$5.7M vacation business + Twitter account side hustle

Dear starters,

Pat Walls here, creator of Starter Story. 

I’m hitting your inbox to share with you the best ideas and insights we've published over the last week.

P.S. I'm also offering a limited-time deal on Starter Story premium for just $1.51/week, our best deal ever (see below).

🤑 Turning Twitter followers into profits?

David makes $2k/month from his Twitter side hustle Rainier Watch.

Although David works a full-time Front End Developer job by day, he’s figured out a way to make some money on the side with a Twitter account that did something unique: to just say if you could see Mount Rainier out (aka nice weather).

Turns out people in Seattle really appreciate their mountains and the account started growing and a community was forming around it.

That’s when he thought about monetizing it. How? David started an apparel brand around the Twitter account that sells quality goods.

More real world examples of starters turning followers into real businesses

David is hardly the first one to walk this path. Many people start social media accounts that hit the right spot (it doesn’t need to gain a huge following!) and are able to monetize it.

Dominic and Aleksander are pretty weird (in a good way). Their Facebook page where they post memes grew to over 200k followers. Thanks to print on demand services they make around $9k/mo selling apparel with the memes that they share.

ATC Memes started as a Facebook page to share air traffic controllers memes (yeah, you can go that niche). The community was engaged and it grew to 8k, then to 40k and reached 140k with lots of users submitting content. He knew that aviation apparel was popular in the community, so he made a first test and sold over $2k in a few hours. Since then, they sell bags, phone cases, skirts, ties, shoes, dresses, and even blankets!

By now you probably have heard about Zach, who stumbled into a $300k business selling framed tweets.

Do you know who Ezekiel Elliott is? Well, he’s Samuel’s favourite NFL player. When he was in high school, Samuel started an Instagram account about him that kinda blow up and now he comfortably makes some extra money with ads.

Also, if you’re good at creating and growing social media accounts, why not start capitalizing on that knowledge? The opportunities in the social media space are huge and diverse so it’s easy to find something that suits you:

• You can create an online course. Iman is making $120k/mo with his.
• You can start your own agency. Jim started his before they were a thing (keep an eye on new trends) and grew it to $500k/mo.
• Or you can go solo and become a consultant. Amanda quit her job to do it and the first year made almost $100k.

⚡️ Join now with our BEST-EVER offer

How do people get inspired and find great business opportunities? How do they get their 10 first clients? What challenges do they face at every stage and how to overcome them?

Learn from real people sharing real stories. The struggles, the wins, the good and the bad. 

Get unlimited access to 2,000+ case studies, 3,000+ business ideas for just $1.51/week using the code "MARCH". This is the best deal we've ever had.

Or, get our Premium Plus membership for $3.83/week. Which will also give you access to our Lean SEO course.

(all of our plans are billed yearly)

🗣️ Quote of the week

“Even if you don’t feel 100% ready, go out there and launch your version 1.0. You will grow and adapt, but you must begin somewhere.”

Muamer Avdic (Founder, Ladels. A $20K/mo software to create custom shipping labels)

🤫 The $5.7M mystery vacations travel agency

Would you buy or gift a vacation without knowing the destination? It might seem a little crazy for some, but over 25k people have chosen Lillian’s Pack Up + Go to plan their vacation.

After every trip, travelers started sending the same photo of them holding up the sign that revealed their destination. That’s a pretty killer social media content for free, and they’ve used it to gain trust and grow their audience. What better selling ad than a smiling happy customer?

In the past, we’ve already featured stories from other surprise travel agencies. You can read the stories from Roshni & Jeff from The Vacation Hunt ($40k/mo) and Charlotte from Whisked Away ($15k/mo) to learn how they started.

This is a great business for people that love travelling and can’t stop making recommendations to friends. It needs a very low initial investment and if you don’t want to sell the trips you can just make a commission from the big travel companies, all of them have affiliate programs.

Travel has been one of the biggest industries in the game. By 2017 it reached an $8.27 trillion size, with over 1.4 billion international travellers (imagine if you’d include local trips). And is set to recover pre-COVID levels by 2022.

But you can start small too and just plan romantic dates for couples. Ta'Veca haves fun with it and makes $3,5k every month.

Plus, the surprise angle can work in other spaces too. Remember subscription boxes? The hype may have moved to other things, but they’re still big! Many of our starters make a living with them and you can start one about literally anything: Japanese candy ($6.5k/mo), books ($10k/mo), cannabis ($350k/mo) or baby products ($60k/mo).

🛠️ Job Opportunities

The fashion company East Meets Dress is looking for freelance content writers.

Adrian from the marketplace for music producers Modern Producers wants to find someone (individual or agency) to lead their content creation.

Love languages, culture and want to work in a diverse team? Check out TRANSLIT, a $1M/year translation services company.

Tanmay and his team have developed PredisAI, an AI-based tool that helps you write better social media posts. They want to grow their team with content writers, social media planners and growth hackers.

🛒 Amazon FBA brands are selling for millions

This week, The New York Times has published a piece about starters that created, grew and sold Amazon businesses. As the ecommerce giant continues to grow, the business around it does too.

I thought this could be a good opportunity to review some Amazon-related success stories that we have shared in the past to show how diverse the opportunities are.

The obvious one is to sell your own products. We talked to many that have succeeded in doing this. Like Felony Case, the $50k/mo unique iPhone cases (their designs are really unique, trust me) or True Leaf Market a huge $400k/mo organic seeds business.

You can also try dropshipping. Amanda did great with her $12k/mo dollhouse kits and miniatures.

Another profitable path is to offer complementary services. Product listings need photos right? Tsour Lee runs a $45k/mo business specialized in product photography. 

Danny started a $40k/mo PPC management and listing optimization agency. And at the coaching company Marketplace Superheroes ($350k/mo) they help sellers improve their performance.

You just need to figure out what is that you do best. The opportunities are huge.

P.S. Huge thank you to Klaviyo - our exclusive sponsor at Starter Story. By using Klaviyo, we've grown our email list to 60K and added thousands of dollars in revenue per month through email marketing. Get Klaviyo today!

Looking for a business idea? Find yours from our database of 3,000+ business ideas.