10 Years Later: Does the “Buy Buttons” Strategy Still Work?

Buy Buttons 10 Years Later

What if the hardest part of your business isn’t building the thing, but finding someone to buy it?

Ten years ago, I wrote a book called Buy Buttons. The premise: instead of building a store or website and hoping somebody finds it, go set up shop where the traffic already is, where buyers are already buying.

The book covered over 300 platforms and marketplaces across niches. A decade later, I wanted to revisit the idea.

Are those platforms tapped out? What new ones have shown up? And does the same principle work offline?

This episode is a tour through the legacy platforms that are still thriving, the newer marketplaces that could be the next big wave, and a few examples of entrepreneurs applying the same strategy in the physical world.

Tune in to Episode 762 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

which “legacy” buy buttons platforms from 2016 are still worth building on today
newer marketplaces like Whatnot, Outschool, and Teachers Pay Teachers that didn’t exist (or weren’t obvious) a decade ago
how to apply the buy buttons strategy offline, from mobile coffee carts to vending machines

Legacy “Buy Buttons” Platforms

Etsy: Still Viable, Especially for Digital Products

Etsy used to mean handmade physical goods, but printables and digital products are where I’m most excited these days.

Cody Berman (Episode 665), who’s been selling printables since 2018, started a brand-new Etsy shop from scratch to prove it wasn’t too saturated, and hit his first $1,000 month in about 4 months.

Cody’s approach is filling existing demand rather than creating it from scratch, using a tool like eRank to check search volume and competition for keywords (color-coded green, yellow, red).

The sweet spot he looks for is decent search volume paired with low competition — what Gold City Ventures calls “unicorns” when you get green-green.

The bigger lesson: niche down. A generic “thank you card” listing faces brutal competition, but a “soccer coach thank you card” or “ballerina instructor thank you card” competes with far fewer sellers and converts better because it matches exactly what the buyer is searching for.

Amazon: Still Powerful, But Build Your Brand First

Amazon FBA private labeling had its heyday around 2016, but fees are higher and competition is fiercer today. The sellers doing best now are building a brand off Amazon first, then layering Amazon on top for its trust, logistics, and reach.

Lou Rice (Episode 589), who sells a Kindle reader strap, drives off-Amazon traffic back to her listings:

Two calls to action: shop on her website, or shop on Amazon
Email and social media to keep organic traffic flowing
Influencer promo codes for US-based Kindle lovers to share with followers

One influencer video hit 2 million+ views on TikTok and 1 million+ on Instagram, helping her reach a six-figure month from free marketing alone.

Beyond FBA, Amazon self-publishing royalties and Audible audiobook sales are still active income streams. The Amazon Influencer program is worth a look too — you upload short product review videos, and if someone buys after watching, you earn a small commission, no SEO or traffic-driving required.

Nate Jackson (Episode 759) averaged 10 videos a day over 10 months (about 3,000 total) and was earning around $20,000/month in commissions at the time we recorded.

Fiverr and Upwork: Still a Proving Ground

Fiverr has gone upmarket since 2016 and isn’t just the $5 marketplace anymore. It’s still a great, mostly free way to test whether there’s demand for your service idea.

Dom and Nicole Draper (Episode 512) landed their first paid voiceover gig on Fiverr, a radio promo for a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony concert, for just $10 (netting $8 after fees).

Their advice: starting on Fiverr helps you gauge whether your voice (or skill) can actually get paid work, even at low rates initially.

Selling digital products on Fiverr has largely gone away as the platform shifted toward services. Both Fiverr and Upwork remain useful just for browsing categories to find validated niche service ideas — if sellers in a category have reviews, there’s demand.

eBay: Still the OG Buy Buttons Marketplace

Borrowing a line from Rob and Melissa at Flea Market Flipper, eBay takes a product from a local buyer pool to a national or international one.

That pool is so big that someone probably wants what you’ve got.

Angie Nelson (Episode 735) runs an e-waste recycling business, taking in old electronics (sometimes for free) and reselling them on eBay.

One of her biggest sales was an obsolete Apple RAID server that sold for $8,000 to a buyer in Amsterdam, made possible by eBay’s global shipping program, which handles the international logistics for sellers.

That single sale funded her business’s first 14-foot truck.

The App Store: Building Apps Just Got Easier

You no longer need to be a developer (or pay one) to launch an app — tools like Claude Code make it possible to build simple apps yourself.

But distribution is still the key to a hit. Steve Young (Episode 743) from App Masters focuses on ASO (App Store Optimization), optimizing app listings for targeted keyword searches.

His strategy: look at what’s already popular and “unbundle” a piece of that feature set.

When Calm ran TV ads about green noise, people started searching for it — so Steve’s team built a green noise app that now ranks number 2 for that keyword and earns around $200–$300/month from that single term. Small ponds, big fish.

New Buy Buttons Platforms Worth Watching

Whatnot

The live shopping platform Whatnot is reaching phenomenon status:

20 million new accounts created last year
$8 billion in 2025 sales (double the previous year)
and buyers averaging 95 minutes a day in the app, up almost 20% year over year

Clinton Benninghoff (Episode 740), a part-time pastor selling in the golf niche, went live with zero followers and still had 65 people show up thanks to Whatnot’s algorithm-driven discovery, which matches buyers to categories they’ve shown interest in.

