Hey Hustlers!
Welcome back to another week of endless possibilities.
And if you’re new here, welcome to the community!
This week we are going to explore:
Why decluttering your home could be your next side hustle.
But what if we don’t want to be influencers?
An AI prompt that is helping to ground new ideas.
SIDE HUSTLE OPPORTUNITY
Why decluttering your home could be your next side hustle
I remember being 15 years old, sitting in my cousin's room, being swallowed whole by a huge pile of clothes, trying to figure out how to style them well enough to sell on Depop.
Depop felt revolutionary.
For every Devil Wears Prada fan, it was our virtual America's Next Top Model portfolio.
Appeal to the right crowd with enough editorial sass and you could sell your old clothes for genuinely good money.
Then there was eBay, the ultimate home declutterer.
Had a fridge magnet sitting in a drawer?
Great. Sue down the road was probably looking for exactly that.
And then Vinted appeared. Cheap second hand tops wrapped in bubble wrap, Aldi bags and tin foil.
Perfect.
Three platforms, same basic function, completely different personalities. And across all three, people built their own side hustles from scratch.
So let us look at Vinted first. Is it still possible and if so, how sustainable is it?
Around 20% of active users treat the platform as a deliberate side income stream, which is a strong indicator that there is real activity in this space.
The Platform
Unlike eBay or Depop which charge seller commission, Vinted charges buyers the fee instead. That means sellers keep more of what they earn per transaction.
Visibility is front loaded. Items get the most exposure in the first 24 to 48 hours after listing, so successful sellers rely on consistently uploading new stock rather than sitting on static inventory.
The Economy
Automated tax reporting, including the DAC7 directive in Europe and HMRC rules in the UK, flags sellers making over €2,000 or completing 30 or more transactions annually. At that point, you are effectively operating as a small business whether you intended to or not.
Ethics
Critics point out that very low prices can replicate fast fashion behaviour, with buyers purchasing higher volumes simply because something costs £3. That said, buying second hand remains significantly lower in carbon impact than buying new.
Time and Money
It takes as long as you want it to and costs as much as you are willing to put in. There is no fixed entry point.
The honest outcome: Yes. Vinted is a genuinely sustainable side hustle, particularly if you focus on items that are harder to source, vintage clothing, antiques, limited pieces.
The fact that it can be started from home with what you already own makes it one of the most accessible income streams out there.
THE EXPLORE
But what if we don’t want to be influencers?
65,000.
That number is an estimation of how many photos are posted to Instagram per minute.
What is your first thought when you see this logo?
For me it is familiarity, comfort and simplicity, remembering a time when social media was new, fresh and extremely underestimated by the average user.
We had influencers then, celebrities were posting their Starbucks orders, we were posting our daily sunsets, yet somehow the nostalgia of it feels simpler.
So, what if we do not want to be influencers or creators?
With the entry being so easy, a phone, a camera, an idea and an account, I am sure most of us have told someone "I could do that."
But with content fatigue higher than ever, not everyone wants to build a personal brand.
I have had the guilt myself.
The internal conflict between posting content with a personal brand against the fear of not utilising an incredible tool for connection to the wider world.
But what I have realised is this.
Building quietly is still building, especially if it energises you.
In the UK, it was reported that around 25% of entrepreneurs still do not use social media for their venture. The reason we do not know that statistic? Because they are the ones working in the background.
1. The Beauty Influencer Who Walked Away
She spent years as a beauty influencer.
Hundreds of photos for one perfect shot, scripts that took days to write, videos recorded in sweat because turning on a fan would ruin the audio.
The constant criticism, the people who stole ideas without credit, the fake and mean corners of the industry.
She wrote about it and then she left social media completely.
She learnt how to sell on her own terms through email marketing and SEO. She sent email pitches to high ticket sellers and eventually began landing clients. As she gained more clients she built her CRM to manage her workflow.
(This why Hubspot is our sponsor today, if you’re interest in something similar, click the link below to learn more.)
2. The Spreadsheet Seller
Emily started selling spreadsheet templates on Etsy.
Using keyword research to find what people were actually searching for, she built a product range around terms like "budget spreadsheets" and "Google Sheets templates" and eventually quit her day job entirely.
A skill she already had and a platform she did not have to perform on.
The takeaway: I know that hearing success stories can sometimes feel like stubbing your toe multiple times.
You are trying to get there. But you can’t quite.
However, it is important for us to do the research and validate that there are opportunities beyond what we already know to be true.
And building quiet, is not as rare as we may consider it to be.
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WEEKLY DIGEST
An AI prompt that is helping to ground new ideas
I love a tool that challenges me.
Thanks CHATGPT.
Which is AI's biggest weakness.
AI has become the ultimate yes man.
Kind, polite and incredibly validating, no matter how bad the idea. AI is practically guaranteed to love it.
This is called AI sycophancy.
We engineered it this way. Like humans, AI is designed to avoid conflict, which can give us a false sense of confidence about our ideas, choices and next steps.
Which is where the Grill Me Method comes in.
By giving AI a clear prompt on how to actively challenge your idea, you can identify the weaknesses, find the gaps and stress test the concept before you commit any time or money to it.
Here is the prompt I designed to do exactly that:
You are a highly critical thinking partner and devil's advocate. Your job is not to encourage me. Your job is to think alongside me and find every reason this idea could fail. Do not soften your feedback. Do not validate my enthusiasm. Ask me hard questions, challenge my assumptions and make me defend every part of this.
Here is my idea: [insert idea here]
Work through this in the following order:
Branch 1: The Market
Who actually wants this and how do you know?
Is there evidence of real demand or is this a solution looking for a problem?
Who already does this and why would anyone choose me over them?
Branch 2: The Business Model
How does this make money and what breaks that model?
What are the real costs I am not accounting for?
At what point does this become unprofitable and how likely is that?
Branch 3: The Founder
What skills does this require that I do not have?
What assumptions am I making that have not been tested?
What would I do if this earns nothing for the first six months?
Branch 4: The Timing
Why now and what happens if I wait six months?
What external factors could kill this before it gets started?
Is the market growing or am I entering at the wrong moment?
Branch 5: The Conversation
What is the single biggest assumption I have not challenged yet?
What would need to be true for this to work and how do I test that cheaply?
What is the one question I am avoiding and why?
THE THREAD
Every week I take one thread as something for us to ponder over.
It might be a question, a side hustle, a random idea or a trending moment. I would love to include questions, quotes or examples from you, reading!
To submit your own, connect on socials with The Side Scoop and you could be featured!
This week is a note from a side hustler on Reddit, on a idea they are looking to validate
“I made a card deck of daily questions designed to force a same day action.
Each card has one hard-hitting question (e.g. What's the two-minute task you keep putting off?) plus a line to write today's action, and a flip side to check off whether you actually did it.
Would you genuinely use this?”
Would you use this?
FINAL BITE
💫 Final Word
That’s all for today folks!
As always: every edition, we get 1% sharper. A better tool, a smarter approach, one less mistake to make.
See you next time! 🤍
The Side Scoop