Today’s guest is your friendly neighborhood forklift driver turned e-commerce entrepreneur.

Over the last nearly 10 years, Ben Knegendorf from DropshipBreakthru.com has started, grown, and sold several different online stores. (Check out the free on-demand webinar for more.)

Ben advocates for a model of “high ticket dropshipping,” where he acts as a virtual retail storefront for brands. Those brands or their distributors ship products to his customers without him ever having to touch the inventory.

Tune in to the Side Hustle Show interview to hear how:

• Ben sold his first online store
• he differentiates himself from other sellers
• you can start your own online business in the next 30 days

Full Show Notes: High Ticket Dropshipping: From $40k a year to a $40k payday 

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Can you live for free?

That’s what The Side Hustle Snowball framework tries to answer.

The idea behind this framework is to slowly erase or eliminate monthly expenses — starting with your smallest expenses and working your way up — with new income streams.

Most of the income streams I’ll share in this post are not huge but they are snowball-worthy, and I think you can use them to build momentum toward that ultimate goal of financial independence.

This is the 3rd installment of the series, so check out the previous episodes if you like this format:

• 63: The 8 Income Streams I’m Working on Right Now
• 303: The 15 Income Streams I’m Working on Right Now

(I’m going to follow the snowball framework and roughly go in order from smallest to largest.)

Let’s do it!

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Full Show Notes: The 17  Income Streams I’m Working On Right Now

I’ve got another 20 Questions episode for you today, diving into the ol’ listener mailbag.

As is customary on these episodes, I’ve pulled out questions from the Side Hustle Nation community from over the last few months and will attempt to answer those for your benefit and listening pleasure.

This is the 14th installment of this series so feel free to check out the older ones:

• 498: Profitable Podcasting, Getting Clients, and $50k/mo in Passive Income: 20 Questions with Nick
• 451: Affiliate Marketing, Early Retirement, and Side Hustle Shifts Over 8 Years of Podcasting: 20 Questions with Nick
• 431: Fear of Selling, Protecting Ideas, Podcasting and More
• 412: Side Hustle Ethics, Charging Your Friends, the Side Hustles I’m Most Excited About, and More
• 365: Market Saturation, Mind Mapping, Miracle Mornings, and More
• 346: The Con of the Side Hustle, Beanie Babies, Affiliate Marketing, and More
• 320: Multiplying Money, Morning Routines, and $100k Side Hustles
• 291: Email, Ebooks, Platforms, and Conferences
• 271: Brilliant Blogging, Ruthless Productivity, and Guaranteed Success
• 245: Network Marketing, Imposter Syndrome, My Side Hustle Mistakes, and More
• 219: Growing Traffic, Monetization, List-Building, a Day in the Life, and More
• 198: Blogging, Branding, Book Writing, and Finding the Right Side Hustle for You
• 181: SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Self-Publishing, Udemy, and More

A common piece of advice you’ll hear is to take audience questions and turn them into content, so here’s a meta example of that in action.

We’re talking pricing, podcasting, pre-aged domains, privacy, personal growth, permission to go full time, and lots more.

Enjoy!

Full Show Notes: Pricing, Podcasting, Permission to Quit, and More: 20 Questions with Nick

Today, we’ve got a killer case study for you, where my guest has built his business to almost $300k in revenue — all on the back of local SEO.

Kody Smith from AwwCrap.com started his pet waste removal service as a side hustle, earning $26k his first year. He did $187k after quitting his day job and nearly doubled that last year without any paid ads!

Tune in to the Side Hustle Show interview to hear how:

• Kody found his first customers
• he prices the service
• gets it all done

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Full Show Notes: From Side Hustle to $300k a Year: Building an In-Demand Business with Local SEO

One of my favorite side hustles is buying low and selling high. This is the business model of Amazon, Walmart — pretty much every store in the history of stores. You buy inventory at one price and resell it at a higher price. It works great, but you still have to buy that initial inventory.

What if you wanted to start with super low upfront costs? Turns out, there are lots of ways to get “free” stuff to resell, and I want to walk you through 10 of those methods in today’s show.

Let’s get right to it!

Your Free Bonus: The Best Items to Flip for a Profit

Full Show Notes: Free stuff to flip for a profit

Turn the skills you already have into a new income stream!

Shannon Weinstein is a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) who turned her fractional CFO (Chief Financial Officer)/tax strategy service at KeepWhatYouEarn.com into a full-time income stream — while still working a full-time job.

Tune in to the Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• the low-cost, high-return marketing tactics that Shannon used to start her business
• how she found her first customers
• how she took the leap to turn her side hustle into a full-time job

Free Bonus: 101 Service Business Ideas

Full Show Notes: How I Built a Multi 6-Figure Business While Still Working Full-Time

AI (artificial intelligence) is one of the hottest topics of the year. And today, we’re going to explore some of the actionable ways that you can capitalize on this new technology to either start a new business or grow one that you’ve already got.

To help me talk through these is Matt Wolfe from FutureTools.io and the FutureTools YouTube channel. Matt’s a long-time friend who’s been doing a deep dive on this stuff for the past few months and I’m anxious to get caught up.

Last week, Matt shared some of his advanced affiliate marketing strategies that helped him earn over $900k from ONE affiliate product — if you missed it, be sure to check that one out as well, but that’s where I want to start this list.

Full Show Notes: AI Side Hustles

Affiliate marketing is a great business. You:

• help people make decisions
• point them to the products that will help them
• earn a commission on those referrals

But most affiliate marketers — myself included in a lot of cases — don’t put as much effort as they could into their campaigns. And as a result, we cut ourselves short of the results we could have seen if they just went a little deeper.

Today’s guest is Matt Wolfe from FutureTools.io, and he’s going to break down what that looks like in practice and the specific tactics you can use to earn more commissions and better serve your audience.

Because the difference isn’t a 15% incremental improvement — it may be a 10x gain or more!

Tune in to the Side Hustle Show interview to hear how Matt:

• made almost $1 million dollars from one affiliate product
• promoted his affiliate link
• drives traffic today

Full Show Notes: Advanced Affiliate Marketing

Making a sale? That’s great. But making a recurring sale? That’s even better.

This week’s guest is Ryan Golgosky from 180Sites.com. (Use promo code HUSTLE to get your first month free!)

He took what is typically sold as a one-off service —  web design, in this case — and repackaged it for recurring revenue in a really creative way.

Tune in to the Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Ryan started his side hustle
• why he picked the service business niche
• how he found his first customers

Your Free Bonus: 50+ Web Design Niche Ideas

Full Show Notes: Setting Your Side Hustle Up for Recurring Revenue

Ancient wisdom + modern science to help you live your best life.

In 2021, I sat down with Brian Johnson from HEROIC. He's a serial entrepreneur who has helped thousands of people discover their true passions, purpose, and potential. 

If your New Year goals are starting to wane a little, I guarantee this conversation will kick you back into high gear!

Full show notes

If you’ve been around online business for some time, you’ve likely heard the saying “the money is in the list.”

There’s a reasonable deal of truth to it — the more people you have paying attention to you, the easier it will be to reach their inbox and sell them your products or services or recommend to them relevant affiliate offers.

That’s actually how I connected with today’s guest probably over a decade ago.

Matt McWilliams is a prolific voice in online marketing who has helped some of the most prominent figures in online business dominate their product launches.

His new book is “Passions into Profits,” which you can find at PassionsIntoProfitsBook.com.

Tune in to learn about high-quality strategies to help you grow your email list and ensure that you have a large audience of subscribers eager to hear what you have to say and likely to contribute to your business growth.

Full Show Notes: How to Build Your Email List Fast

As someone who was a pretty good student in school, I always thought about starting a tutoring business. But while I never acted on it, Matt Fuentes did.

In this interview, he breaks down the steps he took to build a $1000 a week tutoring business. He focuses on the ACT, but I believe you can apply these tactics to other tests or other academic subjects — even if you're not a teacher.

Full Show Notes and 101 Service Business Ideas Bonus: How to Start a Tutoring Business

TikTok side hustles promise big money for little effort, but do they really work?

In this week’s episode, we’re looking at the good, the bad, and the ugly of side hustles that are popular on TikTok with Daniella Flores.

Daniella runs ILikeToDabble.com and is a self-proclaimed side hustle queen who has gone from 0 to 12 income streams in 4 years, paying off over $40k of debt in the process.

They now teach thousands of others how to start and grow their own side hustles, get their money right, and live their best life.

We’ve got a long list of TikTok side hustles to run through, so let’s get right into it!

Full Show Notes: Popular TikTok Side Hustles

Follow The Side Hustle Show on TikTok

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How do you start a side hustle?

Well we can talk about side hustle ideas and marketing tactics until we're blue in the face, but in studying my catalog of past interviews, a few common traits popped up over and over again.

I've compiled those into this 7-step guide to starting a side hustle.

Whether you’re an established business owner, or you’re just starting out, I think you’ll find this a helpful framework for your projects. It'll also help you identify where you have the biggest opportunities for improvement this year.

Full show notes: How to Start a Side Hustle

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In this week’s episode, we’re revisiting some of the most inspiring, creative, and popular side hustles on the show from the last 12 months.

If you missed any of these, make sure to go back and add them to your podcast app.

Let’s dive in!

Full Show Notes: The Best Side Hustles of 2022

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This week’s guest is a long-time Side Hustle Show listener who reached out with a unique side hustle: a part-time lead generation website.

Link Moser runs NHFineHomes.com, which features high-end, lakefront real estate listings in New Hampshire.

How it works is prospective buyers find the website, usually through Google, and when they reach out for more information, Link can either work with them himself as a real estate agent or pass along the lead to one of his referral partners in exchange for a percentage of the agent’s commission if and when the lead eventually buys a house.

Tune in to the Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Link started his side hustle
• his lead generation strategies for real estate
• his advice for people looking to replicate his success

Full show notes: How to Start a Local Lead Generation Website

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This week, we’re diving into a really cool business model that scales and has really low overhead: paid newsletters.

Danielle Desir started the Grants For Creators newsletter earlier this year and has already built it up to around $1,300 a month in recurring revenue.

Danielle also hosts The Thought Card Podcast, which is all about affordable, luxury travel and personal finance.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear how:

• Danielle came up with her newsletter idea
• she found her first subscribers
• she sold the premium version of her newsletter

Full show notes: How to Start a Paid Email Newsletter

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For his side hustle, this week’s guest didn’t start from scratch. Instead, he bought a business that was already profitable, then he went out and tripled the revenue in his first year — all while working a full-time job.

Jono Santamaria from Melbourne, Australia is the proud owner of Nina’s Laundrette, a local self-service laundromat.

Jono bought the business a year and a half ago to diversify his investments. When he took over, he implemented several changes to dramatically improve his side hustle.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Jono found and vetted the laundromat
• the quick win actions he took to multiply revenue
• some of the surprises he encountered along the way

Full show notes: I Bought a Laundromat as a Side Hustle and Tripled Revenue

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No matter how you shake it, that first sale is a powerful one. What's the story of your first job-free income?

I asked people to tell me how they first started making money on the side, and got 25 different voicemails!

In this episode, you'll hear first-hand the steps your fellow listeners took to put themselves back in the driver seat of their own financial well-being. 

Full Show Notes: How 25 Side Hustlers Made Their First Job-Free Income

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Want to bring in extra money but don’t know where to start?

Well, you’re in luck. This week, we’re diving into a special Thanksgiving episode on 10 creative side hustle ideas that make real money.

This is the 5th installment of the series, so be sure to check out the previous episodes if you like this format:

1. 10 Creative Side Hustles Part 1 – 2018
2. 10 Creative Side Hustles Part 2 – 2019
3. 10 Creative Side Hustles Part 3 – 2020
4. 10 Creative Side Hustles Part 4 – 2021

Let’s get right to it!

Full Show Notes: 10 Creative Side Hustles That Make Real Money - Part 5

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A side hustle is not only an opportunity to earn extra money but also a key to escaping the 9-to-5 grind.

But launching a side hustle is not easy — just ask the many amazing guests who’ve been on the show!

More often than not, solopreneurs’ business trajectories are a series of trials, errors, pivots, and adjustments.

These are things we can all learn from, which is why we rounded up 14 big ideas from Side Hustle Show guests that really stood out this year.

Whether you’re thinking of starting a side hustle or looking to breathe new life into an existing one, these ideas may just be what you need to give your business the best chance of success.

Full Show Notes: 14 Big Ideas from the Last Year of Side Hustle Show Guests

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This week’s guest began his side hustle with the goal of getting just 10 clients in 90 days. Four years later, he’s now the proud owner of a 7-figure business!

Justin Tan is a Side Hustle Show listener who was inspired by Russ Perry’s story in Episode 248 of how he began Design Pickle.

In 2014, Russ was running a creative agency when he started to hate everything about it. Not wanting to feel like a prisoner of his own creation, he sought out a new business model, one that offered reliable, affordable, and scalable creative work at a flat rate.

Justin took inspiration from that model and applied it to video editing. And so, Video Husky was born.

Justin’s story is one of many examples of what can happen when you combine a demonstrable business model with a novel idea and an untapped market.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear how:

• Justin found his first clients
• he scaled into a full-time business
• he made the ultimate decision to step away

Full Show Notes: Growing a Productized Service from Zero to 7-Figures as a Digital Nomad

Download Your Free Listener Bonus: 101 Service Business Ideas

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This week’s guest booked $100k worth of work in their first 9 months of a new side hustle they had no experience with.

Haley Gallagher and her husband are serial side hustlers and were specifically looking for a side hustle they could do after hours.

Seeing an opportunity at a bar he was working security for, Haley’s husband asked if they could take on the cleaning contract.

That job snowballed into more jobs and as they hired employees and grew their business, MoonlightCommercialCleaning.com, they turned over $170k in revenue in their full first year.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Moonlight Commercial Cleaning found their first customers
• how they price their work and manage a growing team of cleaners
• mistakes they made along the way

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Commercial Cleaning Business

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Your next income stream might be sitting right in your driveway…

This week we’re talking about how to get your piece of a $100 billion market.

It’s the same model practiced by Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, National: renting cars out for a profit.

It’s a business with lots of built-in demand, and new platforms like Turo help put your car or cars in front of that demand and get paid.

Two years ago, Kirtis Murphy of FamilyTalksAuto.co decided to give this a shot on the side.

He started with his personal vehicle, and since then and with the help of a couple of partners has grown it to a 6-figure business that now has 14 cars in its fleet.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how you can get started renting out your car for cash
• how to protect yourself and your vehicle assets
• Kirtis’ tips for setting yourself up for profitability and scaling your operation

Sponsors: 

• EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼  Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!

• Freshbooks.com – Start your 30-day free trial today!

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Rental Car Business

Download Your Free Listener-Only Bonus: 25 Unconventional Things to Rent Out for a Profit

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A common theme on the show: how do you make money online?

In short, you do it by solving other people’s problems.

We’ve got a really fun example of that today with an online business that helps people come up with gift ideas.

The business is Giftlab.co; it’s a 5-year-old website that’s already earned over $1.2M as a part-time project for today’s guest Andrew Fiebert.

You might recognize the name and the voice — Andrew co-hosted Listen Money Matters, a really fun podcast in the personal finance space.

He’s also the co-founder of the popular affiliate link management tool Lasso, which you can find at GetLasso.co.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Andrew creates and monetizes his content
• how he optimizes his older posts to increase CTR and revenue
• his keyword research strategy for finding super-low competition longtail queries

Sponsors: 

• EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼  Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!

• Ladder – Get instantly approved for term life insurance—no doctors, no needles, no paperwork!

Full Show Notes: The $1.2M Part-Time Affiliate Site

Download Your Listener-Only Bonus: 3 Quick Ways to Stop Your Website From Leaking Money

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This week we’re exploring a unique opportunity to turn the world’s largest buyer of goods and services into a customer of yours.

That’s right, we’re talking about selling to the government.

There’s nothing like having a client that can literally print the money. But there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstandings around getting government contracts so I’ve enlisted some expert help to help us learn how to do it the right way.

Retired Lt Col Ricky Howard of DoDContract.com spent years on the purchasing side for the U.S. Department of Defense and now helps small businesses like yours get their foot in the door.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• why there are so many lucrative opportunities with government contracts
• Ricky’s tips and best practices for winning contracts
• how you can also win contracts acting as matchmaker or partnering with other business owners

Sponsors:

• EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼  Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!

• Freshbooks.com – Start your 30-day free trial today!

Full Show Notes: How to Win Government Contracts

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This week you’re going to meet an entrepreneur who recently left her 6-figure job in biotech to become a full-time podcaster and online business owner.

Gill Tietz of SoberPowered.com started the Sober Powered podcast in mid-2020 and has released over 100 episodes on the science of alcohol addiction and other content to help listeners get and stay sober.

In that time she’s also grown her Instagram account to over 43k followers, created a podcast network for other sober-related podcasts, and created several other income streams.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Gill made her podcast stand out from the crowd
• how she’s grown her audience through different platforms
• the different ways she’s monetizing her business

Full Show Notes: Growing an Online Business from Scratch

Download Your Free Bonus: The Podcast Starter Kit

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By the end of this episode, you’ll have at least a dozen new backlinks for your website.

For those who are new to SEO, quality backlinks will help you climb the ranks in Google — which means you’re going to make more money.

To talk through his best link-building quick wins and link-building tactics, I’m joined by Jeremy Poland.

Jeremy is a long-time Side Hustle Show listener, he’s a former Pastor and non-profit worker turned SEO pro, and he’s gone from digital marketing freelancer to agency owner.

Jeremy specializes in helping small businesses leapfrog the competition with easy SEO wins.

The backbone of what Jeremy does is build backlinks, and best of all he does it without needing a huge marketing budget.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• some of the quickest and easiest ways you can pick up backlinks
• why industry-specific links are so important and how to build those
• some of Jeremy’s best “special plays” backlinking tips

Full Show Notes: 5 Easy Ways to Build Backlinks and Outrank the Competition

Don’t have a site of your own yet? Check out my free video series on how to start a website of your own.

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I wish I was half as smart now as I was at 16!

But learning everything you don't know is part of the process.

One thing I love about my work is I feel like I learn new things every day. Sometimes they're small little tweaks and hacks, and other times they're broader strategies or ideas.

I'm incredibly fortunate to have a healthy family and to get to work on stuff I love every day. Each year that goes by makes me more and more aware of that fact.

But the life I have today didn't happen overnight. It's the result of literally decades (well, at least 2) of entrepreneurial education, trial and error, hustle, and if I'm being totally honest, luck.

In any case, here are 40 life lessons I've picked up in my 40 years on this planet.

Full Show Notes: 40 Things I've Learned in My 40 Years

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Nathan Barry went from working at Wendy's to running a software company doing $2.5M in revenue every month.

But there were several steps along the way — and those steps are the topic of today's episode.

In 2019, Nathan penned The Ladders of Wealth Creation to explain why to level up your earning power, you usually need to level up your skills.

In this episode, we cover:

• The 4 Ladders of Wealth Creation
• How you may be able to add new income streams to an existing side hustle or business
• A marketing strategy that's working well for Nathan right now

Full Show Notes: The Ladders of Wealth Creation

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On the side from his day job, Beau Hunter is a professional shoe flipper.

His flipping side hustle has helped his family erase over $100k in debt!

In this episode, Beau explains why shoes are an excellent choice for beginners and how you can find shoes to flip for up to a 10x return.

If you're looking for an extra $500-1000 a month in profit, I'm confident you can go out and find it footwear with the help of Beau's insights.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• why Beau narrowed in on flipping shoes
• where he sources inventory and how he prices his shoes
• how Beau cleans, preps, and lists his shoes for sale

Full Show Notes: Flipping Shoes for Profit

Download Your Free Bonus: The Best Items to Flip for a Profit

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Today we’re giving away a bunch of business ideas, and to help me do it is Steve Chou.

Steve is a serial entrepreneur who runs a 7-figure e-commerce business at BumbleBeeLinens.com, a 7-figure blog and podcast at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, and also a conference in the e-commerce space called Sellers Summit.

It’s been 7-8 years since Steve was last on the podcast back on episode 128, so it was long overdue to get him back on.

In this one, we go back and forth brainstorming some side hustle ideas that we think should exist in the world - or maybe they already do and we’re just not aware of them.

Here are 17 business ideas we came up with that you’re welcome to take for free and run with!

Full Show Notes: 17 Business Ideas Free for the Taking

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In this week’s episode, we’re catching up with the 6-figure houseplant blogger, Raffaele Di Lallo of OhioTropics.com.

