How David Paxton Turned His Love of Golf Bargains into a Lucrative Side Hustle

David Paxton, a passionate golfer, turned his love for the sport into a successful side hustle by launching Daily Golf Steals. The website curates the best daily golf deals, offering golf enthusiasts affordable options for equipment, apparel, shoes, and greens fees. Paxton’s hustle and strategic approach helped Daily Golf Steals earn over $2,000 in its first month alone.

Paxton found inspiration in the world of daily deals and group buying, which took off with sites like Groupon and LivingSocial. He decided to try the daily deals model in the golf niche after discovering the success of HuntingGearDeals.com. Camron Stover, another entrepreneur featured in the Side Hustle Show, gave Paxton the confidence to pursue daily deals in golf and helped him see the potential for steady growth in delivering consistent value to an engaged audience.

To build an audience and gain traction, Paxton leveraged Reddit, particularly the golf group subreddit r/golf, which has over 800,000 members. He took on the role of finding the best golf discounts and steals for the community, earning their trust and establishing Daily Golf Steals as a valuable resource. In addition to Reddit, Paxton also focused on building an email list, using call-to-action prompts in his Reddit posts and running Facebook ads to drive sign-ups. He now has a current email list size of 30,000+ subscribers.

To scale his business and sustain the daily deal model in the long term, Paxton took practical steps to automate and streamline the process. He hired contractors, including students from his college golf team, to handle deal finding and email/post formatting. He also taught himself programming skills to write scripts that analyze product catalog and pricing data, flagging new markdowns and products for his contractors to validate. Paxton built templating tools to automatically format deals for various platforms, saving time on manual copying and pasting.

Daily Golf Steals generates revenue through not only sales on its website but also affiliate commissions and sponsorships. Paxton receives a percentage of purchases made through deal links on the website, with commission rates varying from 1% to 20%. He sells banner/text ads in his email newsletter and on Reddit, featuring brands relevant to the golf community.

Though Daily Golf Steals has experienced success, Paxton acknowledges challenges such as inconsistent revenue and the need for manual work. However, he remains resilient and continuously adjusts his systems to save time and increase affiliate partnerships. Paxton’s key advice for others looking to replicate his side hustle includes choosing a passion, starting in a community with an existing audience, automating tasks whenever possible, and diversifying income streams beyond just affiliate marketing.

Source: He Turned His Love of Bargains Into a Side Hustle That Earns $1000’s a Month