This 32-year-old was making $17/hour—now his side hustle brings in $500,000 a year. His top 5 business lessons

Five years ago, I was living at home with my mom in Rochester, New York and making $17 an hour in a managerial position.

But in 2018, a friend inspired me to move to Philadelphia and start a vending machine business. I used $10,000 of my savings to pay for a snack machine, a beverage machine, two credit card readers, food and drink products, and any delivery fees. 

During my first year, it started as a side hustle that brought in just $5,000. But in 2022, my company, Joyner Vending, hit $500,000 in sales — up from $300,000 in 2021. I now have machines in six states.

Here are the top lessons I learned in my milestone year about building a lucrative side hustle:

One of the smartest things I did was spend $2,000 to update my website. This included changing the layout and investing more in our search engine optimization.

Last year, we saw an uptick in the businesses that were interested in working with us. We heard from roughly five new businesses each month, many of whom weren’t not happy with their current vendor and wanted to replace them.

They met with me and saw that we were serious about what we promised: being flexible and fulfilling their stock as needed, responding to maintenance issues within 24 hours, and including QR codes on the machines so that people could get refunds quickly if they lost money.

In the past, we mostly worked a lot with schools and office buildings. But this year, we started providing services to manufacturing companies. It had a major effect on our bottom line because those companies offer subsidized pricing.

That means the vending machine items are discounted for employees, who each receive a prepaid card with a spending limit. At the end of the month, we deliver a sales report and an invoice, and the location pays us the difference.

Subsidized pricing has guaranteed thousands of dollars in monthly sales.