding a software developer job, Shahdab kept at it and achieved his goals.

Keep exploring: Shahdab knew he liked to solve problems, but he did not see how that could be his life’s work. So he kept exploring different interests, and through them, he understood that software development was what could help him realise his mission to solve problems at scale.

Like the story?

Share your learnings on Twitter and let more people know how they can build a micro-SaaS.

You can also share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

2022 has been a great year for us, we launched "The Hustlers" in August, and it's been an amazing experience bringing the story of 18 side hustlers to you. Today, for the last edition of the year 2022, we bring you the story of a hustler who made the most of this year with

🚀Three side project exits

🤑Earning a total of $30K from the acquisitions

🤩Launching his micro-VC studio

Want to get a sneak peek into how the Build Community works?

Before we dive into the story for today, here's a special invite for a session by Prashant Sharma to tell you more about Build and how it helps anyone, irrespective of their background, to ship a side project. 

The session will take place on 27th December 2022 at 9:30 AM EST. We have spots for 100 participants, if you want to be one of them please confirm your spot for the free session below.

From Analyst to Micro-SaaS Entrepreneur: Domenico's journey of 3 side-project exits in 2022

Domenico Gagliardi is an Economics graduate with a passion for entrepreneurship. He attempted to build a startup right after university but failed twice. The failures were a learning milestone that taught him how to build products and work effectively with people. Currently, Domenico works as a Business Analyst for a Mexican fintech company in Italy while studying international finance as his second degree and running a micro SaaS studio. The failure experience did not deter him. Instead made him want to take smaller steps. But he could not find any way until he became active on Twitter at the end of 2021.

Our inspiration meter is at 100% after coming across this story. Let's see how with the power of social media, challenging himself and no code, Domenico went on to sell three side projects and set up a micro SaaS studio!

Beginning with a challenge to sell a project in 30 days

2022 brought a new opportunity for Domenico. Being active on Twitter paid off, and he came across a Twitter challenge, #BuildSell30. The entrepreneur in him got excited and decided to build one side project every month. He also found a partner, Tanveer, to collaborate with him in this challenge he signed up for.

Domenico and Tanveer had to build and sell something in 30 days. To do so, they had to execute very fast. Domenico had known about the rise of no-code tools. They understood that to build fast, no code was the way. 

The next step was to get an idea. Both had worked at startups and had observed that most pitch decks had similar elements, and the process of creating them could be made faster. They decided to build an automatic pitch deck creator with information like the startup name, market, team, problem, and solution. They built it on Bubble and shipped the website in one week.

The product, Pitch 2.0, reached more than 100 users in a few weeks and had three paid users too. The revenue was little (less than $150), but the joy of building the first side project together was great. Following the challenge rule of building and selling in 30 days, they listed the project on MicroAcquire, and voila- Pitch 2.0 got sold in February for $4000!

Success leads to more success - Journey of building and selling two more products

Domenico realised that 12 projects in a year were not a sustainable challenge for him. Instead, he should focus on building a few good projects. Tanveer and Domenico loved the experience of building Pitch 2.0 together, so they decided to build another product.

As a business analyst, Domenico spent most of his day with numbers and excel. He wanted something that could translate text into formulas. They decided to build it with GPT-3. The MVP for OneTap (now Lumelixr) was built in a day. They shared the MVP with a niche audience of excel users, got feedback and improved the product before launching. In just two months, OneTap reached more than 500 users and generated a revenue of $5K. After the initial revenue, OneTap was listed on Microacquire and was sold for $23000 by the end of June.

The third product built by Domenico and Tanveer was yourcoverletter.com. The duo came across the insight that cover letters are still important, but candidates are unable to write a good cover letter because you need one for every job they apply for. By now, Domenico and Tanveer were power users of GPT-3 and decided to build a tool to generate cover letters according to the job description using AI. Post-launch, Yourcoverletter was able to garner 300 users and revenue of around $300 initially.

All the products built by the hustler duo were built with no code in a minimal time. The marketing efforts were also all organic, mainly focused on Reddits, niche communities and social media. 

After selling two products, the duo realised that acquisition was not just a game of revenue. The product's idea and future possibilities mattered a lot too. This is why you see many pre-revenue projects on Microacquire too. While Tanveer and Domenico's partnership was going great, Domenico wanted to move in a different direction and sold his stake in Yourcoverletter to Tanveer for $3500.

Setting up a micro-Saas studio

The journey of building three side projects introduced Domenico to a world where micro-Saas was thriving.

Learnings of our Hustler: Micro SaaS as a side hustle

With unique, actionable insights into the world of Micro SaaS, Domenico launched a micro-startup studio called Omega in August 2022. Omega started with a vision of building, scaling and selling micro-saas from scratch. And the first product launch was AI Alfred, an AI tool that can summarise web articles using the article’s URL. With a soft launch, AI Alfred has 100 users. Domenico is perfecting the model before monetizing AI Alfred.

In a year, Domenico has earned around $30000 from his three side project exits and is working on a new vision for Omega to turn it into a Micro-VC concept, focused on the acquisitions of micro-saas, and creating a monthly positive cash flow.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Collaborate: Building side projects is not easy, and most of the time, we lose motivation and cannot follow through with our plans. In a tough journey, having a partner helps immensely. The two of you have accountability for each other, and even the task can be easily divided and managed. All three side projects built by Domenico have been in collaboration, which helped him ship fast and efficiently.

Challenge yourself: A challenge brings our intrinsic motivation to do something, and we are more likely to achieve the goal. Domenico was aware of the no-code tools for a while, but only after he participated in the Twitter challenge did he use it to build something. Challenging yourself is an amazing driving force to start with your side project. 

Experiment and find what works best: Every hustler has a different way of assessing their success and what ways work best for them. Building and selling in quick succession worked great for Domenico because he liked to work on a new problem every 2-3 months. But his partner wanted to focus on a project for longer, and they decided to follow their paths. You need to experiment and find what works best for you.

Like the story?

Share your learnings on Twitter and let more people know how they can build a micro-SaaS.

You can also share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Side Hustle Stack of the week

A new section to give you an overview of the tools & resources our Hustlers used to build their side hustle.

1. Bubble: Bubble is a low-code platform that allows users to quickly create fully-functional web and mobile applications without needing to write any code. With Bubble, users can use a drag-and-drop interface to create entire applications with an extensive library of plugins and integrations. Bubble Apps are cloud-hosted and range from simple websites to complex platforms.

2. OpenAI: OpenAI is the company behind AI models like GPT-3 & Dall-E. They have APIs that can be integrated with Bubble or through code to get AI capabilities in any application.

3. SCRUM Planning: Time management for side projects is critical. Domenico dedicated at least one hour every day to the side projects and used SCRUM Planning to manage his time.

Resources of the week

We are introducing a new section where we will recommend a newsletter or resource you should check out to start your side hustle journey.

Startups.fyi

Discover 100+ profitable online businesses and see how much money they make in this free weekly newsletter. Join 6,800+ startup founders and makers learning how to build profitable projects.

Subscribe here

Side Project Playbook

After enabling hundreds of builders, we are open-sourcing the playbook for FREE. When applied diligently, the playbook will ensure you can build & launch your side project. It is not theoretical but put together in a way for the content to aid the building process.

The best part? People can join the community if they want to get feedback, find collaborators, find a tribe, and hang out with the best of the builders.

Get the playbook here.

It's been great to have shared these stories with you. As we close the year, we would love to know what have your learnings been from 2022. Just reply and let us know.

From the team at Hustlers, we wish you Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year! We will be back with the story of another Hustler in January 2023.

Our this week's hustler's story is an inspiration for not only generating extra income via side hustle but also harnessing the power of side hustle to act as a catalyst for your career. 

📚Published two books on AI & Neural search

🤩Built an audience of 10K+ followers on Twitter

😍Achieved the position of head of the department with three years of work experience

From following his curiosity to becoming a thought leader: Shubham's story

Shubham Saboo's hustling began with a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyalaya in 2019. However, his path to becoming a Data Scientist and now Head of Developer Relations at Tenstorrent Inc was far from conventional. He got immersed in AI and ML while still in college in 2016. Since then, he has dedicated his energy to exploring data science and machine learning. He developed side projects, participated in hackathons in college, started blogging after college, published two books, and built his brand to get unheard opportunities early in his career.

Learning in Public led to becoming an author with a world-renowned publisher

Shubham's intense interest in AI and ML, combined with his skill and side projects developed during college, enabled him to become a part of Plaksha University's Tech Leaders Program in Artificial Intelligence. This one-year post-graduate fellowship enhanced and strengthened his technical abilities while also helping him develop new skills such as writing and selling. In 2020, after completing the program, Shubham started a blog to share the knowledge he had gained and his experiments with technology.

After completing the fellowship, he joined Arcesium, a fintech company, as a founding Data Scientist. He was tasked with creating and building a machine learning and data science practice from scratch. This role enabled him to develop a range of skills and experience a startup-like environment within a larger corporate setting, which made him learn quickly, be creative, think outside the box and work hard.

Shubham continued to write and share snippets of the knowledge on machine learning as he was learning on his job. In mid-2020, when the GPT-3 model was released, he gained early access to it. He started experimenting with it, building prototypes and web applications and writing blog posts.