You might remember Raffaele from a blog coaching episode we did last year with the help of Matt Giovanisci from Money Lab.

At that time, Raffaele was generating over 300,000 pageviews per month, which translated into around $10k in income, mostly from display ads and a little slice of affiliate commissions as well.

The biggest change since I last spoke to Raffaele is that he’s been able to leave his day job and now works on his blog full-time.

In this episode, we focus on that core of the business and what made that possible: creating SEO-friendly content and monetizing it on autopilot with ads.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• How Raffaele’s business has changed from last year
• His best tips for optimizing content for higher ad RPMs
• How Raffaele has doubled down on what’s driving the most revenue

Full Show Notes: The 6-Figure Houseplant Blogger

My Free Course: How to Start Your Own Blog

Download Your Free Bonus: 20 Hobbies to Monetize w/ an Online Business

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To find out what’s working today across a wide range of industries, I’ve crowdsourced some wisdom from Side Hustle Show listeners.

I asked listeners to share a marketing tactic that’s working well for them this year, and I got back a ton of great responses.

Here are 16 of the best marketing tips that were submitted, many of which you can apply to your business today.

Full Show Notes: 16 Marketing Ideas from Side Hustle Nation

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Today I’ve got an awesome story for you — on the one hand, it’s about matching your interests and skills with a hungry market, but maybe more importantly it’s about documenting your work.

When you do those two things, like Craig Odem has, you start to see some fun results.

I found Craig through the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group; he’s a pastor in Tennessee but as a side hustle he sells plants out of his backyard.

Craig’s backyard nursery does around $10k in sales every year, which is awesome.

But where things get even more interesting is when you factor his Savvy Dirt Farmer YouTube channel.

Craig started his YouTube channel in early 2021. It’s already hit 1 million views and is starting to bring in some pretty significant revenue on its own via multiple revenue streams.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Craig came up with the idea to sell plants
• how he is growing and selling plants
• what he’s done to grow his YouTube channel

Full Show Notes: The Backyard Nursery Side Hustle and the Value of Working in Public

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Rene Delgado started an online high ticket dropshipping store with no ideas and no inventory and went from $0-300k in sales in his first year in business.

It was the search for an extra stream of income that led Rene Delgado to consider e-commerce; selling physical products online.

(GH = Greatest Hits)

Full Show Notes: How to Start an Online Store with No Ideas and No Inventory

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This week’s episode is about self-publishing, which we’ve covered before. But this week’s guests have turned the success of their book into a full-time business that’s still growing in momentum.

In late 2020, Justin and Alexis Black self-published their first book Redefining Normal: How Two Foster Kids Beat The Odds and Discovered Healing, Happiness and Love.

Redefining Normal currently has over 200 reviews on Amazon and has sold more than 9,000 copies in the two years since it was published.

That’s an accomplishment in itself for a title that’s kind of categorized as a memoir, where typically unless you’re already famous, nobody’s buying your memoir.

In addition to book sales, Justin and Alexis are also doing workshops, keynote speeches, and other paid gigs related to the content of their book.

So, in this episode we’re going to dive into everything Justin and Alexis did to set the book up for success, and how you can borrow the same tactics for your own side hustle.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• where the inspiration to write Redefining Normal came from
• how Justin and Alexis build and used a launch team
• how they’ve created several other revenue streams

Full show notes

Starting a pressure washing business may be a great seasonal side hustle opportunity.

These types of blue collar businesses tend to have low startup costs and you may already have the skills and equipment you need to get started.

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Pressure Washing Business

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Megan Champion is a mom of 3, a 15-year elementary education teacher, and in the past year, she’s started a side hustle that has brought in $20,000.

Megan’s side hustle is in the parenting niche and has 3 main parts:

1. An Instagram account to drive awareness
2. A podcast called On The Hard Days to drive connection
3. And a paid membership to drive community — and recurring revenue.

In this episode, you’ll learn how all three of those work and how they work together to build Megan’s business — and how you may be able to apply some of the same strategies to your own business.

The exciting thing here is that the audience numbers that Megan shares aren’t huge, but they’ve still been enough to build a pretty substantial extra income stream and help a lot of people at the same time.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how and why Megan had the idea to start a podcast and paid membership
• the ways she has leveraged a small but dedicated social media audience
• how Megan validated her membership idea and launched it

Full Show Notes: How to Make Money with a Small Podcast

Ready to Grow Your Show? Get a Special Discount on my Podcast Growth Playbook Course

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When it comes to sharing your side hustle with your boss, is honesty always the best policy?

In this post, we’ll explore whether or not you should clue your boss in about your side hustle(s).

Full Show Notes: Should You Tell Your Boss About Your Side Hustle?

Get Your Personalized Side Hustle Show Playlist

This week’s guest started his side hustle with the goal of earning an extra $1,000 a month. Four summers later and it’s now a 6-figure business.

Blademir Hernandez of LitterFreeLots.nyc is a long-time listener of the Side Hustle Show who was inspired by Brian Winch’s story in episode 266 to start his business.

Additional Resource: CleanLots

Brian built a $650k a year operation picking up litter and cleaning parking lots, something Blademir told me he knew he could also do.

Blademir ended up reaching out to Brian and running the idea past him, before going out and finding property managers in this area to pitch his litter picking service to.

This story is a perfect example of what can happen when you take inspiration from a proven business model and execute your own game plan.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• more on where Blademir got the inspiration to start his litter pick-up business
• how he found his first customers by driving around his neighborhood
• how Blademir has scaled his business by hiring contractors to carry out the work

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Parking Lot Cleanup Business

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The most popular side hustles aren't necessarily the best fit for you. In this episode I'm breaking down the pros and cons of 5 common side hustles — and what you might consider doing instead.

Full Show Notes: 5 Popular Side Hustles (and what to do instead)

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With her hours cut due to the pandemic and a new house to pay for, this week’s guest set out an action plan to make 6-figures in 2021.

To achieve that, Heather Johnson of HeatherXStudio.com decided to start an Etsy store selling print-on-demand goods like t-shirts, mugs, and other apparel and items.

Fast forward two years and Heather is now a former MRI tech who’s taken her print-on-demand side hustle full-time and is averaging $15k a month in revenue and $4-5k in monthly profit.

How’d she do it?

By following the trends with her own unique spin, putting 100s of products up for sale, and implementing some savvy marketing strategies you can apply in your own business.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• why and how Heather created a “high-volume listing store”
• how she evaluates competition and finds new creative ideas
• heather’s best practices for maximum organic exposure on Etsy

Full Show Notes: Building a Print on Demand Business on Etsy

Download Your Free Bonus: 100 Print on Demand Niches

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Matt makes $200+ a month sharing his writing on Medium.com. It's a hobby he genuinely enjoys doing anyway, so the revenue it brings in is a bonus!

Here's how to get started making money on Medium.

Links and resources:

• Matt on Medium 
• Matt's site
• Episode 510: The 6-Figure Bird Blog

We're halfway through the year, and 2022 is flying by!

In these quarterly Progress Reports, I break down how the business grew (or shrunk), what I worked on, and other happenings from the last three months.

I worked more hours the first half of 2022 than I did in 2021, and (not surprisingly) I feel like I'm getting more done as a result. I'm still struggling to come to terms with a to-do list that's never going to be done, but do feel like I'm making progress on building a business that serves me and serves others.

Full show notes

“You have a skill, but you’re not using it correctly.”

That the tough love advice Vincent Pugliese’s father gave him.

Vincent was working what he thought was his dream job as a photojournalist. He’d just won the most prestigious award in his industry (International Sports Photographer of the Year), and he and his wife Elizabeth had a baby on the way.

Yet the newspaper job didn’t pay well. With the impending arrival of their son, Vincent took a hard look at his financial picture: he was in his mid-30s, 6-figures in debt, and earning $15 an hour.

Not great.

Something had to change, and something did.

Full show notes

This week’s guest took a pain point she was experiencing - finding a nanny for her 3-month-old - and turned it into a multi 6-figure full-time business with 500 nannies across 5 states.

Kristy Bickmeyer started TwinkleToesNanny.com back in 2011 in response to not being able to find a nanny herself.

At least not without going through the “traditional” agency model of paying $1,500-3,000 upfront and with few guarantees it will work out long-term.

Kristy decided to start her own agency without the upfront fees, and with a more streamlined approach and robust guarantees for parents - and it’s snowballed from there.

I love this strategy of taking a fragmented, localized industry and adding a layer of branding and professionalism to it.

This is what 1-800-Got-Junk did in junk removal, and is what Belay Solutions has done in the executive assistant space.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Kristy found her first customers
• how she’s scaled into a full-time business with locations in multiple states
• the mistakes and challenges she faced along the way

Full show notes

Play matchmaker between pallet buyers and sellers to flip pallets for profit. Varnie started his pallet flipping business in 2020, and has already scaled it to $1000 a day (and beyond).

He credits another Side Hustle Show guest — John Wilker from episode 274— and his Simplest Biz course with helping him get started.

To check out that episode here.

“Nothing puts a smile on a consumer's face quicker than a good peach.”

This week’s guest is Shannon Houchin of RoadsideRepublic.com, and she’s passionate about peaches, fresh produce, and delivering an awesome customer experience.

Shannon actually reached out to me and said, Nick, you’ve got episodes on flipping books and mattresses, clearance products, domain names, flea market finds, and a ton of other stuff - but have I got a side hustle for you: I flip peaches.

So, of course, I had to call her up to learn more.

Turns out Shannon has been doing this for 10 years and has scaled up to operating up to 100 roadside stands at once.

Whether you’re looking for a way to make extra money on the weekend, or to scale to something larger, Shannon has a compelling story for starting a roadside produce stand.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how to find suppliers and price your produce
• the best places to set up your stand
• some of the common mistakes to avoid

Full show notes

Escaping the rat race is simple, but not always easy.

In this episode, I break down the 3 most common ways out of the rat race, and the pros and cons of each.

(This was originally recorded for YouTube, which explains the faster-than-normal pacing and some video sound effects.)

Full show notes

What if I was to tell you that your voice has value both figuratively, and maybe even literally.

To prove this point, I’m joined on the show this week by a side hustling couple who have turned their voices into an income stream worth thousands of dollars a month.

Dom and Nicole Draper from TheVoiceoverCouple.com are multi-award winning voice over artists - they get paid to talk.

As professional voice over artists, they’ve done all kinds of interesting jobs and worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, including Nike, Netflix, and Adobe.

In this episode they share how they went from hustling on Fiverr outside of their 9-5, to working with voice over agents and agencies and turning this into a full-time business.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Dom and Nicole got their first gigs
• how they scaled up their business and raised their prices
• the broader tactics you can apply to your own side hustle

Full show notes

Creating the right retirement plan for your business income can save you thousands of dollars in taxes. But between LLCs, IRAs, SEP IRAs, Solo 401(k)s, and more, it's a confusing acronym jungle out there.

To help cut through the clutter, Matt Ruttenberg stopped by and schools us on how to choose the right plan for you and the key differences between them.

Important Links:

• Matt's site - Retirement plans for solopreneurs 
• Retirement plan evaluator tool 
• Matt on LinkedIn
• Matt on TikTok 

This week’s guest, Scott Keller, left his high-paying but not super satisfying career in insurance to run a bird blog full-time.

Scott started BirdWatchingHQ.com as a side hustle back in 2016 and has since turned it into a full-time income with half a million monthly pageviews and more than 1 million monthly YouTube views.

But like all businesses, it’s been an evolution to get to that point.

Scott started out chasing high-ticket affiliate commissions but pivoted into creating one of the best bird watching resources online with multiple revenue streams.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• what’s driving traffic for Scott today
• the creative ways Scott has grown his email list to over 50,000 subs
• how you can borrow some of the same tactics for your business

Full show notes

Do you love weddings? Professional wedding officiants can make $100s an hour and usually do it as a side hustle.

In this episode, you'll meet Maria Romano, who's officiated more than 4000 weddings in her career. She shares what you need to get started, how to get your first customers, and more.

Full show notes

Quizzes can help you:

• Grow your email list
• Serve your audience better
• Make more money

We’ve been talking a bit about the power of quiz funnels over the last few months, and so I thought, why not call up the guy who’s famous for implementing these things and helping others do it as well?

Ryan Levesque is the bestselling author of Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level, and CEO of The Ask Method Company.

Using the exact methods we’re talking about today he’s built a highly-profitable 8-figure/year business across 23 different niche markets, amassing an email list of over 4 million people along the way.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• what exactly quiz funnels are and why they are so effective
• how you can get started building your own quiz funnels
• how to drive lots of targeted traffic to your funnel for next to no cost

Next Steps: Register for the upcoming live quiz funnel training (use code SIDEHUSTLE to make the $100 registration free!)

Full show notes

If you had 2 years to earn $1 million, what would you do? In this episode Chad Carson from the Real Estate and Financial Independence Podcast breaks down his strategy.

(And I share mine at the end.)

Links and Resources:

• CoachCarson.com
• 222: 5 Ways to Get Started in Real Estate Investing on the Cheap
• 460: Side Hustle Showdown: Investing in Real Estate vs. Buying a Small Business

From serious health issues and being $500,000 in debt to earning 7-figures a year in ad revenue.

That’s the short story of this week’s guest on the show, Brandon Gaille of  BrandonGaille.com.

Brandon has been around online business since the 90s, he’s made a ton of money, battled some really scary health issues, and today is one of the top bloggers in the world earning a collective 6 million visits a month across his three sites.

Brandon is also the founder of RankIQ.com, an AI-powered SEO tool that helps bloggers find keywords and outline their articles, and The Blogging Millionaire Podcast.

In this episode, Brandon goes into detail explaining how new bloggers can choose a niche to enter, how he finds low competition keywords, the best ways to monetize a blog, and much more.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• Brandon’s best-proven processes for getting more traffic to your site
• how Brandon evaluates if a niche is worth entering
• how to use your blog to create a funnel and sell your own digital products

Full show notes 

Find an expensive problem, and solve it. 

Jonathan Stark is a pro at finding these expensive problems, and walks us through idea generation and validation, pricing, and growth strategies.

Full show notes

“If you’re bored walking up the hill, try running up it.”

That was what this week’s guest William Wadsworth of ExamStudyExpert.com told me when I asked him about how he got his side hustle off the ground.

Four years ago, William was working full-time in a corporate job, but he wanted to build his own dream, not someone else’s.

Finding it difficult to balance a full-time job and his side hustle, William left his job and took on some part-time tutoring so he could spend more time on his business.

Today, William earns thousands of dollars a month doing what he loves - writing, podcasting, and coaching people about memory psychology, learning science, and how to study smarter.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• why William decided to leave his job and go all-in on his business
• how he’s gone from doing one-on-one tutoring to having multiple income streams
• how he’s grown his blog, podcast, and coaching clientele

Full show notes

Top podcasts make thousands of dollars an episode, but sponsorships are only one way to ring the cash register. In this episode, I'm breaking down the different ways you can monetize a podcast, including some that don't require any listeners at all.

Full show notes

There has never been a better time to build an online business around a topic you care about.

This week’s guests on The Side Hustle Show are proof of that.

Garret Kruger and Sabrina Ricci are the husband and wife team behind IKnowDino.com, which started as a side hustle and is now the world’s #1 dinosaur podcast.

Not bad for a couple of non-paleontologists.

It wasn’t an overnight success. In fact, it took 6 years for the two of them to feel comfortable going full-time in the business.

But they’ve had a blast along the way and they’re doing what they love doing most - interviewing paleontologists, talking about dinosaurs, and building a passionate dino-loving community.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Garret and Sabrina grew their audience
• the different ways they monetize their show
• how you may be able to borrow some of the same tactics for your business

Full show notes

Staci and her husband are earning $3,000-$4,000 month reselling like-new furniture with risk-free inventory sourced from Sharetown. Sharetown is a “reverse logistics” company that helps online, name brand furniture companies deal with customer returns.

As a Sharetown rep, you get notified of these return requests, pick up the items, clean and store them, and resell them on Facebook Marketplace or other outlets. Per Staci, you only have to pay Sharetown for your inventory once each item sells.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

• Sharetown (referral link)
• Full Sharetown Review

SPONSOR

• WP Harbor (use promo code SIDEHUSTLE for 50% off your first month!)

This week it’s the 500th episode of The Side Hustle Show, which just seems crazy to me.

It feels like just yesterday I started this thing in a lot of ways. But it’s been 9 years — I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

In honor of the 500 episode milestone, I wanted to reflect back on 10 big ideas and 10 common themes over the last 9 years.

It took longer than I care to admit to go back through the archives and pull out some of these forgotten soundbites, but I think you’ll like ‘em.

Tune in to this episode of The Side Hustle Show to hear 10 of the big ideas I’ve gotten from speaking with hundreds of guests of the years, and how you can implement these ideas within your business today.

Full show notes

Devyn Ricks, a mom of 4, isn't a Twitch celebrity or a big time YouTuber, but she's still earning thousands of dollars a month playing video games part-time.

In this episode, she breaks down how she does it and how you can follow the same strategies to monetize your hobby!

SPONSOR:

• WPharbor - Use promo code SIDEHUSTLE for 50% off your first month!

IMPORTANT LINKS:

• Outschool
• Devyn's YouTube Channel
• Devyn on Outschool
• MissDevyn.com
• How to Make Money on Outschool

It’s time once again to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 18 to talk through in today’s show.

We're covering podcasting, affiliate marketing, passive income ideas, my proofreading side hustle, customer service issues, and more.

Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free!

Full show notes

Anita Smith saw the writing on the wall when she was furloughed and ultimately laid off in 2020. The hospitality industry was among the hardest hit when travel ground to a halt.

So she decided to use the time to level up her skills and launch a new career, piggybacking on the popularity of the Salesforce software. In just a few months, she landed a new job making twice as much as her old salary!

In this episode she shares the steps she took to make it happen.

Sponsor:
Tailor Brands (use code SIDEHUSTLE for 40% off!)

Links:
Free 5-Day Salesforce Challenge
Anita on LinkedIn
Anita on YouTube
Bradley Rice on the Side Hustle Show ($200k/year working 20 hours a week)

“There is no plan B, I’m going to make this work.”

That’s the kind of determination that is often the difference between success and failure, and this week’s guest is a perfect example of that.

In this episode, you’ll meet Brien Gearin, a side hustler who battled through 11 months of not getting a single client.

However, during those 11 months, Brien was learning new skills and growing as an entrepreneur and has since grown his digital marketing agency into a 6-figure business.

Today, customers are happy to pay Brien and his agency RicochetDM.com $1500 a month and up to spearhead their online marketing efforts.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• the methods Brien uses to connect with customers
• how to navigate the “freelance trap” of selling your own skills
• how to keep customers coming back month after month

Full show notes

The cocktail content business wasn't paying the bills, but a slight pivot changed everything.

Chris and Julia Tunstall from ABarAbove.com were disappointed with the quality of existing barware on the market. So they placed a big bet that they could do better—and sold out in 3 weeks.

This is a story about the power of being a part of your community and listening to what they really want.

From working 40-50 hours a week in an engineering job to working 5-10 hours a week in a “lifestyle business”.

That’s the lifestyle and business shift Chris Lollini created for himself by white labeling someone else’s software tools.

White labeling is a super interesting business model.

It’s basically putting your brand, your sales and marketing, and your frontline customer support on top of an existing software product.

And it comes with a lot of the benefits of SaaS — recurring revenue, good margins — without the upfront development time and expense.

To make it work, you essentially play matchmaker — finding a common problem and pairing that with a software solution.

Chris was a self-described “recovering engineer” who started a marketing agency as a side hustle 9 years ago, which has evolved into a multi-6 figure white labeling operation called Reputation Igniter.

Through Ignite.Reviews, Chris Lollini helps small businesses earn more positive reviews for their work.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Chris got the idea to start white labeling SaaS products
• how he identified his customer's pain points and provided a SaaS solution
• the methods he uses to add value and create healthy profit margins

Full show notes

Rob's side hustle was crushed by the pandemic, but he found a winning spinoff buried deep in his YouTube stats and Google Analytics. 

This one will definitely have you thinking about the simple long-tail search questions you can answer — and monetize — for your own audience.

Full show notes

There’s profit out there, you just have to learn how to find it.

On this week’s show, I’m joined by a pair of Side Hustle Show listeners who’ve been learning that skill and have translated it into tens of thousands of dollars in sales over the last 16 months.

Jack and Joan Ferrell of SecondTimeSellers.com are resellers. They find used items at flea markets, yard sales, online auctions, and flip those items for anywhere up to 10x what they paid for them.

