760: The $100k/mo Single-Function Site, the $4k Pet Party Planner, the $30k Cheese Fortune Teller, and more

When I started the show 13 years ago, it was just me wearing all the hats. But as it's grown, so has the team to support it, and I'm super grateful to Adam for his editing skills, for, uh, Ava, who produces the video versions that you see on YouTube, to Sheila who does the detailed write-ups for the Side Hustle Nation website, and to Teresa, who uploads everything to all the different podcast apps. When you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break, and that's why when you need to get it right, think, "This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs." Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job [laughs] for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Side Hustle Show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. [upbeat music] I've got some awesome real-life side hustle examples for you today, ranging from $30,000 a year to millions and, of course, the spinoffs or pivots that you might be able to run with to make them your own. And to help me out, he's a man of many side hustles. He's the author of You Can Retire Early from wellkeptwallet.com, Deacon Hayes. Welcome back to the Side Hustle Show.

Hey, Nick. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Me as well, Deacon. I gotta show you this site because you are a, uh, a website guy. You've been around the internet for a long time, and maybe just looking at this page, this is wordunscrambler.me, kind of a simple single function site where you punch in a bunch of letters, and it will unscramble these, uh, and, and tell you what kind of words you can make from those letters. What kind of traffic do you think this site is getting?

Man, I know with Wordle, it's gotta be huge. Like Spelling Bee is another word game that I think is pretty popular. I don't know, a couple million a month?

A couple million a month is probably on the low end. 8 million by some estimates, which-

Wow

... is just mind-blowing, right? So it's like, yeah.

Yeah.

This is for people playing Scrabble, people playing Wordle, Words With Friends, Wordscapes. Kids have played that one on their iPad. So all these word games, people come to this site to get... Not, not necessarily to cheat, but to get some, uh, inspiration here. And if you punch in a bunch of letters, it will tell you what words you can make out of this, and it's got the advertisements here. Not sure why it's not loading. But monetized with ads, some estimates range as high [laughs] as $5 or $6 million a year from the, uh, traffic on this, uh, site. Built in 2014 by this guy, uh, Ramesh, in India, and so it's been running for over a decade, and it's just wild that it's pulling in that kind of traffic, that kind of income. Even if we go on the low end and say $100,000 a month from unscrambling words, and it probably wasn't built with AI in 2014,