His work caught the attention of a senior acquisition editor at O'Reilly (a legacy publisher of technical books), who saw potential in his writing. She offered Shubham the possibility of writing a book on GPT-3. This presented a massive opportunity to share his knowledge on a large scale. It was very overwhelming for Shubham as he had no professional writing experience. It took him one and a half months to come up with the proposal, and he felt lonely. He then started looking for someone to help him in the process. 

In his search, he found Sandra Kublik (Developer Relations, Cohere AI). She was creating videos about GPT-3 and its applications at the time. Taking a chance, he reached out to her, and it didn't take long for Sandra to get convinced to join him. Together, they crafted a synopsis and proposal. The publisher accepted their proposal, and the duo began the daunting task of writing a book. It was an arduous process that spanned the better part of a year. With the help of the legacy publisher, they went through many iterations of edits, proofreading, and conversations revolving around marketing. Finally, in July 2022, the book, "GPT-3: Building innovative NLP Products using Large Language Models" was released and was a success. (The book is currently being updated and not available for sale.)

Curiosity leading the way to new opportunities

Writing a book while having a demanding full-time job can look daunting to many. But for Shubham, that was not the case. His enthusiasm for the field pushed him to create Kairos Data Labs, a consultancy that enabled people and businesses to take advantage of the power of AI. He also consulted an exclusive venture capital network to leverage AI in their processes. It enabled him to gain invaluable knowledge on venture capital and startups and build a strong professional network. 

At Arcesium, he observed a problem in finding essential internal documents. No readily-available software seemed capable of meeting the strict requirements of their sensitive data, so he decided to take it upon himself to create a search solution as a side project. This was when he encountered Jina AI, a revolutionary new startup that promised to revolutionise the neural search space. Impressed by their ambition and enthusiasm, Shubham threw himself into the Jina AI community, becoming an active member and contributing ideas to the team. His work was noticed and appreciated, and soon he received an offer to join the team as a Developer Relations specialist.

It was a tempting offer and one that aligned perfectly with his ambitions. After much reflection, Shubham chose to make the career switch and join Jina AI, drawn by the promise of using his technical skills to help other developers and, of course, the zeal to share his knowledge with a larger community.

Building thought leadership and nurturing the community

Shubham's writing and blogging experience became invaluable in the new role helping him get a promotion at Jina AI within a year. At Jina, he also got an opportunity to co-author his second book, "Neural Search - From Prototype to Production with Jina". Shubham also garnered a following of over 10,000 people on Twitter. On top of this, Shubham has also managed to make a substantial portion of his full-time salary from his book & consulting.

The success of his books, a good Twitter following and thought leadership in AI made way to his role as the Head of Developer Relations at Tenstorrent (Scalable and Efficient Hardware for Deep Learning). He plans to keep sharing and creating more content to make information about AI more accessible. He has also started a newsletter to help the community be up to date with the latest developments in AI. 

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Shubham's story is a great example of how strong curiosity and learning in public can lead the way to your side hustles and, eventually, career successes.

Dive deep into your interests: Going deep into your area of interest can help you find ways to make things that make a difference. Shubham dived deep into his interest in AI, which opened his way to writing, wanting to share knowledge and eventually build a career. 

Build thought leadership: Build thought leadership by sharing your knowledge with the world and relevant communities. Shubham built thought leadership in AI by sharing his knowledge and learnings via his blog, books and Twitter. His thought leadership in the space made way for his current role as Head of Developer Relations at Tenstorrent.

Jump right in: When you are given opportunities, evaluate them, and if they align with your goals, dive into them. You may not always meet the required criteria, but if you have the zeal, you can learn on the go. Shubham had no experience authoring a book. But he learnt on the go, found a collaborator and made it a success.

Resources of the week

We are introducing a new section where we will recommend a newsletter or resource you should check out to start your side hustle journey.Startups.fyi

Discover 100+ profitable online businesses and see how much money they make in this free weekly newsletter. Join 6,800+ startup founders and makers learning how to build profitable projects.

Subscribe here

Side Project Playbook

After enabling hundreds of builders, we are open-sourcing the playbook for FREE. When applied diligently, the playbook will ensure you can build & launch your side project. It is not theoretical but put together in a way for the content to aid the building process.

The best part? People can join the community if they want to get feedback, find collaborators, find a tribe, and hang out with the best of the builders.

Get the playbook here.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money. You will also unlock a special discount by referring a friend.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Side hustles can make way to building a sustainable primary source of income while freeing up your time and mind space to help you design your kind of work life. Today's hustler is a freelance developer who has built a portfolio of side projects that generates five figures in monthly income for him.

🚀Built more than three side projects

📈Recent side project is generating ~1600 MRR

💰All side projects together make five figures in revenue

From Freelancing to 5-Figure Side Projects: Rodrigo Rocco's Story

Rodrigo Rocco (Rod) discovered his passion for coding early on. At 12 years of age, he started learning Clipper ( an xBase compiler that implements a variant of the xBase computer programming language). After finishing high school, he enrolled for Computer Systems Engineering at the university. Eventually, he dropped out of the program because he was only interested in the part of the program that involved coding. In 2008, he decided to return to coding and has been focused on web development ever since. He now makes a living as a freelance developer and indie maker in Mallorca, Spain.

A side project that accelerated his freelance career

After quitting university, Rod travelled for a while. In 2008, when he decided to get back to coding, he had to find a way to get his career on track. He started to help a forum for free, and the network he built there helped him get a lot of freelancing work. While freelancing, he discovered that many people wanted to create a booking system in the travel industry and required help with Jomres. (Jomres is a software application that allows users to create and manage a booking system for their website.)

To help the developers working with Jomres, he built Jomres-plugins- a website that offers plugins and extensions for the Jomres booking system. These plugins and extensions can add additional functionality to a Jomres-powered website, such as the ability to accept online payments or integrate with other popular platforms like Airbnb or TripAdvisor.

After the launch of jomres-plugins, he received many work offers, including one from a company in Dubai that was building a 7-star hotel listing, which got him great pay. He also worked with a Swedish startup called Handiscover, where he built a platform similar to Airbnb. He had much fun working on that project. He also created an Airbnb-like template for Jomres users and sold it to many users.

Quirkyaccom, a well-known British accommodation portal with around 3 million visitors, also approached him. He has been working on a contractor basis for them since 2008. Jomres-plugin allowed him to productize his services and create a sustainable primary income source.

During the pandemic, he built another side project with a friend who has been in the villa rental business for 12 years. It is called Villasmediterranean.com, a website for renting villas in the Mediterranean region.

Building a revenue-generating side project in a day

Rod has been active on Twitter and shares his journey of building side projects. His recent side project idea was born from observing a tweet of famous indie hacker Pieter Levels.

Rod was brushing his teeth before bed on a late Saturday night when he saw a tweet from Pieter Levels about StackOverflow Jobs shutting down. Many people were asking about alternatives, so he quickly registered stackoverflowalternatives.com from his phone.

The following day, he woke up at 7 AM and built jobboardsearch.com in 5 hours. It was a website that curated different job boards. He then went to the skate park with his daughter. When he returned, he added 10-15 job boards and tweeted about it under Pieter's tweet to let people know about his new site.

Pieter retweeted the tweet. This caught the attention of many job board founders, who reached out to Rod to ask about being added to the list. Pieter suggested Rod to add a sticky job board listing and sponsored slots. Rod added these features and tweeted about them, and two founders immediately purchased sponsored slots.

The third slot was sold the following day, and the website went viral on Reddit with a post that received 4K upvotes and 800K visits. In November, a job board founder also purchased seven months of sponsored slots. A non-job board company reached out to advertise, further validating the website's success.

Jobboardsearch's best monthly revenue to date has been $4.5K. It generates more than 1.7K visitors daily (at the time of publishing of this issue) and has an MRR of ~$1600. The first MVP was built in 5 hours but subsequent updates has taken significant time and effort from Rod. And he plans to keep working on improving Jobboardsearch and growing its revenue in the coming months. All his side projects together help him make a five-figure income monthly.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Rod's story is different from other hustlers we have met so far. While Rod continues to work as a freelancer on his own terms, he created a sustainable primary source of income through his side projects.

🤩Become good at finding pain points: There are opportunities all around us in the form of problems we or others face. Don't just go about your work and life; when you observe a pain point, explore and act on it. Rod found a pain point with Jomres developers and made his first side project solving it.

✨Be quick to act on trends: Online world is a place where trends keep changing rapidly. If you follow trends closely, don't just follow but take action. You might find something worth building. Observing just a tweet, Rod built a revenue-generating product in five hours.

😍Double down on your passion: Doubling down on your existing interest is far easier than chasing an interest you are unsure of. The journey of building side projects is also full of ups and downs. To sustain the down periods, you need to have a genuine interest. Rod has been building web products since 2009 and can sustain them because he loves to code.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money. You will also unlock a special discount by referring a friend.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by writing to gayatri@skiptheline.dev

Side hustles are a great way to upskill and learn about new technologies in the world. David started with a quest to learn AI and discovered a viral side project opportunity. His side project in three months has achieved milestones like

👀 1Mn+ visitors on the site

🤑 $30K+ in total revenue

🤯 $4K+ in MRR

David built an AI-based side project generating $4k+ MRR

David Bressler is a digital marketing graduate living in Florida with two kids. He has been working in marketing analytics since graduation and enjoys his job. Building side projects allows him to explore his interest and curiosities. He feels that one does not need to give up their full-time job to explore new interests. Side projects need a few hours daily, and "small incremental changes every day can lead to a big impact."