Inspired to start reselling after listening to episode 406 with Stacy Gallego, they’ve hit the floor running and have set themselves the goal of turning over $250,000 in the next 12 months.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• the creative ways Jack and Joan source inventory
• how they handle the shipping and logistics
• the most effective ways they’ve found to grow their business

Full show notes

Here are the projects I've been working on lately and how they're shaping up, my favorite business and lifestyle upgrades of the quarter, a few things that sucked, and what books made my reading list.

Full show notes

From being a “bored stay at home mom” to running a multi 6-figure business in just a few short years.

That’s the story for this week’s guest, Jayne Havens of TheSnoozeFest.com who decided to take a sleep certification course “on a whim.”

This is a 2-for-1 episode where we’re going to learn about starting a service business from scratch — in Jayne’s case that’s coaching parents how to help their babies and toddlers sleep through the night.

Jayne started earning thousands of dollars a month doing the coaching, before deciding to add the addition of an online course component teaching other people how to do what she did.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Jayne got started coaching parents on how to get their babies and toddlers to sleep better
• why she decided to start the online course component of her business
• the methods she’s used to grow both sides of her business

Full show notes 

“How I bootstrapped a 6-figure e-commerce brand in its first year with zero ad spend.”

That was the subject line that Side Hustle Show Connor Meakin sent me that grabbed my attention and earned him a spot on this week’s show.

The brand Connor is talking about is BluebirdProvisions.co, an organic bone broth, and bone broth powder company.

Connor started Bluebird Provisions after suffering a devastating foot injury that doctors said he would never fully recover from and be able to run again.

Searching for alternative, holistic ways to heal his foot, Connor decided to try drinking bone broth.

He accredits healing his foot injury, in part, to the healing properties in bone broth and decided to manufacture his own line of bone broth products.

Connor now sells his products through retail stores like Whole Foods, on Amazon, and through his own e-commerce site, and saw a 225% growth last year.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Connor came up with the idea to sell bone broth
• how he’s turned it into a reality for a relatively low startup cost
• the creative and effective ways he’s driving sales on and off of Amazon today

Full show notes

Today we’re geeking out on the awareness problem — how to spread the word about your business.

And how to do it in a way that aligns with your style and your budget.

To help me out with this is long-time Side Hustle Show listener, Larry Towner. He’s a real estate investor, a handyman, and co-host of the Handyman Pros Radio Show podcast.

Larry runs a local handyman service in the North Atlanta area and always has his work calendar booked up months in advance.

He uses a wide range of free and low-cost ways to get his business in front of the right customers, so there’s going to be more than enough ideas you can use for your own business.

Tune in to this episode of The Side Hustle Show to hear 16 free and low-cost marketing ideas, including:

• how you can use your website and business cards as an “electronic brochure”
• why it’s so important for local businesses to use Google My Business
• how Larry gets so much business through referrals both on and offline
• and more

Full show notes

"Changing the world with chess" and making $100,000 per year on the side.

That’s the story of today’s guest, Jeff DiOrio from EliteChess.net.

Jeff went from working in summer camp chess programs teaching kids how to play chess, to running his own summer camps and earning five times as much.

He then transitioned to an online recurring membership model, in part due to the pandemic, while also keeping the in-person coaching side of his business alive.

Jeff’s approach to growing his student numbers so rapidly?

Organic growth through giving to charities and delivering a value-driven service. All while doing something he loves -- teaching chess.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Jeff built his minimum viable audience
• the methods he used to set up the business for recurring revenue
• how you can borrow some of these same tactics in your business

Full show notes

How does risk-free profit sound?

That’s the promise and of the consignment business — getting paid to sell other people’s stuff.

To help school me on how it all works I’ve invited Megan Church from PineappleConsignment.com onto this week’s show.

Megan experimented with her first popup consignment event in October 2018 with the goal of breaking even and to do something creative with her time.

Megan did a little better than break even with that first show, and more importantly, validated her business idea and had a lot of fun doing it.

She has since broadened her business into online sales, estate sales, and now has her own warehouse and storefront open to the public.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how you can get started throwing popup consignment events right away
• how Megan sources and manages her inventory
• the creative ways she’s found to market and grow the business

Full show notes

What’s one thing people want?

They want to get great deals on great products, and for you as a side hustler, that spells a business opportunity to curate and spread the word about those deals.

This is exactly what Side Hustle Show listener Camron Stover from HuntingGearDeals.com is doing.

Camron stumbled into the business, starting with his hunting hobby and a passion for finding good deals.

He ended up acquiring the site from the original owner and has accelerated its revenue growth to $90k last year.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how the site is making money
• the creative ways Camron gets free content and products
• how you may be able to apply similar strategies in your own business

Full show notes

Today’s guest, Matt Bochnak of HowToMotorcycleRepair.com, is one of my favorite examples of how you can dedicate part of your week to generating time-leveraged income.

This is Matt’s third time on The Side Hustle Show, and every time we speak he’s made huge leaps forward with his business.

Matt first appeared on the show back in 2016 when he was making around $1,000 a month recording himself performing motorcycle repairs in his garage and selling digital products.

When Matt appeared on the show for a second time in 2019 he was making $4,000-5,000 a month from a combination of digital product sales, YouTube ad income, affiliate commissions, Patreon, and sponsored content.

As you’ll discover in this episode, Matt is now making almost $20,000 a month in revenue. He’s completely shut down the service side of his business, expanded into physical products, and more.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Matt’s business has changed since we last spoke in 2019
• where the idea for a physical product came from and how he validated it
• the various revenue streams ringing the cash register for Matt right now

Full show notes

When the pandemic hit, Timmy Bauer from DinosaurHouse.com pivoted his business from being a traveling children’s book author to running a children’s book production company.

Timmy was enjoying working as a traveling children’s book author, but he was forced to change directions when schools started locking down and not allowing guests.

His story is the perfect example that you don’t always need to make a complete 180 if your business hits a wall.

Sometimes you just need to make a slight re-calibration, a couple degrees one direction or the other that can set you off on a new path.

This new path has taken Timmy from “just over the poverty line” to running a 6-figure business in the last 12 months.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Timmy pivoted his business model when the pandemic hit
• how he uses content-based marketing and other people’s events to drive sales
• the ways you might also be able to take your existing skills and knowledge to serve a different customer base

Full show notes

From a $10,000 a month “blog” to a 7-figure “Media Company” — a lot can happen in six years.

Today’s guest is one of my most important real and virtual online business mentors — I’m always trying to pay attention and keep an eye on what Robert Farrington from TheCollegeInvestor.com is up to.

Fun fact: Robert was one of the very first guests on The Side Hustle Show back in 2013.

Our last update was 6 years ago, in early 2016. Back then, The College Investor was earning $10k a month and Robert was still working full-time at Target.

There have been lots of life changes since then, plus some exponential growth on the business side.

Today, The College Investor is one of the biggest personal finance media brands in the world.

With over 1 million visits a month, covering student loans, taxes and tax software, investing, insurance, budgeting — if it’s related to money, you’ll find it at The College Investor.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• what the biggest changes Robert has seen in his online business are since 2016
• what marketing channels are driving traffic for him today
• why he’s started a new brand and the future of his business

Full show notes

There are a million and one ways to make money online, but they almost always come down to helping other people.

Today’s guest, Kat Norton aka Miss.Excel, has been doing plenty of that. She’s reaching hundreds of thousands of followers as a spreadsheet influencer — you didn’t know there was such a thing, did you?

Kat started on TikTok in June 2020 and already has over 734k followers, she later branched out onto Instagram and has already built a following of more than 573k followers there, too.

She hit 6-figures in sales within 6 months and has since scaled to consistent 6-figure months and even the occasional 6-figure DAY - which is absolutely nuts.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Kat built her following so quickly
• her tips for viral success on TikTok and Instagram
• how she’s turned those views into real-life revenue and profits

Full show notes

While he was a full-time student, Johnny Robinson built OrangeWindowCleaning.com into a $700k a year operation.

If you want to start your own business, it doesn’t necessarily take a never-before-seen business idea to have a never-before-seen impact on your life.

Johnny's a long-time Side Hustle Show listener, and we actually recorded this on his last day of college.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• How Johnny got his first customers
• The marketing engine you can borrow for your own business
• How he fulfills the work and the tech and tools he uses to manage the whole operation

Full show notes

People out there will pay for your skills, you just have to find them.

One person who’s done an excellent job of finding them over the last 9 months or so is Georgia Austin from WizardOfContent.com.

Georgia took her skill of writing, and despite a crowded world of other writers out there, did over $500k worth of work through the Fiverr platform last year, including $90k the month before we recorded.

In this episode, Georgia shares her top tips for getting started on Fiverr and quickly gaining traction.

As well as explaining why being a Fiverr seller doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom and how you can command high rates by knowing your worth.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• Georgia’s best practices for getting started on Fiverr
• how she manages her huge order volume
• how Georgia is transitioning to a standalone agency

Full show notes

Inside my biggest wins, best purchases, favorite books, most popular episodes, and most important projects.

Full show notes

Happy New Year! May this be a year of stacking up incremental improvements and optimizations — getting 1% better every day — that’s the idea.

To help out with that goal, I’m excited to introduce Chris Hutchins. He's a serial entrepreneur, a new dad, a professional life optimizer, and host of the new AllTheHacks podcast.

The stated mission of All the Hacks is to help listeners upgrade every aspect of their life while spending less and saving more.

I think that’s a mission we can get on board with since this show is also about upgrading your life through entrepreneurship.

Chris shared a full docket of hacks in this episode to help you start your year off right, and I did my best to chime in as well.

Many of these are quick actionable ideas you can apply to make little upgrades to your life.

Tune in to this episode of The Side Hustle Show to hear 33 hacks covering work and productivity, networking, money, travel, and health.

Full show notes

The Side Hustle Show is a top-rated podcast featuring the ideas, actions, and results you need to start and grow a successful business.

Put a little hustle in your earbuds as I extract the actionable tips and business strategies from successful entrepreneurs.

Each week you’ll get new business ideas, side hustle opportunities, and high-value content to help you make extra money and make the most of your time.

Selling JPEGs and other digital collectibles - do NFTs present some of the hottest investment opportunities right now?

You could hardly open your laptop or unlock your phone this year without reading about NFTs or non-fungible tokens.

When you start to see jpegs selling for tens of thousands of dollars, you can’t help but ask, wait, what’s going on here?

And as is often the case when these new shiny things pop up, I try to learn from those who are a few steps ahead.

In this episode you’ll meet Michael Quan from FinanciallyAlert.com, he’s a father of 2 who retired at 36, and calls himself “an accidental NFT investor.”

I met Michael at FinCon this fall, and called him up to try and get some clarity on the murky world of NFTs, and where opportunity may lie for side hustlers, on the buying, trading, and creating side.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• why Michael is investing in NFTs and the returns he’s seeing
• where you can get started creating or buying NFTs yourself
• how to avoid scams and what Michael thinks the future holds for NFTs

Full show notes

Smart side hustlers go where the cash is already flowing…

One place it’s been flowing at a rapidly increasing pace is Facebook Marketplace.

What started as a Craigslist competitor — a place to buy and sell secondhand stuff — has morphed into an e-commerce powerhouse in its own right.

How Facebook Marketplace works will not be new to most reading this. But how today’s guest, Andrey Kozlov is taking advantage of this platform will be a real eye-opener to most.

So, how can you take advantage?

In this episode, you’ll learn how Andrey Kozlov is making hundreds of dollars a day, selling stuff on Facebook he never even has to touch.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how dropshipping on Facebook marketplace works
• how to find profitable products and make your listings stand out
• the risks and pitfalls to avoid

Full show notes

How does turning a passion into a profitable side hustle sound?

That’s exactly what this week’s guest, Luke Lorick of Tailgating-Challenge.com has done.

Luke took his passion for tailgating — the pre-game parking lot party variety, not the annoying driving habit variety, and turned that into a long-running and profitable online side hustle.

It wasn’t an overnight success. In fact, Luke says himself that “Overnight successes don’t happen overnight.”

Luke has put in years of hard work building strong relationships with brands - some of which are huge household names - and growing an audience of more than 250,000 across his social media accounts to get where he is today.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how Luke drives traffic and revenue
• how he’s grown some substantial social followings
• ways you can emulate his strategies in your niche

Full show notes

Turning a passion into a 6-figure business is the goal of many entrepreneurs, and that’s what this week’s guest, Jennifer Sobel has done.

Jennifer has combined her lifelong passion for belly dancing with her skills in digital marketing to create TheBellyDanceSolution.com, one part of what’s become a 6-figure online business.

There are 3 big ideas in this episode that you may be able to use to improve your own sales funnel:

1. The power of combining two or more things to come up with a new idea - The combination game can help you stand out from the crowd like Jennifer did and become a market of one.
2. Mentorship - If there is such a thing as a shortcut or cheat code, I believe mentorship is it. You’ll hear how Jennifer applied that and relaunched her funnel.
3. The power of micro-optimizations - I loved Jennifer’s call to always be testing and I think it’s something we can all apply.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:

• how Jennifer made her first sales without an audience
• the creative ways you may also be able to acquire customers
• how she’s transitioning from one-time sales to a recurring membership

Full show notes

100 members of the Side Hustle Nation community shared their path to $1000 and beyond in my latest book, $1,000 100 Ways.

I just got approval for the audiobook edition, narrated by yours truly. Here's a sneak peak of the stories inside.

Learn more:

http://1k100ways.com

Get the audiobook free with an Audible trial

Struggling to perform at your best from the moment you wake till you go to sleep at night?

In today’s episode, we’re talking about a key component of your physical and mental foundation to be a high-performing human, and one that we probably don’t give a lot of thought to.

Still, it’s something you spend roughly a third of your life doing, so it’s a huge lever to pull in terms of optimizing your energy and your output in the world.

Yes, we’re talking about sleep.

I promise this episode won’t put you to sleep as we explore 9 quick ways to optimize your horizontal hours to wake up feeling superhuman.

To help walk me through these is Riley Jarvis from TheSleepConsultant.com and SleepForSideHustlers.com.

Riley started through his own health journey many years ago and discovered that sleep was the missing link that brought everything together.

After some biohacking and learning from top doctors in the field, he now helps others get the root of their sleep issues rather than masking the symptoms — all about building that foundation so you can feel amazing and be the best version of you.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear 9 of Riley’s top tips for getting a better night’s sleep.

Full show notes

This week — in what has become a Thanksgiving tradition on the show — we’re diving into 10 creative side hustles that make real money.

This is the 4th installment of the series, so I encourage you to go check out the other episodes if you like this format -- those are episodes 310, 363, and 420.

Tune in to learn about how real people are making real money from everything from tarantulas to luxury picnics, from invisible sculptures to reselling driftwood that you can go pick up for free.

Full show notes

From hating photo booths to seeing an opportunity in the market and taking her photo booth side hustle to 6-figures in 18 months…

That’s the story of today’s guest, Cat Bloch.

Cat told me you would never “catch me dead” using a photo booth at a party.

That was until she came across a modern photo booth, and it completely changed how she looked at this popular wedding venue and Gala attraction.

Cat saw a gap in the market for an upmarket, modern, photo booth. Something that does much more than you’d expect from a photo booth, such as being used for corporate branding, immersive virtual experiences, and more.

Starting with one photo booth out of her front closet, Cat and MDRN Photobooth Company now operate 20 photo booths in multiple cities all across Canada.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how Cat got her first customers
• how she prices and positions her service to stand out from the competition
• and really smart and intentional ways she’s found a steady stream of bookings

Full show notes

Can you really make money flipping phones?

To find out, I sat down with pro cell phone flipper Jeff Duhon from the Smart Flippers Facebook group. In a typical week, Jeff resells 20-30 used iPhones with a target profit of $100 per flip.

If if you did half that volume, you could be earning $1000 a week.

Flipping phones for profit can be a lucrative side hustle or grow into a full-time income stream, but, like any business, there are some pros and cons.

The used cell phone industry is already huge, and growing bigger all the time. Estimates project the global market for secondhand phones to be worth between $39 and $52 billion by 2025.

Here's how to carve out your piece of that massive pie.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• How to source profitable inventory
• The easiest places to resell your phones
• How to not get scammed

After all, being able to go out into the world and find profit is a skill to recession-proof your life.

Full show notes

Struggling to come up with a side hustle or business idea?

To help get the creative idea juices flowing, I’ve invited Joel Hansen, a member of the founding team of Kern.al on the show.

Kern.al is kind of like Reddit or Product Hunt, but for business ideas that don’t exist yet.

Just a few minutes on the site definitely sparked some creativity for me so I encourage you to check it out.

In this episode, Joel and I bounce some different business ideas back and forth that are free for you to run with and should be enough to get the cogs turning on your own ideas.

Tune in to this episode of The Side Hustle Show to hear 16 business ideas that are free for the taking, including:

• why I’d be interested in an “erase me” button for personal data online
• ideas that have been posted on Kern.al for shadowing CEOs and elevating “Open” signs in shop windows
• a cool idea Joel has for autotext reminders
• and more

Full show notes

Like it or not, we’re all marketers.

Whether we’re selling ourselves in a job interview, pitching our product or service, or trying to get people to pay attention to our content — we’re all marketers.

And you should know this is one of my all-time favorite topics.

So, how do we solve the awareness problem?

How do we position ourselves so the right people can find us — and the wrong ones leave us alone?

To spark some inspiration and maybe breathe new life into your own marketing efforts, I asked members of Side Hustle Nation to share what’s working for them right now.

Tune in to this episode of The Side Hustle Show to hear 16 of the best marketing wins and tips, including:

• how you can dominate local search for your business and get a steady flow of organic leads
• the best social platforms to use to grow and engage with your audience
• some different and highly effective ways you can build your network
• and more

Full show notes

At the end of nearly every episode of The Side Hustle Show, I ask my guests for their “#1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.”

There’s always a great variety of responses, and I wanted to take some time today to go through some of my favorites from the past 50-ish interviews.

This has become an annual tradition on the show, which is now almost 8.5 years old and recently passed 17 million lifetime downloads.

If you like this short-and-sweet meta-style show, be sure to check out the others in this series:

• Episode 50 - 2014
• Episode 124 - 2015
• Episode 177 - 2016
• Episode 236 - 2017
• Episode 288 - 2018
• Episode 338 - 2019
• Episode 392 - 2020

Full show notes

Where there’s pain, there might also be profit…

That was the case for today’s guest, Pete Mockaitis. Pete was seeing some traction with his podcast, the HowToBeAwesomeAtYourJob Podcast, but was struggling to keep up all the off-air tasks — the show notes, the editing, the social media.

For Pete Mockaitis, that pain turned into AwesomePros.co, a niche drop-servicing company that he co-founded with Brian Kearny and is now doing $10k a month in recurring revenue.

This is something that will work in just about any niche where you can outsource tasks remotely, and in this episode, Pete and Brian break down exactly how they grew their business.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how Pete and Brian took this from an in-house solution to a $10k/mo business
• the tactics they’ve used to grow their client roster
• how you can figure out niche and pricing if you want to replicate this in another vertical

Full show notes

One challenge that most new businesses face is the awareness problem – nobody knows you exist.

To help erase this problem, I’ve invited Dustin Lien from JumpXmarketing.com back on the show.

Dustin first appeared on episode 251 back in 2017. Back then, he was just ramping up JumpX after shutting down his own physical product business.

Since then he’s grown it into a 6-figure operation and built it in such a way that it only requires part-time attention.

What’s been his key driver?

Partner workshops, which are essentially virtual lunch-and-learn sessions where he can showcase his expertise and build his client roster without ads or bidding for work.

This works in just about any niche and in this episode, Dustin breaks down his exact process so you can go out and apply it in your own business.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• Dustin’s fast-track strategy to getting in front of the right audience
• how he builds his email list quickly with
• his top tips for creating warm outreach emails and connecting with customers

Full show notes

Ever thought about turning your expertise in an everyday subject or topic into an online business?

For Delilah Orpi, her expertise was on taking care of her curly hair — and starting as a side hustle, she turned that into an online business earning around $8k a month at HolisticEnchilada.com.

Delilah has some interesting strategies she used to grow her audience, build her email list, diversify her multiple income streams -- all of which can be applied to a topic of your choosing.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• why Delilah started blogging about curly hair
• how she has grown her audience through Pinterest and organic search
• the multiple income streams she’s created and a high-converting tripwire

Full show notes

There are tons of ways to make money online — the root of all of them comes down to helping people.

Two common ways entrepreneurs help a wide audience is by packaging up their knowledge and experience into an online training course or a membership program/community.

But which model makes the most sense for your business?

