How Millennials Can Sell Expertise Without Ignoring the Costs

Why Expertise-Based Side Hustles Appeal—and What They Earn When raises feel limited, selling practical knowledge can look like a way to earn more on your own terms. The wage data offers one reason workers may consider it: median pay growth was 3.4% in September for people who stayed with the same employer, compared with 4.7% for those who changed jobs, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. A side hustle is another route to additional income, though it is not a guaranteed replacement for a paycheck. Bankrate found that 31% of millennials had a side hustle in 2025, and 16% of side hustlers hoped to make that income their main source. But aspiration and earnings are different: Bankrate reported that side hustlers most commonly earn $50 or less per month. Expertise-based products—such as templates, memberships or classes—can be sold more than once without repeating every hour of work. That potential makes them appealing, but digital products do not scale automatically. Finding buyers, supporting them and building the business behind each sale still take work and investment. Start With One Offer and Build From Buyer Questions When Cassandra Smith was earning $14.25 an hour as an office assistant, she was asking her new employer for a raise. Instead, she created a roughly $20 bundle of templates that helped handmade crafters size T-shirt artwork without advanced design skills. Smith says it brought in about $1,000 in its first week. Buyers then asked how to make the shirts, so she polled her Facebook community about a $25-a-month craft membership. About 100 people joined when enrollment opened, and she built the program while teaching it. That sequence became what Smith calls a product ladder: start with one solution, then use customer questions to identify what to offer next. Kajabi reports that its average six-figure creator has just 309 paying customers and an email list of about 4,000 people; more than three-quarters of those earners run multiple revenue streams. Those figures point to a model built around serving buyers and expanding offers, not necessarily reaching a huge audience. If you are still earning a salary, Smith recommends testing one offer priced between $20 and $40. The aim is to learn whether someone will pay for a specific solution. Keep in touch with buyers and let their questions guide your next product, rather than building a full course before anyone has paid. Account for the Costs and Work Behind the Sales Cassandra Smith reports more than $21 million in cumulative gross sales from 2020 through January 2026. That figure is revenue coming into the company—not her personal profit. By her estimate, payroll and specialized contractors cost about $52,500 a month. Advertising runs $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the campaign, software costs roughly $10,000, and her annual conference adds around $300,000. Those expenses support more than the products themselves. Smith says the business relies on a team and paid systems, and she teaches live during five-day challenges that bring customers into paid programs. Memberships and automated products could continue earning if she stepped away, but launches would suffer without her live teaching. She once went live almost daily, sometimes for hours; cutting back took a team and systems. That is a different kind of work, not work-free income. Selling a file did not remove Smith from the business—it changed how she spent her time. A digital offer may reach more buyers than one-to-one work, but running it can involve people, advertising, software, events and recurring demands on the founder. Read Income Claims Carefully and Protect Your Expertise Smith reports roughly 800 program participants. For a 2026 awards ceremony, 90 submitted results: one reported seven figures, 10 reported five figures and 79 reported four figures. Those figures describe a self-selected group, not a representative sample. They do not show what the typical student earns, what participants keep after expenses, or how the roughly 700 who did not submit results are doing. Before buying a course or using someone else’s numbers to shape your plans, ask what each figure measures, what time period it covers and what spending helped produce it. Smith’s reported cumulative gross sales, for example, are not the same as personal profit; her business also has substantial payroll, advertising, software and event costs. Protect your expertise as you test an offer. Build from knowledge you own, not your employer’s files or confidential information; reusing company material can create a legal problem. For a first product, Smith recommends one offer priced between $20 and $40 to test whether a stranger will pay for a specific solution. A practical place to look for that solution is the process colleagues already ask you to walk them through.