Quest for upskilling leading to finding a gap in the market

David was on paternity leave and had some free time. With the evolving AI landscape, he felt it would be a natural progression for his career in analytics. So he decided to start learning about AI. One night, he went down the rabbit hole of GPT-3. He spent the whole night asking GPT-3 hundreds of questions. And being in analytics, he uses Excel very often. He decided to test GPT-3's knowledge of Excel.

He started with simple questions and progressively made them more complex. The responses were mindblowing, and an idea stuck David. What if AI could generate the excel formula with text inputs? He searched Google to find if an excel formula generator existed. Nothing was in the market.

"I've worked in analytics. Everyone from interns to data analysts to CFOs and CEOs use Excel. One billion people use it, and even the most proficient ones Google for formula help. It was a no-brainer."

David saw this as an excellent opportunity to create a product that could bring value to Excel users. Since he had no coding skills, he built the product using No-code tools.

David had come to know of Bubble, a no-code web application tool with capabilities of integrating OpenAI API. He learnt Bubble on the go, watching YouTube videos, failing and learning. He would spend his nights reading API documentation for OpenAI. Soon the MVP was ready. He named it Excelformulabot. The app’s front end was simple, with just an input text box and an output box.

David wanted to test the ideas and get feedback from initial users. He posted about Excelformulabot on an excel subreddit. His Reddit post went viral and was reposted on another subreddit, where it received 10K upvotes.

He got his validation and decided to continue building it.

Unknown to him, a TikTok influencer with 4.5Mn followers posted about Excelformulabot. The video went viral, with 285K likes! David learned about the post a day later from one of his colleagues. Overnight, Excelformulabot had thousands of users.

Building upon the virality of the MVP with an incredible full-fledged product

The MVP was completely free, and the number of users skyrocketed David's API cost for a few weeks. He invested several thousand dollars before making any returns. But it did not worry him much as he knew he was building something worthwhile.

He started building the product with better flows and outputs. He added a monetization layer to the product by adding usage-based pricing tiers. And in September, he launched Excelformulabot on Product Hunt.

On PH too, the virality continued. The launch day has been the highest sales so far. Within three months of the launch, Excelformulabot has reached $30K in revenue, $4.0K MRR and 1.1Mn visitors.

The growth has been insane and mainly driven by organic marketing. The product has generated lots of traffic from social influencers sharing it on their profiles. David did not reach out to them, but the product’s benefits attracted them organically.

"Excelformulabot has been shared by several hundred because influencers LOVE promoting free tools to their audiences. TikTok and Twitter are full of 'productivity hackers' who freely promote websites that can help people be more productive."

The product growth has been amazing because of the unique combination of the product's usefulness, novel technology and generous free usage. David also capitalized on organic marketing by using social listening and being present in any conversation on social platforms that mentioned the “excel formulas” and sharing helpful tips.

Since the launch, many competitor products have also entered the market. But David is confident that if he continues to provide value, Excelformulabot will keep growing. He has some significant plans for marketing in the coming weeks! To manage his time between his job, family and side projects, he started getting help from freelance contractors.

"Don't recreate the wheel. There are now 10+ Excel AI generator websites and 50+ AI-based copywriting sites. If you think you offer something better/different, then build it, but why would someone purchase from you if it's the same as all the others? You better be damn good at marketing. Find a problem and build an answer."

Hustlers insights of the week

David's story is full of inspiration. He did not let the lack of skills or time stop him from solving a problem. He founds ways to overcome and shipped a product that users love. 

Start with MVP and keep improving: You do not need a full-fledged product to start getting users. Even a simple MVP can go viral. David started with an MVP and progressively improved it. He built a good fan base through the MVP, ensuring the product's success before the launch.

Share your progress as you build: We live in a world crammed with information and products. For side projects, it gets even more difficult to market & compete with big products. But what can make a difference is building in public. Don’t work on your side project in stealth; instead, share your progress and learning at every step. David made a Reddit post immediately after building the product. He also keeps sharing the progress on Twitter and generating organic marketing.

Keep upskilling: Always keep your thirst for learning and upskilling alive. In your quest to learn novel ideas, you can discover an opportunity for a project that can make a big impact. David discovered the gap in the market for an excel formula tool because he started learning about AI.

Side Project Playbook: Launch your side project in 30 days

After enabling hundreds of builders, we are open-sourcing the playbook for FREE. When applied diligently, the playbook will ensure you can build & launch your side project.

It is not theoretical but put together in a way for the content to aid the building process.

The best part? People can join the community, too if they want to get feedback, find collaborators, find a tribe, and hang out with the best of the builders.

Would love for you to have a look at the playbook and share your thoughts/feedback/comments.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money. You will also unlock a special discount by referring a friend.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Today's hustler is an inspiring young woman hustling to keep her passion alive and spread its joy to many.

🎨 Painted more than six murals all over Bangalore

💰Earning substantial income and is not dependent on anyone financially

😍 Teaching many people through her art workshops

Bhoomika has made her passion for art into a sustainable side hustle

Bhoomika Ananth, a third-year medical student at Raja Rajeswari Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, is unlike most students around her. She will paint vibrant murals or take painting workshops between classes and exams. At 20, she is not dependent financially on her parents because of her side hustle.

Holding on to her childhood passion

As children, we all have dabbled in painting & crafts. But there have always been few children who would love it to the extremes—drawing on the walls, painting on the floor, and cutting newspapers all over. You can imagine the scene, right?

Bhoomika was one of those kids. From a very early age, she recognized her passion for painting. And Rob running the MAD (Music.Art.Dance) TV show, became her most significant influence.

Soon, she started to complete the half-drawn sketches of her classmates. But no amount of art seemed to be enough for her. She wanted to do more! Her school spotted her talent, and she was enrolled in art competitions across the country.

"By the end of 10th grade, I had won more than 60 awards, including two national awards and multiple state-level awards."

But the turning point in her life came when she hosted her first workshop.She was still in school when through her best friend she happened to get an opportunity to conduct a painting workshop. It was for an American NGO working on an awareness drive in Bangalore.

She was new to conducting workshops and hence she reached out to few artist friends who had conducted workshops earlier. One of them guided her through the process of conducting a successful art workshop.

"The workshop was attended by 15, which was overwhelming because I did not expect more than four people to turn up for an amateur's workshop."

It turned out she was not so much of an amateur. The workshop participants loved the way she conducted the sessions. Word of mouth was powerful, and she got invited to many private events. She even ran some exhibitions at that time.

Bhoomika soon cleared her Class 12 with flying colours and knew that painting was her passion. But hailing from a family of doctors, she had to pursue her MBBS degree. She decided to continue her passion for art as a side hustle.

Painting her way to financial independence

After her first workshop, most of her following workshops were in alliances with Rotary clubs and NGOs. She was happy making everyone experience art. And she cultivated a way to teach & inspire people. Her unique skill of teaching art made more and more people come to her workshops.

Bhoomika did not monetize her work until about a year ago. When she started working on commissioned murals, she found a way to make a sustainable side income. While hosting workshops, she would charge a nominal amount to cover only the venue and the materials.

The first mural was commissioned by one of her friend's father. She painted 12ft tall sketch of Steve Jobs in an IT office in Bangalore. It took almost a week, but she loved the process. Bhoomika's second project was an apparel designer's store and then a restaurant. With each project, she became faster and better.

With the workshops and murals, she has earned enough not to depend financially on her parents anymore. She has also built a team to help her with marketing and logistics. Today, she charges about $2 per square foot plus an hourly rate (excluding materials cost).

Finding an artistic and sustainable way to do social good

And very recently, she started hosting mural painting workshops too! It started with her not getting funding to paint a government school in Bangalore. She decided to experiment and see if she could get people to buy tickets to a mural workshop. And voila! Almost 15 people attended the workshop and painted the school in colours of inspiration.

Bhoomika plans to finish her medical degree and take a year off. She plans to pursue a fine arts course during her sabbatical. After that, she will decide if she wants to pursue medicine full-time. But teaching people how to paint is something she is very sure about. Full-time or on the side, at the end of the day, she is an artist and wants to spread colours in everyone's lives.

Hustlers insights of the week

Bhoomika is an inspiration that tells us there is an artistic side in each of us. And side hustles are a great way to keep the artist in you alive.

🤩 Do things that give your joy: Find your side hustle in activities that bring you joy. Bhoomika kept doing painting workshops despite a gruelling college timetable because it gave her immense joy. Things that feel like play eventually lead to something sustainable and potentially turn into more.

🔍Seek help from the community: You don’t have to feel alone in your journey. When you start anything with passion, you will find a community to support you. Bhoomika needed help for her first workshop and did not hesitate to ask.

💫Dive Right in: When you get an opportunity to explore one of your interests, take that shot. You may not know what to do, but you can always figure that out. Bhoomika took her shot as a 15-year-old, which made all the difference.

We discovered Bhoomika's story when we attended her mural workshop a few days back. The half-day event was not only a lot of fun but felt even more special because we could contribute to bringing some colours into the lives of young underprivileged children. If you are in Bangalore, you can attend Bhoomika's workshop this Sunday (27th November 2022).