To find out, it’s time for another Side Hustle Showdown.

For the debate, I’ve invited back two Side Hustle Show favorites:

• Jacques Hopkins has sold over $2 million worth of his flagship online course PianoIn21Days.com and teaches others how to create their own courses at TheOnlineCourseGuy.com.
• Shane and his wife Jocelyn sold their primary membership website for over $1M and now help other people create and grow membership sites of their own at flippedlifestyle.com

Tune in the week to learn:

• how Jacques and Shane approach creating content for their businesses
• the differences in business models between memberships and courses
• the time commitment involved for both business models
• tips for pricing and increasing conversions
• and more

Full show notes

We’ve been on a bit of an audience building kick lately in our conversations with Dickie Bush about Twitter, with Tori Dunlap about TikTok.

Today you’ll meet a long-time listener of the show who built her audience on Facebook.

Chantal Lavergne is the founder of FunSensoryPlay.com, which started as a Facebook page in early 2020 — and that’s important because that’s years after the supposed death of organic Facebook page reach.

Since then she’s grown the page to nearly 80,000 followers using some specific and proven engagement strategies, and turned that following into a business with multiple revenue streams.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how Chantal came up with the idea to start a sensory fun Facebook page
• how she has grown her audience so fast by creating an “ecosystem”
• the multiple income streams she’s created for her business

Full show notes

Tired of toiling away on social media for lackluster results? Tori Dunlap earned her first 200,000 TikTok followers in just a couple weeks, and has added another 1.4 million since then.

All that attention has helped her turn a healthy 6-figure business into a multi-7-figure operation. 

Tori is the founder of HerFirst100k.com and host of the Financial Feminist podcast, where she helps women become more financially confident.

She argues that TikTok is the best social media platform on which to grow a targeted audience right now.

For a start, TikTok has more than a billion monthly active users and is still seen as an up-and-coming social media platform where you can easily connect with your target audience.

In addition to the huge user base, Tori explained that "there are more consumers than creators," which gives content creators like you an edge. 

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show to learn:

• how to get started on TikTok and what type of content works best
• how Tori creates viral videos that helped her gain more than 1.6 million followers in 13 months
• the ways she's driving TikTok traffic to affiliate offers and paid products

Full show notes

If you’re looking to add some time-leveraged cash flow to your bottom line, two of the best options are investing in rental real estate and buying small businesses.

Both are viable options, and to help you figure out if either or both of these investment options are right for you, it’s time for another Side Hustle Showdown.

For the debate, I’ve invited back two Side Hustle Show favorites:

• Chad Carson is the owner of over 100+ properties and the author of Retire Early with Real Estate.
• Codie Sanchez is the owner of several so-called “boring” small businesses, including a laundromat and a podcast production service.

(In Chad's first appearance, we covered 5 low-cost ways to get started in real estate. With Codie, we explored how to grow and monetize an email newsletter.)

Tune in the week to learn:

• what kind of portfolios Chad and Codie have built up
• how you can get started buying real estate and small businesses
• some of the creative financing options available
• the mistakes they made along the way
• and more

Full show notes

Online arbitrage is the process of buying inventory from one site to resell on another (usually Amazon).

To help school me on this side hustle is Chris Grant, a longtime Amazon seller and the founder of ClearTheShelf.com and OAChallenge.com.

Chris has been involved in the online arbitrage space for the last 10+ years and is currently selling $75,000-80,000 per month.

In this episode, Chris explains the systems he’s built and the tools he uses to help him find more “winners”, minimize the risk of losses, and how anyone can make money with this side hustle in just 1-2 hours a day.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• Where Chris finds inventory to sell on for profit
• The tools and tech he uses to automate and streamline his product sourcing
• How he minimizes risk on the downside and some hacks for finding discounts when buying in bulk

Full show notes

Few words will get as polarizing a response among freelancers and side hustlers as Upwork.

Depending on who you ask, it’s either a fantastic platform to connect with well-paying gigs and quality clients … or it’s a hopeless, desperate race to the bottom, overly-competitive bloodbath with no chance of success.

Like a lot of things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and a lot of your outcome will depend on your strategy and how well you show up.

Upwork is the world’s largest freelance marketplace. The platform booked $2.5 billion worth of work last year, so there's no shortage of cash flowing — if you know how to get it flowing toward you.

To help is do that, I invited 2020's most popular guest, Chris Misterek, back to the show. 

Chris is a web design pro who’s booked over $80k worth of work through Upwork. 

(We’re going to focus on Upwork but these same rules apply for other freelance platforms as well, like Fiverr or Thumbtack — so get ready to set yourself up for success.)

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how you can set up your Upwork profile for success
• why Chris says niching down will help you secure more jobs
• how to pitch clients the right way to increase your chance of landing your ideal jobs

Full show notes

Today’s guest has gone from zero to almost 50k followers in the last 12 months and has turned that newfound attention into a 6-figure online business.

This is impressive in itself, but what’s even more impressive about this story is that Dickie Bush has built his audience on Twitter.

You know, that social media platform that's always just ... been there. One of several platforms that I’d kind of written off.

In fact, in 8 years and 450 episodes, we’ve never done a dedicated conversation on Twitter as an audience-building platform.

Dickie has been a frequently-requested guest over the last few months. He’s a former college athlete turned portfolio analyst. But on the side, he’s the creator of Ship30for30.com, a cohort-based online course that helps you build an online writing habit.

Dickie opens up enrollment for Ship 30 for 30 every 6 weeks, and in the last enrolment, he had 476 students paying $350 each.

That’s $166,600 in gross revenue.

If you’ve been focusing on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, you may be missing out. In this episode, Dickie explains why Twitter is the perfect platform for quickly building an engaged audience.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• why Dickie uses Twitter and says it’s the best platform for building an audience
• how he writes tweets that go viral and attract followers
• why he opted to build a cohort-based course over evergreen content

Full show notes

What's the best way to write a bestselling book? Ask a hundred people and you'll get 100 different answers.

Sure, I've had some book launch success before, and have certainly learned a lot about self-publishing since my first title in 2012. But there are always new and different tactics to try, and you never really know how audiences and algorithms are going to react.

You can check out my latest book at 1K100ways.com. 

I asked several fellow authors "What's your #1 book launch or book marketing tip?"

Here are their answers.

Full show notes.

I want to introduce a concept I call The Side Hustle Snowball.

If you've heard about Dave Ramsey's "Debt Snowball" framework, this may sound familiar.

Here's how The Side Hustle Snowball works:

You itemize out your expenses and then aim to come up with side hustle income to cover them, starting with the smallest and working your way up.

Once you reach the bottom of your list, you don't need your job anymore!

In this episode, I'll share 11 of our real household expenses and how we zero those out with side hustle income.

Full show notes

Some ideas just won't die. This project was one of them.

My latest book is called $1K 100 Ways, and it features 100 case studies from the Side Hustle Nation community on how to earn an extra $1000 or more in your spare time.

The first flicker of the idea came into my head way back in early 2015. This is the story of how it finally came to life.

Full show notes

Today we’re diving into the easy wins — the quick updates you can make to your websites to drive more traffic and sales.

To help me out on that topic is Mushfiq S., a side hustler who has been building, buying, growing, and selling websites since 2008, all on the side from his full-time career.

During that time he’s done over 175 transactions and has a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to make money and build equity online.

You can think of it a little like flipping houses — trying to find these undervalued fixer-upper projects, and making 'em shine.

Only it’s better suited to those who are more comfortable creating content than they are replacing countertops and cabinets -- and your upfront costs may be a lot lower too.

You can find out more about Mushfiq over at TheWebsiteFlip.com and EasyWins.io where you can buy a copy of his “easy wins” spreadsheet listing the things he does to fix up sites he purchases.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• where Mushfiq finds “distressed assets” he knows he can fix up and flip for a profit
• the buying criteria he uses to find the best deals
• some of his best “quick wins” that have the biggest impact on a site’s revenue

Full show notes

Want to drive more organic traffic to your website?

I’m sure you do.

At the heart of organic traffic is SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

The better optimized your site is for search engines, the higher you’ll rank for your target keywords, and the more visitors you’ll get.

For everyone interested in SEO, I have an excellent round-up style show for you today.

To help you get up to speed with the latest SEO techniques and methods that are working right now, I invited a bunch of friends of mine and experts who make a living online to share their top SEO tips.

I asked them what’s working today in terms of driving more search traffic to their sites, and they shared some insights, resources, and tips that are easily replicable for your sites.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show this week what's working now in the world of SEO, including how to:

• find easy-to-rank-for keywords
• perform a free SEO site audit and identify easy SEO fixes
• use content editors to write better-optimized content

Full show notes

If you’re starting an online business, you’re almost certainly going to create content. But should you focus on written content on your blog, or video content to try and tap into the massive YouTube audience?

Which is better to focus on for audience growth, monetization, and for the best ROI on your limited time?

To help you figure out which type of content is best for you, it's time for another Side Hustle Showdown.

For the debate, I found two gracious volunteers. Both are from the food and recipe niche, so we can compare proverbial apples to apples.

They are:

• Blogger Jannese Torres-Rodriguez, who started DelishD’Lites.com as a side hustle to share her love of Latin food. She has since turned it into one of several income streams under her multi-6-figure business umbrella.
• YouTuber Nisha Vora, who is a former lawyer who started RainbowPlantLife.com and the Rainbow Plant Life YouTube Channel to share how to master vegan cooking at home. She’s closing in on half a million YouTube subscribers and has more than 20 million lifetime views.

Tune in to hear:

• Which type of content takes the longest to create
• How they go about creating content that ranks well on each platform
• The pros and cons of "owning" your blog content vs. relying on YouTube
• How monetization compares on the two platforms
• And more

This is a fun one, and by the end, you’ll have an idea which platform is going to be best for your business.

Full show notes

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.

Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free!

The questions:

1. How I can use my knowledge for a blog or a podcast or affiliate marketing?
2. How have your attitudes about side hustling changed over the last 8 years in the space?
3. How do bundle sales work? Why would these product creators give their work away for so little?
4. What's the table of contents plugin you're using on your site?
5. How is the "You Might Also Like" box in your newsletter working for you in terms of boosting clicks, pageviews, etc.?
6. I noticed that you are using Teachable -- any particular reason?
7. Which WordPress theme should I use?
8. How much do podcasters get paid by sponsors?
9. What made you “jump” [from your day job]? How did failure not become an option for you?
10. Should you build a review site around a single product or service, or broaden it a bit to the whole family of products of services?
11. What are some good potential side hustles for retirees?
12. How can you protect yourself from legal liability related to online content?
13. What's your take on services like Skimlinks?
14. Do you still recommend putting your books in Kindle Unlimited / KDP Select?
15. When registering a business, can I be my own registered agent?
16. I have 11 separate websites for the local towns where we operate. Should I consolidate domains?
17. I'm just getting started. Should I write and publish a book or start a service business?
18. How much is enough to retire at 35?
19. What side hustles or gigs grew the most in the last year?
20. How would you speed up the process of growing a community?

Full show notes

Royalties from book sales is one of the most passive of all my income streams.

After you create a book, with print or digital distribution handled by Amazon,  you can collect royalties for years.

And while I enjoy the writing process and have published several titles myself, I have yet to venture into the world of children's books. 

(Despite having the outlines of a couple kids books on my phone for the last two or three years!)

This week I connected with Matthew Ralph, a children’s book author from England, who recently quit his full-time marketing job to focus on his publishing and freelancing business.

His bestselling work to date is Sam the Speedy Sloth. The idea of which came to him while walking through an airport, and by the time his flight landed, the book was almost written.

Matt has since added more books to his portfolio, while freelancing to help other self-publishing authors.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• what the children's book creation process is like
• the most effective ways he’s found to market his books
• how he’s expanding his portfolio and entering different markets

Full show notes

What advice would you give your 18-year-old self? Here's my actual valedictorian speech from 20 years ago!

Creating assets you can sell over and over again -- that’s the passive income dream, right?

This is exactly what Rachel Jones at MoneyHackingMama.com has done by creating and selling downloadable printables on Etsy.

This year she’s averaging over $10,000 a month in sales, all while balancing a full-time job and two young kids.

Rachel has only been doing this for two years, and she’s planning on leaving her full-time job in the near future and going in full-time on her Etsy business.

Big thanks to Cody from Gold City Ventures and The FI Show for the intro!

Note: I call this the Buy Buttons strategy. To kickstart your business, find the mini-marketplaces your target customers are already shopping at. Go where the cash is already flowing!

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how to find profitable niches to sell digital products in on Etsy
• some of the categories Rachel likes
• the tools and technology she uses to get it all done

Full show notes

What if you could rent out digital real estate just as you would traditional real estate, but without all the headaches that come with maintaining a property?

That’s exactly what Luke Van Der Veer is doing with his digital “Rank and Rent” business.

I found Luke through the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group, where he shared a unique take on online business, kind of at the intersection of service businesses, SEO, and real estate.

Really taking a page out from all of those playbooks.

What Luke does is he builds a local service business website, then “rents” it out to a local, less digital-savvy business that is more than happy for the extra leads.

Luke has been doing this for several years but said it took about 6 months to replace his day job income, and 12 months to hit 6-figures.

Today he runs a portfolio of over 100 different websites using this “rank and rent” model, earning predictable recurring revenue taking up just a few hours pre week.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how Luke picks a niche and evaluates the competition
• how to price your service
• how to find qualified “tenants” for your digital properties

Full show notes

Earning up to $2,000 for 45 minutes doing something you love -- who wouldn’t want to do that?

That’s exactly what Brian McGovern of McMagical.com does. Brian is a party entertainer — he’s been practicing magic and performing since he was in high school.

The success of the side hustle allowed him to walk away from a well-paying, but stressful, career on Wall Street.

Despite the pandemic forcing him to perform shows from his living room, he’s still making up to $2,000 for an hour's work.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn how to:

• Get started, even if you don’t have any experience
• Attract event producers and party planners for high-paying events
• Turn something you love into something that can make you an extra $1000-2000 in just a few hours on weekends

Full show notes

"Apples to Apples meets Shark Tank" in SideHustle, the party game for entrepreneurs.

After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the team behind the game is looking for ways to raise awareness and stand out on the crowded Amazon marketplace.

In this coaching episode, you'll meet co-founders Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran, who (along with a 3rd co-founder, Tim Palladino) are looking for some ways to expand on the initial traction and grow a brand in the "productive play" space.

To help out with this one, I enlisted Side Hustle Show alumni and e-commerce and branding pro, Scott Voelker. 

Full show notes

With a full-time job, a baby at home, and a thriving side hustle, Troy Parker was becoming a master juggler.

He was excited about the growth of his Etsy shop, Goober Prints, but was beginning to reach the ceiling of his own capacity.

Troy specializes in fun, quirky, customizable direct-to-garment printing. Goober Prints had a breakout year in 2020, jumping to $80,000 in total sales — up from about $10,000 in 2019.

Could it become his full-time focus? Is it possible to scale sales without sacrificing even more sleep?

I reached out to Side Hustle Show alum and Etsy growth pro Melissa MacDonald, because I knew she'd have some great ideas for Troy.

And she didn't disappoint!

Tune in to check out our full conversation.

Full show notes

Side Hustle Show listener Raffaele Di Lallo has built a successful house plant website, earning $10k a month — on the side from his day job.

Still, he explained that 90% of that income was from advertising, and he wanted to diversify his revenue sources and earn more from affiliate marketing.

To help me talk through Raffaele's business is a long-time friend and online business mentor of mine, Matt Giovanisci.

Matt runs SwimUniversity.com, BrewCabin.com, and MoneyLab.co and the Money Lab Pro membership community.

I knew he'd have some suggestions to grow the income pie and "future proof" Raffaele's business.

Tune in to check out our full conversation.

Full show notes.

With Mother's Day coming up, I wanted to share some of the best advice and lessons I got from mom growing up. Most of the time, this was pretty literal advice, but I found a lot of it has a broader application to entrepreneurship. 

Mom has always been probably my biggest advocate and supporter. For background, she essentially had a couple different careers, first in nursing and then as a library assistant.

(At the library, she actually helped me get one of my first jobs in high school.)

Lots of wisdom I hope to be able to pass along to our little ones!

And if you like this format, be sure to check out the companion list/episode on dad's advice!

Full show notes

$100 MBA Founder Omar Zenhom shares his perfect first business, plus why live courses are so hot right now.

Check out the full $100 MBA Show archives in your podcast app of choice and learn more at 100MBA.net. 

$10,000 a month working 20-hour weeks sounds like a pretty sweet gig! And for Jade Weatherington, it's been a dream come true to make a living in education--while working from home.

Her financial success didn't happen overnight. She had months of earning less than $100 from her online private tutoring.

But when she discovered a then-new platform called Outschool, things really started to take off.

In her first month on the platform, Jade made $32. Still, she was encouraged by the possibilities and scale of teaching online classes there.

By the third month, she made almost $5,000.

Today she’s making $10,000+ from a combination of online classes, pre-recorded courses, and other teaching products -- all while working around 20 hours a week.

Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to learn:

• how to decide what topics to teach
• the online teaching platforms Jade likes
• how to price and market your courses or classes

Full show notes

Last year, Brad Rice booked $225,000 worth of Salesforce consulting work. That's impressive on its own, but what's crazier is he only worked an average of 18 hours a week.

Brad took his existing skills and experience with a popular software product, and pivoted to become a remote freelance consultant.

This is the "SWAS" strategy: Software with a Service.

(We’ve heard from guests following a similar path with Asana and Quickbooks.)

If you're not familiar with Salesforce, it's the #1 CRM (customer relationship management) software in the world.

Businesses and non-profits of all sizes use the software to organize and manage the back-end of their sales efforts.

And on the other side, there’s a community of salesforce professionals who support those customers … and earn up to $230 an hour to do so.

Why are the rates so high? Supply and demand — there's a gap between the popularity of Salesforce and the number of experts like Brad who can help with it.

That's the opportunity I think you should know about.

To learn more and see if Salesforce consulting is the right career upgrade for you, check out Brad's Free 5-Day Salesforce Challenge.

Tune in to hear:

• why there's such a high demand for Salesforce professionals
• how you can get started today earning your Salesforce certifications
• the progression steps Brad took to go from $40,000 a year to $225,000 part-time

Full show notes

Amanda Austin has a healthy 6-figure part-time business drop shipping dollhouse miniatures.

From the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, Steve Chou takes over hosting duties today! If you want to learn more about building an e-commerce business, check him out at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com and subscribe to his show for more!

Rachel cash-flows $10k a month from her portfolio of mobile homes.

When most people think of real estate investing, mobile homes probably don't come to mind. In fact, technically speaking, mobile homes are personal property--not real estate.

Still, this is a sub-niche in real estate that comes with the familiar cash-flowing opportunity of buying a building and renting it out for a profit.

Rachel Hernandez has been investing in mobile homes for over 10 years. She made her first mobile home purchase for $3,600, re-sold it for $10,000 on a leas-to-own contract, and hasn’t looked back since.

Rachel is the author of Adventures in Mobile Homes and she blogs and podcasts about her work at AdventuresInMobileHomes.com.

Tune in to hear:

• why mobile homes make an attractive investment
• how to find potential deals near you
• how Rachel markets for tenants

Want more unconventional rental ideas?

Click here to download a list of 25 other things you could make money renting out.

Full show notes

With over 500 million users and growing all the time, your target customers are probably on Pinterest.

To help catch us up on all the latest strategies and best practices for getting more traffic, more sales, more leads from Pinterest is our resident Pinterest marketing expert, Kate Ahl from SimplePinMedia.com.

It’s been a couple of years since I last spoke with Kate and a lot has changed on the Pinterest platform.

The user base has doubled, they’ve released new pin formats, and I’m actually starting to see some signs of life from my own account. Which I’d kind of written off for a while to focus on SEO instead.

Tune in to hear:

• what’s working on Pinterest right now
• how to optimize your content for Pinterest search
• some cool things coming to the platform around selling your own products

Full show notes

Here's an inside look at what I've been working on the last few months. Tune in to hear:

• The projects / experiments on my mind
• Personal / lifestyle updates
• What books I read
• My plans for what's coming next

Important links:

• TheTrafficCourse.com
• SideHustleNation.com/join

Thanks so much for tuning in!

Anthony and Jhanilka Hartzog erased $114k of debt in 23 months.

The couple were making good money at their day jobs, but realized there's only so much you can cut from your budget.

That’s when they turned to the income side of the equation and started a ton of different side hustles.

They picked up second jobs at their gym, rented out their car on Turo, dogsitted, and — inspired by my episode with Chris Schwab — they started a residential cleaning business called Maids2Match.com.

