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Digital Side Hustle: Insights from the Maker of Curated for Founders

An Exclusive Look into the Side Hustle of Reviewing and Curating Digital Products

Happy Sunday. This week we are talking with Rahul, a programmer who shares interesting information for new business founders in the digital product world. Rahul has spent 7+ years building digital products and learning the ins and outs of online business, now he helps other founders by sharing his learnings and curations in a bi-weekly newsletter.

In our interview today, you can learn from him about:

  • Balancing your time between your job and your side hustle and the importance of keeping to a schedule.

  • How itā€™s possible to monetise your newsletter, regardless of what you write about.

  • Step by step advice on how to pick the right content to start your own newsletter.

Now, over to Rahul!

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Curated For Founders

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your side hustle?

My name is Rahul and I am from New Delhi, India. ā€‹ā€‹I am a computer application graduate with over seven years of experience building iOS mobile apps and digital products.

Currently I am building a newsletter named ā€˜Curated For Foundersā€™ where I publish a curated newsletter twice a week with newly launched SaaS tools, founder success stories, ai resources, marketing strategies, and other learning resources to help founders and business owners grow their business.

What was your main inspiration for starting your newsletter?

I have always been inspired by the idea of being a digital nomad.

When I was in my 2nd year of university I learned about SEO, blogging, and lifestyle businesses which really fascinated me.

After graduation, I worked with several firms as a programmer and gained first hand experience over seven years. Most notably, I learnt the technical side of building digital products and online business.

In 2022, I started working on my side projects, but honestly, I failed to market them properly and make enough sales. Building solo projects alone has taught me several things such as when building an online business, you need more skills than just making a product. Thereā€™s a whole other side of the equation which involves knowledge of creating landing pages, funnels, copywriting, branding, social media marketing, sales, and business operations.

With all of this in mind, I realised I needed to read more and learn more, so I started reading more newsletters, blogs, and articles on the web.

From there, I decided I would share my learnings with other founders and thatā€™s where the ā€˜Curated For Foundersā€™ newsletter was born. I am very inspired by influencers like Dan Koe and Marc Lou and I hope that someday in the coming years I will be able to work on my own projects full time and make more money out of them than I do with my regular job.

How do you balance the time between your main job and your side hustle?

I often have to work on my side hustle during the early hours of the morning or late at night when I get the time outside of work.

I log my plans in a project management app so that my goals and tasks are clearly laid out whenever I sit to work on my side hustle. This keeps me super focused.

I try to make sure I work on my side hustle for at least an hour or two a day, particularly in the mornings when my energy levels are highest. This helps me ensure that I dedicate focused and consistent effort towards both my main job and my side hustle without compromising on either.

What mediums do you use to monetise your newsletter?

Currently I am monetising my newsletter with beehiiv ads only, and working towards getting sponsorships outside beehiiv ad network.

Eventually I plan to build other streams of monetisation to scale the ā€˜Curated For Foundersā€™ brand. But thatā€™s a far-fetched dream as of now and my current focus is to grow my audience.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out in a similar field?

If you want to start a newsletter, here are my suggestions:

1. You need to find the overlap between ā€˜what topics interest you the mostā€™ vs the ā€˜topics you have some knowledge and expertise inā€™.

2. Once you find the overlap with three-four topics, write four subtopics for each of the main topics from the first step - this could be something you can create your newsletter around.

3. Now you need to refine your content strategy and do some competitor analysis.

4. If your newsletter idea passes step three, I suggest that you publish one to two newsletters every week for a few months. Keep promoting your newsletter in communities wherever your target audience hangs out every day and if you see some traction, you might be off to a good start.

5. Next, you need to work towards refining your strategy to build content consistently, get new subscribers, and build automations & processes to make your workflow more efficient.

Where can people find you?

Iā€™m active on the following three platforms - Twitter, Linkedin and Product Hunt.

Personal Twitter 

Newsletter Twitter 

Linkedin

Product Hunt

My newsletter is available here and aitrends.fyi where readers can subscribe for regular updates.

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If you refer 3 people, Iā€™ll send you this 19 page Side Hustle Starter Guide completely free! This guide is proven to help you get started with a successful business.

šŸ‘‡ļø Now itā€™s your turn to answer a question:

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If youā€™d like to read last weekā€™s newsletter, an interview with Nathan, a clothing designer who sells turned his hobby into a full-time business. Check it out here.

Thank you all,

See you next week! šŸ‘‹