I'm part of a web design and development agency and while we're super busy its good to challenge yourselves every now and then. I wanted to challenge myself so have decided to attempt to create a "side hustle" which will bring on some extra revenue or other benefit.

Ideas

So how do we decide on what the project will be? In the past its been solutions to problems we've had as a design & development agency, what problems we do we have?

Well, none at the moment. We currently use:

• Freedcamp for project/task management
• Xero for invoicing
• GSuite for emails/live chat
• Linode for hosting

Everything is covered.

On a personal level I do have a few domains for when I used to build affiliate web sites, such as stock-checker.co.uk which could be re-used. I've also placed an order for a new EV, so something along those lines may be a good idea.

EV's and the energy crisis

This could be a good one to think about. I recently put down a deposit on a new EV to replace my wife's commute car. We eventually decided to keep my wife's high mileage Vauxhall Astra and instead replace my Hyundai Santa Fe. I could use the Astra for the very little mileage I do and she gets a new EV for her daily commute.

Putting together an Excel spreadsheet we discovered we could save around £130 per month on fuel if we switched to an off-peak tariff with Octopus Energy on their Go tariff (https://octopus.energy*).

Sign up with the above link and both *you and me both get £50 credit on our latest bill.

While researching I also found that if I purchased home batteries I could also store enough electricity during the over night off-peak rate to run the house off during the peak-rate, saving more. Going back to the Excel spreadsheet it worked out at around £220 per month of savings with a ROI on the battery system of a year.

Can we make something of this?

I was thinking of creating an EV based site with calculators to highlight the savings you could achieve moving from an ICE to an EV car. We could build this up with more calculators or other EV related content in the longer term.

Can we monetise it?

Firstly, I could get £50 (the visitor also gets the same) on each referral sent to Octopus Energy for my home energy use but that doesn't benefit my business partner unless he moved to Octopus Energy too. We would need a fair few visitors though to get referrals as not every visitor is going to switch their energy provider.

We could team up with solar/home battery installers to again have a referral scheme. However, during my research as its quite a busy period for solar/home battery installers it been very hard to get suitable quotes.

So I'm not sure is the answer...

As with everything its the idea which is the problem!