Today, that business is doing $20-25k in sales a month, with other people doing the cleaning. Anthony and Jhanilka are fully in business-owner mode, dedicating just a few hours a week to it.

You can follow along with their journey on Instagram @thehartrimony.

Tune in to hear:

• how they got this business off the ground while working full-time
• how they find reliable cleaners
• the marketing tactics that are paying off

Click here to download 101 more service business ideas!

Full show notes

Can you still make money in domain flipping?

Last year, Mark Levine flipped 70 domain names, for around $160k in gross profit.

Of that, he spent a little over half on renewal fees for his domain name portfolio and acquiring new domains to add to it, netting $70-80k for the year.

Not bad for a part-time hobby!

In his spare time, Mark manages a portfolio of 3500-4000 domains. That's not huge by domain investor standards, but still a good-sized collection.

With established investors like Mark, I was curious to find out if there was room for new players to earn a profit. (Several Side Hustle Show listeners requested this topic as well!)

Tune in to hear:

• what it takes to buy low and sell high in the world of digital real estate
• where to buy and sell domains
• how new up-and-coming extensions level the playing field for new investors

Free Bonus: Click here to download the "alternative" investments I've personally invested in.

Full show notes

Speedos, systems, and niche strategy -- this episode has it all.

John Lee Dumas to share some insights from 2000+ interviews with successful entrepreneurs.

(Turns out, I have an informal tradition of hosting John every 4 years. In 2013 we chatted podcasting and monetization, and in 2017 we dove into productivity, discipline, and focus.)

His latest project is a book: The Common Path to Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment.

Inside, he unpacks a 17-step guide to business success -- based on his own experience in building Entrepreneurs on Fire into a 7-figure operation and lessons learned from his thousands of interviews.

Tune in to hear:

• John’s take on the common path to uncommon success
• an outline of the steps you need to take to create a successful business
• some of the tips and tricks John has implemented in his own businesses over the years

Full show notes

How do you make time for a side hustle?

That's one of the questions I get the most, and one of the reasons we return to the theme of productivity so often.

In this post (and podcast episode), I'll share a 10-step process for making — and optimizing — time for your business, inspired by Side Hustle Show guests.

Download the Free Time Tracking Template + My 10 Favorite Productivity Tools

Full show notes

Last May, Monisha Misra reluctantly accepted her first customer. Nine months later, she'd eclipsed $100k in total sales -- all on the side from her day job.

BoardsByMo.com is a charcuterie board prep company, and the early success and attention in that arena has spun off other revenue streams including virtual live charcuterie board building classes.

Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free!

Monisha has covered a lot of ground in the last year.

She started out donating snack platters to essential workers during the beginning of the pandemic. Now she’s scaling up her B2B operations, running online classes several times a week, and holding several business workshops a month.

Tune in to hear:

• how Monisha has grown her Instagram following to over 20,000 people
• the actions she took to build a 6-figure operation on the side in less than a year
• how she’s been streamlining her business and adding additional income streams

Full show notes

Are laundromats "the ultimate side hustle," like my guest Jordan Berry described?

These simple, local, cash-flowing businesses have been around forever, but surprisingly this is the first time discussing them in detail on the show.

Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free!

Jordan is a former pastor turned laundromat mogul. Along the way, he's become an advocate for the industry through his website and podcast at LaundromatResource.com.

Jordan got the idea to buy a laundromat after his wife told him about a family friend quitting his day job in tech after buying one.

It wasn’t just the income potential that intrigued Jordan. He wanted a business that would generate passive income -- and yield better returns than real estate.

Jordan has been able to achieve both of those things through buying laundromats. 

Tune in to hear:

• why a laundromat makes a great side hustle and investment vehicle
• some of the expensive mistakes to avoid
• where to look for financing and some creative marketing and monetization ideas

Here's a look at the 10 most compelling reasons why owning a laundromat is -- according to Jordan -- “the best investment you can make."

Full show notes

From burned out freelance writer to making $200+ a day in affiliate sales ... all in less than a year.

That’s Tami Smith's story.

Tami was writing affiliate content for clients when she had a “why don’t I try that?” moment.

Starting in late 2019, Tami went from watching clients make money from the articles she wrote, to making her own affiliate commissions on a site of her own.

Her effort and results on FitHealthyMomma.com are extraordinary, all while combining two things she loves -- fitness and writing.

Tune in to hear:

• how Tami gained traction and traffic so quickly
• the tools she uses to get the job done
• how you can follow a similar path with a side hustle of your own

If this inspires you to start a blog of your own, my free video series will help you get online quickly and affordably.

Download the Free Bonus:
3 Common Website Mistakes that are Costing You Money

Full show notes

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.

Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free!

Here are the questions I cover:

1. How do you get over the fear of asking someone to buy your service or product? (1:42)
2. Should I gain a skill to start a side hustle or just jump on some ones that have little barrier to entry? (3:45)
3. How do you combat shiny object syndrome? (5:14)
4. Do you have to have an established site to qualify for affiliate programs? (6:52)
5. I'm thinking of expanding the focus of my website. Should I rebrand? (7:59)
6. Are there tasks too small for virtual assistants? (9:32)
7. What are your thoughts about leaving a side hustle as a "hustle" instead of a business? (10:08)
8. Can you send it to me in French? (10:58)
9. What low startup cost businesses can a 14 year old do? (12:07)
10. Is there a service you would recommend for monetizing newsletters through sponsorships? (13:55)
11. What are the top three things you would do to monetize a (new) podcast? (17:21)
12. What’s the hardest part about hosting a podcast? (18:59)
13. How do block days work if there's a conflict between your schedule and someone you're trying to meet with? (20:17)
14. What's your take on the best length of time for a podcast? (21:26)
15. How do I transition from my full-time career to my side hustle? (22:44)
16. I have a idea that if shared with anyone or investors could be easily stolen. How do I protect it? (25:04)
17. I just made my first $5 in passive income! How can I keep this newfound motivation alive? (27:51)
18. I'm finding it difficult to grow my Facebook page. Any ideas or advice? (29:29)
19. How would you go about getting your first freelance clients? (30:37)
20. What makes a good KPI? (33:02)

Full show notes

Service businesses can get a bad rap.

After all, there are clients to deal with, and actual labor involved in fulfillment. They’re just not as glamorous as other more “passive” income models.

But you should know that more Side Hustle Show guests started with a service-based business model than any other.

This week’s guest has a unique approach to service businesses -- one that doesn't rely on your skills as the expert.

Tyler Gillespie has built two successful service businesses and had a clean exit from both -- the last being just 13 months from startup to sale.

Tune in to hear:

• how Tyler comes up with ideas for productized service businesses
• the processes he implements to put his business in a position to exit
• how he outsources the mechanism of his businesses

Click here to download 101 more service business ideas!

Full show notes

How does the idea of taking your part-time hobby, and turning it into a full-time income sound?

That’s exactly what Carey Adam of RunningMoms.com has done.

Carey has turned her passion for running and fitness into a full-time business by creating paid products and a membership model.

To do this, she tapped into the massive Facebook audience -- over 2 billion people -- to connect with her target customers.

I’m calling this the Facebook Funnel. It's a unique and systematic way to make money on Facebook.

Tune in to hear how:

• New prospects enter Carey’s ecosystem
• She provides them with helpful, valuable content and an “experience”
• They ultimately become long-term paying customers

Download the Free "Facebook Funnel" Visualization and Worksheet.

Full show notes

You’ve heard of Hot Tub Time Machine, but how does Hot Tub Cash Machine sound?

That’s effectively the business model this week’s guest, Steve Nadramia.

Steve is a high school history and economics teacher in New York, and a listener of the show.

He reached out after our Thanksgiving episode, which touched on renting out attic space and even camper vans and semi-trucks as potential sources of recurring revenue.

His unconventional rental business?

Portable hot tubs!

Steve started a hot tub rental business to replace his summer job income, with the goal of earning $1000 a month. Today, he’s got 25+ tubs in his “fleet,” delivers them with his pickup truck, and is doing thousands of dollars in bookings every month.

Steve explained renting hot tubs is quite common in Europe, but doesn’t have much competition in the US yet.

Tune in to hear:

• how Steve got the idea for this business
• how he’s marketed and grown his business
• the logistics of how it all works

Want more unconventional rental ideas?

Click here to download a list of 25 other things you could make money renting out.

Full show notes

A masterpiece life starts with masterpiece days stacked on top of masterpiece moments.

Whatever your future looks like, to get there you’re going to need to build masterpiece days.

To help us build more of those masterpiece days and work toward being the best versions of ourselves in our life and work starting today is Brian Johnson.

Brian is a serial entrepreneur who combines ancient wisdom with modern science to help people live their best lives.

You’ll find him at optimize.me, the app version of which has lived on the homescreen of my phone for the past few years, ever since my brother introduced me to his work.

This is an episode about taking a break from chopping down trees to sharpen the saw. This is about the seemingly small actions you can take on a daily basis to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Note: Click here to access my free habit tracker inspired by this episode.

Tune in to hear:

• what it means to have a masterpiece day and where you should start
• the framework Brian uses with his students and coaches
• which virtues he sees having the biggest impact on his students

Full show notes

In October, I sold a website.

It wasn't a 7-figure, never-work-again type of exit, but when the funds were deposited, it was the largest single amount ever to hit one of my accounts.

Over the course of 9 and a half years of running Virtual Assistant Assistant--including the proceeds from the sale--the site generated over $550,000 in revenue.

This is the story of how I started, grew, and sold a very part-time online business.

I hope it inspires you to start one of your own.

Full show notes

I know most people are ready to put 2020 behind us for good, but there were some bright spots in the midst of all the craziness.

With that in mind, here were some of mine I'd love to share.

Full show notes

What comes first, the domain name or the business idea?

For Peter Askew, the author of a viral blog post called “I Sell Onions on the Internet,” the answer is always the domain name.

Peter is fascinated by expiring domain names and how they’re treated like physical assets.

This is how he ended up with VidaliaOnions.com long before he had any plans on starting an e-commerce site shipping onions.

Peter took that domain name, partnered with an award-winning onion farmer, and last season shipped more than 64,000 pounds of onions!

(Prices range from $2.50-$7 per pound so you can estimate the site doing multiple 6-figures in revenue.)

Like the product itself, this is a business with layers worth exploring. From the domain name to the farmer/supplier relationship, to the marketing efforts, and to the logistics and customer support that make it all work.

Tune in to hear:

• why Peter says starting with an expired domain name gives you “a small unfair advantage”
• how he found a supplier and manages the logistics of his business
• his marketing and customer support methods

Full show notes

What started as a 2-week challenge with a friend 6 months ago, has turned into a business processing $3,500 in orders a day!

Luke Emery has a background in design and portrait painting. So, he decided to utilize these skills and his e-commerce experience and start a business selling custom pet portraits.

Van Woof specializes in putting your dog or cat into a Renaissance-style oil painting, looking like they really posed for the portrait.

This isn’t Luke’s first e-commerce business, but it's taken off like a rocket!

Tune in to hear:

• how Luke markets and sells these paintings on Etsy and his own store
• how the fulfillment logistics work
• the tools and platforms he uses to create a smooth workflow and great customer experience

Full show notes

Ever thought about buying a semi truck and renting it out?

Yeah, me neither, until I came across Ericka.

Apparently there's big money to be made in trucking, but like any other side hustle, there's some strategy, risk, and nuance to the business.

Ericka Williams owns 12 of these giant 18-wheelers, which can generate thousands of dollars a month in profit.

Ericka has gone from delivering pizzas as a side hustle to owning a painting company, to now managing an investment portfolio that includes both real estate and semi-trucks.

If you're interested in real estate, there’s a parallel to consider with this business model. Trucks are assets you can acquire with leverage (meaning other people’s money), and essentially rent it out for weekly or monthly cash flow.

Tune in to hear:

• how Ericka came across the idea of buying semi-trucks
• what to look for when buying your first truck
• the math, marketing, and mistakes to avoid in this side hustle

Full show notes

Interested in growing a community and building a profitable blog around something you - and most other people - will inevitably go through?

That’s exactly what Katie Emery did when she decided to stop dying her hair after 25 years and transition to natural gray hair.

Kate had questions about the transition, but couldn’t find the answers she wanted online. In fact, the information she found was mostly negative.

So, she decided to start her own blog, KatieGoesPlatinum.com, to provide comprehensive information about gray hair, and to show women that growing out their grays could be fun and empowering.

In just two years Katie has grown her blog to an average of $6,000 a month in revenue. She’s also grown a passionate community and is helping other women go through the transition to natural gray hair.

Ready to start a blog of your own? My free video course will help you get online quickly and affordably.

Tune in to hear:

• how Katie started her blog and got it off the ground with no prior experience
• how she creates content that drives traffic
• the revenue streams bringing in an average of $6,000 per month

Full show notes

Our annual Friendsgiving celebration has been put on pause this year, but one tradition lives on.

This is year 3 of a special Thanksgiving Side Hustle Show episode showcasing creative side hustle ideas that make real money.

If you like this format, I’d love for you to check out the first two in this series -- those are episodes 310 and 363 -- both are in the Top 10 all-time most popular episodes.

Ready? Let's do it!

Full show notes

Zero to 55k subscribers and $50k in revenue in 8 months?

That’s exactly what Codie Sanchez with Contrarian Thinking, her newsletter about investing and entrepreneurship.

Codie's a former journalist, turned institutional investor, turned online business owner. 

I've thought about content businesses mostly in the context of blogging, podcasting, or video -- but what if email is your content channel?

After all, the challenge that many other content channels face is "how to get people to join your list."

Codie's model, in a true "contrarian" way, cuts out that middleman.

This episode is sure to have you thinking a little differently about how you approach building an audience and building an online business.

Tune in to hear:

• what you might create a newsletter about
• what makes newsletters such an interesting business model
• how Codie’s grown and monetized her's so far

Full show notes

What little purchases or changes have you made that had an outsized impact on your overall happiness?

This is something of a sport in our house.

Bryn and I kind of joke that we have this mission to optimize everything, whether that’s the:

• limited space in our house
• hours in the day
• money in the bank

We've taken great joy in these incremental improvements. We often ask ourselves, “How can we make this 1% better?”

If we can make those 1% improvements consistently over time, they start to compound and we’re way better off than when we started.

I put the call out to several friends and listeners:

What little life upgrade or optimization have you made recently -- with great results?

Tune in to hear 21 little life upgrades -- the habits, products, or tools that don't cost a lot of time or money, but make a big impact.

Full show notes.

We’re in the middle of a massive labor shift from employees to entrepreneurs.

In this episode, I want to try and equip you with some skills, frameworks, and mindsets to help navigate that shift.

If you want to make money online, there are a million ways to get it done, but it usually boils down to one thing: helping people.

To help me walk through this stuff I’m joined by Austin L. Church.

Austin’s a writer, brand consultant, and online entrepreneur. He’s been making his living online for the last 12 years, with some of the exact strategies we’re talking about today.

Tune in to hear:

• how to identify your marketable skills
• how to land clients in a crowded marketplace
• the tips and tactics Austin has used to grow his business over the last 12 years

Full show notes

Want to get started with an online business but don’t feel like you’re an expert in anything?

Maybe you’ve started a business but you’re struggling to monetize it?

A few short years ago, Shane Sams and his wife Jocelyn were school teachers.

In their off-hours, they built several successful online businesses, including ElementaryLibrarian.com, which sold for over $1 million in 2017.

Today they run FlippedLifestyle.com along with the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, to help others try and replicate the success they’ve had online, and specifically take advantage of the membership model.

Tune in to hear:

• how to set up your membership site the right way
• why you might be closer than you think to getting your first paying members
• the payment tiers that work for Shane and his students
• how Shane and Jocelyn continue to grow their community year-over-year

Full show notes

Josh Belk is a full-time college student, he works full-time in web design, and in what little spare time, he’s started a $6,000 a month mobile detailing business with his younger brother.

This idea came about when Josh connected the dots between obsession and opportunity.

On the obsession side, Josh would always see his brother out in the driveway cleaning his car.

On the opportunity side, he received an email about business ideas anyone could start, and mobile car washing was one of them.

He asked his brother if he wanted to team up to see if they could make some money cleaning cars -- and with that, Belk Mobile Detailing was born.

Tune in to hear to the full podcast episode to hear how the pair:

• landed their first mobile detailing customers
• price their service
• stand out from the competition

Full show notes

How can you instill the skills and values of innovation and entrepreneurship in kids?

And if you can teach it to kids, why can’t you teach it to grownups?

This week I’m joined by Don Wettrick, an award-winning middle school, and high school teacher and the CEO and co-founder of StartEdUp, which has a mission to empower students and teachers to apply innovation and entrepreneurship in the classroom.

He’s author of Pure Genius: Building a Culture of Innovation and Taking 20% Time to the Next Level, and also the host of the StartEd Up Podcast.

Tune in to hear:

• how to get kids AND grownups excited about this stuff
• the rules Don uses for brainstorming
• his processes for turning problems into real solutions for real customers
• how those of us with young kids can encourage them to be producers not just consumers

Full show notes

$18k in 9 months ... from ONE YouTube video?

And that's without even filming or putting your face on camera!

Jon Corres identifies trending topics on YouTube and produces viral videos to ride that trend. Or at least videos he hopes will hit the algorithm just right.

It's a numbers game -- not everything you publish will get traction. In fact, Jon said most of his videos don't even breakeven on their production costs right away. But when you have one that hits, it washes away all those expenses and more.

When I spoke with Jon, he told me about one of his videos that had gone viral earlier in the year. This video quickly hit 1 million views in February, netting Jon $3,200 in ad revenue.

That same video has carried on bringing in passive income. At the time of our call, it had made Jon more than $18,000 and received 8 million views.

All from a short video that cost $80 to produce and comprises of short clips from other videos.

Tune in to hear:

• how Jon comes up with ideas for his videos
• how he and his team create videos without filming any new content
• the types of videos most likely to go viral
• the math and metrics behind a successful viral video

Full show notes

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.

Like this format?

This is the 10th installment of “20 Questions” so feel free to go back and binge on the older ones too:

• 365: Market Saturation, Mind Mapping, Miracle Mornings, and More: 20 Questions, with Nick
• 346: The Con of the Side Hustle, Beanie Babies, Affiliate Marketing, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 320: Multiplying Money, Morning Routines, and $100k Side Hustles: 20 Questions with Nick
• 291: Email, Ebooks, Platforms, and Conferences: 20 Questions with Nick
• 271: Brilliant Blogging, Ruthless Productivity, and Guaranteed Success: 20 Questions with Nick
• 245: Network Marketing, Imposter Syndrome, My Side Hustle Mistakes, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 219: Growing Traffic, Monetization, List-Building, a Day in the Life, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 198: Blogging, Branding, Book Writing, and Finding the Right Side Hustle for You: 20 Questions with Nick
• 181: SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Self-Publishing, Udemy, and More: 20 Questions with Nick

A common piece of advice you’ll hear is to take audience questions and turn them into content, so here’s a meta example of that in action.

This episode covers side hustle ethics, the side hustles I'm most excited about right now, the best traffic drivers, and lots more.

Enjoy!

Full show notes

"I allowed the business to to coast and it's coasted wonderfully well," Nate Dodson explained.

In this episode you'll hear about the power of an evergreen digital product that makes sales on autopilot. It's allowed Nate to shift his focus to some offline projects, including several real estate renovations.

In Nate's first appearance on The Side Hustle Show (episode 314 in late 2018), he shared the simple sales funnel that ultimately earned over $1 million in total online course sales.

Tune in to hear how Microgreens Farmer continues to make sales every week, how COVID has impacted Nate's business, and his plans for the future.

Full show notes

How does a new blog get to $50k a month within 2 years? 

It takes great content, a consistent SEO strategy, and building strong partnerships.

When we last heard from Alex and Healy from FinvsFin.com in episode 367 at the very end of 2019, the site was earning around $20k a month in affiliate commissions.

Just 9 months later, that's jumped to $50k!

Tune in to hear what's changed and what's working today in terms of content, SEO, and affiliate partnerships.

Full show notes

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

Well, when you're a knife sharpener, every house is a potential customer!

Matt Rowell was earning $250-500 a month when we caught up in episode 308 back in late 2018. Since then, he's grown to a consistent $1500 a month, working maybe an hour a day.

Tune in to hear:

• The most important new marketing channel for Matt.
• How the pandemic has impacted his sales.
• How he's leveled up his skills to broaden his customer base.
• How new sharpeners can get started today.

