How about a quick side hustle idea to make 1000 a week from home?
This idea is easy to put into action and can realistically produce a profit over and above $1000 in a week from home. When you’ve learned to do it the first time, you’ll be able to do it over and over again using different themes.
It’s another one of the amazing ideas inspired by the local community promotional strategies found in The Event Entrepreneur, an informative program that will direct you on how to make $1,000, $5,000 or more using small live & digital events to make money.
Do you like coffee? Well regardless of whether you do or not, millions of people are intensely passionate about their coffee.
In fact, coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world only behind crude oil. That’s a whole lotta java!
Within your own local community, it probably wouldn’t be complicated at all to locate 5 or more coffee shops that serve world’s best coffee. (At least that’s what they’ll tell you.)
These coffee shops could always use more customers and with this side hustle idea, you’re going to be the one to deliver them.
Introducing: The Coffee Shop Crawl Event Plan!
You may have heard of a bar/pub crawl where a group of ambitious bar-hoppers journey the night bouncing from one bar to another guzzling down beer.
A coffee shop crawl is similar except with a more sophisticated approach. First, instead of alcohol, participants will get their buzz from caffeine. And rather than cramming it all in a single night, this event will extend over the course of a week or two.
How To Make 1000 A Week From Home With The Coffee Shop Crawl Event:
1) Get Local Coffee Shops On Board –
Reach out to local coffee shop owners in your area to get them to participate. If at all possible you should stick only with small locally owned, non-franchised coffee shops.
Keeping it local enhances the exclusivity of the event, making it more enticing for both the business owners and local coffee lovers to participate.
Most owners will jump at this opportunity because targets coffee drinkers directly bringing them right into their shop.
It also presents them with the opportunity to dazzle a few of those die-hard franchise coffee lovers over to their local brand.
Another reason business owners will love it is because they don’t have to put up any money out of pocket. Their only investment is to give away free cups of coffee.
And because everyone participating in this event is a self-proclaimed coffee lover, it only makes sense for them to let these highly desirable prospects sample their tasty coffee.
You’ll want to communicate to the owners that it’s in their best interest to give away as many cups of coffee as possible during this event. The more coffee that’s given, the better the chance they’ll win over new customers.
Your profits will be directly influenced by the number of “Crawl Passes” that you can sell. If the coffee shops can each give 100 cups away that’s great, but if you can get 300+ cups it’ll make it easier to make 1000 a week from home!
Value Booster: Want to boost the value of your event? You could invite other local small businesses that have products which compliment coffee.
Bakeries, chocolate/candy shops, breweries, tea shops, and cheese shops could all add a little delightful variety to the event.
If they’re not interested in fully participating, another good idea would be to barter promotion within the event for the donation of free gift baskets or gift certificates that can be used as giveaway prizes.
List Of Benefits To Entice Coffee Shops On Board:
A) Get New Customers –
Every business needs new customers. Your coffee shop crawl is the ultimate advertising vehicle to drive in new customers. There’s no other form of advertising that targets coffee drinkers directly and leads them directly into their doors.
B) Social Engagement –
Coffee shops will experience the full benefits of social media by having crawl participants take pictures of themselves enjoying their fresh coffee. And this engagement will be greatly reinforced by the free giveaway campaign that you’ll soon read about below.
C) Testimonials & Reviews –
90% of shoppers base their decision to use a business on the reviews and testimonials that past customers post. This campaign will generate a flood of feedback from participants. Shop owners can sit back and watch as their online reputation strengthens with positive reviews and testimonies from their customers.
D) Targeted Advertisement –
Owners can reach the perfect prospects during and even after the campaign. You’re going to hit the nail on the head by attracting the right customers and following up with them on the behalf of the coffee shops.
2) Planning & Setting Up Your Event –
Now that you’ve gotten the OK from local coffee shops and complementary partners, it’s time to do a little planning.
A) Rules, Rates, & Rewards –
Make the rules for participation extremely clear and straightforward.
To be included in the coffee shop crawl participants must purchase their “crawl pass” online.
Buying online is crucial because in addition to selling the passes you’ll want to collect the names and email addresses of your participants.
