I am so excited to report that in my journey of trying new things I wrote an ebook in my spare time (right!) of just 2-3 hours/week on nights and weekends over the last 3 months. It's called Everything I learned about sales I learned from my dog.
A year ago I had just turned 50 and decided that I wanted to shake up my life a bit. Not anything drastic like having another child, skydiving, getting a divorce or walking barefoot across hot coals but I just didn’t want to be remembered as someone who worked in sales her whole career, had kids, drove a minivan and was constantly tired. I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and try new things without changing my whole life or having a mid life crisis (at this point in my life I’m more of a minivan than a sports car kind of person any way).
I was thinking about writing an eBook so I took Nick Loper’s course about selling non fiction ebooks on Amazon for $10 https://www.udemy.com/kindle-launch/?couponCode=HUSTLERSUNITE I would recommend taking Nick’s course-- I definitely got more than the $10 I spent out of it. The rest of this blog is a combination of what he said in his … Continue reading How to publish an eBook
I told my sister, who is a writer, that I was interested in writing an ebook and she told me I should go to the Library of Congress and trademark it. I followed her advice and documented all of the steps so that other Side Hustlers or writers could do it faster and easier.
About 5 months after starting my The Ordinary Parent Facebook group and deciding to brand myself as The Ordinary Mom for my side hustles, I decided that others might find value in going through this journey with me. I had the epiphany on one of my long drives for work that I wanted to publicly document this process. I will say that I’m an excellent documenter (I think it’s one of my special gifts) and realized I had tons of notes in Evernote and on Google Docs about my side hustle journey thus far.
I had been hearing on podcasts that Merch by Amazon is a great side hustle but that’s it’s hard to get approved by Amazon and the wait is long. That is why I tested the water on Teespring before jumping into the big leagues of Merch by Amazon with my https://teespring.com/stores/the-ordinary-mom site. After learning how to create on demand print t-shirts on Teespring, I decided I would attempt the big league of Merch by Amazon but I didn’t know how so I once again utilized podcasts for advice.
In the post, I am going to tell you how I did the few necessary steps to set up my business. I had an mentioned in an earlier post, I had used the free resources of a Small Business Development Center to help me come up with a business plan and get started on a side hustle. I didn’t ever start that original business but I learned how to set up a business in my state (California). FYI- Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) are funded by the government and offer free business consulting to anyone who wants to open a small business. It’s the best kept business secret out there.
So you want to start a side hustle but don’t have any extra time. As a mom of 3 elementary aged kids, 1 dog (we had 2 but, sadly, one died a few months ago), 2 hamsters, a full time job, tons of kids sports and other kid activities and a busy family life, if I can do it so can you. I set aside 2 hours a week to devote to it. That makes it a slow process but I look forward to that time every week and I have found it gives me more energy instead of taking it away. Part of my side hustle journey is that I want to share my learnings, successes and failures with others to help them on their own side hustle journeys. I want to help create a community of people who are passionate about what they do and have the freedom to follow their dreams.
In my ongoing journey to figure out a side hustle (or three or five), I stumbled across Fiverr in a podcast from The Side Hustle Nation: https://www.sidehustlenation.com/how-to-start-a-bounce-house-rental-business/ The podcast episode was about starting a bouncy house business (which I had no interest in doing) but what I am learning that no matter what side hustle someone is doing, even if it is something that you would never want to do, they always have at least one or two nuggets about starting or running a side hustle that I find relevant and helpful. In this podcast, the nugget I found was about outsourcing work to Fiverr. I had never heard of Fiverr so I went to their website to see what they do. They consider themselves “the world’s largest freelance marketplace” and you can outsource everything from graphic design, video editing, business plan creation to astrology readings. It’s pretty amazing and now that I know about it I wonder how I could have lived so long without it (I had the same realization a few months ago when my sister-in-law introduced me to Etsy).
As I described in my last blog, I finally took action on something and started a closed Facebook page in August 2018. (https://thesidehustlejourney.com/2019/04/28/taking-action-by-starting-a-closed-facebook-page/) After purchasing the URL http://www.theordinarymom.com from WordPress and all of the extras I thought I needed in case I created a website, I had spent $98. To sign up for your own WordPress account to start your own side hustle journey, click here: https://wordpress.com/alp/?aff=13401&cid=2093430 (FYI- this is an affiliate link and I’ll make money if you sign up this way).
