Subscribe Now For A Free Five Step Tutorial
Get a free five-part email course that shows you how to find, validate, and launch your side hustle idea — no experience required.
What It's About
A diamond algorithm that helps you get the most bling for your buck!
Business Model
Affiliate
Skills Required
Research & Coordination
Complexity
Medium
Profit Potential
Medium
Words of Wisdom
While he says it took them a considerable amount of time to become fluent in web design, Devin says that they wouldn’t have wanted to learn any other way. To him, it also means that if they have a problem, they can fix it themselves instead of paying a third party to help them out.
And he certainly feels it’s been beneficial. As Devin told us, “The best advice I can give is to learn to be self-sufficient. At the very worst you learn new skills, and at best you understand your business far better than you would have without the technical understanding.”
Fun Fact
Next time you worry about your fine lines, think about this: diamonds are literally billions of years old. They’re formed about 100 miles beneath the earth’s surface and slowly pushed up because of volcanic activity. And, depending on the minerals that are present as they are formed, diamonds can be created in a rainbow of colors. Rock on!
Notes from Chris
Episode 706
Devin Jones, a hedge fund manager from Michigan by day, was a secret algorithm enthusiast by night. You might think there would be other things to be enthused about, but for Devin… patterns of numbers were the other love of his life. Besides his now-wife, of course. Luckily he was able to combine two of his favorite things into one stone cold side hustle. Shopping for the perfect diamond ring to propose to his future wife proved to be a big challenge. Some diamonds were outrageously priced. Some were the wrong cut. Others were just not ‘the one and only’ for his one and only. Frustrated, he turned to his daytime business partner to help him out. Two heads are better than one, and they put theirs together to download data on diamond inventory from top online jewelers. Together, they used their trading experience to price each diamond like it was a value stock and figured out how to get the biggest, highest quality diamond within Devin’s budget. They created a model that found the sweet spot between cut, quality, carats, and price to find the perfect stone. According to their diamond algorithm, the diamond that Devin eventually found was underpriced by nearly 30%. After a successful proposal, Devin told his wife about their search, and her first response was “of course you guys built an algorithm for this." As their friends got word of his project and asked for his help in their own search, Devin slowly realized he was onto something. He and his business partner began spending all of their free time teaching themselves how to code, build a website, and aggregate diamond data from online jewelers. They knew that, if they had done it once before, they could do it again to help others find the best cut diamonds and determine which diamonds offered the best “bling for their buck.” They called their shiny new side hustle, StoneAlgo It took a few months for sales to catch on after their official launch in July 2018, but their patience eventually paid off. Something shifted in September, and StoneAlgo saw a significant increase in sales, totaling about $50,000 for that month. In October, they recorded double that. Devin and his partner receive an affiliate fee for the sales, which ends up being substantial because of the cost of the diamond purchase. Users don’t pay anything to use the StoneAlgo site, and the cost of the diamond is the same as it would be at the retailer. The affiliate fee is paid by the online jeweler, and those companies consider it part of their marketing budget. With just a $12 investment in their domain name, Devin and his business partner are now making a monthly profit of over $5,000, based on over $100,000 in diamond sales. With StoneAlgo’s growth continuing to be rock solid, they’re working on adding new features to the site. It began with the small goal of finding the perfect engagement ring, but now they want to change the entire diamond industry for the better. They won’t crack under pressure!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- StoneAlgo: Having a hard time trying to find the perfect rock? Head on over to Devin's website to take advantage of their diamond algorithm!
- Diamond in the Rough: Engagement Ring Hunt Turns Into Hustle: A search for the perfect engagement ring leads a software engineer in Baltimore on a mission to discover the algorithm for the ideal sparkly diamond. Along the way, he creates an affiliate side hustle with major potential
- From London With Love: A Tale of Diamonds and Espionage: From smuggling diamonds in a grocery bag on a fast moving train to secret meetings in the shadows of St. Paul Cathedral at sunset, this Special Agent dedicates her time to helping suitors looking for “yes”
- Writing Duo Makes a Vow To Improve Wedding Speeches: Two freelance writers use their wit with words to write wedding vows for tongue-tied brides, grooms, and sometimes even the best man
Quote of the Day
"We accelerated our growth process by paying a lot of attention to Reddit. Finding a community of first movers who are looking for the type of advice we offer has helped us quickly get the word out and also figure out what aspects of the product need work and what could be added to improve our user experience."
—Devin Jones #SideHustleSchool