Full show notes

The mobile notary business is booming for Brian Schooley, a long-time Side Hustle Show listener.

When we last caught up with Brian in mid-2018 (episode 286), he was earning $1500-2000 a month as a loan signing agent. In this "where are they now?" edition of the show, he shares how he's grown to $10k a month and quit his day job to focus on the notary gig full-time.

Tune in to hear:

• when he felt comfortable quitting his job
• how the pandemic has impacted his business
• how he builds relationships with escrow officers

Full show notes

$1000 a week cleaning backyards?

Erica Krupin turned some earbuds at the start of the year with her fast-growing pet waste removal business. 

Since we spoke, she's added another 50+ recurring weekly customers and expanded to a new location.

Tune in to hear:

• What's working on social media today.
• How she's grown 50% in 9 months, in spite of a global pandemic.
• The software she's testing to manage her customers, team members, and jobs.

Full show notes

Want to scale back on your day job?

Want to travel more, and spend more time with your family?

That’s exactly what Stacy Gallego has been able to do thanks to her part-time flipping business.

What’s cool is that this income stream was actually inspired by a former side hustle show guest, Rob “the flea market flipper” Stephenson, who we last heard from in episode 298.

Stacy is one of Rob’s star students, and I’ve loved watching her share some of her sales results for quite a while.

In just two years, Stacy has gone from flipping her first item to hitting $10,000 in sales in a month.

The ability to find profit in your hometown is one I think is really valuable in recession-proofing your own income. If that appeals to you, I encourage to you check out Rob and his wife Melissa’s free training to learn more.

Tune in to hear:

• how Stacy sources profitable inventory
• how she deals with the logistics of shipping huge items
• which items/categories are selling best
• her advice for new flippers to start making money

Full show notes

We all live by a set of unwritten "money rules."

These guide the decisions we make on how we spend, save, earn, and invest.

But are your rules really serving you?

In this episode, we’re looking at 10 "unconventional" money rules. These are suggestions that hopefully spark some introspection and conversation.

Because the "conventional" wisdom clearly isn't working for a whole lot of people!

To help me talk through these is Rich Jones. He’s the host of the award-winning Paychecks and Balances podcast, which is all about helping you navigate your finances and career.

Rich is a frequent speaker at both podcasting and personal finance events. More impressively, he’s done it all on the side from his day job.

Tune in to hear why:

• your best side hustle might be your day job
• all dollars earned are not equal
• the “best” financial advice might not be right for you

All that, and more "unconventional" financial wisdom coming at you!

Full show notes

Build your email list!

Get your first 100, 1,000, 10,000 subscribers.

“The money’s in the list,” right?

That's the chorus of advice you hear from all the marketing experts.

But what do you send someone after they join your list?

That’s what we’re diving into in this episode with Daniel Throssell of PersuasivePage.com.

Daniel is a copywriter and has been called “The best marketer in Australia” by a prominent client of his.

His journey started as a side hustle while working 12-hour shifts as an electrical engineer. Daniel started using any spare time he had and a special way of writing proposals - and landed high paying jobs from week 1.

It wasn’t long before he was charging $200/hr and up, working with the bestselling author in Australia, and he now has his own audience he writes emails to daily.

Tune in to hear:

• how to come up with the best lead magnet for your target audience
• how to get people to sign up for your email list
• the 3 kinds of emails you’ll send after someone does sign up
• the 3-part email structure that can work in just about any niche

Full show notes

This week I’m excited to share a unique side hustle that’s turning hobbies into profits, through what I’m calling “local” e-commerce.

This is a story of building a following for homemade or handmade products -- without shipping anything, without advertising, and without relying on 3rd party marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy for exposure.

We’re going to explore this through the lens of So Here’s the Dough, a local cottage kitchen cookie operation run by a friend of mine here in Livermore, Jenn Fei.

Jenn is an attorney and real estate broker by trade, but those professions have now become the side hustles to her thriving cookie business.

Tune in to hear:

• when it's time to turn your hobby into a business
• how to grow a loyal and hungry (pun intended) following for your products
• how to consistently generate new product ideas
• other growth ideas for artisan products

Full show notes

Create a design.

Upload it to a store.

Earn passive royalties whenever it sells.

That’s the passive income dream, and that’s the premise behind the Merch by Amazon and print-on-demand side hustles.

But does it really still work?

To find out, I invited Michael Essek on to the Side Hustle Show.

Michael has been designing and selling t-shirts online since 2013, and he’s seen how the market has changed over the years.

For the past 4-5 years, Michael's earned $100,000+ licensing and selling his designs, so he has his finger on the pulse of what’s working right now.

Tune in to hear:

• how you can get started selling merch online -- even if you don’t have design skills
• how to come up with product ideas -- without being a copycat
• some interesting ways to level up your merch business as a gateway to bigger opportunities

Full show notes

We’re all dealt 24 hours a day. I believe how you spend that time, or maybe rather how you invest it, should give you some sort of return.

That could be a monetary return, sure. But it could also be a return in personal satisfaction or impact on others.

Today, I want to introduce a productivity framework I’m calling The Productivity Pyramid.

Like most frameworks, it’s a work in progress, but here’s how it shapes up:

• Vision / Goals
• Projects
• Tasks
• Tools and Tactics

Full show notes

Starting a business doesn't have to be expensive -- in fact, low startup cost business ideas are everywhere.

Just last week, Nate and Alysha Jackson explained how they started their Amazon retail arbitrage business with just $100 -- and had since grown to over $1 million in total sales.

Inspired by their story, along with a couple of threads in the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group that asked for some real-life low startup cost business ideas, I put together this episode.

Stick around to hear how several Side Hustle Nation members got their business off the ground on the cheap. In most cases, you don’t need outside capital to get started.

Instead, my hope is you’ll use these stories as inspiration to start lean and start now.

Full show notes.

“It was costing me money to go to my job,” Nate told me.

That was just a year after Nate and Alysha Jackson started their Amazon FBA retail arbitrage business -- with just a $100 investment.

Since then, the former public school teachers have sold over $1 million worth of products on Amazon!

Amazon FBA retail arbitrage is the art of buying low locally and online, and reselling for a profit on Amazon.

After hearing about the opportunity on Side Hustle Nation, they turned that $100 in initial inventory into more than $180,000 in total sales in 12 months. It didn't take much longer than that before they both quit their jobs to focus on the Amazon business and their growing family.

Tune in to hear:

• the product categories Nate and Alysha like for new sellers (interestingly enough, they’re known as the bra flipping couple in FBA circles).
• where they source profitable inventory.
• tools of the trade to scale up your reselling business.

If you want to start an online business, you’re probably going to need to build a website.

But could you shortcut the process by just buying one that’s already working?

In this episode, which is the fourth and final episode of our Showdown series this month, we’re comparing two ways you operate a revenue-generating website; building your own site vs buying an established website.

For this debate, I’ve got a couple of powerhouse guests:

• Mark Webster from AuthorityHacker.com and the Authority Hacker podcast, one of my favorite resources for all things SEO and affiliate marketing. He’ll be representing the build side of this conversation.
• Dom Wells from Onfolio.co is on the buy side. Onfolio, among other things, has a management service for website investors. He’s been in the website building, buying, and monetizing space for years.

There are pros and cons to both starting and buying websites. But, as you’ll hear discussed, there are some key differences between each method and might help you lean one way or the other.

Tune in to hear both Mark and Dom discuss the different strategies behind:

• Getting started
• Finding a site to buy
• Quick wins and monetization
• Marketing
• Pros and cons of each model
• And more

These guys both have a lot of experience in building and buying websites. By the end of this one, you’ll have a good idea which path is best for you.

Full show notes

A service business is one of the fastest side hustles to get off the ground, and you can scale it by hiring other people to deliver the work.

But is there an advantage to staying a solo operator?

In this Side Hustle Showdown we're looking at freelancing vs. building an agency.

For this debate, I invited a couple members of The Side Hustle Nation community who both run cleaning companies:

• Chris Schwab from ThinkMaids.com represented the agency side. We last heard from Chris in episode 294, where he talked about how he’d built his cleaning business to $60k a month in revenue, and scaled back his own involvement to just 10 minutes a day.
• Ken Carfango from SoloCleaningSchool.com represented the solo freelance side. Ken’s a former engineer and a father of 5 who’s got his cleaning business dialed in where he can knock out the work himself in just a couple days, and enjoy 5-day weekends with his family.

Tune in to hear both Chris and Ken discuss which business model is best for:

• Getting started
• Finding new clients
• Scaling
• Start-up costs
• How to exit
• And more

If you’re trying to decide which path you want to take, stick around to learn how to avoid the dreaded “valley of despair” that often afflicts service businesses, and how to get started on the right foot.

Full show notes

In the e-commerce space, selling private label products on Amazon has been a popular side hustle for the last several years.

But is it still the best way to go?

Or is there a lower risk, higher reward way to turn your ideas into profits?

In this episode, which is the second episode of our Showdown series this month, we’re comparing two ways you can capitalize on opportunities in the market; selling private label products and product licensing.

For this debate, I’ve sourced two guests who have appeared on the Side Hustle Show before:

• Greg Mercer of JungleScout.com, creator of the popular Jungle Scout product research and amazon analytics software. We last from Greg on episode 263, when he talked about how to find your first Amazon FBA private label product. (Try Jungle Scout for half off your first month with my referral link.)
• Stephen Key of, InventRight.com and author of the One Simple Idea: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work. We last heard from Stephen on episode 113, when he talked about how you can turn your ideas into recurring revenue.

Both business models allow you to exercise our creative muscles. But, as you’ll find out, each model is suited to a different personality type and has a different balance of risk and reward.

Tune in to hear both Greg and Stephen dig into the different strategies behind:

• Getting started
• Marketing and discoverability
• Start-up costs
• Beating the competition
• Monetization
• And more

There is some interesting insight into these business models. By the end of the episode, you’ll have a clearer idea of which business model is best for you.

Full show notes

Creating content online can be a super-effective way to build an audience and ultimately to make money.

If you’re just starting out or trying to grow your business, you might be wondering what type of content makes the most sense to create.

In this episode, we’re going to compare and contrast two of the most popular content channels going today: podcasting and YouTube.

This is actually the first of several friendly debate-style episodes this month I’m calling the Side Hustle Showdown series.

For each debate, I tried to source guests in a similar niche so they could best speak each other’s language.

To fire shots over the pros and cons of starting an online business with podcasts or YouTube, I enlisted the help of:

• Podcaster Jonathan Mendonsa, co-host of ChooseFI, a personal finance show. We last heard from Jonathan in episode 287, where he talked about how his show took off and how he was able to quit his job just 10 months in.
• YouTuber Marko Zlatic, who started his personal finance channel Whiteboard Finance as a side hustle also in 2017. Since then he's amassed 370k subscribers and quit his job to produce videos full-time.

Tune in to hear both Marko and Jonathan go back and forward discussing which of the platforms are best for:

• Marketing and discoverability
• Content production
• Monetization
• Start-up costs
• And more

This is a fun one, and by the end, you’ll have an idea which platform is going to be best for your business.

Full show notes

Businesses evolve over time, but I don’t think anyone could have prepared for the pace of change this year.

To gauge how some of you have been handling everything the pandemic has thrown at you, I reached out to Side Hustle Nation and asked what pivots and changes you’ve been making in your business over the last few months.

What I got back were some interesting and innovative ways some business owners and side hustlers have found to actually grow their businesses during the pandemic.

Here’s a look at some of the hardest hit industries, and some of the ways business owners have been pivoting and adapting.

Full show notes

At the end of nearly every episode of The Side Hustle Show, I ask my guests for their "#1 tip for Side Hustle Nation."

There’s always a great variety of responses, and I wanted to take some time today to go through some of my favorites from the past 50-ish interviews.

This has become an annual tradition on the show, and we just passed 7 years and 12 million downloads!

If you like this short-and-sweet meta-style show, be sure to check out the others in this series:

• Episode 50
• Episode 124
• Episode 177
• Episode 236
• Episode 288
• Episode 338

Full show notes

How did a butcher shop's side project turn into "the best snacks in the world" -- and $500,000 in sales in their first year?

And more importantly, could you apply the same strategies to help local businesses take their products online?

This story features Dustin Reichmann, a long-time Side Hustle Show listener. He has a blog called EngagedMarriage.com, and with the online marketing skills learned there, started a new consulting business to help other businesses build their online presence.

One of his clients was a local butcher shop. Impressed by one of their products--a higher-end, clean-ingredient meat stick--Dustin felt there was an opportunity to reach a lot more customers online.

So, he made Ryan -- the owner of the butcher shop -- a low-risk offer to partner and launch the product online.

What followed was a series of wins across multiple marketing channels and through a number of innovative promotional tactics.

Tune in to hear:

• How Dustin approached Ryan with a win-win partnership.
• The marketing channels and techniques they used to sell more than $500,000 worth of FireCreek snacks in their first year.
• How they got their product into 50+ Walmart stores.
• And how anyone can apply the same online and offline marketing strategies into their own business.

Full show notes

How does a YouTube channel with less than 300 subscribers generate 6-figures a year?

In Joshua Lisec's case, he does it by answering targeted questions, and selling high-value services to those viewers.

Joshua is an award-winning, celebrity-recommended, #1 international bestselling Certified Professional Ghostwriter. He’s also a TEDx speaker, a novelist, and has ghostwritten over 45 books for entrepreneurs, executives, and public figures.

Over the last few years, Joshua's freelance work has gone from $1.67 an hour on his first writing project, to over $500,000 a year!

(Long-time listeners might remember him; Joshua appeared on episode 201 in late 2016. In that classic Side Hustle Show episode, we talked through the OPA strategy -- tapping into Other People's Audiences -- to sell your services.)

In this episode, we're diving into another innovative marketing strategy involving YouTube. It's one you can apply to your own business right away.

Tune in to hear Joshua explain:

• How he’s generating high value leads on YouTube with less than 300 subscribers
• The tools and techniques he’s using to optimize his YouTube videos to rank well
• How he bundled individual low paying freelance gigs for a high-value service

Liam Austin made $50k off his first online event, and hasn't looked back. Since then, Liam has hosted another 17 virtual summits and online business networking events.

In total, these events have brought together more than 400 speakers and 100,000 business owners.

Virtual summits allow you to connect with industry leaders and influencers in your niche while growing your own audience.

Hosting a virtual summit sounds pretty straightforward:

• interview a bunch of influential people in your niche
• collect registrations of people who want to watch those interviews
• sell access to the recordings after they expire

But the virtual summit model has a lot of nuance and strategy, and behind-the-scenes action that all has to come together to make it a hit.

That's why I invited Liam on the show.

Note: Click here to download Liam’s top tips for planning and hosting a virtual summit from this episode.

If you’re looking for ways to grow your business and make meaningful connections within your industry, this episode lays out that blueprint for you.

Tune in to hear Liam talk through:

• The core benefits of hosting a virtual summit
• How he made $50k from his first summit and learned some valuable lessons
• What it’s going to take to create your own virtual summit in your industry
• And more

Are you stuck with the idea that you don’t have the skills to start a side hustle?

Today’s guest, Chris Misterek of SelfMadeWebDesigner.com didn’t let that hold him back.

He went from being in a tight spot personally and financially, to bringing in an average of $3k a month on the side through his new web design business.

With no previous experience with web design, Chris decided to start at the ground up by working through some free online courses.

Within a few months, he was introducing himself as a web designer, and within 18 months he was earning double his day job salary on the side!

Tune in to this episode to hear Chris explain how he:

• Picked up this new skillset on the cheap
• Found his first clients
• Marketed and grew his business
• Recommends you replicate this across any number of industries

$15,000 a month for 30 minutes of work? The passive income dream is real for Dustin Heiner.

Dustin achieved this by following a systematic approach to buying homes and renting them out.

He started with his first property back in 2006. Within 6 years he had 19 properties, and within 9 years he had 26 properties and had retired from his day job at the age of 37.

Today he has more than 30 properties bringing in (mostly) passive income supporting him and his family.

Note: Click here to download Dustin’s top tips for finding and buying rental properties from this episode.

Dustin is a serial side hustler, but once he realized the benefit of getting paid over and over again for work he did once – he doubled down on real estate.

Tune in to hear Dustin talk through:

• His approach to property sourcing
• The 6 ways he makes money with rental properties
• How he’s been able to grow his portfolio so quickly
• His advice for those looking to replicate his success

Side Hustle Show listener Kate Johnson started her bookkeeping business in 2017, and now serves several recurring clients. She targets an effective rate of $70 an hour, and is able to work from home.

With her youngest starting preschool, Kate found herself with an extra 9 hours a week. "I wanted to be a good steward of that time," she explained.

Tune in to this episode to hear Kate explain:

• Why she decided to start working as a virtual bookkeeper
• How she landed her first clients
• How she’s grown her client base with little marketing
• The surprising new side hustle this work has spun off

Is trading stocks a legit way to make money from home? Or is it just another get-rich-quick-scheme?

Admittedly, I’ve always kind of looked at stock trading as a glorified form of gambling. And to be sure, there are risks involved.

In this episode, Teri Ijeoma does a good job of convincing me there really is an art and a science to it -- and that it is a winnable game.

Teri is a former assistant principal at an elementary school, who turned her stock trading side hustle into a full-time income.

To replace her day job salary, the MIT grad set herself a goal of making $300 a day.

By trading stocks before school started and during her lunch break, she was hitting that goal in about a year.

Today, Teri’s on a Million Dollar a Day mission -- that is, to help 1,000 people start making $1,000 a day trading stocks through her online course.

Tune in to hear:

• Teri’s trading criteria
• Her advice for new traders
• Why small players like you and me may have an advantage over billion-dollar hedge funds and Wall Street quants
• Where and how you can get started trading today

Reports of email's death are greatly exaggerated.

Andrew Allemann has gone from zero to up to $10,000 a month in just 3 years with a low overhead side hustle:

An email newsletter and an online directory that helps connect podcasters with guests.

Finding it difficult to find guests for his own podcast, he wanted to create a solution that would not only help himself, but the greater podcasting community as well.

It’s a business model I’m excited about right now, and Andrew is proof that if you provide value through email, people are willing to pay for it.

Tune in to hear why Andrew decided to start a newsletter and an online directory, how he’s grown his audience to more than 19,000 subscribers and 500 paying directory members in 3 years, and how he’s turned this into a profitable business.

Would 10 new clients solve all your business worries?

That was the position Helen Pritchard was in back in 2008.

On the back of a financial and personal crisis, Helen needed 10 clients paying £250 each to pay her bills.

She turned to LinkedIn to find those clients, and it didn’t take her long.

Since then, Helen has pivoted her business and now teaches other people how to get clients and grow their business using LinkedIn.

Note: Click here to download Helen’s top tips for attracting your ideal clients on LinkedIn from this episode.

In fact, I found out about Helen through a listener of the show:

I do not work for Helen. Nor do I do her PR. I just want to nominate her because she changed my life. Thanks to her, I have filled my client roster and have more money coming in as an entrepreneur than I ever did working for someone else.

That’s an awesome testimonial for Helen, and solid proof that her methods work.

If your goal is to leave your job in the near future, you don’t want to miss this one. What Helen teaches is probably the fastest way to start your own business with the least upfront expense.

Tune in to hear Helen talk through:

• the processes she teaches students on her LinkedIn mastermind
• how to set up your LinkedIn profile as a landing page that converts
• how to connect with potential clients
• and more

Chris Guillebeau is a tremendous advocate for the lower risk brand of entrepreneurship we cover on the show.

He’s the bestselling author of several books including, The $100 Startup, Side Hustle, and The Art of Non-Conformity. On top of that, he’s hosted over 1,100 episodes of The Side Hustle School podcast.

His latest project is The Money Tree: A Story About Finding the Fortune in Your Own Backyard.

I've been a fan of Chris' work for years, so it was about time we had a meeting of the side hustle minds!

Tune in to this episode to hear Chris’ take on:

• How you can come up with side hustle ideas
• What actions you should take next
• What may be coming down the road in the world of side hustles.

Are you struggling to get traction with your blog?

Are you concerned your niche is too competitive or you’re starting too late?

If so, you’re going to come away from this episode with loads of actionable tips to put those questions to the side.

“I have learned, it is never literally too late to ever start anything,” today’s guest Jennifer Marx from JenniferMaker.com told me.

Jennifer has taken her DIY/crafting site from a part-time hobby blog earning $33/mo to bringing in more than 6-figures every month in just a few years.

Note: Click here to download Jennifer’s top tips for growing a blog into a 6-figure business from this episode.

She knows a thing or two about entering a competitive niche, finding, and cultivating an audience.

