$1M/Year Asking People How Much Money They Make

Hannah Williams and James Daniels are the couple behind Salary Transparent Street 💰

They started in 2021 by posting TikTok interviews with people on the street, asking how much money they make.

And last year alone the business apparently did $1 million in revenue, mainly from partnerships with companies like Indeed and Capital One 😳

In a recent interview, Hannah reveals how they got started…

I found out that I was underpaid at my job.

In 2021, I started a new job as a senior data analyst and I was making $90,000.

Shortly after starting the job, my only other colleague on my team was let go, and all his responsibilities became my responsibilities… I realized that I was probably underpaid… As I did more market research, I found out that I was underpaid about $20,000 to $25,000, compared to what my peers were making in my market.

When I asked for a raise, I was denied.

🧐 So she went looking for another job, and eventually landed an interview…

I had done all my market research, I knew that I could earn between $100,000 to $120,000. I was going to ask for $105,000, but I didn’t know what the company’s budget was…

I had nothing to lose so I asked, “Would you mind sharing the budget with me?”

She [HR] was like, “Our budget is about $115,000.” I said, “Perfect, that sounds great to me.”

💡 That was a light bulb moment for Hannah…

Even though I felt like I’d done a lot of market research… I was still going to ask for $10,000 less than they were offering. And they weren’t going to tell me that they had saved $10,000 on me—they weren’t going to offer that to me in goodwill.

Then…

I had seen some people doing street interviews, and I was like, it might be a really cool idea to just go ask people on the street how much they make… And so I got my husband to come out with me in Georgetown one day, and we filmed it. It went viral. And the rest is history.

🤑 Monetizing with partnerships works well for them…

Choosing not to sell anything to our audience and making sure everything is free is a very deliberate choice that we made to build trust with our audience. Because as a consumer of content, I hate being sold to.

An early partner video they did for Indeed…

• We went to Indeed HQ and interviewed Indeedians!…

So it’s just more free content posted to their usual channels, but highlighting the brand they’ve partnered with.

Hannah’s career advice at the end of another video 👀…

Say yes to a lot of opportunities that make you uncomfortable. That’s the best way to learn and the best way to figure out what you like to do and what you don’t like to do.

I reckon there’s lots of opportunity to emulate Salary Transparent Street.

The same concept could work well in other countries and languages. Or you could niche down to a specific industry or profession.

The other day I saw a finance app in the UK 🇬🇧 asking people in London how much money they make. Their video has 80k likes, and it’s not even their main thing.

Alternatively, you could try building a niche website showing salary info.

Resources for that 👇

• Joe Davies’ keyword research video + 600 researched keywords to target…
• Ian Nuttall’s US wage statistics dataset

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