Build team with other participants of the workshop along with Bhoomika & Team

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money. You will also unlock a special discount by referring a friend.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamps Dharamshala: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

One of the benefits of side hustles is that you can explore your interests with low risk until you are confident enough to dive full-time into your interest area. Our hustler today had a similar path. She started with small projects and recently resigned from her job to focus on her interest in No-code.

💸Got her first no-code side project acquired for four figures

🤩Built an audience of 3K on Twitter in six months

💰Made $2,410 in 2 months from her newsletter

Katt built a side hustle that got acquired for 4 figures and made way for another hustle generating $1000/month

Katt Risen lives in Belgium with two kids. A digital marketing graduate, she has been working for nine years in different roles in the e-commerce and innovation department of a big European tourism company.

Since 2016, she has been observing different products being launched on Product Hunt, Indie Hackers and Twitter and always dreamt of building her product. But she could never start with building on her product ideas since she lacked coding skills.

Discovering the No-code world changed her life

When COVID-19 hit the world, tourism was the worst-hit sector. Katt’s company faced considerable challenges in communicating regulation updates to the guests. There was a need for some digital solution to get the correct information to the guests as quickly as possible. But the engineering team was occupied and could only release something eight months later.

Katt always had a hustler spirit and did not want to give up.

She started looking for other solutions and discovered No-Code. With Airtable and Softr, she built a solution. She learnt to build the no-code application with YouTube tutorials. The ease of these tools also made it easy for her. The solution was an instant hit where all the correct information was live in eight languages in just a few clicks. It was a side project that her company used for the whole duration of the pandemic.

It also gave Katt the confidence to come out of the shadows and become a builder. She joined the 100 Days of No Code Bootcamp to learn more. During the BootCamp, she observed that many people needed help finding the right no-code tool to build their ideas.

“The No-Code Tool landscape is pretty complex if you get started, so I decided to build a chatbot that could guide new people to identify the right No-Code tool for their use case.”

She built No code Guru, a site that helps you select the right tool based on your answers to the questions. It was a chatbot powered by a database; all built without a line of code! And she made it in the evenings and weekends after office work while also taking care of the two kids.

Katt was now a true builder, and her launch in April was greeted with lots of appreciation. She ended up in the Top 10 on Product Hunt, connected with many makers and received valuable feedback.

Getting her project acquired for four figures

Katt was promoting No Code Guru on Twitter, listing on directories and sharing her stories in some newsletters. But it was a free product and was not making any money. One day, a podcast interview gave her a new idea to work on. She wanted to build a Notion template that would make the transfer of information between buyer and seller during acquisition easier. To do some research, she listed No Code Guru for sale on Microacquire & Tiny acquisitions.

In the listing, she focused on the opportunities that were still possible for No Code Guru and defined a price by calculating the time she spent on it (4-figures). It was not an easy decision to sell because it was her first project. But she was not working on it anymore, and the monthly price to keep it running was pretty steep for a small side project that didn’t bring in any money.

“I received some information requests here and there and then forgot about it. A few months later, I got contacted by a potential buyer via Twitter, and after thinking it through, we sealed the deal on MicroAcquire.”

So when the acquisition happened, it was a win-win situation. The buyer was happy to pay a fair price, and Katt was glad to free the bandwidth to work on new projects.

Taking the bet to go full time

In June, Katt took parental leave and decided to give herself time to explore making a living through building projects with No Code. She started freelancing and building small niche products. She also kept talking about her experience on Twitter. Her tweet about the acquisition experience had a lot of engagement, and her inbox flooded with questions.

The engagement on the story prompted Katt to start a newsletter where she would share the stories of how No-Code makers went from 0 to being acquired. Before even writing the first issue, she announced it on Twitter to validate the idea.

That first tweet resulted in 240 subscribers. The first issue of No-code Exits was her own story; within the next two weeks, she had 600 subscribers. Today, the newsletter has more than 2200 subscribers and made $2,410 in the last two months from sponsorships.

The newsletter’s success and Katt’s willingness to keep building projects prompted her to resign and go full-time in no-code. She plans to expand her product portfolio and freelance to build a sustainable lifestyle.

“I truly believe in learning by doing. I’m amazed by how much I learned in 9 months by building side projects and figuring everything out. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Hustlers insights of the week

Katt’s story has all the ingredients of a great side hustle recipe. Our world has evolved to empower anyone to become a builder; one only needs to get started.

Be a problem solver: Starting a side hustle can happen in any form, but you need to be able to identify a problem and take an initiative to solve it. Katt took an initiative to solve a problem at her office and that lead her to build another no-code project.

Have keen observation: Observing your environment is extremely important to get ideas to work on. Katt’s first project was formed on observation and even her newsletter started as she observed the popularity of her exit story.

Be open to change/ pivots: When you build something, it may or may not become very successful. To keep the hustler spirit alive, some projects need to be let go of, so that you can focus on the next thing. Katt’s first project was doing good but it was sustainable and she took a wise decision to sell it and make an exit.

Hustlers Recommendation: Getting started with No Code

The no-code revolution started a few years back and has changed many things. Today, you don’t have to know coding to build ideas; you can do it with No-code. If you want to get started with your no-code journey, here are some resources recommended by Katt:

• Honest Guide to Indie Making

• No-Code Bootcamp

• No Code Saas Podcast

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money. You will also unlock a special discount by referring a friend.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

Our hustler today, Bhanu took a different route than most that you have read in our previous editions. His story shows us that sometimes you can let hustling and exploring take center stage in your work life.

💰Built a microSaaS that reached revenue of $1200 MRR in 6 months since launch

🤩Built a Twitter audience of 6K

💪Generated $20000 through freelance and bounty projects to support his hustle

Bhanu is building a microSaaS that is making $1200 MRR

Bhanu Teja had a career path like most techies in India. In 2019, he graduated as an engineer from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. His first job was at Swiggy as a software developer. In a few months, he realized that the job felt unfulfilling for him. He felt like a tiny bolt in a large system; his presence did not make much difference. He wanted to take some action to change his life course.

The start was rocky and difficult

In his quest to learn more, he started working on side projects. These side projects were elementary projects to improve his software development skills. With a demanding job, he faced difficulties in completing the side projects he worked on. One day, he came across an article about people earning a living by building software products and services called Indie hackers. Motivated by what he read, he decided to give building software products a shot and quit his job.

He had savings that would last him a few months. Bhanu got together with a friend to build a product and make it a business. With his friend, Bhanu built a platform enabling anyone to create courses like Free Code Camp. This platform was launched within three months. But after the launch, they could not find users willing to pay for it. After a year of working on it without much traction, they gave up on the product.

This was Bhanu's first failure.

But it gave him immense learnings. For the first time, he built an end-to-end product. He learned things that his four years of college and a half-year job could not teach him. He also started blogging about his experience. People began to follow his blog as they found it very useful. He started to even get a small following on Twitter. The product failed but his experience of building was proving beneficial to others.

Exploring and focusing on hustling led to the first success

Bhanu realized that he enjoyed the process of writing, but the execution was time-consuming. He would write the draft on Notion and then convert it to markdown to upload to a blogging platform. The publishing took him around 30 minutes for every post. He wanted a way to publish from Notion directly.

He started looking for a solution and could not find anything. Bhanu decided to build it himself and created a product called MDX. It was effortless; it just converted the Notion pages to a blog site without any manual effort from the user. He got 100 users, and 20 of them were paying customers. But within a week, he got a hosting bill of $10000! His development was not very sustainable. He did not know what to do, and he just shut everything down.

As he had taken a risk and quit his job, he had to find ways to make some money. He started to freelance and work on bounty projects in the Web3 space. It was when Web3 was booming and he completed a bounty that paid him $20000. It extended his runway for a long time.

He then started working on MDX again. He began finding ways to reduce the cost and got help from the network he had created. Within six months, a new version of MDX was ready. It was very different from the first MDX, with more features and a better UI. He rebranded it to Feather and launched it in May 2022. It got instant traction and started growing organically. Within six months, Feather crossed 100+ customers and $1200 MRR.

After almost two years of hustling, Bhanu feels confident that he has built a product that he can scale and get a good ROI. He is now building it further in public and in the process improving his marketing skills. Creating a solid network online has helped Bhanu a lot. When he started his journey, he knew nothing about product marketing or growth hacking. But he was very active in various communities like Indie Hackers. He would ask many questions and help others when he could. Over time, he has built a great network of friends and supporters.

Looking back, Bhanu feels it would have been wise to start side hustles instead of building full-time. But he is happy being where he is. It is a roller coaster ride, but focusing on the long-term goals keeps him motivated every day.

Hustlers Insight of the Week

Bhanu's story is full of grit and persistence. He did not let his failure demotivate him. Instead, he learnt from them and reached a point where he can lead the life that he desired.

Hustling can take centre stage: Sometimes you can take the leap and hustle to take centre stage in your work life. Bhanu was unhappy with his job and he started exploring his interests. When his project was not getting traction, he supported the project with freelancing gigs.

Start small: The biggest lesson we can learn is to start small. Bhanu's first product was very ambitious, and it took him a lot of time to build it. But it did not acquire users. So he started small with his second product, which was a success.

Learn from every experience: We should always look at ways to learn from all our experiences. The failures are bound to teach you a lot. You need to utilize it well and create success from it.

