5 Biz Fri #0002: $250k/mo by making Excel cool again

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Welcome to 5 Biz Fri, a new series where we go over 5 micro-businesses that make a lot of money! The goal? Give you an idea of how you can start your next side hustle.

Miss Excel - $250k/mo

What is it?

With 660k Instagram followers and 860k TikTok followers, Miss Excel is an account dedicated to making Microsoft Excel fun and easy to learn. How? By giving 20-40 second Excel tips mixed with viral music and dancing 

Kat Norton started her side hustle during the peak of the pandemic, and after just 6 videos was reached out by an IT company for a paid tutorial. Her courses range between $297-$999 and she has over 16,000 students (you can do the math). The courses range from 90 to even 500 different videos/lessons!

Unlike other content creators, Miss Excel is more focused on driving sales through courses and info products over ad revenue and sponsored posts. She picked this because of people she knew making a lot of money with only 5,000 followers because they are able to drive and convert high-quality customers at a larger price point!

Tips on going viral

Positive energy, reverse engineering what works (i.e playing different "characters" in her skits), and fast-paced content! 

Tools and software used

• iPhone for filming

• Thinkific for selling and listing courses

• Beehiiv newsletter

• WeVideo for video editing

UseGravity - $25k/mo

• React + NodeJS boilerplate templates to help you build your SaaS product faster. Includes logging, user authentication, email, payment, etc

• Priced at $895 for lifetime access and 1 year of Slack support and updates. $195 annual subscription to maintain that access later

Georgia Austin - $35k/mo

• Fiverr Freelancer and ghostwriter helping people with written content (focusing on eCommerce companies). "Drop Servicing" which means she no longer writes but has a team that handles this portion for her

• Ranking high in SEO, keywords, and having over 1,000 5-star reviews on Fiverr helps. But the most important thing is to have friends and family get you your first couple 5-star reviews!

Testimonial - $400k/yr

• Easy way to collect and display testimonials on your website. Created by Damon Chen

• After a few failed past side projects, Damon found a hit with Testimonial when it generated $1k in sales in a few days. 

Rankd SEO - $3.2k/mo

• Directory database of guides related to acquiring backlinks for your website. Saves you hours of time researching this information yourself, including websites that will allow you to guest post!

• Can be built with an Airtable + Softr combination! 

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped you or you found it interesting! If you haven't already, follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn for the stories and insights that don't make it to the newsletter. Also, check me out on Medium for more personal blogs!