UPDATED: 16th July 2024 – 13 years in the making
Since 2010 I’ve worked on a lot of side hustles.
A decade at the time of writing this post, that is depressing.
13+ years, after updating this post in July 2024, with more failed side hustles.
My goal was (and still is) to start working for myself.
I hoped that one or more of these side hustles would take off and bring in an income that I could live on.
Allowing me to focus on running the hustle full-time and turn it into a fully-fledged business.
So, what skills have I learned from these failed side hustles?
You Don’t Fail. You Learn
On the first few of the failed side hustles I worked alongside friends or people I knew.
Most of the early projects started with some coming to me saying “I have this idea, do you think you can build it?”.
I always jumped at the chance as I struggled in the past to come up with potential business ideas.
Working on these side projects gave me the bug of starting my own side project/business.
I have become better at coming up with potential ideas. Always delving right in and start building the product.
Unfortunately, many of these ideas have also fallen by the wayside. Ending up in the graveyard with the earlier “joint ventures”.
I decided to write this blog to look back at the projects and review what I had learned over the years, skillset-wise.
You can always view these so-called “failures” in a negative way.
Taking inspiration from Tony Robbins. Instead of viewing them as losses. I have started to think “What have I learned from this”.
Getting all the information down and drafting this blog has been a little therapeutic.
“Failed” Projects I Have Worked On
In this section, I will run through what sorts of projects I have worked on.
Giving an overview of what I learned from each one.
Sketchbook Guru
Someone I knew from University had this idea. His idea was a website which ended up being “LinkedIn for start-ups”. Before LinkedIn was a thing (we missed the boat on this one).
The main idea of the site was to bring together people to launch a business idea, ranging from designers and developers to people who wanted to invest in new businesses.
What I Learned
Linux/Ubuntu and how to set up things like MySQL databases, Postfix email management, etc.
Installation and configuration of WordPress and PHP.
PHP/WordPress front-end development.
PHP scripting to process results and email the users.
Web design. Although our attempts were pretty shocking compared to today’s standards.
Football Survivor/Fixture Survivor
My University contact also came up with another website idea.
Again, we missed a trick with this one and couldn’t get it to market. Someone had had the same idea as us. Not sure if their site is still running or not.
This website idea was gambling against your mates on the football results. The last man/men standing would take the share of the winnings.
What I Learned
PHP and an earlier version of the CodeIgniter framework.
Bootstrap, HTML and CSS.
jQuery and Javascript.
How to build a custom admin area to run the product.
I also built a custom CMS, integrated into the main product, which only admins could see and use.
More web design – My skills improved massively while working on this side hustle.
Marketing/sales/copywriting. I included marketing pages within the website to help promote the product.
Even though no one signed up.
Away Day Bible
The Away Day Bible started as an Android and iPhone app.
It was for travelling football fans to be able to find places to eat, drink, places to stay and included transport information. Users could submit reviews to let fans know if a pub or chip shop was worth visiting or not.
Three of us contributed to Away Day Bible for over 3 years.
Unfortunately, we could not find a way to transition this into a paying side hustle and decided to part ways.
What I Learned
How to build a custom API using Apigility.
I built a custom admin area to manage the data that was displayed by the API. This admin area also enabled us to manage the “business”.
I built both an Android app and an iPhone app from scratch (written in the native programming languages for each phone). Which used the API, that I had built to display data to the users.
We used third-party products such as Google’s APIs to show maps. Along with other API’s such as analytics packages.. This was a massive learning curve along with the app development.
More WordPress experience for the marketing website. Also exposure to things like setting up SSLs and integrating WooCommerce. Allowing people to purchase merchandise directly from our website.
How to interact with payment providers. We used Stripe to process payments as a friend recommended them.
For version 2 of the mobile apps, I started building an MVP using NativeScript. However, we never managed to get this to market. Although I did manage to get exposure to NativeScript by getting around 80% of the functionality from the original apps into version 2.
Automated Accumulator
A friend of my wife and I got both of us into ‘Matched Betting’.
I won’t go into detail about what matched betting is. Or delve too far into the goal of the product.
I designed and built a SaaS product which would allow a user to set up a number of bets to be placed on football matches. Selecting which outcome the user would like to bet on.
The software would then place the bets for you.
The clever bit of the software was that it made decisions about whether to place another bet on a fixture. Which was dependent on the outcome of the last fixture our system had bet on.
Blowing my own trumpet here, the software was very clever.
I even managed to get my first customer who signed up for a monthly subscription.
I was over the moon.
But, I decided to shut down the project as there were very few potential customers.
Also, the whole system relied on a third-party API which was flaky at best.
I couldn’t bring myself to let customers lose money because of a third-party API.
It wasn’t reliable and if the third party decided to revoke my product’s access to their API. The whole project would have had to be shutdown.
It wasn’t a stable business model. But, I learned so much in a very short space of time.
What I Learned
I built the main SaaS website using Microsoft’s .Net Core framework.
Learnt how to build ‘WebJobs’ using .Net Core.
It was my first real product that was hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
Learned how to use VSTS/Azure DevOps to automate my build, test and deployment pipelines.
Gave myself exposure to Azure SQL databases.
Again used WordPress as my marketing site. I got a lot better at building a marketing site and writing sales copy.