It's been 13 weeks since we started the Hustlers. We want to constantly bring you inspiration for side hustles and help you start one. And to improve our endeavours we need your suggestions. Please take this quick poll, you can also write back to me with any suggestions.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money. You will also unlock a special discount by referring a friend.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

Have you ever wanted to write a book? Books are a timeless form of expression that's rewarding. But writing books has historically been challenging. Now, thanks to technological advancement and ease of distribution, today, anyone can start the book writing side hustle. Our hustler, Hassan, has been writing books on the side for 16 years!

🤯 Published 16 books on Amazon in four different genres

🤩 Published 11 courses on Udemy with 250K+ students

🏆 Received Amazon Best Selling Author recognition

Becoming Amazon bestselling Author by writing books on the side

Hassan Osman is a Director at Cisco, where he leads program management teams. (All the views he shares are his own, not those of Cisco). Along with a very demanding full-time job, he has been writing books on the side since 2007 and publishing Udemy courses since 2013.

A slow start, with a lot of learning

Hassan always had an entrepreneurial spirit in him. After his master's from Carnegie Mellon University in Information Security, he joined E&Y as a manager. And after two years in his job, he started his first side hustle, a magazine about photojournalism and documentaries. But with a huge scope and heavy logistics, he could not sustain it.

In the next few years, he gathered knowledge and expertise in information security. It was a fascinating topic, and he thought of sharing it with the world. So he started documenting everything in a book. He did not have a publishing company, and self-publishing a paperback was a lot of investment. Thanks to technology, ebooks were becoming popular, and Amazon self-publishing came to his rescue.

It took about six months for him to finish the book and publish it, titled ‘Securing Your Information in an Insecure World’. At that time, he believed that writing a book was 95% of the work and marketing was 5%. But the sales and reception of the book proved otherwise. While the book got good reviews and a few companies also bought it, it was not a success by any metrics.

It made him think that he needed to approach writing books differently. Even though writing the book takes most of the time, success depends on marketing & distribution.

Seven years wait for the next book

In 2010, Hassan moved to Cisco and enrolled for an ALM, General Management, at Harvard University. With university and a job, he pushed book writing on the back burner. Even though his first book was not a success, Hassan realized that he enjoyed writing and sharing his knowledge. He also learnt the importance of understanding and serving market needs. So he actively analyzed trends, read book reviews and kept observing people's needs. He wanted to reverse-engineer his next book.

In 2013, virtual teams emerged as a concept, and only a few companies were practising it. Hassan was one of the few managers to manage a virtual team dispersed across time zones. He had self-learned and gained knowledge from his education at Harvard to manage teams. He observed that many people wanted to learn more about managing virtual teams. So, he started a blog called the ‘Couch Manager’ to share his learnings.

His blog got good traction, 5-6 articles went viral and were syndicated by top media publications. He decided to write a book to help managers work with virtual teams. He researched Google and Amazon search results and other books on the same topic. Armed with all this data, he decided to keep his book short and insight-driven.

In 2014, with the help of Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, he published his second book titled Influencing Virtual Teams. It became Amazon's Best Selling book and got media attention. The topic was new and gaining traction, so Hassan was contacted whenever there was an article on remote work or virtual teams. He got mentions in publications like the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur and more.

From Books to courses: creating a playbook to be consistent

The success of Influencing Virtual Teams boosted Hassan's confidence. Even without a traditional publisher, he became a bestseller based on his content. He wanted to explore more of his interest in sharing and teaching about his experiences.

He learned about Udemy, a platform to upload a course and get students without explicitly working on marketing. He already had the content from his book, he decided to repurpose it into a course. He started recording his videos and published them. The Udemy course too got good traction and he created one more income source on the side.

After a few months, he observed another paid point- emails. Many people need help with writing effective emails. And as a PMO manager, he had the experience of writing effective emails, and he decided to write a book titled Don't Reply All. He also converted the book into a Udemy course.

Since then, he has established a playbook for coming up with ideas, writing a book and then creating a course. He now has 16 books and 11 courses. Some of the topics that his books are based on are- team management, travelling in Europe with kids, and how to write and publish on the side while working a full-time job. These topics do seem diverse, but all these topics have always been at an intersection of his interest, knowledge and market trends.

Another exciting part of his playbook is that his topics are mostly evergreen and related to his job. He believes that books should not have a short shelf life. The topic should be relevant for extended periods and should not need constant updates. And writing for topics related to his job helps him grow in his career. People see him as an expert; over time, he has built a reputation because of this side hustle. And in terms of financial benefits, he generates four-figure revenue from books and five-figure from his courses.

The secret behind his consistency

Hassan has written a book and produced courses consistently over the years. He has also written a book and made a course on how anyone can become an author on the side. A significant enabler of his success is the process he has built. To complete a book, it takes him 6 months, with writing 30 minutes five days a week. His first course took four months, but now he has templatized his course creation process and reduced the time to two months. Building a course and book includes many parts, from selecting a topic to creating the cover image.

You can get Hassan’s book on how to write a book on the side for free here.

What has kept Hassan going for so many years is the fact that writing feels like therapy to him. Book writing for him started as a way to share his knowledge, and now he views it as leaving a legacy behind him.

"I absolutely love teaching. Your book can be read by anyone. The feeling of someone from a foreign country that you've never heard of, reading your book and sending you an email saying, 'This is great, or Thank you’ is unparalleled. I wish everyone could experience that."

The side hustle has also given him financial security. Be it an economic recession, a bad boss or not liking the work, he can always take a step back and have a security blanket. With his books, Hassan has also created a small audience for himself on Twitter. His network has now been expanded to prolific authors and creators.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Hassan is an inspiration for us to start building a side hustle in our interest area. Books can be challenging, but he found a way to succeed.

Learn from your failures: The first hustle you start may not become a success. But it will teach you some lessons that can prepare you for your next hustle. Don't take failure as the end of it all; learn from it, iterate, and you will find success.

Build your own playbook: Books can be written on any topic and in any genre. You should research and identify your own space. Then build a playbook to come up with topics and get distribution for them. It should be at the intersection of your knowledge, interest and market demand. Hassan has been following this formula to create successful books.

Understand the market: Finding book readers or course students can take time and effort. Hassan could crack this without having a massive audience because of his thorough understanding of the market. He researched topics and keywords people were searching on Google and Amazon and adapted his content accordingly.

If you want to learn more about writing a book and creating a course, Hassan has built a playbook that you can buy.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

There are many reasons why people start a side hustle. For majority is it to earn extra money, but along the journey they always find their way to a passion project. Our hustler today started with a goal to earn some money, but after hustling for about four years, he has been able to start his own business at the age of 20!

🤑Built a dropshipping business of ~$10000 in revenue

🤩Founded a marketing agency before turning 20 years old

🤯Led the agency to revenue of ~$150K ARR in 6 months

Dropshipping as a side hustle can make $5000/year in revenue

Keith Salins is the founder of Crowwd, a Web3 community marketing agency. He started hustling as early as 11th grade and became a founder before age 20. He has had successes and failures in the journey. But he was always focused on building and experimenting.

The curiosity that led to a Dropshipping hustle

It was 2019, and Keith had just graduated from 10th grade and had a very conventional path ahead of him. But he wanted to explore something else. One day while scrolling through Instagram, he came across a business model called dropshipping.

In 2019, dropshipping was the talk of the town in the US. With E-commerce penetrating a vast market, there was a new way of making money.

So what is dropshipping?

“Dropshipping is a retail fulfilment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the seller doesn’t have to handle the product directly.”

Keith decided to drop ship for the US. He did some research and narrowed it down to the fitness equipment niche from Alibaba. To get customers, he started advertising. He realized that to get any results in the US, the ad spending has to be much larger. He invested around $100 with no sales.

Dropshipping was also picking some steam in India, so he experimented with the Indian market.

And voila!

Even a $5 ad spend led to sales of $50, a straightforward 10X ROI.

Scaling Dropshipping to ~$10000 revenue business

In dropshipping, while you don’t have to worry about the logistics and inventory of the product, you still need to find reliable fulfilment partners. Keith found his partner in Shop101.

Shop101 handled not only the logistics but gave him the tools to set up a website and payment gateway. His sole focus was on running ads and generating sales. He started with fitness equipment and soon realized that virality & hype drive most sales.

He started selling products based on trends. Special days like Valentines and Diwali had the most impact. He would start selling products for these events two weeks prior. Discovering trends and running the ads was enjoyable experience for Keith. He also experimented with influencer marketing on niche Instagram pages, and found out it was giving better results than paid ads.

Soon, he found a playbook for dropshipping. From logistics to customer acquisition, he had figured out what worked. But even with sales and good ROI, he started losing interest as the tasks had become monotonous. His 12th-grade finals were also approaching, and he wanted to be more serious with his studies.

After two years and generating ~$10000 in revenue (25-30% profit), he decided to shut shop on dropshipping.

Failures & Experimentations led to him starting an agency

Keith started feeling bored with dropshipping and began to experiment with products. The first product was a QR-based menu for restaurants. Around July 2021, the COVID lockdown restriction was lifted, and QR menus were in demand. He built an MVP with no code and got five restaurants to sign up for a month’s trial. While the feedback was good, a lockdown was imposed again, and he could not get any paying subscription.

He abandoned the idea and went on to join a college social app startup as the first marketing hire. During this time he was in his first year of college. In about six months, he decided to leave the startup to explore new opportunities. At this time, he started to get active on Twitter. He got a freelance opportunity to write content for an Indiehacker product.

