A side hustle can accelerate your career in unexpected directions. As part of our series demystifying industry jobs, Evoluted SEO executive Joe Dickinson explains his paper printing business for bespoke toilets.
If someone asked me, “What do you do for a living?'' I wouldn't say “toilet paper.'' You will fall down the rabbit hole.
When I was in college, I seriously wanted to start my own business. It was my passion. I tried quite a few ideas, but none of them worked. I always thought that printing and sending personalized toilet paper in the mail would make a really interesting gift, but I didn't understand the printing part. I shelved the idea. But after about four failed businesses, I thought, “Okay, let's do a toilet paper business.''
I brought in an old college buddy who was in engineering. They said it wasn't possible, but I tried building a model. After about a year of trial and error, I had something that mostly worked and could be printed on toilet paper. And I adopted it from there.
I copied and improved the design and now have three. It's more efficient and provides additional capacity. He can only print on one paper grade, ready-made toilet paper.
(When people ask me what I do, I always say I do SEO. I work in marketing at Evoluted. You wouldn't even understand that.)
It is essentially an e-commerce business. My experience as an SEO professional carried over and I used to also use paid media (mainly Facebook ads). At the beginning of COVID-19, when toilet paper was in short supply (hence the funny thing), I sent in toilet paper and had some pretty good celebrities come along with me. It generated a ton of business. He also appeared on ITV's The Voice.
But SEO definitely helps. How to create the perfect URL with the right keywords, and understand title tags, meta descriptions, site structure…I'm currently in the process of creating a new site.
When I joined Evoluted, I had no marketing experience. I just did some trial and error with the Toilet Face site – that was my experience. In the interview, I talked about what I've been doing, what kind of ads I've created, what results I've gotten, and how I've built the site from an SEO perspective. Perhaps that's why they asked me.
The printer is located in Ancoats, Manchester. They are located in an old cotton factory that has been renovated. At some point, they'll probably want to tear it down. I kept watching the luxury apartments coming closer and closer. I'm literally the only one there. I do it at night, usually once a week.
We also accept bulk wholesale orders. Some companies use it for PR and product sales at festivals. It generates a lot of business, sometimes buying up to 5,000 rolls of toilet paper. But generally speaking, people buy them as gifts and order them one at a time. That's a good thing, because otherwise you'd be there every night.
I want to grow it. I don't have time to work on Toilet Face and Evoluted. It must remain a side hustle.
As told by Sam Bradley