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👋 Welcome to The Ramen Hustle, your weekly newsletter serving up hot, scrappy business ideas, helping you go from zero to side hustle. The only rule? Don’t just read it. Steal it.
In today’s episode:
👨🏾⚕️ Now accepting new patients
📺 The future of running paid ads
💒 The hustle that starts with “I do”
🎤 Words of wisdom from Shakespeare
🎰 Profiting on nostalgia
THE FRESH IDEA
The Ad Doctor will see you now
🩺 As the Ad Doctor, the patients you will be seeing are brands spending thousands per month on paid ads, but aren’t happy with the results. The problem is 👉🏼 social media viewers decide in the first three seconds if they will keep watching or click an ad.
Brands pour money into new footage and big edits when the real problem is the opener. Fix the first few seconds of the ad, also known as the hook, and stats will improve immediately.
The Ad Doctor is a fun marketing play with a simple, tiny service and a big promise. You do a “three-second surgery” and provide your findings with a solution.
Here’s the process: A client lands on a single web form, drop a link to the ad, answers a few questions, and pays at checkout. Within 24 hours, you email them a cleaner hook, a stronger first frame, and simple messaging to A/B test.
Keep pricing simple and cheat. It’s a volume play here. Charge $10-$15 per ad and aim to get 10+ per day.
Deliverables stay light so you can move fast. Add a short note with the new intro, some improved copy to A/B test, one thumbnail idea, and a single CTA change. No deck. No retainer. No back and forth. Upload ready files and a simple (template) email.
📈 This works because it removes friction. These brands do not need a new agency. They need a better opening and a plan to test it.
Learn more about viral hooks here 👇🏽
Start with one niche you know, like beauty or SaaS. Create a simple form website. Join some FB groups and other communities to start getting traction. Find your angle, run ads, gain attention, and bring on your first orders.
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Shoppers are adding to cart for the holidays
Over the next year, Roku predicts that 100% of the streaming audience will see ads. For growth marketers in 2026, CTV will remain an important “safe space” as AI creates widespread disruption in the search and social channels. Plus, easier access to self-serve CTV ad buying tools and targeting options will lead to a surge in locally-targeted streaming campaigns.
Read our guide to find out why growth marketers should make sure CTV is part of their 2026 media mix.
HUSTLE AUTOPSY
Etsy Wedding Hustles
💍 It started with a deadline and a budget. DIY brides made their own signage, invites, robes, and favors because stores felt generic or pricey. After the wedding, they listed a few extras on Etsy and discovered a gold mine hiding in plain sight: thousands of couples searching for custom, affordable, on-trend pieces.
As recent brides, they knew the stress points and the styles that actually photograph well. They solved narrow problems first—boho seating charts, pressed-flower place cards, minimalist suites—then iterated fast. One viral TikTok, a forum shoutout, or a blog feature pushed orders from ten a week to hundreds a month. Reviews, customer photos, and quick replies turned buyers into a referral engine.
Here’s how DIY brides built mini-empires
The $1 Million Wedding Etsy Shop - A couple started their Etsy shop in 2016 after DIY-ing decor for their own wedding. Over several years, they made $1.4 million in revenue. Their business began unintentionally from solving a wedding problem and expanded into a full family business selling wedding and event decor.
Custom Bridal Apparel - A mom of two started testing bridal-themed items with custom last names and retro fonts in 2022—spotting the trend before it hit mainstream. Her niche products exploded, helping her generate over $500,000 in two and a half years (enough to quit her day job).
From Hobby to Full-Time Wedding Stationer - Betty Lu started out selling wedding invitations on Etsy while working full-time, then had a design go viral on Pinterest in 2015. That single product’s success let her quit her job, double down on bohemian-themed designs, and eventually build her own e-commerce brand off Etsy.
The playbook is simple and scalable: Start with one standout product that fills a gap. Offer tasteful variations and easy personalization. Batch production with templates, proofs, and pre-cut materials. Optimize thumbnails and titles for search terms brides actually use. Build bundles to lift order value.
👰🏼♀️ What began as money-saving crafts has become resilient brands. It’s proof that solving your own wedding pain point can become a business that lasts long after “I do.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Platforms giveth, algorithms taketh away.
If you don’t collect emails, your audience can vanish overnight with one tweak, ban, or bug. An email list is the only channel you truly own: portable, permission-based, and resilient.
Make capturing emails effortless. One-tap subscribe in your bio, a simple landing page, a weekly promise. Offer a crisp lead magnet: a one-page playbook, a checklist, a template. Add a PS in every post and video: “Join the list for the next move.” Build the list now, before you need it.
🔻 Overnight algorithm updates have devastatingly impacted audience reach on social media.
NICHE HIGHLIGHT
Connecting Pinballs and Printing Revenue
🕹️ Old-school pinball looks sleepy until you add the internet. Scorbit sells a small “Scorbitron” module that plugs into most machines, pushes live scores to the cloud, and turns bar games into trackable, social competitions with contactless payments and prize play. Operators show up on a map in the Scorbit app, run asynchronous tournaments, and keep players coming back for rematches instead of one-and-done quarters.
Why it’s an underserved niche: bars and arcades already own the cabinets, but very few have data, leaderboards, or cash-prize events. Scorbit gives them a plug-in layer: digital payments, live leaderboards, remote monitoring, and a console for performance insights. That means higher play volume, longer dwell time, and repeat visits—without buying new machines.
What they did well: they built hardware that reads and writes to the game’s memory across eras, launched an open platform that developers and manufacturers can integrate with, and packaged it as a simple operator upgrade. The result is a connected network that feels native to players and low-lift for venues.
🎯 This is all about nostalgia with a monetization engine. Turning “novelty” into a dependable revenue lane. What else could this industry use?
🧃 QUICK SIPS
📚 Must-Read: The hottest new job in AI
📈 Trending Story: The 'Amazonification of Whole Foods'
💬 Founders Story: 52-year-old worked 90-hour weeks in an oil refinery to save money for his business—now he’s worth $9.5 billion