Towards the end of 2021, Web3 was witnessing a boom, and Keith had worked on a few NFT projects by then. As his freelance work was slowing down, he decided to look for some opportunities in Web3 companies. He knew a friend working for a Web3 company and reached out to him for an opportunity. It was fate; the company was looking for a community manager. He started working with Layer3 for $1500/month as a community manager. This opportunity opened many doors for him.

In about nine months, he understood that Web3 marketing required a firm hold on content & community. And with his experience with Layer3, he decided to start a Web3 marketing agency called Crowwd. Layer3 became his first client, and now six months later, his firm boosts of clients like Pillow, Devfolio, Coinbooks, and EthIndia, among others. Today, as a team of 3 Crowwd generates an ARR ~$150K.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Keith’s journey is a great testament to the opportunities one can unlock from side hustles. All you have to do is start somewhere and keep exploring your interests.

Focus on a niche: For any side hustle you start, you should find a niche audience. It helps you to get the best ROI. Be it dropshipping or freelancing or starting his own agency, Keith always found a niche that he could serve the best.

Keep a close eye on trends: The market and consumers are always changing. Knowing the current and emerging trends helps you to change your strategies and keep attracting your users. Keith could sustain a dropshipping business because he could spot trends easily and

Be open to opportunities: Side hustles are meant to give you free rein to experiment. So experiment and be open to opportunities. You can start with dropshipping and then move on to freelancing and eventually become a founder like Keith.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

Most great startups are a product of experimentation of crazy ideas. If you have startup aspirations, a side hustle can be a great way to experiment. And with good traction and potential, you can sell your side hustle like our hustlers today. 

Bradley Vangelder and Dries Augustyns built a side hustle while in college and got it acquired for six figures, all in less than three months!🤯

🤩Built the product in 1 month

👟Identified the niche of Sneaker sellers to maximize ROI

💰Sold the product when it had good traction

A side hustle that got acquired for 6-figures in less than three months

Bradley Vangeldar hails from Belgium with a background in graphic design. As a high school student, he aspired to be an entrepreneur and build things. To follow his dreams, he decided to take up Computer Science at his University. And in the four years of college, he got skilled in coding, worked part-time in the food industry, built two side projects and got one of them acquired! 

One side project sparked the idea for another

Bradley built various projects during his first two years of college to improve his skills. In the third year, he had his first startup idea. It was named Kwotet. It was an online social platform where everyone could share quotes from their favourite books. 

Before going all in, he wanted to validate his idea. He wanted to build a process where users sign up for a waitlist. When he opens the waitlist, users should get invite codes, and once the codes are verified, they get access to the app.

Sounds simple? Well, it took him around 60 hours to develop it. No service could do it faster. He thought it was too much work for something so simple. He spoke to a few friends who built similar projects or were working on startups. They all had the same use case and spent around 70-120 hours building it.

And that's when he decided to build Lancerno, a "waitlist as a service" product.

Launching a product to acquisition, all in 3 months

Bradley’s idea had much potential, but he felt he needed a partner. Any builder or startup founder would take only 15 seconds to set up a page with a waitlist, configure automatic emails from their email ids and do code validation upon launch. It was an idea that solved his problem as well as other people he knew.

That's when Dries Augustyns joined him. Dries was an acquaintance from school with a strong entrepreneurial mindset and had built a strong portfolio of products. Both found a synergy and started building Lancerno.

"We came together during school hours to brainstorm our idea. We came up with features that would put us at number one. We worked on the development till 3 AM; we were just so excited to get this product launched."

In a month, the product was launched. Their go-to-market strategy was not very elaborate but effective. They reached out to many communities of builders & founders and got good initial traction. But soon, they realized that the product had an inbuilt churn. While they had paid users, the churn rate was very high. A waitlist is not something users would always need.

They decided to look for a niche target market where the churn rate could be lesser. They found it with Limited edition sneaker sellers. Such sneakers are always sold via waitlists, and these sellers always found it difficult to set it up. So they started targeting the community of high-end sneakers. It became a hit, and soon they had 100+ customers sending 20,000 codes per month.

This was all happening during their final year of college. As they had picked challenging companies for their internship, they were getting very little time to work on Lancerno and eventually they lost the momentum.

But the users were still there. They decided to find someone with the same spark by selling their project. And Microacquire came to their rescue. Within a few days of listing the product, they started getting offers. Soon they sold the project for 6-figures🤑 (Any monetary numbers cannot be shared due to the non-disclosure agreement clause in the acquisition).

"Sell before your product dies. Make sure to profit from all the gains."

In three months, the two boys went from building to getting their project acquired. An experience that taught them a lot and will be very beneficial in their future entrepreneurial endeavours.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Bradley is now working in consulting while he continues to build ​side projects. He wants to get some financial stability before venturing into a startup full-time. The side projects are helping him to keep exploring ideas and ventures that could potentially become startups. He is thinking of reviving Kwotet too. Dries has gone on to start an email marketing automation company called Plunk.

👀Observe your daily life to get ideas: If you ever feel that you are not able to get ideas to pursue a side hustle, you should start observing the problems you face. The chances of other people facing similar problems are very high. You are also more motivated to solve the problem and have a sustainable side hustle. 

🔍Find a niche audience: When you build a side hustle, getting users is the most critical and daunting task, especially when you don't have an audience or are building in public. But you can always find a way. 

💫It is ok to lose spark: Sometimes you may start a side hustle with lots of enthusiasm but lose interest in it eventually. Side Hustles are low commitment and low risk, you can stop them anytime you want and go on to start another. Or you can find a new home for your side hustle where its potential can be realized by getting acquired

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

Dr Neelima Devadas got into a side hustle to make some money, but today, she continues with it for the joy it brings her. Her story is yet another example of how side projects make you a serendipity magnet. 

🔥 Part-time voice-over artist for more than a decade

🤑 Earning ~$350/ month 

🤩 Most popular work has been for Mia by Tanishq

Dr Neelima Devadas is making ~$350/ month by being a voice-over artist

Dr Neelima Devadas has taken a path untrodden by most medical professionals in India. After her MBBS, she joined Noora Health as a medical design strategist instead of going into practice. She uses her clinical knowledge to create some transformational experiences in the public digital healthcare space. She also continues a side hustle she started almost a decade ago to make some extra money.

Started hustling to make some side-income 

Medicine is an expensive area of study. When Neelima started her Bachelor of Medicine, she wanted to find ways to earn some side income to help her parents financially. It was 2011, and she started looking for part-time jobs in newspapers. She came across an opening for an English trainer near her house. Soon she found herself working at Banwasi's English Academy, teaching adults for whom English is a second language.

It was an excellent side hustle that paired perfectly with her college schedule. A year flew by, and on an ordinary day when she was teaching, a student mentioned that she had a lovely voice and should try voice-overs. At that time she didn't pay much attention to the comment. But after six months, she thought to research what voice-over artists do precisely.

She found it exciting and, without much thought, started calling recording studios across Bangalore. They were cold calls, and she did not get any positive response. But one day, she got called for an audition. Her first audition went well, and she did a voice-over for a popular cab service in Chennai. The advertisement did well, and the recording studio started calling Neelima for regular gigs!🤩

Her work was appreciated, and she started getting many projects by word of mouth. Now she was not only teaching English but also doing voice-overs while attending college. While it could have been a time-management disaster, her side hustles were flexible and not very stressful for her to manage.

In her fourth year of college, she decided to be more proactive in her voice-over projects. She had got a good understanding of the voice over ecosystem and started marketing her skills better. She did major voice-overs for e-learning and corporates and even lent her voice to Lakme Fashion Week (India's premier fashion & lifestyle running for over 25 years)!🤯 

Side Hustle transforming into an artistic outlet

By 2016, Neelima was almost completing her degree, and she became interested in public healthcare. She joined Noora health as an intern and soon joined the team as a health fellow. With a full-time job, the need for extra income had reduced. While she stopped English training, she continued with voice-overs.

She wanted to be more strategic and do quality work. While she got into it by chance, with no training, she found herself really enjoying it. It was a meditative experience for her. In those minutes of voice-overs, she could completely detach from reality and focus on what the script demands. While doing voice-over is just speaking the words, it still requires you to communicate an emotion to somebody, which makes you have no other thoughts.

"Every time I walk into the booth, however bad my day had been, I come out refreshed. Because for those 10 minutes, I haven't thought about my day, haven't thought about anything else apart from just the script that's in front of me."

Soon after graduation and joining the job, Neelima and her best friend decided to start their voice-over production company. Their company would take big projects (300-400 hours of recording) and work with different artists to deliver them. After a few projects, they could not even keep up with the logistics and demands. They decided to shut it. And Neelima continued to do independent part-time work.

The beauty of pursuing side hustles for the pure joy 

Today, after a decade, she is working as a healthcare professional and doing voice-over work on the side. She has reduced her voice-over clients to just two and makes about ~$350/ month with a very flexible schedule. She can quickly push to $1000/month if she markets and takes more clients, but that would not be sustainable with her full-time job.

She also believes that going full-time into voice-overs would remove the joy she gets from it. Full-time would put much pressure, and the task she finds meditative would soon become stressful. 

