Promotion of the Year (Week?)

What to start a newsletter of your own? Want it to look better than this one? Try Beehiiv!

It has more features than Squarespace, which I use (WTF?) and if you use this link you can get 20% off 3 months of a paid plan after a complimentary 30-day free trial (how did we snag that deal?). Maybe if I make enough off this sweet partnership I can move over to Beehiiv and impress everyone like you could from the start. 

Gratuitous promotion (affiliate disclosure to appease my lawyer) is done, onto the content!

We have a lot of new business builders reading this newsletter. Thanks for joining! And if you’re looking for an idea that’s somewhere between drop shipping and creating artificial general intelligence you’re in the right place. 

Today it’s side hustle time. 

We start with niching down and distribution. 

First the niche. A journal.

Nope. More nichey (new word!).

A digital journal file for sale.

MORE NICHEY.

A digital journal for e-ink tablets. Boom!

Next distribution.

Need to get these in someone’s eyeballs to sell em. Let’s use Etsy. No, stay with me!

Etsy sells $13.2 billion per year of merchandise a year. Seriously. Check out their Investor Presentation. 

People shop there. You can advertise on the platform. So let’s try it. 

Here’s an example. Shop started in 2020. Sold 64,000 units at an average price of $9 USD. So around $190k per year in revenue per year. For a digital product. Fulfilled by Etsy. 

And here’s the interesting part. There’s only 24 items in the shop. Not 2,000 designs that can be put on a shirt or pillow. Now that’s a side hustle!

Each time some enthusiastic corporate clone who wants to flex on their lesser paid colleagues buys a Remarkable 2 e-ink tablet and downloads a digital journal from Etsy this hustler gets a sweet dopamine hit when their phone jingles on the side table holding a mojito in the Maldives. 

That was a long sentence. But lets leave it in the spirit of side hustles and lower effort.

Most digital file stores on Etsy have hundreds or thousands of files. Which takes a lot of time and you still have to pay a few pennies (20 to be exact) every 4 months to keep the listing alive. 

But is this an anomaly? F Nope.  

Here’s another, started in 2020, $23k sales with 13 items. Didn’t even upload a profile photo. And here I’m worried about long sentences.

But that was four years ago you say! The Remarkable 2 tablet market has been swarmed with millions of enthusiasts. It’s basically AI.

Challenge accepted.

What about a store that started five months ago and has almost 600 sales with 19 files. The dream is still alive. 

If you’re trying to do this make sure to have a starting marketing budget and put around 20% of revenue into Etsy ads to build momentum. 10-15% worked for this Etsy shop selling dog collars. 

And not sure how to create templates for e-ink readers, maybe the Remarkable 2?

Well no problem. Just sign up for the Capital Friday Community, only $1,200 for the first year. Just kidding. You can just search YouTube, it has everything. 

Business Ideas of the Week

• Luxury home gym equipment is an interesting niche

• Create a pay once Saas from a popular tool

• Do something… but expensive

Business Success Stories of the Week

• Tezza photo app is making $2.2 million MRR

• 0-$20 million in 2 years selling a coffee ground scrub

• Online SEO community advisors hits $15k MRR