Finding a Creative Side Hustle
In New York — or maybe everywhere — there’s practically a law saying that you have to find a creative side hustle.
The woman who owns the dog-walking business in my neighborhood sings in her own cabaret act. I know a financial planner who’s shopping around a script for a romantic comedy she wrote.
I started searching for a side hustle while working as a writer and editor for publications, because the content I dealt with didn’t always naturally interest me.
So I signed up for some sketch-comedy writing courses. It was a lot of fun. But to turn that kind of writing into paying work, you really need to join an improv group and perform yourself, which didn’t appeal to me. Also, I was tired of obliging friends and family to attend the performances.
Next up, I persuaded a local cafe to sell cupcakes that I baked and decorated. It was at the height of the cupcake craze, and I was thrilled people enjoyed, and would pay money for, something I made. But the labor got old fast, especially after I did the math. The microfinance venture was netting $3.30 an hour.
I needed a different side hustle, something to do at home on the couch with my dog lying next to me. Something that would engage me so much that it wouldn’t matter whether or not it paid off monetarily.
In 2016, I had an idea that was totally 1999, but I did it anyway: I started a blog.
It’s about true crime.
I’ve always loved true crime TV. But not sensationalized stuff like Nancy Grace does. And not shows like Cops — it’s painful to watch poor people getting arrested.
I dedicated my blog to my favorite docuseries, Forensic Files. A lot of its episodes center on middle-class or wealthy criminals, and the stories say something about human nature. Numerous otherwise-intelligent people think no one will suspect “respectable” citizens like them just because they took out a million-dollar life insurance policy one week before the insured spouse or business partner died of an “accidental” shooting.
Many of the criminals use the same types of ploys that any law-abiding person who’s musing over (but not actually planning on) committing a felony would consider unassailable. A few classics: wearing the wrong shoe size so footprints don’t implicate you, showing investigators the love letter you wrote to your spouse two days before the suspicious house fire, and “Clumsy me, I accidentally knocked the powered-on TV into her bathwater.”
The producers of Forensic Files made 400 episodes of the original series from 1996 to 2011, and they’re still aired in syndication in 142 countries. I figured I must not be the only one awake at 2 a.m. combing the internet for information on whether the pilot who put his wife in the wood chipper ever got out of jail. Or what happened to Vicky Lyons, who at age 4 was run over by a truck — leaving tire impressions on her face — and lived to tell her tale on the show at age 25. It turns out that she died nine years later.
I started researching and writing long-form blog posts about favorite episodes. I give updates or epilogues for the cast of characters and recap the stories with other details that the show didn’t have room to include.
The blog, ForensicFilesNow.com, got 498 pageviews the first month.
Traffic rose gradually and really took off after about two years, when Paul Dowling, the creator of Forensic Files, discovered the blog and shared a link on his Facebook page.
About a year later, some nice reader posted a link on the Forensic Files subthread on Reddit. One person commented, “There goes my productivity for the week.” Another said, “I was up way past my bedtime the night I discovered that blog.”
Pageviews have increased to 100,000 to 120,000 a month, good numbers for a writer who doesn’t do so well at self-promotion on social media or elsewhere. My two posts on Vicky Lyons are up to about 75,000 views.
In 2019, I found a sponsor. Now the blog pays for itself with enough left over for my cable, phone, and pet insurance bills.
After my employer laid off my entire department in 2020, I used the time to pitch agents on the idea of a book featuring existing blog posts plus added research.
I must say literary agents write the most tactful, kind rejection letters ever. They were so nice I almost felt sorry for making them have to say no.
And they all said no.
Fortunately, a book publisher said yes after I reached out directly. Then an agent came on board to handle the contract negotiations.
The publisher gave me an editor and a copy editor to work with, which was great after doing the blog all by myself for so long. They had me revise the posts to give full narratives so readers who don’t watch Forensic Files can relate to the stories, too. Paul Dowling agreed to write the Foreword.
Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases is coming out on October 15, 2022.
Crime might not pay, but a side hustle in true crime can pay off at least a little.
About the Author
Rebecca Reisner, Allegheny Class of 1985, is originally from Meadville and lives in New York. She’s author of ForensicFilesNow.com and Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases (Prometheus Books, October 15, 2022).