The cost you charge for the “crawl pass” should be at a discount to the participants. No one will want to purchase the pass if they can get a cup of coffee for the same cost they’d receive by visiting the shops without it.
A good pricing strategy would be to charge $1 to $2 for each of the coffee shops included. So if you have 5 coffee shops, you could charge up to $10 (5 X $2.00) for the crawl pass.
Once you’ve decided the cost, you can calculate your potential revenue from the sale of crawl passes.
If the coffee shops all agreed to give away 200 cups of coffee, then you can print 200 crawl passes and sell them for $10 each, giving you a revenue of $2,000!
Want to make more money? You can get more shops to join the event or you can negotiate with your current shops to give away more cups of coffee.
Another technique you can use to improve your ability to make 1000 a week from home is to boost the value of the overall campaign by adding benefits for participants. That way you can charge a higher price for the crawl pass.
Value Booster: To add to the excitement and increase participation, you should offer an irresistible giveaway prize. This is where those free gift baskets and gift certificates you received from partner businesses come into play.
You can also grab an extra 10 cups of coffee from each coffee shop, package them together and give them away as a free month of coffee to one lucky winner!
Hold a competition within the event asking participants to send in a picture showing them drinking their favorite cup of coffee at the shop. With the picture, they are to write a very unique & creative description of why it’s their favorite. The best description will win the free month of coffee!
This pictures and reviews generated from this competition will give the coffee shops great content that they can share with their social media followers. They’ll LOVE IT!
B) Set Your Event Dates –
The event should run for at least a week to give participants time to visit each shop.
Two weeks seems like a reasonable duration providing ample amount of time for participants while not overwhelming the coffee shops with a flood of customers.
Set the event start date 30 – 60 days away allowing yourself enough time to print & sell your crawl passes. Every pass that you sell is revenue to you, so don’t cut yourself short by setting your start date too early.
C) Design & Print Your Promotional Materials –
Unless you decide to use paid adverting to promote your event, the only expense you’ll have throughout this entire campaign is the design and printing of your promotional materials.
Having Your Crawl Passes Printed – Your crawl passes are most important to your event as they will serve as the “Tickets” your participants will use to redeem their coffee.
How you decide to design the crawl passes is totally up to you, however, we’ve found that postcards provide the perfect landscape to display the logos of each coffee shop, print a reminder of the rules and showcase captivating images/headlines.
Glossy postcards are also hard to duplicate, so it helps to eliminate any attempts at counterfeiting. (Yes… they are people who’ll try.)
The crawl pass works as a punch card where each logo is permanently marked as the participant claims their coffee at each of the shops. So it’s vital to have a very distinctive and appealing design.
If you’re not a graphic designer yourself, it’s highly suggested that you use Fiverr to get a professional design on the cheap. Otherwise, you could end up paying $70+ for a design you could’ve gotten for $25 or less.
Fiverr makes it extremely easy to find a very good freelancer who can produce amazing work. If you ask, you may even persuade the freelancer who completes your design to throw in a few smaller images that can be used for promotion on social media.
Having glossy postcards printed will be the largest investment you’ll have, so you’ll want to find a low-cost printing service that can deliver a quality product.
Vistaprint is always a popular choice because their prices are affordable and they always seem to have a special promotion available that you can take advantage of.
A Quick Reminder: You will be mailing the crawl passes directly to participants, be sure to account for shipping expenses on your online order form so the cost doesn’t eat into your profits.
To avoid mishaps and complaints, mail out the passes as soon as the orders come in. Customers like a quick turnaround and how you handle delivery not only effects you, but also the businesses participating. Quick delivery shows you provide exceptional service and will make you look good just in case you decide to do more future events.
D) Promoting Your Coffee Shop Crawl –
Ready to make 1000 a week from home? Put money in your pocket by executing a powerful promotional strategy that will help you sell all of your crawl passes.
Use the techniques below to make your coffee shop crawl the buzz of the community! (How punny is that?)
1) Create A Promotional Page –
You must have an attractive and persuasive promotional page that excites local residents to join in the fun.
