72: All About Being A Tour Guide, with Ed Moser

Side Hustle Hero

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

https://amzn.to/40nCbpJ

Connect with Joan:

https://www.instagram.com/joanposivy/

https://www.facebook.com/posivy/

https://www.sidehustlehero.com/about/

Be on the show!

https://www.sidehustlehero.com/guests/intake/