#1: Chaitanya makes $3000/month with his niche Travel knowledge

Hola!

We're excited to bring you the first issue of Hustlers, and hope you enjoy the content and get inspired to start your own side-hustle.

🤯 Started the first side-hustle in college and sold it to The Viral Fever

✈️ Travels in business class without spending a penny

💰 Cracked the credit card and miles system to travel to around 36 countries with minimum spending

Chaitanya makes $3000/month with his niche knowledge of the Travel Industry

You are likely aware of the Credit card points and airline miles system, but 90% or more users take no advantage of it. Our first side-hustler is part of the 10% who has cracked the system and gets unbelievable returns like a Bali trip in business class without spending a penny!🤩

Not only that, he has successfully converted his knowledge and experience into a side-hustle that makes around $3K every month while having a full-time job!

Chaitanya Choudhary is a Senior Software Engineer. In his full-time job, he build products that hundreds and thousands of people use worldwide. His side-hustle is Brownpoints, a blog documenting his travel experiences and helping others maximize their credit card points. It attracts a niche audience of travel enthusiasts, which has led to Chaitanya building a side-hustle by earning commissions on travel bookings 💰

What set him up to make money along with a full-time job

Chaitanya moved from Rajasthan to Delhi in 2013 to pursue engineering in Computer Science and Mathematics at Cluster Innovation Centre, Delhi University.

While college allowed him to explore varied subjects like Economics and creative writing, he felt his life was engulfed in a tech bubble. So to have some fun and explore his other interests, Chaitanya along with a friend started a YouTube channel called Sortedd.

Chaitanya has observed US YouTube channels making reaction and street videos get very popular. It was 2014, and YouTube was just getting popular in India, with the audience looking for quality content made in India. Chaitanya saw this as an opportunity to take inspiration from the US and create India-focused content. With some video equipment and self-taught editing skills, they started the journey. The content was fun and novel, ranging from reactions to popular events to videos from the streets of Delhi asking citizens questions like 'who is the president of India?'. The first video had 600 views, the second 15000 views, and within six months, most of the videos would get 500000 views. 🚀

While it may seem a monstrous task to manage college and a YouTube channel, for the two boys, it was fun and fit easily into their schedule. They would work on creating the videos after college in a studio they set up in a friend's farmhouse. The consistency and quality of content kept attracting more audiences and they achieved a monthly viewership of 3.5 million.

The numbers brought in money too. The revenue from YouTube was about $1000 per month, and as the channel grew, brand sponsorships brought in $2000 to $3000 per deal. The money was BIG for two college students. It helped them not only pay the college fees but also explore other interests (travel being one of them for Chaintanya).

At the start of 2017, in their final year of college, they reached 130,000 subscribers but hit a cliff in terms of growth. After some deliberations, they sold the channel to The Viral Fever (TVF)🤯

Today, the channel is called "The Timeliners" (None of the content has been produced by Chaitanya in the last few years, and he is no longer associated with it).

Chaitanya joined a job and got started with another side-hustle

After the acquisition and graduation, Chaitanya started his career as a product engineer. But for a hustler, there is always an innate desire to explore & build.

The world of credit card points and miles fascinated him, and he read The Points Guy (TPG), a points-and-miles blog by Brian Kelly. While the blog content was US-specific, the ways to utilize points and miles to travel free had many similarities in India. The money from the YouTube channel gave him leverage to get a credit card, learn the hacks to optimize his spending, and explore his passion for travel during college.

In 2018, he wanted to document his knowledge and experience utilizing points and miles to get free travel. This led to his next side-hustle, a travel optimization blog called the Brownpoints. The content was novel and easy for any beginner to follow, and even with little consistency, Chaitanya was able to attract a niche audience. He wrote on the blog for a year and started an Instagram account in 2019. The content differed from other travel influencers, as his focus was more on sharing his experiences of utilizing different loyalty, points & miles programs to get the best deals.

Chaitanya'squality content helped him establish credibility and trust among a niche audience. An audience that is passionate about travel and has high credit worthiness as they possess some of the most elite credit cards. And as he treated his audience more like a community, he also started to assist a few people in making bookings for their travels. It all began with helping friends and family get the best vacation/honeymoon deals but soon turned big.

And this time, he is making >$3000/month

Chaitanya has traveled to around 36 countries, and he also took 60 flights in 2021, despite COVID. In most of his excursions, he led with his curious self and always spoke to the General Managers of the properties and other people in the travel industry. In one of the conversations with someone running a travel company in the US, he discovered a way to monetize his audience.

So what was this discovery?🤔

The hospitality industry is small and dominated by branded hotel chains. Each of these chains have special rate cards that can only be used by specially authorized affiliates. These rates are cheaper than usual and offer extra perks like free credits or an additional night's stay. For example, a five-star would cost you $100/night, and along with it, you would get $100 credits.

Chaitanya soon reached out to all major hotel chains and the connections he had made so far and got affiliated with them. He would get a 10-30% commission on every booking he makes. The bookings are not made on any portal but via emails. So to minimize efforts and gain better commissions, Chaitanya makes bookings for only significant transactions between $6000-$12000.

His audience is very niche and targeted. Even without any advertisement of his affiliations, he makes an average of $3000 monthly. Out of the 10K followers across Instagram and Twitter, he has been able to monetize over 500 of them. A conversion rate that cannot be seen with large audiences.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

😍Sustaining a side-hustle along with full-time work is challenging. Chaitanya personally struggles with consistency, and to overcome it, he works on side-hustles that are in an area of his passion.

💸Chaitanya did not start any of his side-hustle for money. It was to explore a new dimension of his personality. But because he was having fun and was committed to it, he was able to earn good money out of it.

🤝The biggest upside of the side-hustles for Chaitanya has been the people he has been able to add to his network. From working with brands like Pepsi and influencers like MostlySane to making a connection with top executives of Cred, his side-hustles have led him to meet fascinating people. And this has helped him grow as an individual, learn and constantly push himself to reach new heights.

Did you learn something new about side-income reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more & more people can know of ways to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let me know by writing to [email protected] and we will get chatting!