This is going to be a pretty unique post. After your initial WTH moment, I hope I can at least make you laugh, smile, cry, or maybe all three at once.
As you should know, I am very passionate about FIRE: Financial Independence Retire Early. And within the FIRE or FI communities, we have loads of discussions about side hustles, which are those additional things we do to earn some extra income throughout the year. It might be holding a garage sale to offload those unused household items, house and pet sitting, tutoring, freelancing, power washing driveways, or washing cars. Well...this is where I decided to try something that's probably going to be super shocking to everyone I know.
Because our phones are creepy and watch everything we do, my FaceBook account started showing me articles and short videos of these people that claim to be earning 5K to 10K a by selling...
...wait for it...
...are you ready?...
FEET PICS.
Yep, that's right. Selling feet pictures. (Are you laughing yet?...come on, at least smirk.)
When I read these detailed articles about these people's experiences I was dying. Tears are running down my face and my stomach was sore from laughing so loud because it caught me off guard. And then I said, BS. No way they are earning that much. But then again, what do I know?
That's when "Dr. Gawlik" research mode kicked in. (For those of you that don't know, I have my Ph.D. and I use to be a mathematics professor back in the day. Just a big ole nerd right here who loves data.) I found several public articles and videos to learn more about who is selling pics and who as well as what I should know about the buyers. Then I made a post on the ChooseFI Facebook Group to see if anyone has been doing this as a side hustle in their FI/FIRE journey. Well, that post lit up the Griswold's House at Christmas. From that post, 30-some people reached out to me individually stating they were interested in trying to sell feet pics online and would like a safe space to collaborate; so I created a private group and the research began:
What platform should we use?
What price point should we target?
How do we get buyers?
FeetFinder & InstaFeet
These two platforms became the top contenders in our research. I applied for an account on InstaFeet and was never approved. They appear to have too many sellers and not enough buyers, so they are not accepting more sellers at the time I tried.
FeetFinder was almost instantaneous with account approval. They have different subscription plans and I chose the Lifetime Membership at a flat fee of $40. The platform allows you to upload 1-15 photos in an album, or 1 individual video. You can have unlimited albums in your account. The minimum price you can set for an album is $4, and I don't think there is a maximum. FeetFinder keeps 20% on album sales. There are two additional ways to earn on the platform: 1) buyers can send you Tips and, 2) a referral program. If someone creates an account from your referral link and they have album sales, then you get 10% of their sales.
Show Me the Money!
This is what it's all about, right?
On August 2, 2022, my account was approved.
I created 3 albums using pictures from the past few years:
On August 3rd, one person signed up with my referral code.
On August 6th and 7th, that referral had three $5 sales which I earned $0.50. per sale, or $1.50 total.
On August 9th, another person signed up with my referral code.
Between August 10th and 21st, I added 4 more albums and 1 short video clip.
Also during that timeframe, I messaged and "followed" verified buyers. I started asking a question or two in the messages, thinking that most people will be obliged to reply. Nope, not at all. So then I tried the approach that I get all the time from random strangers on Facebook; the good ole, "hi." Again, absolutely nothing. I was shocked because I was truly prepared to receive a million creepy and gross messages, but nope. Not the case at all in my experience.
I don't yet understand the algorithm on FeetFinder as to how my profile is shown to Buyers. Am I on the bottom of some list? Do they have to sort by keyword only? When you create an album there's a section for you to add SEO words. So I select several based on the dropdown menu provided in hopes I'm picking good categories.
Minimum Withdraw Amount
So here I am with $5.50 that I would like to put towards my $40 investment, but I can't access it. You need a minimum of $30 earnings in your account before you can withdraw the funds. Waaa, waaa, waaaaaa
I'm not giving up though! Time-wise, it's nothing to snap some photos and upload. I've been taking photos of my legs and feet while I've been lounging at pools and beaches in all of the countries I've been traveling to over the past 4 years. Since it's a regular activity in my daily life, and I had already been posting them on my public FB Blog page anyways, why not try and get some money?
What's Next?
I'm convinced this side hustle is all about marketing, and that's my next focus. I don't have a degree in marketing but I've done pretty darn good marketing the business I started 5 years ago, by targeting my audience and focusing on referrals. This is why I chose to publicly write about my experience here. The ChooseFI Group has 96,000 members, and my little public blog page has around 1200 followers. I think there are going to be a lot of curious people reading about this, who will click on my FeetFinder profile to see what it looks like. And let's be real, I'm hoping that curiosity will drum up sales, or maybe I'll get my first "tip." We shall see!
Take a gander at my profile:
And if you're bold enough to try it yourself, please use my referral link:
Articles
As I mentioned earlier, I had started a private FaceBook Group for anyone interested in joining my feet pic selling journey. In the group, people shared articles and info. Here's some:
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