As a "side hustle"?

RMN19

Expert
24
Hello, all. I am interested in learning about sales avenues that would work as a scalable side hustle.

I am 30 with a family and a day-job that pays about $50K/year with benefits. I live in a small town of about 30k people.

I started doing some web design on the side, but I really want to get away from that for a number of reasons.

I started poking around and trying to learn about other side business avenues and I am trying to learn more about insurance sales.

My general question is how feasible this is as a side hustle (though I really hate that term). I find that I have an honest 20-30 hours/week to dedicate to things other than my day-job and family commitments.

1. How "scalable" is this? How few hours can a person dedicate to this and still have it be worth their while?

2. What are the available sales avenues for this? Is it mostly selling to individuals local to (your town)? Or are there sufficient opportunities for telesales/online sales?

3. What are some good resources to learn about "how it works"? I know virtually nothing about selling insurance.

4. How does it work? I understand that to do it as a side business I would need to work with an FMO/IMO (and honestly, I have zero interest in having another boss other than myself). How do people generally get started? Does it really evolve around a bunch of "door-knocking"?

5. What are the typical start-up costs? I know that I need the state course/exam, insurance of my own, and I already have a home office, phone system, etc. that I use for my existing side business.

6. Which type of insurance (lines of authority, I think it's called?) do you think would be best for a person in my situation?
 
Hello, all. I am interested in learning about sales avenues that would work as a scalable side hustle.

I am 30 with a family and a day-job that pays about $50K/year with benefits. I live in a small town of about 30k people.

I started doing some web design on the side, but I really want to get away from that for a number of reasons.

I started poking around and trying to learn about other side business avenues and I am trying to learn more about insurance sales.

My general question is how feasible this is as a side hustle (though I really hate that term). I find that I have an honest 20-30 hours/week to dedicate to things other than my day-job and family commitments.

1. How "scalable" is this? How few hours can a person dedicate to this and still have it be worth their while?

2. What are the available sales avenues for this? Is it mostly selling to individuals local to (your town)? Or are there sufficient opportunities for telesales/online sales?

3. What are some good resources to learn about "how it works"? I know virtually nothing about selling insurance.

4. How does it work? I understand that to do it as a side business I would need to work with an FMO/IMO (and honestly, I have zero interest in having another boss other than myself). How do people generally get started? Does it really evolve around a bunch of "door-knocking"?

5. What are the typical start-up costs? I know that I need the state course/exam, insurance of my own, and I already have a home office, phone system, etc. that I use for my existing side business.

6. Which type of insurance (lines of authority, I think it's called?) do you think would be best for a person in my situation?
First of all...........I wouldn't use the word "hustle" connected with insurance...unless you're talking about being a go-getter. :)
 
First of all...........I wouldn't use the word "hustle" connected with insurance...unless you're talking about being a go-getter. :)

It's just a colloquialism. I think most of us know what we mean when we hear the term "side hustle".
 
You can't "side hustle" insurance.

It's a full time gig.

I disagree.

Here’s the deal, Op.

You can totally start this business as a part-time gig. However, there are two questions you should ask yourself before you even sign up for pre-licensing:

1) What type of market do you want to be in?
2) What are your goals?

Oregon is a great state for Medicare Supplements because of the "Birthday Rule." Basically, in most states, you only have 1 enrollment period where you don't have underwriting (without a special qualifying enrollment.) Oregon, on the other hand, allows seniors with a medigap plan switch plans annually without underwriting. So, they can just switch to a cheaper plan every year. I hate Birthday Rule states out of jealousy.

So, a big thing for you is to cut out all the bs that most agents do and automate as much as possible.

Leads-You're a web developer (previously) you should push content marketing. It takes time, up front, to do it right; but once Google acknowledges your sites existence (blog, Youtube videos) you have a 24 hour 365 website working for you for lead generation.

If you have the money up front, buying leads is great for you, but you're going to be calling a lot. So that's going to be a time suck. Direct Mail is better but much more expensive.

What I do is content marketing. I have a quote engine on my website. They don't have to put in information to get a quote from me for Med Supps. They only have to put in info when they're ready to talk, or they can call me.

Appointments- Do them over the phone. If you're doing content marketing, they should be 75% sold by the time they get to you. They already have trust, they already have a need, they already have an interest in changing, and already have a budget. All you're doing is determining if they qualify, building further rapport, overcoming light objections (which should be minimal if you've done your job right), and completing the app.

Customer Service- You can do a lot of customer service over e-mail/phone. You can touch base with birthday/holiday/policy details with mailed cards or e-mail, and call them once on their birthday and once on an annual review.

The great thing about using the Internet for leads is you can market and sell pretty easily throughout your state. Your readily available market is much larger.

If you're willing to put in the work and are patient (it's going to be 6-8m) before you can really achieve the sustainable results, you can make this a part-time gig.

Just don't try to set the world on fire all at once. You will burn out fast.
 
PS: Don’t let anyone else on this forum tell you what you should do, especially me. Do you.