"I think that's the beauty of having side hustles. You don't end up dying on just one income source, because you know that no matter what, you will survive; there's something on the side. So even if you have a terrible nine to five, you know you have an outlet after that. That is what makes the concept of side hustles as sources of income amazing."

In the future, Neelima plans to get formal and advanced voice training. She then eventually wants to use her savings so far and start her own recording studio.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Neelima's story is unique in terms of her background and side hustle. And that's the beauty of side hustles, regardless of your education and professional background, one can always find a fulfilling hustle

💫Take Action: We should not be stuck in analysis paralysis. If you are interested in a hustle, take action and go with the flow. Sometimes you may have an imposter syndrome of your abilities, but you should battle it by taking action. Neelima had no idea if she could do voice-over, but she just went ahead with cold call recording studios and putting herself out.

🤩 Do things that give your joy: Side hustles can quickly become burdensome without intrinsic motivation. It needs to be something that is different from your full-time job. It can be related to your passion/ hobby. For Neelima, it started with the motivation to earn money but eventually, it became a meditative activity.

💥 Activate serendipity: Serendipity can be orchestrated. You need to be open to opportunities and grab them at the right time. Neelima started with English teaching, which led her to voice-overs. But if she never took a step to do something, she would have never found her way to being a voice-over artist.

Did you learn something new about side-hustle reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives

Build: It is India's most premium community (also the biggest) for side hustles. The inaugural cohort was kicked off in August last year, and since then, we have graduated with 500+ extraordinary builders. Join Build to launch your side hustle in 4 weeks and become a builder.

BuildOnChain: It is a cohort and community to help you learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: It is an experiential travel initiative where you launch your side hustle while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.

Build weekend: It is a weekend staycation in a metro city of India with other builders, where you ship your side hustle in 48 hours.

Daniel, our hustler today, is not someone who did side hustles along with a job. Still, his journey of discovering the value of diversification and building a portfolio of small bets will inspire you all to make some bets of your own. 

Since leaving his job at Amazon in 2019, he has

💸 Made $1Mn in revenue

🤩 Built a Twitter audience of 133K+ followers

🚀 Shipped 4+ information products

🌟 Started a community with 1000+ members to help them build a portfolio of small bets

Daniel has built a portfolio of side hustles, generating $1 Million in revenue in three years

Daniel Vassallo had worked at Amazon for eight years when he decided to quit and go into self-employment. He had a balanced work life and was rewarded with promotions, compensation, recognition, and praise. Still, there was a lack of intrinsic motivation. He wanted to do things he loved. Things that he did as a kid when there was no external force wanting him to do it, like writing code, selling his creations and building his own path.

The start to self-employment was rocky

Daniel, like most people, always lived a paycheck-to-paycheck job lifestyle. The first step into self-employment was daunting. He decided to leverage his software development skills and started a SaaS called Userbase. It helped create secure and private web apps using only static JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. 

In a job, if you work hard, you are rewarded and can meet your goals. And the same should apply to creating your own project too. With this in mind, he devoted lots of time, effort and money to the project. He was building in public by sharing the journey and received validation signals for his idea, with 1000+ users on the waitlist. When the product launched, it became #1 on Product Hunt, got featured on the front page of Hacker News, and made sales of $1500. He invested ~100K from his savings and worked on it for a year, but the project was challenging to sustain. (It is still running but makes only $10K/year)

Daniel was confronted with the unpredictability of the world. There is no simple way to succeed; the world works on randomness. The exact path that led to success for one, can lead to failure for another. The only way to make randomness work for you is to diversify your income sources and make bets on different things. 

Be prepared for opportunities and build for your audience

Userbase was not growing as expected, and to not run out of savings, Daniel started freelancing. While at the same time, he was building his credibility on Twitter by sharing helpful content. One of his threads on AWS went viral, and people had many questions about it. Having worked at AWS for some time, he had lots to say and knew he could not encapsulate everything on Twitter. He saw an opportunity here.

He decided to write a book that would share the information and not take more than a month of his time. It was a small bet he placed and got a co-author in Josh Pschorr, a friend and former colleague at Amazon.

"We released the product on Christmas Day 2019, and it's been far more successful than our expectations. After 14 days, the product had made $45,000, and since then, the product is approaching $144,000 in total sales."

Soon after the book's release, Daniel started sharing the performance and other metrics with his followers. Every day he would wake up to people asking how he built an audience from zero to 12,000 followers in a few months. Coming from a pure tech background, it was an achievement that other tech-focused people wanted to learn from and emulate.

Daniel had great learning from it. He always thought he should leverage his software skills to earn a living. Instead of being empowered by it, he was getting constrained. He was only thinking about ideas where he could use his years of experience. But he should think of ideas that people find valuable and that he can bring to life. It may or may not be related to his expertise. And that's when he decided to build his second information product.

​​"This time, I wanted to go even more aggressive on my investment. At first, I was thinking about doing another e-book, but those take a lot of time, so I thought I could record myself and sell that as an information product."

Everyone can build a Twitter Audience proved even more successful by getting $100,000 in sales in the first two months.

Building a portfolio of Small Bets

After the success of both products, Daniel started building what he calls a Portfolio of Small Bets. He believes that in an uncertain world, one should take small bets that are low in effort but can yield good ROI. Putting all your effort into one thing exposes you to lots of uncertainty. But when you have 3-4 small bets, even one of them doing exceedingly well can compensate for any failures. A Venture Capitalist builds a portfolio of companies and does not invest all their money into one. This helps them mitigate losses and make the best ROI. Similarly, we can create a portfolio of projects that can give us the best ROI for our efforts.

"I'd like to use the metaphor, like imagine you're searching for golden treasure underground, and you pick one spot, and you start digging in that spot. You can dig as far as you want, but if the treasure is not in that spot, no matter how hard and long you dig, you're never going to find it. And I think it's the same thing here in projects, that it's more exploring than exploiting."

With this philosophy, Daniel has created 4+ information products and, very recently, a community called Small Bets. He wanted to create a cohort where he could teach people his philosophy behind creating a portfolio of small bets. The cohort has since evolved to a vibrant community of 1000+ members working on side hustles. Daniel believes that making small bets enables one to use available resources best. And every subsequent investment into a project becomes a new small bet. For example, the Small bets community was a small bet which got excellent traction on launch. Daniel's decision to make it a community and market became another small bet. 

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Daniel took the plunge into self-employment, and it took him a year to find things that could work for him. But for many of us, doing side hustles while working full-time can be a great way to explore interests and earn money. We need to consider what we want to put into our portfolio of small bets.

👥 Build an audience by sharing your knowledge and expertise: Most of us find it challenging to build an audience. We do not know where and how to start. Daniel was the same, but he dived into it with the singular focus of helping people with his knowledge. He did not necessarily follow the marketing guidelines. Still, he started sharing how he was building a SaaS from scratch and everything he had learnt over the years at Amazon.

🤑 Diversify to battle randomness: We usually have the mindset that focusing on one thing will yield the best results. But the world is random and uncertain; even after all efforts, things may not succeed. Daniel's Userbase had all the ingredients for success, but the ROI was not great. We should explore small projects requiring less effort, but even a tiny success will give us good ROI. You can make money with an information product on Gumroad, a video course, a community, freelancing, building SaaS and many more.

✨ Be prepared to leverage opportunities: Daniel's success can be attributed to his preparedness to take on new opportunities. From the first AWS book to the recent community, he was prepared to take steps to capture any opportunity he saw. After all, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." — Seneca

We recently hosted Daniel for a session with the builders at Build. If you want to watch the recording, please reply, and I will gladly share it.

Did you learn something new about side-income reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more & more people can know of ways to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Upcoming initiatives to start your side-hustle journey

Special Masterclass: Side projects are a gateway to financial independence

Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of MicroAcquire, Inc. 30 under 30 Entrepreneur and 2X founder, will be coming to Build this Tuesday, 11th October, at 7:30 PM IST for a session on how builders can leverage side projects for financial independence.

Enrollments are open for Build Cohort 7

Build is India's most premium community (also the biggest) for side projects. The inaugural cohort was kicked off in August last year, and since then, we have graduated with 500+ extraordinary builders. We have just started the enrollment for the last cohort of the year beginning on Nov 19, 2022

Want to become a builder and learn with some of the best builders in India?

Side Hustles have many upsides - from helping you create multiple income sources to enabling transition in your career. But, have you ever thought that it could change your lifestyle too.🤯

Karthik's side hustle started from his interest in sustainability. Now, "Yash Farm Stays" generates income for him on the side while also enabling him to enjoy the perks of a sustainable lifestyle with his wife. 

🤩270+ paying guests

🌾3000+ people have taken the farm tour 

✨Hosted multiple special occasions, photo shoots, day outings and zero-waste boutique weddings

 A life-changing side hustle of a Google executive 

Karthik Padmanabhan has worked at giant tech companies and even experimented with running in his career spanning two decades. But always felt constricted, like something was missing. He always thought that the corporate lifestyle is not sustainable as the earning potential goes away entirely if you fall ill or are not in a good mental state. Exploring the answers to a more sustainable life led to Yash Farm Stay.

