Iman Gadzhi's Side Hustle Challenge: What's Inside, Who It's For, and the Free Version

Earlier this month I was offered a program for $1,995. I said no. On Tuesday 22 September, the same team offered me something new for $145. On Wednesday it was $195. On Thursday, $245.

I have not bought either. This is not a verdict on whether the Side Hustle Challenge works. It is what was in the box, who it suited, and the free version of each piece.

Who should buy it, up front: if you can spend $245 without it hurting, and you know you work better with a deadline and a group of people around you, this challenge is probably a good buy for you. If you were already planning to buy Monetise, it is close to free, because every dollar comes back as credit. If that money is rent, or you would rather understand every step yourself, the second half of this page is for you.

Where the offer stands. The Side Hustle Challenge ran from 22 to 25 September 2026 and closed on Friday 25 September at 1 PM Eastern. The page said it would not return: “There is no second window.” This page is a record, not a reason to hurry.

I run Marketing Maniacs, a digital agency in Lahore. Eight years, clients in six countries. I build funnels like this for clients, so I watch the machinery. No affiliate link, nothing to sell.

The Claude answers shown in the video are example runs with a made-up student profile, not my own situation. Yours will differ.

What the Side Hustle Challenge Includes

The Side Hustle Challenge bundled four pieces under the headline “Make Your First $2,000 Online (Without Investing Thousands To Get Started).” Value lines are as Consulting.com’s page printed them.

Read the footer word for word: “Lifetime access applies only to program content and excludes support, consulting, and private communities.”

AskIman AI runs for one year, not for life. Russell’s recordings did not exist yet at the point of sale, and the page said so.

The Monetise Credit and the Scholarship

The Monetise credit means whatever you paid for the Challenge counts toward Monetise later. In the page’s words: “Whatever you pay for the Side Hustle Challenge, you get that amount back as CREDIT towards Monetise.” You can then join “on your own terms. No waiting for a launch.” If you were going to buy Monetise anyway, the Challenge cost nothing extra.

The scholarship goes to 20 people at the end of the 45 days. “It’s not based on whoever makes the most money, but rather whoever has the biggest life transformation,” which the page says could even be a fitness transformation. Winners get “full access to Monetise, permanently, at no cost.”

Why the Price Moved: The Value Ladder

The price moved because the Challenge is the last rung of a ladder. Russell Brunson stated these figures on camera in session four, or the offer pages printed them.

Russell Brunson calls this the value ladder, and he wrote it down years ago in DotCom Secrets. A free thing to meet you. Small offers to build trust. The core offer. And for the people who say no, a smaller step that leads back up.

I am not pointing this out to catch anyone. It is good marketing, openly taught, and Russell invited everyone at the summit to study their funnel. It is the cleanest value ladder example I have seen this year.

What Saying No Looks Like

Saying no to Monetise put me into a sequence of more than twenty emails. These came after the big offer closed, names removed.

The 21 September email had no pitch in it at all. It was about the psychologist Peter Gollwitzer and the gap between deciding to do something and doing it, and it ended: “That’s the whole email.” The next day the Challenge opened, with a start date, a plan and a group. My reading: the email named the problem, and the offer the next day was built to solve it. That is very good sequencing.

My reading of the rest: the feedback email asks the people who did not buy why not. The cheaper offer then answered the two things beginners say stop them: price, and not knowing where to start.

The 23 September email is worth copying. I had opened the checkout and closed it. The follow-up came from a named person on the team, with a WhatsApp number. My reading: a person you can reply to feels like a conversation, and another brand email feels like marketing.

Who It Suits and Who It Doesn’t

Whether the Side Hustle Challenge is worth it depends on which of these people you are.

Buy it if you were going to buy Monetise anyway. Every dollar comes back as credit.

Buy it if you wanted Digital Launchpad. Apple’s App Store lists the app at $269.99 for 12 months (prices vary by country). The Challenge gave lifetime content access plus three other pieces for less.

Buy it if you work better with a group, a start date and something to win. Most people who start alone stop alone.

Skip it if $245 is money you need. Pressure does not make you build faster. It makes you rush.

Skip it if you would rather own the skill than rent the structure. Read on.

The Free Version, Piece by Piece

The free version rebuilds each piece with Claude and one book. The last column names what each one cannot give you.

DotCom Secrets is free plus shipping: $9.95 in the US, $19.95 internationally. Its checkout then offers a $37 and a $97 upgrade. The book about the value ladder has its own value ladder. That is the man doing what he teaches.