Not good at web design… NO PROBLEM! There are online programs that will allow you to put up a professional promotional page in just minutes.
GetResponse is a very low-cost program that offers hundreds of predesigned templates to get you started. They’ll also supply you with a turn-key email management software that automates the whole follow-up process.
That way when someone signs up for your coffee shop crawl, you can have each email message already written and ready to send to your new customer.
Your emails should, of course, thank them for joining and ask them to share the event with friends and family to help build word of mouth marketing.
When building your promotional page on GetResponse, be certain that you add captivating images and headlines to make visitors take immediate action. Again, Fiverr is an excellent source to have your images created for cheap.
A few important messages that you’ll want to include are the free coffee giveaway with rules on how to win, tell them up front that there are ONLY 200 (or whatever amount) passes available, announce the purchasing deadline when you’ll stop selling passes and add the logo of each participating coffee shop.
You can spice it up even more by adding comments from the coffee shop owners or testimonials about how delicious their coffee is.
2) Create A Facebook Page –
As one of the most popular online social networks, it makes sense to design a Facebook page for your event. Your Facebook page can work as your communication hub allowing you to answer any questions followers might have. You can also post your event on Facebook along with the URL link to your promotional page.
3) Submit A Press Release –
Contact local media sources (newspaper & radio) in the area about your event. You can write the press release yourself or have a freelancer from Fiverr to do it for you. Press releases are a great way to get massive local exposure for free!
4) Write An Article –
Have a detailed and interesting article written about the event. Once complete, you can distribute this content piece to local websites and blogs attracting more attention to your event.
5) Post on ULiveUSA.com & Other Local Event Sites –
Get this event posted on as many event websites as possible. Search engines such as Google love to show local events. When people search up what’s happening in their area there’s a great chance your event will be listed for them to stumble across.
6) Social Media –
Share your event with friends and family by making frequent posts about it on your social media networks. In addition, research popular Facebook pages in your community that won’t mind posting your event.
And don’t forget to ask participating coffee shops to post it on their pages as well.
7) Pass Out Event Business Cards –
Sometimes it can pay off to hit the streets! If you can spare to invest just a little more cash, get some business cards made and pass them out in shopping centers or malls.
Your Profits From The Coffee Shop Crawl Can Continue After The Event Has Completed!
Here are a few additional income sources you can use to easily multiply your capability to make 1000 a week from home with this side hustle idea:
1) Create A Local Niche Blog –
If you received a good response to the campaign, build a niche blog that’s all about coffee and other products that compliment it.
Now that you have a relationship with the local coffee shop owners, you can offer them permanent advertising on your blog. Give them an affordable monthly rate to place banner ads, write intriguing articles about their various product offerings, and make short videos highlighting the benefits of doing business with them.
2) Host A LIVE Yearly Event –
Remember all those emails you collected during the competition? Stay in touch and build on it so that you have a foundation of prospects who might be interested in a yearly coffee extravaganza.
This could be a HUGE money maker if you can get more sponsors and vendors to participate.
3) Direct Mail & Email List Marketing –
Throughout your campaign, you captured mailing addresses and email information that can be used to deliver special offers and discounts from local coffee shops.
Use your lists to engage customers with a thoughtful email marketing strategy to keep them visiting local coffee shops.
Charge a small fee to send out blast emails or postcards to these prime customers.
Alternative Event Themes:
Coffee shops aren’t the only businesses that could benefit from this campaign structure. There are many themes that may be used as alternative options.
You might have to make a few minor adjustments to the duration of the event, but here are some other businesses you could approach with this side hustle idea:
Family Restaurants – Best Burger or Chili Challenge
Pizza Restaurants – Pizza Parade
Bakeries –Desserts, Cakes, Pies & Cookies
BBQ Restaurants – Ribs & BBQ Challenge
Chicken Wing Restaurants – Hot Wing Challenge (Pair with football season!)
Smoothie Shops – Smoothie Show Down
There you have it! An easy step-by-step strategy to make 1000 a week from home.
If you’d like to learn more about creating live & digital community events to make money from home, download our eBook The Event Entrepreneur.