A realization that sparked interest in "sustainable living" 

In 2015, Karthik and his wife, Shyla, deeply reflected on their lives and realized their current lifestyle was not sustainable. With this realization, they embarked on a journey to seek a sustainable lifestyle. Sustainability did not happen by design but by chance. As they were finding alternative things to do, they came across sustainable living. Within a short time, the couple learnt about sustainable living through permaculture workshops. The quest to discover more about sustainable lifestyle drew them to Auroville, where they learnt about building houses on earth architecture. Karthik and his wife also volunteered on various farms at Auroville to learn more about living in harmony with nature - plants, trees and animals. 

Diving right into the project with determination

Once Karthik and his wife got a little bit of hang of it, they got a one-acre land on the outskirts of Bangalore. They jumped right into setting up an organic farm that was based on permaculture principles. And very soon, they pivoted to make the farm based on natural farming, (a farming technique practised by our ancestors) as it is more suited to India. While they wanted to set up a full-fledged farm, it seemed complicated. Farming requires an integrated family and help; their kids were not into it. Also, they were setting it up with their full-time jobs, so time was scarce.

But they were determined and also took the Green Sustainability Pledge in 2016. Instead of a big farm, they decided to build a farm stay. A small house that could be sustained with the farm produce. Since then, their lives have changed significantly. Karthik and Shyla say that now they feel more centred and at peace with themselves.

Tapping into the network, Getting the first paying guest 

The main house of "Yash Farm Stays" was completed in 2018. Since its completion, Karthik and Shyla have been developing the farm to make it a functional food forest that caters to animals' and humans' needs. Karthik has got a deep network in the tech community. As he started sharing the concept of Yash Farm Stays, his friends became intrigued and started visiting the farm stay. Friends and folks from his network started coming to help, stayed at the farm and eventually started paying. They loved the experience and started spreading the word. 

Come May 2019, and the first paying guest checked in for a week-long creative workshop with their employees and associates. Since then, the couple has been super busy sharing, hosting and spreading awareness about sustainable living practices to families and groups. They have hosted over 270 paying customers at "Yash Farm Stays" to date, and around 3,000 people have experienced the Yash Farm Tour. Through "Yash Farm Stay", Karthik envisions building a community that practices sustainability because he believes that sustainability goals can't be achieved alone.

Also, he says that one doesn't need to do farming to lead a sustainable life; sustainability can be practised wherever you are. One of the starting points is to cut down on unnecessary expenses. He believes a sustainable lifestyle is all about managing our needs and not succumbing to consumerism.

Yash Farm was a passionate side project for him that now brings cash flow to sustain the farm property and gives the couple a tranquil oasis of their own in the middle of the urban jungle.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Karthik's story is an inspiration that your lifestyle could also show the way to a side hustle that makes money.

🔍Reflect on your current life: One of the ways to find your side hustle interest is by reflecting on your current life. It can point you towards the missing piece in your life, and then you can explore different ways to find that missing piece. 

🗣️Talk about your project in your network: Karthik didn't even know he could make money on the side with "Yash Farm Stays". Because he had shared the concept among his network, people started getting interested and eventually started paying. 

💫Dive Right in: For most of the projects, we recommend that you start small, but sometimes if the transformational value of the project is massive, to make it a reality, you got to dive right in.

We discovered Yash Farm and Karthik's story as we tried to find a venue to host Build Weekend in Bangalore. We had a blast building side-projects at their farm stay for two days and learnt that side-projects could be anything, even a lifestyle change.

Did you learn something new about side-income reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

If you are active among the community/no-code/indie-hacker Twitter, Sharath Kuruganthy is a name you would not miss. Currently heading community at Threado, he has built 15+ side-projects since 2018. But that’s not the most mind-blowing fact about him, he has a list!

🗣️Co-founder of Shoutout, ​​a SaaS generating $30k ARR with 150+ paying customers

🏅Recipient of Product Hunt's Maker Grant 2021

✨Built a Twitter audience of 20K+ followers

A microSaaS side hustle that generates $30K ARR

Sharath’s early life in India was spent building a traditional career. His move to the USA in 2013 started to change his mindset. The entrepreneurial spirit of the people around him lit a fire in him to build something of his own. But it was not until the end of 2018 that he became a true builder.

A failure that became a stepping stone for side hustles

After graduation, Sharath started a corporate work life. But there was a fire within him to explore different interests and build something of his own. He co-founded a design agency called BICAD to help early-stage startups simplify their pitch decks. BICAD served more than 25 clients, and the experience of running the agency fueled him to start a product startup.

In 2018, along with two of his friends, he started Closing Page. It was a content management and sharing solution for salespeople. After almost 7-8 months, they understood the problem they were solving was not of high value to the market, and their startup became a failure.

Failures are great teachers, and the failure of Closing Page became the turning point for him. He realized that building is not only about taking the big high-risk bets. It can also be building small projects that are risk-averse and fun to work on.

Best side-hustles solve the maker’s needs

Sharath took the failure in his stride and gave himself a deadline to build a side project by end of 2018. For a non-developer, it seemed tough but that’s when he discovered no-code tools. He started to explore all the tools and solutions.

The search was not easy. There was no single source to find the different tools a builder can use. He felt that a simple directory of no-code tools should exist. It was a light bulb moment for him and he decided to build a product to solve the discovery of tools for builders.

Tools for Makers was launched in November 2018, it became popular among builders and became the #3 product of the day on Product Hunt.

His next project came in March 2019. Naval Ravikant, the CEO of AngelList is someone that most people in startups and the tech world know. He a powerhouse of wisdom and insights. Sharath wanted a collated base of all the knowledge Navel shares in the public domain, but it did not exist. So he built The Angel Philosopher, a compilation of Naval Ravikant's wisdom, knowledge, and thoughts. It went viral with 50-60K monthly visits initially. The cherry on top was Naval acknowledging the site and pinning it to his Twitter profile for about a year. Even to this date, the site gets traffic of 30-40K visitors monthly.

This product put him on the map of builders. Product Hunt and Twitter community started to know him and gave him great support. Even though he is an introvert, at that time he felt like engaging with strangers and building relationships.

Side-projects powers serendipity engine

Sharath believes that side projects are a driving force for the serendipity engine. The proof of work it builds can lead to some amazing opportunities.

Through 2019-20, he kept building different curation projects like RequestforProduct, Really Good Questions, OneDial, WFH Manual, and many more. Some of them got lots of love while some failed. But executing the ideation-build-launch process, again and again, taught him a lot. He got better at observing problems, understanding design & copywriting, speaking to customers, and building an audience.

He built all his projects to learn and have fun. He never cared about money or any other outcomes while building these projects. Yet, the serendipity engine was at work. He got the opportunity to make a shift from being a Product Manager at Walgreens to being a Product Evangelist at Draftbit, a low-code tool to create mobile apps. It was the magic of putting things out in the world.

“You cannot underestimate a side project. You never know, the power it can give you in the future. You can't quantify one thing and have an ROI for each project. Because everything counts. As Steve Jobs said, you can only connect the dots looking backwards, and tell what X project did.”

Earning the first dollar

By 2020, he had started to build an audience on Twitter. He did this by sharing valuable content from his experience of building projects. He would get lots of shoutouts from the community, so he had this thought:

“What if I curate all my shoutouts under one place? I immediately shared the idea with my friend KP who instantly said it was great, and that gave me a solid boost to take the idea from zero to one!”

This was not a curation product and would need more development time. But before spending time on building it, he validated it from his audience. A landing page was shipped in about 24 hours, and it got around 300 sign-ups. That's when he started developing the first version of Shoutout on Bubble.

By the end of 2020, the no-code version of Shoutout was being tested by beta users. The users loved the product and some users came up with feature requests that they would pay for. Being a non-developer, it seemed like a tough task. He needed a technical co-founder.

As Shoutout was being built in public on Twitter, he utilized the audience to search for the technical co-founder. He connected with a few and found the perfect fit with Curtis Cummings. They started working on a full-fledged tech version of the product.

In February 2021, Shoutout was launched on Product Hunt and became the third product of the day. But that was not it, it also made Sharath the recipient of the Product Hunt Maker Grant. The product got him his first dollar, with Shoutout generating $600 MRR in the first month itself. Today, Shoutout generating $30K ARR with 150+ customers.

With his experience of shipping 15+ side-projects, he understood that building a community first and then products is important. The community should be part of your journey. Sharath’s proof of work, Shoutout’s success, and the community he built were instrumental in him joining Product Hunt, then OnDeck, and now Threado. Not only that, he is well on his path to being a creator. His side projects now include a podcast called The Undefeated Underdogs and very soon a newsletter.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Sharath is an inspiration for any non-developer to start shipping their ideas. You don’t have to be limited by your tech skills.

⚒️Build a portfolio of small hustles: Take small steps and build small projects. Just like Sharath, start building these products by looking within, finding problems you have, and solving them. Every project will teach you something, and it will have a compound effect over time. You can work on them on the weekend and use simple no-code tools like Soft and Airtable to ship them. Don’t dream of building huge products, rather ship and build your muscles first.

🤩Build in Public: You should build your side hustles in public. Share your highs and lows, discoveries, and content that can add value to others. This helps you build a community that is there in your journey and supports you. Your products will get faster reviews and users too. And you can just build products to solve your audience’s needs too.

💫Don’t have expectations: Side projects give you the liberty to be stress-free and enjoy the process because there is nothing to lose. So do not have expectations of earning money from it, keep at it and the upside will come. Sharath built side projects for almost three years before earning the first dollar.

Did you learn something new about side-income reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more & more people can know of ways to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!