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What It's About
When headaches strike, this engineer finds pain relief in the form of a side hustle.
Business Model
Reselling
Skills Required
Research & Coordination
Complexity
Low
Profit Potential
Medium
Words of Wisdom
The one thing Dennis has learned from this whole side hustle experience is that it’s good to have a plan. That means thinking ahead about what’s might be next and working to future-proof yourself against any unforeseen problems.
Fun Fact
Good Look Gamer sells games and accessories for popular card and tabletop games like Magic The Gathering and Warhammer. But don’t be fooled, with millions of players worldwide and tournaments with up to $50,000 prize money they’re anything but child’s play.
Notes from Chris
Episode 684
Dennis Michels grew up playing card and tabletop style games. He found himself interested in the strategy of the games as well as their collectible nature. It was an enjoyable hobby that kept him occupied for hours on end. But, as the game of life rolled its dice, Dennis found himself playing less and less of the games. His enjoyment never waned, he just found it hard to find the time with so many other commitments. It’s not that he lives a bad life. Dennis works as a professional audiovisual engineer at a Dutch university. He’s well paid, likes his colleagues, and he enjoys the work. It’s just that he had a simple plan for his life—and when it was working out, he never thought something might go wrong and throw a kink into things. But as the universe reminds us from time to time, even the best-laid plans go awry. One morning, Dennis woke up with a terrible headache. He put it down to a bad night’s sleep and assumed things would wear off during the day after he took an aspirin. He went to work… and things didn’t wear off. In fact, it got a lot worse. Over the next three days, Dennis' headache got so bad that he had to call in sick. The first of many sick days over the next eight months. He saw doctor after doctor and specialist after specialist but none could tell him what was wrong and why the headaches persisted. He figured he needed to start working on a side hustle. His goal was to build something that would give him a cushion from having to work a full-time job, a sort of financial safety net. After sitting at home and worrying about his job and income for a while, Dennis put two and two together. Why not start an ecommerce store selling the things he loved? He’d call it Good Look Gamer. An online store selling card and tabletop games and accessories. For the launch, Dennis decided to list a few popular games that could be placed on pre-order and hope to sell a few. That way, he could take money from his customers before having to buy the actual game from the distributor. Dennis shared his store online and with luck, a few orders started trickling in. He purchased the games from a distributor on release and shipped them to his happy customers. He used the profit to purchase more games to stock the store with additional products. Since Dennis is a gamer himself, he chose only products he thought looked cool and skipped on the ones he wouldn’t play himself. This approach has worked as slowly but surely more orders started trickling in. Just enough to encourage him to keep going on. So, where exactly is he at financially? Well, Dennis is making at least 500 Euro profit per month. That money is made from roughly 50 to 100 sales per month. He sells everything from deluxe game sets where he might make 30 Euros down to individual playing cards for a euro each. So far, the additional income from Good Look Gamer has given Dennis the confidence to change his working hours from 40 hours per week to 32. Since his online store is still growing, he is already planning a transition down to 24 hours per week.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Good Look Gamer: Looking for some tabletop games of your own? Head on over to Dennis' website!
- Wordpress: Dennis used Wordpress to setup Good Look Gamer, and here you can learn how to install your own Wordpress site in 5 minutes
- College Student Pays Off Loans by Flipping Classic Video Games: Wanting to get out of debt, a college student pays off a $4,000 student loan by buying and reselling classic video games
- Gamer Levels Up Life With eBay Side Hustle: This production supervisor always loved buying video games—but it wasn’t until he stumbled upon some of his favorite games on eBay that he thought about selling them
- Living the Dream: Man Gets Paid to Play Video Games All Day: When he began live streaming his video games for a faraway friend, he had no idea he’d end up building a 30,000 person community and earning up to $3,000 a month
Quote of the Day
"When you get right down to it, a goal without a plan is just a wish."
—Dennis Michels #SideHustleSchool
