$2,000,000/Year Local Knife Sharpening Empire + User Testing & AI Prompts

Happy Sunday Nerds!

First on the to-do list this week, let's all check through those old Pokemon cards. Found one of these babies? You’ve just made $6,000,000. Check out this story on how one card out of 52.9 billion came to be worth so much (bonus points for guessing which YouTuber is involved).

User testing: Make £500+ per month browsing websites

Let’s start with an easy one, user testing, which has seen explosive growth over the last 10 years. Whether you like it or not, software, websites and apps play an ever increasing role in our every day lives and companies want to pay you to test the latest and greatest.

Simply apply online to one (or all if you’re feeling particularly ambitious) of the major user testing services, answer some simple questions and get matched with companies looking for feedback.

All you’ll need to do is record yourself using their website, app or software and provide feedback on your experience. Literally anyone can do this.

A typical task will pay $10 and takes 10-20 minutes, and while tests are only available at certain times, consistency is the key here and over the course of the month the rewards can really add up. Check out Melanie Akinrode who makes over £500 per month from the comfort of her sofa.

The ‘really simple’ way this woman makes an extra £500 a month

Psst.. here’s some user testing sites to get you started:

• https://www.usertesting.com/

• https://www.userfeel.com/

• https://www.testingtime.com/

Start a knife sharpening business and scale it to $2,000,000+ per year

Let take it up a notch. Have you ever heard of Knife Aid? They make $2,000,000 every year offering one simple service - knife sharpening.

This is a side hustle you can absolutely start small though. We suggest buying a starter kit with some quality sharpening stones and a selection of knives to practice on before diving down the YouTube rabbit hole for a few weeks honing your craft. Reddit also has an excellent guide walking through every single step from dummy to master here.

Once you’re churning out razor sharp edges on a regular basis, begin offering your services to family, friends and neighbours to build out testimonials, credibility and (hopefully) get the ball rolling on referrals and word of mouth.

Check out Grizz and Tana who own To The Point and started out this exact way. In 2016 after a year of #vanlife, they settled down in the small town of Bastrop and started knife sharpening for local businesses, going door to door at restaurants and eventually turning this into a full time side hustle.

This niche doesn’t just stop at knives though. Take Knafs for example, who started in 2018 with a one product business selling a poster covering everything they knew about knives. Fast forward to today and they have built out an extensive, profitable product line with 65,000 website hits every month.

Become a prompt engineer and earn money by telling ChatGPT what to do

Artificial Intelligance applications like ChatGPT and Midjourney are taking over the world, and crafting the right inputs to generate witty blog posts and photorealistic images is a growing business. Welcome to the world of ‘prompt engineers’.

To get started for free, we suggest working your way through the in depth material compiled by learnprompting. Skillshare also has a growing selection of high quality prompt courses from beginner to advanced if you want to invest in additional knowledge for specific niches.

PromptBase is the number one marketplace to capitalise on this trend, only launching in June 2022 and already seeing over 1 million visits per month. Prompts sell for $1.99 to $6.99, you keep 80% from each sale and our analysis of the platform suggests some sellers are already making hundreds of dollars each month.

You don’t have to stop at selling individual prompts though. This side hustle could expand into offering services to businesses seeking AI prompts that craft relevant content and images for their brand, or you could compile your best prompts into a ‘starter pack' and use a service like Gumroad to take payments. Check out Prompt.cafe, who sell a library of 300 prompts for $4.90.

This is just one business model out of hundreds that are sure to emerge as AI develops. Keep an eye on this space…

And that’s it for this week folks…

Or is it?

If you can’t wait until next week, check out this guy who makes $1000 a month breeding snails.