Aditya's Newsletter Edition #1

In today’s edition:

• Reality Check: Is money your only goal?

• Ideas and Success Stories: Two side hustles that you can start with low effort and how to do them

• Articles: Content-led product validation, tech blogging, and more

• News: DALL E 3, Microsoft event, and more

• No sponsored or paid content

Reality Check
Is money your only goal?

If your only target is “I want to be a millionaire before I’m 30” - I’m sorry but you’re unlikely to succeed. As per Credit Suisse (2022), only 1.1% of people in the world are millionaires (in US$).

There are two ways of becoming rich:

• Take birth in a wealthy family

• Create your wealth with what you have

If you’re not in the 1.1%, the first one doesn’t apply. So, here we are my friend. You, me, and probably more than 90% of the world’s population - all of us want to be rich. And, most of us will not succeed - mathematically, an insignificant number of us would go on to become millionaires.

I am not a millionaire (yet) but I do know how to make money. It’s by providing value.

So, if your only goal is to become rich, I’m sorry, you’ve already failed.

But, if you’re ready to do something that provides value to others, congratulations, you’re on the right track. You have taken the first step towards financial freedom.

Ideas and Success Stories
2 Side Hustles That You Can Start Immediately

Today, I list two side hustles that are - not unique, easy to learn, have more demand than supply, and have a low to moderate earning potential (in most cases). Just to be clear, these are side hustles, don’t expect them to completely replace your day job.

Side Hustle #1: Niche Content Curation

What

Content creation and content curation are completely different things. A curator is someone who just collects quality content on a particular topic.

This newsletter’s Articles section is an example of content curation.

Why

We are in the era of the creator economy. People are overloaded with content. The average internet user is now heading towards streamlined content exposure. They don’t want to be bombarded with everything they like (or don’t like).

Content curation is a market that can never really be saturated - there will always be clutter that needs to be decluttered.

Success Stories

Eduardo Morales (@pinlord) was one of the first enamel Pinterest pins curators on Instagram. Five years ago(!), he was making $3500 per month from his account! You can read how he did this.

Alex (@AlexAndBooks_) is an avid reader of books. He has more than 300K followers on X, more than 30K newsletter subscribers, an active podcast - all around the same topic - books. He reads and shares book reviews and summaries.

How

There is something you are good at. (Stop demotivating yourself). There really is a field where you have an advantage over others, just think about it. Perhaps:

• You know a lot about car engines - you don’t have dozens of supercars but you really do know what’s genuine and what’s gimmicky

• You are a florist. You can look at an image and tell what’s rare and what’s common.

• You know a couple of local food vloggers who know another 4 who know another 8…

Just curate good content, you don’t need to be a creator every time.

Now, share it, consistently on any platform you like and build an audience. Once you have an audience, you become an authority figure in the field. Once you are an authority, you can start monetizing your services through a blog or a newsletter or eBooks, and so on.

Side Hustle #2: Thumbnail Design

What

You search for something on YouTube. Which video would you click on - A video with a professional-looking thumbnail or a video with just a frame from the video as the thumbnail? Most likely, the first one.

Good-looking thumbnails indicate high-effort videos ultimately leading to more views.

Why

Most YouTubers are not graphic designers. Most YouTubers are also not very rich. They can not afford to get their thumbnails designed by professionals.

This makes the market size huge. 90% of the best-performing YouTube videos have custom thumbnails.

Success Stories

Matt Brighton has made over $10000 dollars by selling YouTube thumbnails on Fiverr.

20-year-old Dill Toma makes $5000-$6000 every month by designing thumbnails.

How

If you’re a complete beginner in graphic design, Canva is your friend. Here is a tutorial.

Want something even easier? Here’s one with Instagram!

Articles
How To Know If Your Product Is Good Enough Even Before You Build It

Aditya Kumar Saroj

In this story, I explore content-led product validation with the Active Knowledge Sharing framework. In content-led validation, content replaces the product MVP as the first step in the development process.

I explain the advantages in detail with step-by-step instructions on how this can be done by solopreneurs and smaller teams.

Read the complete article

A Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Start A Blog For Software Developers

Ankur Tyagi

Looking to start a technical blog? Ankur Tyagi explains each and every step about blogging for software developers. He explains how to write good content consistently, sharing on the right platform, scheduling and more.

Read the complete article

Apple vs Meta: The Illusion of Privacy

A growth.design case study

A deck describing how Meta has been poor with privacy and transparency in the Threads app - Meta’s competitor to X (Twitter). The deck goes on to describe how Apple’s App Store is also responsible for poor privacy standards in such applications.

Read the complete article

News
DALL E 3, Microsoft event, and more

• After secretly working on an image generation tool for months, OpenAI finally announced DALL.E 3. Not only that, come October and DALL.E 3 will be integrated with ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise…read more

• Microsoft has unveiled new Surface computers and shared details on the release of this year’s version of Windows 11, including its embedded Copilot AI assistant, during an event in New York…read more

• PhonePe launched the Indus AppStore Developer Platform on Saturday, promising zero platform fee and no commission on in-app purchases as the Walmart-backed fintech races to win Android developers in Google’s largest market…read more

• Astronomers, using the James Webb Space Telescope, have discovered carbon dioxide on Jupiter's moon Europa…read more

• Scientists have created a power generator that uses atmospheric humidity and polyoxometalates to produce continuous electricity, offering a sustainable way to utilize low-value energy…read more

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