His margins run lower than his brick-and-mortar shop, but faster inventory turns more than make up for it — he did around $2 million in Whatnot sales last year.

For sourcing inventory via liquidation auctions, check out Episode 731 with Shannon Jean.

Outschool

Amir Nathoo created Outschool, an online class marketplace for school-age kids. It started with coding and STEM, got a toehold in the homeschool market, and took off in 2020.

Because it’s crowdsourced, classes range from Lego building to art to Pokémon to video games.

Devyn Ricks (Episode 499) teaches kids to play video games over Zoom.

When we caught up with her in Episode 611, she’d grown from around $4,000/month to a six-figure business by adding classes and hiring other gamers to teach.

Teachers Pay Teachers

Around since 2006 (a miss on my part for the original book), Teachers Pay Teachers has millions of buyers in the education space, and you don’t have to be a teacher to sell there.

Rob Phelan (Episode 644) built his storefront to around $2,000/month selling personal finance education products for high school teachers.

His advice: niche down hard. He tried math too, but it was too crowded to compete in versus his focused personal finance niche, especially timely given new state graduation requirements pushing personal finance into classrooms.

Poplin

Poplin matches busy people with side hustlers who wash, fold, and return their laundry, usually within 24 hours.

Mona Lisa Escobedo, featured on entrepreneur.com, reportedly earns $8,000 to $11,000/month, paid $1.16 per pound of laundry across 5 to 12 orders a day.

New providers start with fewer, less desirable orders until their rank improves.

Her strategy is clustering pickups in the same area on the same day to save on drive time; she’s on track for an extra $90,000 this year with no outside marketing.

Facebook Marketplace + Sharetown

Facebook Marketplace has quietly become one of the biggest resale platforms around, and free to use.

Sharetown recruits local reps to pick up bulky product return requests (mattresses, furniture, exercise equipment) with no upfront inventory cost, then resell them mostly on Facebook Marketplace.

Reps typically earn $150 to $250 per flip. Matt and Hannah Lee (Episode 687) turned it into a full-time income flipping up to 60 items a month, crediting daily consistency (posting mattresses every single day for 8 years) as their top strategy, since fresh listings get more algorithmic love.

Learn more or apply at sidehustlenation.com/sharetown.

Dress Rental Marketplaces

Peer-to-peer rental sites like The Volte (Australia) and By Rotation (US/UK) let you rent out your own wardrobe.

Summer Fisher (Episode 652) built this into a $150,000/year business, finding success by targeting recent styles (within the last 6 to 18 months) and slightly larger “mid-sizes” rather than competing in the crowded small-size market dominated by younger renters.

A Few More Niche Marketplaces

AuctionNinja: Sue Antinoro (Episode 739) uses Auction Ninja for her estate sales business, clearing up to $5,000 in a weekend.

Loan draw inspections: Lou Shaver (Episode 748) gets work through marketplaces where banks find inspectors, with no outside marketing.

Taking the Buy Buttons Strategy Offline

Not every side hustle fits neatly into an existing online marketplace, but the same principle applies: go where the crowd already is.

Coffee Bike

Vlad Priyadko (Episode 754) runs Coffee Bike, a mobile coffee shop in Vancouver.

His first location, between a subway and bus station, flopped because commuters were too rushed to stop. Moving just two blocks to a spot where people were exiting toward their offices produced 5x the sales.

He then approached ten different office buildings directly, offering scheduled visits (Monday, Wednesday, Friday at set times) that created scarcity and anticipation, eventually leading to invitations for private events.

Those events now make up more than half his revenue, paying up to $275/hour.

Aura Photography

Summer Ray (Episode 707) runs an aura photography business, charging $44/session using proprietary software that turns a short recording into a colorized Polaroid-style print.

She started at local retail pop-ups and farmers markets before pitching larger festivals. Her first festival booth cost $600 plus 20% revenue share; she negotiated to pay the fee out of her earnings since she couldn’t afford it upfront.

That weekend she sold out of film, ran over 100 sessions each day, and cleared about $5,000 after fees, plus landed a wedding booking from a festival contact.

Vending Machines

Mike Hoffman (Episode 599) built a vending machine and micro-market business by cold-approaching senior centers, apartment complexes, and offices with over 100 units or employees, often simply asking the front desk for the property manager.

Many locations already have vending but with outdated machines that don’t take cards or aren’t restocked promptly, an opening for a modern operator.

His advice: focus on revenue per machine rather than total machine count.

He’d rather have one senior center generating $1,000/month than 5 machines spread across low-traffic locations totaling the same.

Mistakes to Avoid

The recurring theme across every guest: don’t try to create demand from scratch.

Whether it’s Etsy printables, App Store listings, or a mobile coffee cart, the winners are the ones who go where buyers already are searching, browsing, or walking by, then niche down enough to stand out inside that existing traffic.

Episode Links

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