Also EFF anyone that calls you an order taker. Your job is to educate to the best of your ability and then let people make decisions for themselves. If you don’t feel comfortable with their decision, don’t write them. Otherwise, the commission dollars aren’t any less and I think they spend the same too.
 
I disagree.

Here’s the deal, Op.

You can totally start this business as a part-time gig. However, there are two questions you should ask yourself before you even sign up for pre-licensing:

1) What type of market do you want to be in?
2) What are your goals?

Oregon is a great state for Medicare Supplements because of the "Birthday Rule." Basically, in most states, you only have 1 enrollment period where you don't have underwriting (without a special qualifying enrollment.) Oregon, on the other hand, allows seniors with a medigap plan switch plans annually without underwriting. So, they can just switch to a cheaper plan every year. I hate Birthday Rule states out of jealousy.

So, a big thing for you is to cut out all the bs that most agents do and automate as much as possible.

Leads-You're a web developer (previously) you should push content marketing. It takes time, up front, to do it right; but once Google acknowledges your sites existence (blog, Youtube videos) you have a 24 hour 365 website working for you for lead generation.

If you have the money up front, buying leads is great for you, but you're going to be calling a lot. So that's going to be a time suck. Direct Mail is better but much more expensive.

What I do is content marketing. I have a quote engine on my website. They don't have to put in information to get a quote from me for Med Supps. They only have to put in info when they're ready to talk, or they can call me.

Appointments- Do them over the phone. If you're doing content marketing, they should be 75% sold by the time they get to you. They already have trust, they already have a need, they already have an interest in changing, and already have a budget. All you're doing is determining if they qualify, building further rapport, overcoming light objections (which should be minimal if you've done your job right), and completing the app.

Customer Service- You can do a lot of customer service over e-mail/phone. You can touch base with birthday/holiday/policy details with mailed cards or e-mail, and call them once on their birthday and once on an annual review.

The great thing about using the Internet for leads is you can market and sell pretty easily throughout your state. Your readily available market is much larger.

If you're willing to put in the work and are patient (it's going to be 6-8m) before you can really achieve the sustainable results, you can make this a part-time gig.

Just don't try to set the world on fire all at once. You will burn out fast.

Thanks for the input. What are some good ways to learn about this industry? I know virtually nothing. Heck, I've only ever purchased a few different policies in my own life, having always had my health insurance stuffed down my throat by employers.

Is there a way to do work-from-home call center type stuff? I'm fine making minimum wage, provided I can do it on my own schedule and actually LEARN. Some Google-Fu turned me on to LiveOps, which is like the Uber of call center workers, but I don't know if this is employer-employee relationships or contracting.

I know a lot about content marketing, having put in considerable hours blogging for clients.

Time isn't much of an issue, other than everything has to take backseat to my day-job. I have an Asperger's characteristic that makes unproductive or asinine leisure time difficult for me. "Wasting time" makes me very anxious.

So, is it possible to do this without the stereotypical "cold-knocking"? Can this be a purely inbound-marketing based approach?

As for goals: channel my time and efforts into something that will earn some money, primarily. As stated, sitting around at home not doing anything makes me anxious.

I honestly have no idea what market I want to be in. Truthfully, nothing about selling insurance excites me, other than the problem-solving aspect and the self-determinism.
 
First you’ll need to figure out what kind of license you want to get. Then you somehow need to get trained or receive training.
Figure out your niche and figure out how to get your but in front of people.
 
I'm fine making minimum wage, provided I can do it on my own schedule and actually LEARN. Some Google-Fu turned me on to LiveOps, which is like the Uber of call center workers, but I don't know if this is employer-employee relationships or contracting.
Is there a way to do work-from-home call center type stuff? I'm fine making minimum wage, provided I can do it on my own schedule and actually LEARN. Some Google-Fu turned me on to LiveOps, which is like the Uber of call center workers, but I don't know if this is employer-employee relationships or contracting.
First you’ll need to figure out what kind of license you want to get. Then you somehow need to get trained or receive training.
Figure out your niche and figure out how to get your but in front of people.

Thanks for the input. How does it typically work? Is it feasible to do this solely based on inbound marketing?

I have quite a bit of experience with SEO, having gotten client sites ranked very well while blogging about topics I know absolutely nothing about; notably an SEO campaign for an online boutique selling women's underwear.


Is that feasible for the insurance industry? Being able to forego the "door knocking" and rely solely on inbound marketing?
 
As Chazm said, you have to figure out YOUR interest first. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Once you figure out the interest and goal, it’s easier for us to point you in a direction for training and such.

Inbound marketing is the future of the insurance agent, long term. As you know, starting a website will take time before you see results. Luckily, if your market is soft (most insurance agent markets are, because they’re spending time buying leads, ads, etc) you can rank locally pretty fast.

I started my website two months ago. If you look for Medicare supplements in my area, I rank #1 in the snack pack AND the first organic search. I’m pretty proud of that considering I knew zero about developing websites and SEO.
 
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