First, she mastered Pinterest, then Facebook, and just over a year ago she entered YouTube and already has an audience of more than 225k subscribers!

Dominating a source of traffic and growing an audience is something Jennifer excels at, and in the blogging world, there’s huge profit in doing so.

Tune in to hear how Jennifer found her initial traction in a competitive niche, what’s driving traffic for her today, how her site makes money, and how she’s built an email list that’s almost the population of Cleveland!

Do you enjoy hunting for bargains that you can buy low and sell high?

Charlie William does, and his book flipping business is proof that this business model still works.

He’s become a master deal-hunter, selling more than $9,000 worth of used books last month on Amazon. 

The best part? Anyone with access to thrift stores, yard sales, and local charity shops can get started with this side hustle for just a few bucks a month.

I connected with Charlie though the Side Hustle Nation Facebook Group and invited him on the show to learn more about the book flipping business.

Tune in to hear:

• How Charlie got started flipping books.
• The tools and software he uses to run his business.
• Where he sources profitable inventory.
• What it takes to make this side hustle profitable and successful.

Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.

As you know, one of the core themes of Side Hustle Nation is to control what you can control, even when the world seems to be spinning out of it.

I’m still wrapping my head around what the coronavirus outbreak means for all of us. I mean, we’ve never been through a global pandemic before! We’re all learning as we go.

But at this point, it feels weird NOT to address the issue, so here goes.

In this episode, I'll attempt to cover:

• Why I think this is a temporary setback, and how science says we can make that prediction come true
• How to stay sane while working at home
• Businesses that are positioned to thrive in this environment and on the other side
• Some awesome free resources to help if you’re hurting right now

Do you want to generate more leads for your business?

Are you struggling to turn prospects into paying customers?

If you’re saying “yes” to either of those questions, you’re going to get tonnes of value out of this episode.

I invited Kai Davis of KaiDavis.com and DoubleYourEcommerce.com back onto the show as he’s a pro when it comes to this stuff.

(Kai was actually guest #4 on The Side Hustle Show way back in 2013, he also had an encore performance a year later in episode 59.)

This time around, Kai walks us through the 3 levers that anyone can use to grow their business:

1. Find new customers
2. Get referrals from existing customers or your network
3. Sell more to existing customers

Note: Click here to download Kai’s top tips for finding prospects and turning them into sales and paying clients from this episode.

With a little creativity and tenacity, you can begin to implement his strategies right away.

Tune in to hear the techniques Kai is using to generate more leads for his business, how he’s turning these prospects into sales and profit, and the 3 specific actions anyone can use to generate leads for their own business.

Melissa Fassel Dunn has built a thriving - and profitable - online community serving residents in her small town.

The interesting part is that she didn't start her Facebook group or website with the goal of making money.

She did so to solve a pain point she was experiencing finding information about services in her town of Milton, a suburb of Boston.

“I needed information about kindergarten, I needed information about a plumber, an electrician, and I felt like there wasn’t a go-to place for any of that.

“So, I thought, I’m going to start a group, I’m going to add some of my friends and we can exchange information with one another,” Melissa told me.

She started Milton Neighbors, a Facebook group for residents of Milton to share information and recommend local services.

That was in 2013, today the group has more than 11,000 members and is almost a 6-figure business.

Note: Click here to download Melissa’s top tips for growing and monetizing an online community from this episode.

Tune in to hear how Melissa built up her group, how she keeps people engaged, her monetization methods, and how you can replicate her model with a Facebook group of your own in just about any niche.

From personal pain point to a 7-figure payday!

That’s what Donald Spann did when he started -- and eventually sold -- his virtual receptionist company, Vicky Virtual.

Donald took a personal pain point of his -- handling incoming phone calls in his cleaning business -- and built out a fully remote virtual call center.

Tune in to hear how he found his first clients, what worked in terms of marketing and sales, and how you can apply some of the same strategies to a business of your own.

What would it take to make the 4-Hour Workweek a reality?

Since we last caught up, this stay-at-home-mom blogger has been on a mission to automate and simplify her business.

Yes, by request, Rosemarie Groner from BusyBudgeter.com is back for a 4th round on the podcast!

If you are just joining us, let me catch you up on the backstory...

In her past life as a state trooper and home daycare operator, Rosemarie made an incredible transformation in her own household’s finances -- reducing expenses and paying off debt.

She shared her winning money strategies on a blog for “chronically disorganized” moms. 

Within her first year, she was making $5k a month, mostly from ad income.

A year after that, $20-25k, mostly from affiliates and her own email list.

And a year after that, she’d even touched the 6-figures a month mark by creating her own products.

Tune in to hear how Rosemarie:

• Turned her best content into a 2-year automated email sequence.
• Fine-tuned that sequence to earn affiliate commissions and sell her products.
• Drives traffic today.
• Decided to cut off a profitable segment of her audience.

Can you build a new income stream on your lunch break?

This week's guest says yes, and shares how.

In this episode, I’m joined by Mike Zima from ZimaMedia.com -- a full-service digital marketing agency that got its start with a single $5 sale on Fiverr.

It’s been a while since we talked about Fiverr, but the way today’s guest has used the platform to start and grow his freelance business is an eye-opener.

Mike’s claim to fame: He’s the only Fiverr seller who’s mentioned in Fiverr’s IPO pitch deck.

But it all started with one $5 order.

He’s now doing thousands of dollars a month, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars a month in Fiverr sales.

Tune in to hear what’s working on Fiverr today, Mike’s “rapid gig prototyping" strategy to test out new offers, and how to wean your reliance off of Fiverr while building your agency.

Are you operating online fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations?

Do you have the right type of liability insurance to cover you should the worst case happen?

If you’re unsure about any of the legal stuff surrounding you, your business, or side hustle, it should be a lot clearer by the end of this episode.

This is because Mariam Tsaturyan from FreelanceandMarketing.com has graciously agreed to do some legal listener Q&A for us in today’s show.

She’s a licensed and practicing attorney, who helps bloggers and online business owners navigate the often-murky waters of legal regulations and compliance.

Tune in as we tackle some of the big topics like entity selection, GDPR, and liability insurance. Then we'll dive into some specific questions from the Side Hustle Nation FB group.

Do you know how much cash flows through your hometown on a monthly basis?

In this episode we explore how to get some of that cash flowing toward you!

I'm joined by Nick Huber, co-founder of Storage Squad and host of The Sweaty Startup podcast.

Storage Squad, a student storage service, has grown to over $3M in sales since starting it as a little part-time project back in 2011.

I invited Nick on The Side Hustle Show to help walk us through his "sweaty startup" framework. That is, how you can start a low-risk, low-overhead, local, service-based business, set it up for success, and let that be the vehicle that drives you away from a lifetime of cubicle slavery.

Tune in to hear Nick’s thoughts on generating service business ideas you could start today, evaluating the market and competition, and scoring your first customers.

That’s why I think this is pretty exciting -- it really doesn’t take many customers to begin to make a meaningful income here.

Early last summer I joined Teachable’s “Creator Challenge.”

The premise was to research, create, and launch an online course over the next three months.

On top of that, Teachable provided expert support, a community of fellow instructors, and a little friendly competition.

People have been asking me about creating an online course for years — but since I tend to work better with a deadline, I jumped in on the challenge.

Creating your own website can definitely be a great side hustle–if you take the time to monetize it.

But the problem is that many people who create websites have no clue how to actually make money with them.

When this happens, your website becomes a liability. You’re sinking precious time and money into something that isn’t giving you a return.

However, it’s entirely possible to prevent that from happening or to fix the problem if it has already started. You just need to know how to use your website to generate income, and in this article, I’m going to show you how.

Let’s look at 15 great ways you can monetize your website and turn it into a proper revenue-generating machine.

As we turn the calendar on a new decade, I thought I'd reflect back on the last 10 years.

To paint the picture of where the 2010s started for me, I was:

• coming off a great year in business, and had high hopes for the future
• about to get married
• blogging at nickloper.com, on a bunch of random topics
• $150k underwater in our house, which was a huge source of stress

Let's see what happened next!

Rob brought in $40k last year hosting tours in of Washington, D.C. -- all on the side from his day job, and with no marketing budget.

However, if you Google “Washington, D.C tour guide”, Rob Pitingolo's TripHacksDC.com is nowhere to be seen.

So what's secret sauce?

He’s been creating helpful tourist-friendly content on YouTube, and outlet largely ignored by his better-funded competitors.

His channel has had more than 1.4 million views to date, and he’s funneling those viewers to his site where they can sign up for a tour.

In fact, his channel has grown so much that he’s partnered with YouTube and ad revenue from his videos has become another income stream for his business.

Tune in to hear how Rob has grown his business into a fun and cash-flowing side hustle, how he leverages YouTube to reach his target customers rather than traditional tour marketplaces, and how he’s growing the business beyond just himself giving tours.

How do you start a side hustle?

Well we can talk about side hustle ideas and marketing tactics until we're blue in the face, but in studying my catalog of past interviews, a few common traits popped up over and over again.

I've compiled those into this 7-step guide to starting a side hustle.

Whether you’re an established business owner, or you’re just starting out, I think you’ll find this a helpful framework for your projects. It'll also help you identify where you have the biggest opportunities for improvement this year.

Is there gold in your backyard?

Or, more accurately ... dog poop?

Erica Krupin found $1000 a week in hers, with a side hustle that can easily be replicated in your local area.

Erica started Kroopin’s Poopin Scoopin, a pet waste removal business in her spare time, and now has more than 80 recurring weekly customers.

With an average price of $15 per customer per week, that’s over $1,000 a week, picking up dog poop.

Sometimes it’s the simplest businesses that are the fastest to get started and see some results. Erica just left her day job to pursue this full-time, and with the plans she has in place, it looks like her business is set to continue growing.

Tune in to hear how she landed her first customers and markets this business, how she prices the service, and how she delivers on her promises.

Helping people make decisions is a big business!

In fact, these two Side Hustle Show listeners started a website to do just that, and it's now bringing in $17-20k a month.

Oh, and the project is only a little over a year old.

Alex Goldberg and Healy Jones run a site called FinvsFin.com, which focuses on reviews and comparisons of direct to consumer brands.

They earn money as affiliates -- basically earning a commission on sales that are referred through the site.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Affiliate Marketing Case Study: Zero to $20k/month in a Year

Ready to Start a Site of Your Own? My free video series will help you get online quickly and affordably.

FinvsFin is an example of what I’ll call the modern comparison shopping site -- helping readers make decisions and getting paid for it. And since comparison shopping was my original side hustle over a decade ago, this was especially fun to dive into.

The impressive part is that this is still very much a side hustle. Both Alex and Healy have full-time jobs, and their business falls under the “passive income" business model.

Tune in to hear how Alex and Healy prioritize and create their content, what they’re doing to market the site and drive traffic, and how you can borrow some of their same strategies in your own niche.

Etsy is no longer just the marketplace of handmade crafts! Yes, you can sell digital products like printables and even drop ship physical goods without ever touching your inventory.

We haven’t really discussed Etsy in detail for a while. But I thought it was time to take a closer look at this platform again, as it’s seen tremendous growth in recent years.

Opening the doors for you to create your own passive products -- both through digital downloads and drop shipping physical products.

In fact, since 2015, the number of Etsy buyers has more than doubled -- far outpacing the growth of Etsy sellers.

So, if you are currently selling online or have an idea in the pipeline, you’d be crazy to ignore the potential Etsy holds as a "Buy Buttons" platform.

Melissa MacDonald is a long-time Etsy seller who now focuses her efforts on Etsy marketing and optimization for other shop owners.

Tune in to hear Melissa’s process for coming up with new passive income product ideas, her favorite tools for running a hands-off Etsy shop, and how to optimize your listings for conversion and sales.

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.

Like this format?

This is the 9th installment of “20 Questions” so feel free to go back and binge on the older ones too:

• 346: The Con of the Side Hustle, Beanie Babies, Affiliate Marketing, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 320: Multiplying Money, Morning Routines, and $100k Side Hustles: 20 Questions with Nick
• 291: Email, Ebooks, Platforms, and Conferences: 20 Questions with Nick
• 271: Brilliant Blogging, Ruthless Productivity, and Guaranteed Success: 20 Questions with Nick
• 245: Network Marketing, Imposter Syndrome, My Side Hustle Mistakes, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 219: Growing Traffic, Monetization, List-Building, a Day in the Life, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 198: Blogging, Branding, Book Writing, and Finding the Right Side Hustle for You: 20 Questions with Nick
• 181: SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Self-Publishing, Udemy, and More: 20 Questions with Nick

A common piece of advice you’ll hear is to take audience questions and turn them into content, so here’s a meta example of that in action.

This episode covers market saturation, getting up earlier, mapping out content, and lots more.

Enjoy!

Looking for a part-time side hustle where you get can your inventory for free and there are almost no startup costs?

This week, I’m excited to introduce the side hustle of public domain publishing.

This is the art and science of republishing classic literature - where the copyrights have expired - and earning passive royalties when your version sells.

Because these works are so old, they’re available online for free - but many Amazon shoppers and Kindle owners will pay to have them delivered straight to their device.

I think any business where you can get your inventory for free is pretty compelling!

Since 2013, Aaron Kerr has pocketed over $110k in royalties through this very part-time side hustle. You can see all his public domain projects over at TimelessReads.com.

Tune in to hear how this business model works, Aaron’s advice on what to publish and how to get past Amazon’s gatekeepers, and how to differentiate your public domain books from everything else out there.

This week’s show is a re-take on last year’s Thanksgiving episode on 10 Creative Side Hustles that Make Real Money.

That show was a hit, so I’m returning to that format for another round.

Some of these will you have kicking yourself not thinking of it yourself, and some of these are 6-figure businesses you could literally start tomorrow.

Here are the 10 creative side hustles I cover in this episode:

1. The 7-Figure Lemonade Stand
2. The World's Most Boring Podcast
3. Local Dog Poop Pick-Up
4. The 6-Figure Dog Walking Business
5. The 7-Figure Email Newsletter Business
6. The Ambient Noise Alexa Skill
7. Big Bat Houses
8. The Niche Service Provider Directory
9. The Niche Productized Service
10. In-Person Classes

Enjoy!

Can you really get paid to answer questions?

That’s exactly what Debbie Gartner from TheFlooringGirl.com does - and her answers are earning her $20,000 a month.

Debbie used to run a local hardwood flooring consultation business. She’d estimate jobs, make recommendations, and match homeowners with reliable installers.

In her spare time, she started her blog with the goal of showing up in some local search results to generate some more business.

“I wrote blog posts that were questions that my customers would have,” Debbie told me.

Note: Click here to download Debbie’s top tips for growing and monetizing a blog.

But as you might have guessed, the site soon started to reach an audience well outside her local area. A couple of years later Debbie got out of the brick and mortar flooring business and decided to monetize her blog.

She was already pulling in more than 100,000 visitors and by simply turning on ads she made $1,100 in her first month.

From there she continued to grow her traffic numbers, added affiliate posts, created her own products, and is now making more than $20,000 a month.

Tune in to hear how Debbie is driving traffic, how her site earns money, and how you may be able to replicate some of Debbie’s tactics in your own niche.

Note: If you don't have a blog of your own yet, my free video series will show you how to get up and running quickly and affordably.

Would you trade $200 for $4,000?

That’s exactly what today’s guest, Josh Elledge is doing.

Josh runs a kind of modern PR service for small businesses and has developed a unique and innovative way to break through the marketing clutter and have real conversations with real prospects -- and do it at scale.

He’s found a way to create what he calls “a speed dating environment.” That's his metaphor for the revolving door of new prospects he’s interviewing and selling his services to.

To do this, Josh has created a podcast called The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. It serves as a platform for business owners to talk about their businesses, and for Josh to demonstrate to them how he can improve their visibility.

It’s a win-win, and with streamlined processes in place, Josh is seeing a return of around $4,000 for every $200 he spends on producing his show.

If you’re a current or aspiring freelancer, consultant, coach, or agency owner… this is gold. 

Tune in to hear how Josh does his proactive prospecting, how he’s turning his content creation into sales conversions, and the foundational ground game he’s got set up that makes this all work.

He knew his $12 an hour gig at Walmart was a dead-end job.

His escape route was a business idea you probably walk past at least a couple times a year without even thinking about it.

What's he do?

Today, Larry McGee's the guy who takes care of the aquarium at the dentist office and other commercial waiting rooms.

And it earns him around $70,000 a year, doing something he enjoys and working just 15-hours a week.

Larry’s aquarium maintenance business started as a lunch break side hustle with a friend while working at Walmart. More than a decade into the operation, he's got dozens of predictable retainer clients that pay him every month.

In this episode, Larry shares some interesting tactics he’s used over the years to find new clients and keep them around for years.

I'm confident he'll give you some food for thought as to what type of local service business could be right under your nose.

Just because a niche is insanely competitive, it doesn’t mean you can’t start an affiliate site and claim a slice of the revenue.

At least, that’s what Sa El of SimplyInsurance.com has done, and the way he lays out how he’s done it will pique the interest of affiliate marketers out there.

Sa was a door-to-door insurance salesman in Atlanta. He wanted to get into the online space and build an affiliate site, and with more than 11 years’ experience in the insurance industry, it made sense to enter the insurance niche.

He took Brain Dean’s SEO That Works course to learn the ropes. But, when he told Brian he was going to build a site in the insurance niche, he was advised against it.

Did Sa go back to the drawing board and look for a new niche?

Nope.

Sa told me there were two reasons why he decided to go ahead and build his site:

1. He likes a challenge, and
2. If the niche is that competitive, most of his competition is already at the top, leaving room for him to work his way up.

That was 2 years ago.

Today, Sa’s site is bringing in 6000 visitors a month and $13k-$15k in revenue.

These numbers prove how competitive the insurance niche is. That’s a huge revenue number for 6k visitors, and Sa told me that only around 4.5k of those visitors are landing on his "money pages." (Some examples linked below.)

Tune in to hear how Sa strategically built out his content to capture longtail traffic, how he builds backlinks (lots of them) to rank his money pages, and the tools he’s using to accelerate his efforts.

What if you could make your rent or mortgage payment go away?

Or, what if instead of paying that expense every month, your living situation actually paid you?

It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound.

In fact, that’s exactly what today’s guest, Craig Curelop, has done by intentionally "house hacking" over the past few years.

He’s even written a book on the topic, and it's one I wish I’d had when I was 18 or 19! I would have definitely done some things differently.

The basic idea is to use other people’s rents to offset, or even profit from your own housing costs. On top of that, you'll begin building wealth through real estate and earn tax benefits as well.

If you have a spare room or two in your home, or you're interested in house hacking, this episode is going to get the gears turning for you.

Tune in as Craig runs through some examples of how you can do this. Whether you’re a young professional, or you have a family of your own, you can offset some or all of your mortgage payments.

But keep in mind, this isn’t a common path -- this is living for a period of time like others won’t -- as you’ll hear from Craig’s story.

“Typically you’re going to sacrifice comfortability with profitability,” Craig explained to me. But living for a few years like others won’t has given Craig the financial independence to potentially live decades like others can’t.

You’ve started a business.

You’ve created a product or a service.

You’re selling it to clients and getting great feedback.

That’s great, you’ve overcome so many of the hurdles we face as entrepreneurs. But the next step is finding a way to keep new customers coming through the doors and scaling up your services.

That’s the challenge today's guest Matt Rudnitsky of Platypusbooks.com is facing. Matt helps entrepreneurs and other interesting people turn their ideas and expertise into books.

For this, Matt earns $30k and up per project. But, as you might have guessed, it takes a ton of work and the client pipeline is sometimes dry for months at a time. Matt has also created an online course teaching self-publishing, but hasn’t enrolled any students yet.

So, I invited Kurt Elster from EtherCycle.com back onto the show. (Some of you will remember Kurt from episode 71 back in 2014 where he talked about productized consulting).

Kurt hosts the unofficial Shopify podcast and is a leader in productized consulting in the Shopify space. He’s faced all the same problems Matt, and a lot of you reading this are currently facing.

Tune in to hear our take on Matt’s business and Kurt's recommendations for next steps. As you listen in, put yourself in Matt’s shoes and see how a similar product or service ladder can apply to your own business.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.

This post (and podcast episode) are inspired by my presentation at FinCon last month. I broke my own rule of not seeking out any speaking gigs, and submitted for a breakout session.

The idea was a bit of an homage to the conference: 10 FinCon Breakthroughs that Tripled My Business.

The powers that be stripped the "FinCon" part from the title, but I was still able to highlight some of my favorite -- and most impactful -- takeaways from the annual conference.

