Welcome to The Hustle Stack, your weekly hit of smart marketing plays, simple side hustles to grow your income without eating your time, founder hacks, and much more.
No fluff, no filler, just valuable, actionable insights you can skim, save, or stack into wins.
Let’s dive in. 🚀
This Week’s Hustle Stack:
Marketing Play of the Week: Grow with a performance-driven acquisition engine
The $2K+ PM Simple Side Hustle Hack: Part-time Project Manager Side Hustle
This Week’s Hustle News: Solid founder wins
Tool of the Week: Kittl
Time-Saving Hack: The ultimate email outreach sequence
Founder Success Story: Bette Bentley
🎯 Marketing Play of the Week
Grow with a performance-driven acquisition engine
Hack: Leverage affiliate marketing as a performance-driven acquisition engine, not just a “nice to have”.
Why it works right now: According to fresh data, the global affiliate marketing industry is projected at ~$37.3 billion in 2025, with brands earning roughly $12 for every $1 spent.
Action steps:
Choose 1-2 strong affiliate partners (bloggers, micro-influencers, niche review sites).
Build offer-specific landing pages with tracked affiliate links.
Pay on results (CPA, not just impressions).
Optimise mobile traffic: mobile devices now account for over 50% of affiliate traffic.
Bottom‐line: Stop treating affiliate like a side experiment. Make it a structured, tracked channel and you’re playing marketing.
💵 The $2K+ PM Simple Side Hustle Hack
Part-time Project Manager Side Hustle
Here’s a low-maintenance side hustle you can start this week (yes, even if you already have a full-time job): Part-time Project Manager (PM) for micro-agencies.
Why $2K+ is realistic: Many small agencies/specialists struggle to keep projects on time and on scope. You step in, provide structure, run the board, send the updates, manage QA and delivery. Minimal setup, high value.
Your blueprint:
Pick one niche (e.g., SaaS startups, e-commerce creatives).
Create a lean PM kit: board template (Trello, Monday.com), status docs, weekly update email.
Reach out to 5-10 micro-agencies with a one-pager: “I’ll run your next 4-week sprint for $2,000 – scope, timeline, delivery, you focus on the work.”
Offer a 4-week “pilot” at a slight discount to land the first client.
Why it works: You're offering time-saving + structure, two things most small teams lack. And you keep the hustle finite and manageable—fits evenings/weekends.
Tip: Limit yourself to one client first. Deliver killer results. Then scale.
📰 This Week’s Hustle News
Solid founder wins
Here are three developments you should care about:
a) When adversity becomes your launchpad
Bette Bentley, after facing a double mastectomy, turned her kitchen-table side gig into a full-time business, Skimpies — cotton underwear alternatives designed for leggings wearers. In just one month she hit ~$60,000 in sales by leveraging TikTok livestreams and authentic storytelling.
What to steal:
Build around a real pain point (hers: uncomfortable underwear + active wear)
Use authenticity & story (health scare → mission) to engage an audience
Use social/live selling to test and scale quickly
Hustle tip: Don’t wait for #perfectproduct — launch your MVP, tell the honest story, iterate fast.
b) AI’s double-edge sword for side hustlers
A recent article by Business Insider warns that while AI tools have made starting a side hustle easier (lower barrier to entry), they’ve also flooded the market and pushed down what you can charge. Freelancers report needing to produce more for same pay; clients assume AI can handle “good enough”.
What this means:
Entry-level gigs are getting squeezed — you’ll face more competition and lower margins
Your differentiator must shift: quality, niche expertise, or community/trust > generic AI-output
Hustle tip: If you’re doing “me too” stuff (e.g., generic freelancing), find a micro-niche where you’re irreplaceable. Use AI as a tool, but keep the human angle alive.
c) Seasonal side-hustle explosion
Heather Torres, a stay-at-home mum in Dallas, turned Halloween porch-pumpkin displays into a business: over 1,300 clients this year, £187K (~US$250K) revenue in just ~4 months. thescottishsun.co.uk
What you can learn:
Seasonal niches = low competition + high willingness to pay
Offer something visually appealing + shareable (social proof)
You can scale quickly by focusing intense effort during short windows
Hustle tip: Explore micro-season niches in your region or market (e.g., holiday décor, seasonal pet services, summer outdoor installs) — pick one, launch fast, optimise next season.
⚡Tool of the Week
Kittl
Tool: Kittl — a fast, browser-based graphic design platform that lets you create logos, t-shirts, social graphics, packaging, etc.
Why I’m recommending it:
You don’t need heavy design skills.
Great for quickly creating digital assets (ideal for side-hustle merch, print-on-demand, social posts).
Pricing and flexibility make it a solid pick when you’re lean and agile.
Use it now: If you’re launching a quick product, dropshipping theme, or social campaign — pop into Kittl, knock out 3-5 high-quality assets today. Saves you outsource cost/time.
Hack: Clone one design, tweak colours and message, repurpose across Instagram ads, TikTok posts, and email headers. Leverage one asset for multiple channels.
⏳ Time-Saving Hack
The ultimate email outreach sequence
Hack: Use a 5-email outreach sequence and schedule it on autopilot—then forget it (until it works).
Why: The outreach burden kills side hustles. If you can systematise it, you reclaim your time.
Step-by-step:
Write a simple outreach email template (target + pain point + clear ask).
Use a tool like Mailchimp/ActiveCampaign (or even Gmail + extension) to schedule the send.
Set follow-up emails on 3-day cadence (reminder, value add, final nudge).
Once sent, move on. Review responses once/week.
Pro tip: Use a spreadsheet to track who you’ve contacted, what their reaction was, next step. Make the first ten contacts your test batch this week.
Why it works: It turns outreach into a system, not a ritual. Consistency beats inspiration here.
🚀 Founder Success Story
Bette Bentley
Snapshot:
Background: Comedy writer, stay-at-home mum, no manufacturing experience
Trigger: Health crisis (double mastectomy) → reevaluated life & what really mattered
Business: Founded Skimpies (single-use cotton underwear alternatives for leggings wearers)
Results: From kitchen-table side hustle to ~$60K in one month after a viral live-sell push on TikTok. Business now has 8 employees, hiring returning mothers.
Why this matters for you (and your side hustles):
From personal pain to product: She didn’t invent underwear for underwear’s sake — she solved her own problem (and found others had it too).
Authentic storytelling = conversion: The hospital-bed moment, behind the scenes of recovery, the raw honesty — used in marketing to build trust.
Leveraging niche + community: Her audience were active-wear women who hate the underwear-line struggle. By speaking their language and being one of them, she converted fast.
Fast test-and-scale: Instead of waiting a year for perfection, she produced a minimum viable product, launched on social, measured traction, then scaled.
Hire for shared identity: She hired returning mums — someone who knows the pain point and community — aligning team + mission.
Your blueprint:
Identify your problem-you’ve-felt → the better the problem you understand, the better the product fit.
Use the “why now” moment (trigger event) to sharpen messaging (health scare, frustration, life pivot).
Use live selling or direct audience engagement (TikTok, Instagram Lives, livestream drops) to test demand first.
Hire or partner people who share your story and can amplify credibility (often overlooked).
Once you have traction, scale wisely — don’t scale before you nail product-market fit.
👋 That’s a wrap for this week’s Hustle Stack. 👋
Thanks for reading, your time’s valuable, and we aim to make every issue worth it.
Got a hack, tool, or success story we should feature? Hit reply and share it, we love hearing from readers.
See you next week with more sharp plays, side hustles, and founder wins. 🚀
Stay sharp,
The Hustle Stack Team