The Three Prompts, In Full

All three prompts, in full. Replace everything in square brackets with your real details.

Prompt 1 · Pick your side hustle with FACETS. Consulting.com publishes the FACETS checklist next to their income calculator. Credit to them. If you use Claude, the free toolkit also has this as an installable skill, the FACETS Side Hustle Picker, which adds a payments check for your country and scoring rules for every letter.

I am deciding which side hustle to start. Use the FACETS checklist below and be honest with me, not encouraging.

The FACETS checklist, one yes or no per question, for each idea:
F Face: Can I run it without having to show my face if I wanted to?
A Advantage: Can I start earning without spending years building my own audience?
C Capital: Can I try it without risking much money upfront?
E Expertise: Can I start it now, without having to learn any skills first?
T Time: Can I succeed with it without spending several hours a day on it?
S Scale: Can I increase my income without increasing the hours I work?

About me:
- Country: [your country]
- Hours a week I can give this: [number]
- Money I can risk: [amount, or zero]
- Skills I already have: [list them]
- Things I will not do: [for example: show my face, cold call]

Step 1: Suggest six side hustles that fit my situation, including at least one that uses a skill I already have.
Step 2: Score each one against the six questions in a table, yes or no, with one line of reasoning for every no.
Step 3: Tell me which one you would pick for me, and the first three things I should do this week.
Do not invent income figures. If a number depends on something, say what it depends on.

Prompt 2 · Your own mentor. In Claude, open Projects, create a new project called “My 45 days”, and paste this into its instructions.

You are my business mentor for the next 45 days. You are not a cheerleader.

About me: [paste your "About me" answers and the side hustle you picked]
My goal for the 45 days: [one sentence, for example: my first sale of a digital product]

How to work with me:
1. When I ask what to do, give me one next action I can finish today, not a list of ten.
2. When I bring you a decision, ask me the two questions that matter most before you answer.
3. If my plan has a weak point, say it first and plainly, then help me fix it.
4. Never promise income. If I ask how much I will make, tell me what it depends on.
5. At the start of every chat, ask me what I did since last time.

Prompt 3 · The 45-day plan. Run this inside the same project.

Using everything in this project, build me a 45-day plan to launch [the side hustle I picked] and make my first sale.
Rules:
- One line per day. Each day's task fits inside [your hours per day] hours.
- Week 1: pick and validate. Weeks 2 and 3: build. Weeks 4 to 6: get it in front of people.
- Every Sunday is a review day: what worked, what did not, what changes.
- Mark the three days where most people quit, and tell me what to do on those days.
- Every task gets a time and a place, written as: I will [task] on [day] at [time], at [place].
- Give it to me as a table I can paste into a spreadsheet: Day, Task, When, Where, Done.

Why every line gets a time and a place: that idea is from Iman’s own 21 September email, and from Peter Gollwitzer’s research on “implementation intentions”. People who decide what they will do mostly do not do it; people who decide when and where do it far more often. In one exercise study (Milne, Orbell and Sheeran, British Journal of Health Psychology, 2002), about 91 percent of the group who wrote down when and where exercised at least once a week, against roughly 35 to 38 percent in the other groups.

For the group, post one line a day in public: “Day 1 of 45, here is what I did.” The people watching become your group.

What Each Path Costs

Neither path costs nothing.

$245 is roughly a year of a $20 AI plan. The real trade is structure, a group and a deadline, against owning every step yourself. Both are fair choices.

If You Already Bought It

If you already bought it, here is how I would use the 45 days.

1. Show up every day, even when it is small. They said the scholarship could go to the person who showed up all 45 days. That is the part you control most.
2. Use AskIman for decisions, not writing. Ask what to do next and whether your idea has a hole in it. That is where ten years of someone else’s experience counts.
3. Post your progress in public anyway. It costs nothing and makes quitting harder.

What Do You Offer After No?

The lesson for your own business is one question: what does someone get from you after they say no?

The people who said no to your big offer are the warmest people you have. They came close. After Monetise closed, the ones who said no got a smaller step with a way back up.

For most small businesses, the answer is nothing. That is the gap. For the big offer itself, see my Iman Gadzhi Monetise review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Recommended reading: Is Monetise Worth $1,995? An Agency Owner’s Honest Answer and How to Build a Calculator Lead Magnet Instead of Another PDF