A Retiree in Florida Started This 'Fun' Remote Side Hustle Out of Boredom. Now She Makes Up to $3,000 a Week. When Chanda Torrey retired, she looked around for an enjoyable hobby that might also bring in some income. Now she's offering up her playbook to others.

If you're retired and looking for a remote side hustle — or you're still working, and want to make some extra cash — flexibility is probably a key component of what you're looking for. But also, spare time is too precious to spend your hours doing things you don't enjoy. All of those pieces clicked for Chanda Torrey, who retired in 2019 and now lives with her husband in Palm Beach, Florida. Torrey's side hustle started as a hobby, but it's become quite a profitable business. And she has a blast doing it. "I love that I can work anywhere in the world and I can take off any time I want," she says. "If I want to travel the world for a month, it's no problem."

Torrey was never one to sit around and twiddle her thumbs. Before retiring, she was the Chief Development Officer for the Red Cross, and an executive in the nonprofit space for almost two decades. She worked with the Peace Corps in Belize for over four years, living in a hatched hut in a rural village. So once Torrey stopped working, she needed something to keep her busy. "I was incredibly bored," she says, "so I started a blog of unique gifts for those who have everything." She called it Gifter World. "At first, I did it as a hobby to prevent myself from going crazy," she says. "But now I normally make about $1500 per week with Gifter World, and during the holidays, it goes up to around $3,000 or more per week."

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Many businesses are born from some kind of hardship — and Torrey's was no different. Her burden was that she hated the idea of giving someone a lame present.

"Years ago, I used to hate shopping for other people," she says. "I would go to the mall and be crying on the floor within fifteen minutes because I was so scared I'd buy the wrong gift. One time, I bought gifts for my whole family, wrapped them, put them in my trunk to take them to the Post Office, and then freaked out and never shipped them because I was convinced they would hate them."

But then, one day, Torrey had a revelation. "I realized the secret to shopping for gifts is that most adults can buy what they want or need," she says. "So you shouldn't try to think about what they need. Instead, think outside of the box for something unique they would never think to get themselves, or something they never even heard about."

Of course, unique things you've never heard about aren't easy to come by if you don't know where to look, so that's what Torrey started doing: looking. She scoured the internet for items to delight and surprise. The gifts she recommends run the price gamut, and are categorized in ways that allow you to search based on different characteristics of the person you're buying for: men, women, moms, dads, coworkers, couples, teens, drinkers, book lovers, funny gifts, techie gifts, travel gifts, etc.

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Torrey set out to create a blog to make her recommendations on, but quickly discovered that building a website was a bit like learning a new language.

"Prior to starting Gifter World, I had no idea how to make a website and I wasn't a very techie person at all," she says. "So I spent hours a day watching videos and reading articles trying to learn. As I watched a video, I would stop it after every sentence to Google what they were talking about. It got easier and easier until I could actually comprehend it."

Once Torrey built the Gifter World site, she started exploring options for monetizing her recommendations. "When I first started, I signed up with the Amazon Associates program," she says. "They give you three months to sell three items, and then they officially approve you to feature their items. As soon as I launched my website, I was able to sell about ten items on the first day."

She didn't know much about marketing or SEO back then, so she just shared the blog on social media. "But once I saw that a lot of people were using my website," she says. "I got more serious about learning more. I took some SEO classes on Udemy and watched lots of Youtube videos in order to increase my Google ranking."

Before she writes an article on a given topic — say, "DIY Kit Gifts" — she'll search to see how many articles have already been written about it. "If the first few pages are filled with quality articles from great websites, I'll probably find a different topic."

As Gifter World garnered more and more interest, Torrey began reaching out to more websites to sign up for their affiliate programs. An affiliate program is a partnership where one party recommends a product being sold on another site, and if someone makes a purchase by way of their recommendation, they get a commission for the sale.

Related: Want to Be More Productive at Work? You Need Better Hobbies.

"The great thing about having a website like Gifter World is that I don't have to physically have any products," Torrey says. "I find great items and then refer my readers to other websites to buy them. If you buy something, that website collects the payment, ships the item to the customer, and sends me a small percentage."

She says there are also affiliate marketing programs that allow you to access thousands of websites all at once. "Some of my favorites are Awin, Skimlinks, and Shareasale. Once you apply, you can look through all of the available websites."

If she comes across a product she loves on an independent website, she reaches out to them directly to discuss affiliate opportunities. "I currently have products from well over 300 different websites."

Gifter World's success didn't happen overnight, but Torrey says the time spent learning and educating herself on how to build, market and monetize the website was more than worth it. "My favorite part of my job is that I get to search the internet for fun, unique gifts," she says. "I get so excited when I find something new that I didn't know existed!"