A side income from the kitchen table: the shop-window month traders already pay for
The skill has a plain name and very little glamour: holding, for a shop, the thread of what it posts. Hairdressers on Capel Street, a café in Rathmines, a florist off Camden — they know the feed should not go quiet. What they have not got is a still hour to write a caption, pick a photograph and drop the lot onto a calendar. One person, who lets a drafting tool swallow the repetitive first pass, can now hand over a pack that used to need a junior, a designer and a project manager. No hire. No office. A reread, because the first pass on its own looks like a first pass.
How it actually works, without the pitch language
Before anyone talks about a studio or a price list, the scene has to be set. What does a shop buy, in a file they can schedule on a Thursday night? Who can deliver that from a kitchen table in Phibsborough without leaving the day job? What do Irish independents tend to pay, in the ranges that keep coming up when you ask around? Five points, from the wide view down to the one that decides whether this stays a hobby.
The gap shops do not close on their own
A salon two doors from the Luas, a bakery that unlocks at six, a clothes rack run from a spare room after the children are down: the pattern repeats. Everyone has understood that a silent account looks amateur. Almost nobody has, in the week they actually live, the slot to write, crop, and schedule. It is not laziness. It is the till, the deliveries, the queue that will not thin.
So the request, which is unromantic and fairly well paid, is this: someone who arrives with a ten-minute briefing and leaves with a month of posts ready to go. Call it shopfront production, with a drafting tool in the background. It is the independents, not the big brands, who need it most — and who will pay not to do it themselves on a Sunday night after the dinner plates.
I walked a stretch of Camden Street last month and asked three owners the same question. Two said they “should post more”. One had a nephew who used to do it, then went back to Galway. None of them had a person they could text on a Tuesday with a photograph of the day’s tray and get a caption back that sounded like the shop, not like a brochure.
One person, a finish that still looks like a small desk
What moved is not taste. It is the time that used to vanish hunting ten angles, then rewriting the same offer for Instagram, Facebook and a newsletter. The tool throws a first pass. The person keeps the voice, the shop’s own photographs, the things you do not say (no medical claim, no lifted picture, no slagging the place next door) and the final “yes, put it up”.
The result, if you are honest about the reread, is that a freelancer working from Stoneybatter or from a kitchen in Drumcondra can frame, produce and deliver a batch that, five years ago, still needed three people. Without hiring. Without a studio lease. With a cold read the next morning, because a first pass left alone has a shine that regulars notice.
What you actually sell — not “digital”
Shops do not buy a philosophy. They buy a folder they can post from. Three shapes come back again and again, and they are the ones Sill Studio teaches you to make and wrap:
- A shopfront month on 30 days — dates, pillars, captions, pictures — ready to schedule
- A batch of lines and simple visuals, delivered in a lump, for a launch or a season
- A monthly keep-up: the thread held for the same client, with a fifteen-minute check-in
In Dublin that often looks like this: oven on Tuesday, lunch plate on Thursday, the back room on Saturday. Nothing glittering. Just regular. Precisely what the owner cannot hold once the door is open.
Before / after: what the method changes in a week
Without a frame, every new shop resets the clock: you hunt, you scratch, you deliver in a rush on the 30th. With the workflow taught, the structure repeats. Only the content changes — the loaf, the cut, the rack.
| Task | Without a method | With the Sill workflow |
|---|---|---|
| Finding angles | Start again for every shop | Reusable grid, first pass as a support |
| Captions | Blank page, line by line | Draft generated, then corrected in the shop’s voice |
| Adapting per network | Rewritten by hand, often skipped | Stepped down, then read for length and tone |
| The month grid | Done separately, in a panic | Built with the posts, from the briefing |
| Handover | Files scattered, notes in WhatsApp | One folder, dates and rights ticked |
Knowing how to do it, price it, and say it to a shop
Everything above stays a hobby until there is a clear offer: what is in, what is out, a price, a sentence you can say to a trader without trailing off. That is what Sill Studio’s Shopfront Month path teaches — from building the month through to putting it across as a service, not a favour between neighbours.
Plans run from 297€ to 1,797€ depending on how much walk-through you want. Price on the page, no surprise rung, no “we’ll see once coaching starts”. You read the method first. You decide after.
No commitment: you read the programme, you decide afterwards.
Who this is for — and who should walk on
It can fit if…
You already have a job or a practice, and you want a side income you can run from home, with no stock and no unit to rent. You can write English that a shop would put its name to — not prize-winning, just clean. You are willing to talk to traders around you: in Dublin, in Cork, in a market town, anywhere a window still opens in the morning.
Walk on if…
You want automatic income, clients handed over with the course, or a button that “does the drafting for you”. That is not this. There is practice, there are rereads, and there is a first message to send to a real shop. Nobody does that in your place.
A week, once the first shop says yes
This is not a full-time post. It is a rhythm, often parked in the evening or at the weekend, around one or two independents.
A fifteen-minute check-in: this week’s offers, photographs to hand, the sentences you must not use.
First pass of the month, captions, crops. A cold read the next morning, not the same night.
The folder goes over. The owner ticks or annotates. You correct. You do not start again from zero.
Schedule, or send the files. A note for next month while it is still warm.
What a briefing actually sounds like
It is shorter than people think. The shop is not paying you to run a workshop. They are paying you to leave with enough to work. Three things, if you can get them in ten minutes, will carry a month:
The tray, the cut, the rack — and the one thing they are tired of being asked about. A photographer they already have, even if it is the owner’s phone.
Prices they do not want in writing. Claims a solicitor would hate. A rival they will not name. Write those down. They save you a rewrite.
Instagram only, or Instagram plus a Facebook page the niece set up in 2019. One network done well beats three done in a rush.
If the owner has no pictures, you say so. You do not invent a shoot they have not paid for. The studio is explicit about that: a calendar built on photographs you have no right to use is not a calendar. It is a problem waiting for Monday.
From the pavement — not testimonials, just the texture
These are not “success stories” and they are not a promise. They are the kind of sentences you hear if you stand long enough outside a till.
“I know I should put something up. I have the photos on my phone. By nine I cannot look at the screen.”
Owner, café, Rathmines — conversation, August 2026“We paid a lad for three reels. They were grand. Then he disappeared and the page went dead again. I need someone who will still be there in November.”
Salon, north of the canal — conversation, July 2026“Don’t make us sound like a hotel. We sell bread. That’s enough.”
Bakery counter, Dublin 8 — conversation, June 2026In short
- The skill: a shopfront month for a local trader, first pass from a tool, last pass from you.
- The clients: shops that know they should post and never find the hour — in Dublin and anywhere a window still opens.
- What you sell: a 30-day calendar, a batch of captions and pictures, or a monthly keep-up.
- What that pays, on the client side: 30€–50€/h* and 397€ to 1,197€* depending on the job.
- What it costs to learn: 297€ to 1,797€, printed, no hidden rung.
Maeve Dunne
Money & Week columnist at Everyday Balance Hub. She writes from Temple Bar about what everyday services actually cost — and what independents charge — without turning the figures into a promise.
A side income, from home, without leaving the job you have
This page describes a method you can learn at a distance. Read how it is built. Then decide whether the pace and the honesty of the programme suit the week you actually live.
Read the Sill Studio programme →