I got over the fear of actually messaging and picking up the phone to call a potential customer. That’s how I managed to land my one and only client by dropping them a phone call.
Cleansounds [UPDATE from Jul 2024]
This was my most madcap idea yet.
I’d seen a lot of content about eCommerce and dropshipping.
And had gotten conned into thinking it could make me rich.
But what could I sell? What could I niche down into that other big brands and online stores don’t care about?
Then, something my wife said gave me an idea.
We both had started to listen to the radio, music or podcasts in the shower.
And she said one day. “We need a shower radio, I listen to it in the morning getting ready”.
BOOM!
That’s my idea.
To drop ship shower radios to the UK, USA, and even Europe.
Hence the name “clean sounds”. Get it?
It was niche enough to narrow the focus. And I couldn’t find other websites that only focused on one product type.
And it did crash and burn.
But I didn’t spend too much time on it. I spent a few weeks to see if I could make a sale using Google Ads.
I didn’t make any so it was an easy decision to switch it off.
What I Learned
More WordPress, yet again.
I used WooCommerce for the first time with this project. Getting used to setting up products. Figuring out how to set up shipping charges.
I’d outsourced the product research to a VA. I can’t remember which site I used. But I was trying to get used to paying other people to do certain tasks.
Again more copywriting and marketing. To be able to write product listings.
Having exposure to running Google Ad campaigns was also a major plus.
It was also the first time I’d focused on validating an idea as fast as possible. With as little upfront effort as possible. Good practice for future projects.
Outflash [UPDATE from Jul 2024]
I won’t go into too much detail about Outflash.
I’ve gone into a lot of detail about this project in other blog posts. You can read about the project and my experience switching it off, here and here.
In a nutshell.
Outflash was a better mail merge tool for Outlook.
Instead of using Word or Excel to send multiple emails. Outflash turned Outlook’s new message screen into an email marketing tool.
I’d even implemented open-and-click tracking.
Even got my first paying customer. Who ended up paying month after month, for something like 14 months.
Long story short.
A load of scammers found my tool and started using it for things I wasn’t comfortable with. That’s why I decided to shut it down.
What I Learned
How to create an Office app using JavaScript, which works on both desktop apps and online.
More dotnet core. The whole backend processor where written in that language. And hosted on Azure.
Using MongoDB for the first time in anger.
More WordPress again.
How to build sales funnels and use a software product like ClickFunnels. To land new customers.
More outsourcing. I hired people to help me create lead magnets. And other assets that I could sell as a one-off.
Got good a researching and writing blog posts. So much so. A few posts started ranking on the first page of Google.
Did some cold outreach and more picking up the phone and speaking to people.
Started a podcast which was “sponsored” by Outflash. Which got me over the fear of speaking and being on video.
The Takeaways From Failed Side Hustles
I have learned so much from all these failed ventures.
From picking up new programming languages and frameworks. Which comes more naturally as I have worked as a software developer for a long time.
Through writing, marketing and sales content and speaking to potential clients.
Which has been a steep learning curve and something that is still difficult for me.
Would I Still Jump In Without Looking?
In short. No.
I wouldn’t dive right into projects like these again.
Over the years I have read a few books like The 4-Hour Work Week and Will It Fly.
These books discuss testing and validating your side hustle/business ideas.
This is key to what side hustles I would work on in the future and something I have been more focused on recently. I still have the desire and work ethic to find a successful side hustle.
But, my time is getting ever more precious and I need to spend it wisely.
One thing I will say. If you are a programmer. Or come from a tech background and want to play around with new programming languages or frameworks. Coming up with a side hustle idea is a great way to learn them FAST.
A word of caution though.
Expect to earn ZERO money from it.
Actually expect it to take money out of your pocket for things like hosting, etc. If it’s purely a plaything then great.
There is no such thing as “If you build it, they will come”.
You will be waiting a long time.
What’s In The Pipeline
There are a few things I have worked on recently that I am trying to see if I can find paying customers for.
But, they are more a “scratch my own itch”.
I am trying to find users too. Seeing if they would like to test what I have built.
Also to gain feedback before writing another line of code.
If you are interested in trialling one of these products please reach out.
I am also doing a lot of market research to find a side hustle.
It seems I used to struggle to come up with potential ideas. Now I have so many I want to look into. Market research can be as overwhelming and time-consuming as building a product.
At least with product research and a potential customer list. Your chances of succeeding are increased.
Good luck in finding your side hustle.
What’s In The Pipeline [UPDATED from Jul 2024]
Well. I’m still in a 9-5.
And I’m still trying to find something that works.
If you’d like to read more about what I’m currently focusing on. Check out this post titled: Starting A Side Hustle, The Frustrations, Trials And Tribulations (Part 5).
My main focus is still Elementary Analytics.
I’ve been working on this since 2018. And I am getting little signals off traffic. But I’m not sure how long I can stick with this project.
Writing this update in July 2024.
If I can’t get the project to cover all business expenses by the end of 2024. Then I’m going to have to make a tough decision. Which will be to switch it off.
Other than that. I’m testing new ideas all the time to see if I can get some form of traction in a month or two. Not years.
Also to push myself online more and sell products and services under my name.
I’ve not been making much money at all.
And that’s got to change.
Find Out More
If you would like to find out more about what I learned you may find the following blogs useful.
