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72: All About Being A Tour Guide, with Ed Moser
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Are there places in your local community that you think are fun, intriguing, or interesting for a visitor to discover?
Locals are offering tours to all kinds of their favourite things; from historic sites and museums, to breweries and food outlets, to edible wild plant nature walks.
Ed Moser is leveraging his love of history and politics to run a side hustle business as a tour operator based in Washington DC.
Plus, he’s taken his knowledge and vast storehouse of stories about the area, and has written multiple books providing him a nice compliment to the tours while providing additional income streams.
In this episode you’ll learn,
- the best ways to market a tour,
- pros and cons of the various platforms (AirBnB, Paypal, Eventbrite, MeetUp) from fees to the marketing opportunities,
- potential earnings and workload,
- how he put a positive spin on things when in the early days few people showed up for his tours, and
- how he’s earned a TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award for 2023
What You’ll Hear:
02:21 From an article, to a book, to the guided tours side hustle
05:16 How Ed’s tours are different from the rest
06:21 He cross-promotes his books with his tours
08:29 Marketing through MeetUp
09:09 Eventbrite has been the best to receive bookings and prepayment
10:34 AirBnb Experiences also provides bookings and prepayment
11:59 What Ed charges for tours and his earnings
13:24 You can customize tours for the seasons, specific groups, and create speciality tours
18:45 Earnings will really vary depending on number of hours worked, part-time or full-time
21:45 Using the MeetUp platform and dealing with payment
23:44 A discussion of platform fees - AirBnB, PayPal, Eventbrite
25:09 The silver lining of small groups in the early days
26:22 Pros and cons of using Tripadvisor
27:24 Ed has earned a Tripadvisor Travellers Choice Award for 2023
28:16 The rise of scooters, small vans, e-bikes affecting traditional walking tours
30:29 Tips for ranking well and getting noticed on Tripadvisor
31:31 Tips for starting a tour guide business
33:44 One of Ed’s most memorable moments during a tour
37:02 Ed’s best tip
WrapUp
37:44 Asking customers how they heard of you, how did they find you?
38:14 How did you discover Side Hustle Hero?
Joan's Online Masterclass to help you achieve your side hustle goals:
Turn Your Thoughts Into Wanted Things:
https://courses.joanposivy.com/p/turn-your-thoughts-into-wanted-things
Connect with Ed:
https://www.meetup.com/lafayette-sq-tours-of-scandal-assassination-spies-meetup/
One of Ed's books:
The White House’s Unruly Neighborhood
Connect with Joan:
https://www.instagram.com/joanposivy/
https://www.facebook.com/posivy/
https://www.sidehustlehero.com/about/
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