I've been every year since 2015, and have seen some great steady business growth since then. This chart tracks my yearly profit:

While there are certainly other factors that went into that growth, there is absolutely a concrete, positive ROI from attending. And on top of that, it's super energizing to hang around a group of motivated, talented, and generous individuals.

So here we go with the 11 simple ideas!

If you have an online business, chances are you’ve tried your hand at outreach.

If you want to expand and grow your business, especially from an SEO standpoint, you need good quality links pointing to your site from other websites.

The problem is that getting other sites to link to you is not easy, as I’m sure you’ve found it. The “traditional” method is to send out dozens, even hundreds of emails to other site owners trying to land a guest post.

But, as today's guest Brendan Hufford explains, this takes an awful lot of work, has a low chance of success, and the links you do get might not actually be doing much for your site’s SEO.

Brendan is an SEO master, a long-time entrepreneur, and a master at building win-win relationships. His approach to SEO and link building is a little different.

“Build friend’s first, not links,” is Brendan’s motto when it comes to outreach. He’s come up with his own Dream 100 Strategy for SEO, and he’s seen it work wonders with his own businesses and for his students.

Tune in to hear Brendan explain how you can create your own Dream 100 list of the sites you’d like to work with to grow your business.

He explains why most outreach is awful, how you should be reaching out to people, why there is long-term value in building friendships, and how you can improve your SEO and grow your online business.

Sick of trading time for money?

Looking for ways to turn a service or a skill you already have into a digital product?

This is exactly what Matt Bochnak of HowtoMotorcycleRepair.com has done. He’s turned a "blue collar" service business--repairing motorcycles--into a lucrative business with multiple streams of time-leveraged income.

This is a “Where are they now?” episode. I first caught up with Matt early in 2016 when he was a guest on episode 160 of the Side Hustle Show.

Back then, Matt’s revenue split was about 50/50 between repairing bikes and selling the video guides of the repairs. Overall, his business was doing around $800-$1,000 a month.

Fast forward almost 4 years later and Matt is earning $4,000-$5,000 a month, still on the side from his day job. What’s more impressive is that this boost in revenue is mostly from passive income streams, and he’s spending less time than ever in his garage.

If this sounds like a side hustle you’d like to replicate with your own business, tune in to hear how Matt’s creating content without repairing customer's motorcycles, and the various passive income streams he’s built up over the past 4 years.

Related: Need a website for your service business? Here’s the fastest and cheapest way to get one online.

A small blog doesn't have to mean a small income.

By helping a specific group of people solve their problems, Carol Tice has attracted more than 1500 members -- at $25 a month -- to join her community.

Note: Click here to download Carol’s top tips for starting and growing a paid membership community from this episode.

Carol went from working as a freelance writer, to coaching others how to become freelance writers, to building one of the largest online membership sites for freelance writers.

(I found Carol while doing keyword research for terms like “get paid to write” and “make money writing” – and Carol OWNS this space.)

The best part is that the paid membership model is an awesome way to build an online business, and it’s a model that can be applied to just about any niche.

It didn’t come without sacrifice for Carol, who was working full-time and had two preschoolers when she started her blog. “I didn’t see a TV show, I didn’t go out to a movie, I didn’t go to dinner parties,” Carol explained.

But with hard work, a laser-focused attitude towards her goals, and good communication with her audience, Carol has built something special for freelance writers.

Tune in to hear how Carol built her membership site from the ground up. She explains how she uses funnels to constantly bring in new members, and how she keeps members engaged (any paying) for the long-haul.

You’ll learn loads of actionable stuff, and how you can also apply the same tactics to develop a recurring revenue business of your own.

I wish I was half as smart now as I was at 16!

But learning everything you don't know is part of the process.

One thing I love about my work is I feel like I learn new things every day. Sometimes they're small little tweaks and hacks, and other times they're broader strategies or ideas.

I originally drafted this list 7 years ago, after my 30th birthday, but decided it was due for an update.

(I updated it at 35, too, but keep learning more!)

For context, that was pre-Side Hustle Nation, pre-podcast, pre-kids, and pre-almost everything I'm working on now. I'd been a full-time entrepreneur for 4 years already at that point, but my business had seen lots of ups and downs.

Turning 30 had hit me harder than I expected it to, and I'm guessing it was because I really wasn't where I wanted to be. I'd been battling with flaky developers, fighting with the state Assembly in Sacramento over affiliate marketing tax laws, and we were in the process of short-selling our home -- which had been a major source of stress.

Seven years later, that stuff is thankfully in past, and I’m in a better place today.

That's not to say I'm completely stress-free, but I'm incredibly fortunate to have a healthy family and to get to work on stuff I love every day. Each year that goes by makes me more and more aware of that fact.

But the life I have today didn't happen overnight. It's the result of literally decades (well, at least 2) of entrepreneurial education, trial and error, hustle, and if I'm being totally honest, luck.

In any case, here are 37 life lessons I've picked up in my 37 years on this planet.

Enjoy!

The fastest way to multiply money?

It might be reselling.

That is, buy low, sell high, repeat.

Keely Stawicki started reselling when she was just 12 years old, flipping a horse saddle on Craigslist and making $100 profit.

Fast forward 15 years--and more than $270,000 in sales--and reselling is now her full-time gig. Today, Keely focuses mostly on vintage goods, clothing, and furniture--all items in great demand right now.

Reselling is a business model we keep coming back to because it checks some of the boxes for an awesome side hustle:

• Anybody can do it
• It doesn't require a huge upfront investment
• It’s quick to get started and see results

If this sounds like a side hustle you’re interested in, listen in to hear Keely’s top tips for sourcing profitable inventory, the types of products she sees doing well today, and where she lists and markets her items for maximum exposure and profitability.

Buy a house.

Rent it out.

Tenants pay it off for you.

It’s possibly one of the oldest side hustles in the books, right?

Done right, owning rental properties can be an attractive long-term income and wealth-building strategy. But done wrong, it can be a recipe for headaches and a mountain of debt. 

It’s a side hustle that I know a lot of the Side Hustle Nation readers and listeners are interested in (as am I).

For this one, I collected my own real estate investing questions, and gathered more from the Side Hustle Nation Facebook community.

On the other end of the line is Zach Evanish, a remote real estate investor and Director of Retail for Roofstock.  

Roofstock is a marketplace designed to make it easy to shop for, compare, and purchase rental properties. (Zach was Roofstock employee #3 -- and has bought 11 rental properties of his own through the platform.)

She always knew she wanted to start her own business, she just didn’t know what kind of business.

Sound familiar?

So, Sylvia Inks asked friends and colleagues what they saw her as an expert in, and what they go to her for advice and help with.

Their answers?

“They said I’m great with finances, and they said I have great research skills,” Sylvia told me.

This helped Sylvia narrow down her focus to financial coaching. From there she started networking, wrote a book, and worked diligently on her presentation and speaking skills. Her business has taken off as a result.

Tune in to hear how Sylvia found her niche, found her first clients, and continues to level up her impact and income. As you listen in, you'll notice the common theme throughout the call: conversations + action.

Michele Mattix of SedonaMeditationExperiences.com has a unique side hustle where she gets paid to breathe.

As a tagline that sounds great, but there’s a lot more to her side hustle than just breathing.

In fact, in Michele’s own words she describes her business as helping, “people experience the spiritual side of Sedona and to bring more awareness and wellness into their life through meditation, mindfulness, and a deep connection with nature.”

Michele is able to offer all of this because she is a certified meditation instructor. The interesting part is how she's managed to carve out a profitable business model in the experience economy using Airbnb’s Experiences platform.

When travelers book a stay in Arizona using Airbnb, they are also offered one of Michele’s meditation experiences -- at a cost of course.

This enables Michele to take advantage of the huge marketing machine that is Airbnb. They drive the traffic and raise awareness of her meditation experiences, and it’s paying off.

Tune in to hear how Michele found her first experience customers, what she’s done to market and grow her business, and how you may be able to apply the same strategies to an experience of your own.

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.

Like this format? This is the 8th installment of “20 Questions” so feel free to go back and binge on the older ones too:

• 320: Multiplying Money, Morning Routines, and $100k Side Hustles: 20 Questions with Nick
• 291: Email, Ebooks, Platforms, and Conferences: 20 Questions with Nick
• 271: Brilliant Blogging, Ruthless Productivity, and Guaranteed Success: 20 Questions with Nick
• 245: Network Marketing, Imposter Syndrome, My Side Hustle Mistakes, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 219: Growing Traffic, Monetization, List-Building, a Day in the Life, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
• 198: Blogging, Branding, Book Writing, and Finding the Right Side Hustle for You: 20 Questions with Nick
• 181: SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Self-Publishing, Udemy, and More: 20 Questions with Nick

A common piece of advice you’ll hear is to take audience questions and turn them into content, so here’s a meta example of that in action.

This episode covers the dark side of side hustling, beanie babies, affiliate marketing, and much more.

Jaime Masters has interviewed more than 500 millionaires. On top of that, she runs some premium mastermind programs and is a sought-after business coach.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to get on the podcast for years, and I think we came up with something unique and hopefully compelling.

Jaime agreed to actually coach me on a couple of areas of my business.

In preparation, she:

• took a look at the last 12 months of my business finances
• asked me to complete a time-tracking study to see what I was actually spending my time on
• had both my wife and I complete a 5-year vision document

So, if you want to hear what a millionaire coach thinks of my operations and what I could or should be doing differently, or just want hear the kinds of questions that come up, tune in.

I think you’ll find the insights applicable to your own business, no matter what level you’re at.

A location-independent consulting business that replaces your day job income in a matter of months?

That's exactly what Paul Minors accomplished with his virtual software consulting business.

You might recognize Paul’s name. Paul is a productivity blogger and consultant from New Zealand. He was part of a fun productivity roundtable episode we did towards the end of 2016 -- that was episode 197 if you want to go back and check it out.

What I now know, is that at that time Paul was putting the wheels in motion on his consulting business centered around specific software tools.

Which as a side hustle tactic, is fantastic. If you can hitch your cart to a rising tide of interest in a particular tool, and become the go-to expert in that space, you can do really well.

And, that’s exactly what Paul has done.

Note: Click here to download Paul’s top tips for setting up a location-independent consulting business and landing your first clients from this episode.

Paul was able to leave his day job within a couple of months of starting his business. He was then able to go traveling with his wife for 6-months while working 15-20 hours a week from his laptop.

After arriving back home, he started working full-time on his consulting business. “I noticed the impact of that straight away, within a couple of months I had doubled my income,” Paul told me.

It's clear Paul has figured out this business model.

This one’s packed with ideas you might be able to apply to your own areas of expertise. Maybe you’ll even uncover some areas of expertise you never really considered that special before.

Tune in to hear how Paul came across the idea of offering his first consulting services “by accident”. As well as how he’s used several different marketing channels to drive targeted traffic to his website, and how he’s been adding more products and services to his portfolio and seen his revenue increase as a result.

We all have a limit to our capacity. For some entrepreneurs and small business owners, that’s a tough pill to swallow .

But when you’re up against that ceiling you have to decide between two options. You can:

1. Settle in.
2. Ask for help in breaking through.

This episode is about growing your team in such a way that you have some breathing room in your schedule and in your mental bandwidth to do the work that’s required of a business owner.

Even though I’ve been hiring virtual help in my businesses since 2005, I’ve still got a lot to learn! This is something that’s been on my mind this year as I think about where I want to my current operations to go and who can help get me there.

To help dive into this topic, I’m excited to welcome John Jonas and Nate Hirsch to the show.

Between them, they’ve got more than 60 virtual team members and have been practicing remote management for more than a decade.

They both run platforms to help you make your first virtual hire as well:

• John heads up OnlineJobs.ph, the largest remote job board and resume database for workers in the Philippines.
• Nate created FreeeUp.com, a curated freelance marketplace for workers all around the world.

Tune in to hear John and Nate’s take on when it’s time to hire, how to find the best talent for your budget, and some common mistakes to avoid.

Is options trading legit? Is it a viable side hustle?

In this episode, we’re tackling trading options -- a topic that’s been frequently requested by listeners, but is somewhat foreign to me.

To help school me on this, I’m excited to welcome my friend Kirk DuPlessis to the show. Kirk runs the super popular site OptionAlpha.com, where you can get all sorts of free options trading training. He’s been at this for over 10 years and the site has over 150,000 members.

Options trading (when done right) is a high probability form of investing, but as with all investments it’s based on risk.

Kirk explained options contracts are like insurance. As a trader, you can either be a buyer of insurance or a seller of that insurance.

On the buying side, it’s a way to kind of amplify your trading power through leverage. Instead of buying 100 shares of a certain stock and hoping it goes up, for example, you could buy contracts for a fraction of the share price that give you the option to buy the stock at today’s price should it go up by a defined amount in a certain amount of time -- the contract term.

If it does, you exercise your option and make a big gain on a small initial investment. If it doesn’t, you just lose your initial option contract purchase price, kind of like your car insurance premium if you don’t get into a wreck.

On the seller side, you’re the person selling that insurance. You collect the cash upfront, and as long as the trigger event doesn’t happen, you keep it. Kirk argues that just like insurance companies are some of the most profitable in the world, option sellers are most often the winners in the options trading game.

In this post and podcast episode, Kirk explains in more detail about how this all works in practice and shares his 8 rules for success in options trading.

Amy Feierman and Kristin Ostrander of MommyIncome.com have generated over $2 million in sales on Amazon over the last 12 months with a unique strategy that has high margins and lower costs per sale.

What are they selling on Amazon?

Bundles -- Think shampoo and conditioner, peanut and butter, or any 2-6 products that compliment each other and provide some added value and convenience to the buyer.

Note: Click here to download Amy & Kristin’s top tips for sourcing, packaging, and selling wholesale bundles on Amazon from this episode.

Amy and Kristin have both been selling online for over 10 years, but recently they have shifted their focus onto this specific strategy of wholesale bundles – and it’s working really well for a number of reasons.

These bundles make life easier for the 1-click ordering, free Prime shipping Amazon customer, and they make life better for you as a seller because you face less competition and can earn better profit margins.

Tune in to hear how Amy and Kristin go about their product research that leaves them confident their bundles are going to sell without any paid ads, product reviews, or marketing efforts.

You'll also learn how they're sourcing their inventory, the kinds of upfront investment needed, and the price points and margins they're working with.

Over the last 10 years, the bulk of my energy and attention has been on building audience businesses. 

These types of businesses (usually) involve creating some helpful resource, and then figuring out a way to monetize the people who come by to use it. In my case, that's primarily been through affiliate marketing and more recently, advertising on this podcast.

But you also have the flexibility to sell products and services to your audience once you have their attention.

In this episode, I'll play a section from my latest book on Building an Audience Business of your own, and share why I'm giving it away for free on Amazon.

Robert Brandl is a German entrepreneur now living in Spain with his wife and twin 16-month olds, but 10 years ago he was working full-time, wanting to travel, and was just trying to figure out how to get a blog online.

He did what most aspiring bloggers would do--he turned to Google for answers.

But he was disappointed with what he found. Nobody was doing a great job answering his question and comparing all the different options.

With that, WebsiteToolTester.com was born.

This is Robert’s flagship affiliate site that now has in-depth reviews of all the top website building software.

I invited Robert on the show because this is a really common side hustle business model: the affiliate review site.

How it often works is you write product reviews, hopefully attract some organic search traffic, and then collect your commissions when someone buys through your links.

We saw this most recently in the physical product space with Kieran MacRae in episode 313, where he was reviewing mattresses and other sleep-related products.

But like most businesses, there’s an art and a science to doing this right and building a truly helpful resource as Robert has. And, he’s applied the same model to a number of different niches too, including email service providers, live chat tools, and more. You can check out his whole portfolio at ToolTester.net.

Tune in to hear how Robert structures his review content to make it easy to consume, how he optimizes it for SEO, and how you might apply the same strategies to an affiliate review site of your own. Or even just to review content on your existing blog.

This week I’m excited to introduce one of the hottest side hustles of the moment, and that is low-content self-publishing.

What is low-content publishing?

Let me explain -- self-publishing has been around for a decade, and we’ve covered that quite a bit in both fiction and non-fiction -- it’s one of my favorite and perhaps most passive side hustles. Write the book, hit publish, collect royalties for years.

Cool, right?

Well, it’s the whole write the book part where a lot of people get stuck.

You might not know what to write about, and even if you do, it can be really time-consuming, and at the end of the day, it still might turn out to not be a huge seller on Amazon.

What low-content publishing aims to accomplish is to accelerate your product creation by focusing on a very specific sub-set of books:

• journals
• diaries
• planners
• notebooks
• sketchbooks
• and more

With these types of books, the value doesn’t come from your years of experience and a 35,000-word brain dump. Instead it comes from how you’ve structured the mostly-blank internal pages and prompts, and who you’re targeting as your customer.

With Amazon’s print-on-demand KDP print service, you can upload these products as digital files, hold no physical inventory, and collect passive royalties whenever they sell. But there’s an art and a science to it, and that’s why I’ve assembled a panel of experts in today’s show.

I’m joined by three experts in the low-content publishing space with more than 1,000 titles between them:

Rob Cubbon from RobCubbon.com - Long-time listeners might remember Rob from episode 81, back in 2014. Rob’s been in the low-content game for the last year or so and in that time has published over 1,000 titles.

Flav Maderios from SideBusinessLaunch.com - Flav was a guest on episode 300 of The Side Hustle Show last summer, where we were talking about his merch business. Since then he’s expanded to the self-publishing space with around 300 titles so far.

Rachel Harrison-Sund from RachelHarrisonSund.com - Rachel built her low content business to 6-figures a year on a very part-time basis.

But as you’ll hear in this episode, there’s some seasonality that comes into play, there are some competitive factors that come into play, and there’s a little bit of a gold rush feel to all of this.

Tune in to hear how these low content publishers go about their product research (so they don’t waste their time), how they price and market their books to maximize sales and royalties, and how they manage such wide-ranging portfolios.

Download the Free PDF Highlight Reel:

Click here to download Rob, Flav, and Rachel's top tips for starting a low-content KDP publishing business from this episode.

At the end of nearly every episode of The Side Hustle Show, I ask my guests for their #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation. There’s always a great variety of responses, and I wanted to take some time today to go through some of my favorites from the past 50-ish interviews.

This has become an annual tradition on the show, and we just passed 6 years and 8.5 million downloads!

If you like this short-and-sweet meta-style show, be sure to check out the others in this series:

• Episode 50
• Episode 124
• Episode 177
• Episode 236
• Episode 288

And even though my primary motivation is to extract helpful tactics for you, the listener, I can’t help but learn from my guests as well. You never know when inspiration will strike or where you’ll hear the one insight that has a huge impact.

These episodes are a lot of fun to put together, and give me an excuse to revisit some of my favorite moments and wise words from the show.

From the last 49 guests, the 3 most common theme I heard was to "Take action. Just start!"

While it might sound overly generic, don’t be quick to dismiss it. If all these really smart and successful people keep saying these episode after episode as their “#1 tip,” I think it's worth paying attention to.

My #1 tip this time? Surround yourself with people on the same trajectory.

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian decided to take action on a particular skill of his, and is seeing some impressive results -- all on the side from his day job as a research psychologist.

What do I mean by impressive?

How about $650k in revenue last year, which was more than double of 2017, which was more than triple of 2016.

He’s on a serious growth curve!

“Everyone is researching a product, I’m telling you to research a problem,” Chad told me.

Chad Rubin runs ThinkCrucial.com, a profitable e-commerce business that he’s built by selling products that solve a pain point for people. Every product follows a direct-to-consumer strategy that lets him source and sell in-demand products efficiently and inexpensively.

Click here to download Chad's top tips for finding and sourcing direct-to-consumer products from this episode.

Chad’s story began when he was laid off from his job on Wall Street. He started helping out at his parent’s vacuum shop, selling some of their inventory online.

He came to the realization that the profit margins were being eaten up by intermediaries along the supply chain, so he decided to get closer to the manufacturers to make more profit per sale, while still selling at a competitive price.

His first products, starting with what he knew, were vacuum filters. Once he had the blueprint down for selling at a higher margin than his competitors, Chad started sourcing new products to expand his product line, and he has an interesting and unusual way of finding product ideas.

Tune in to hear Chad’s unique take on product research, what he calls the “anti-Amazon opportunity,” and some sneaky ways you can connect with expert manufacturers.

He'd just gained 3000 subscribers and made $8000 in a matter of days, but Chris Ritter's first virtual summit didn't deliver the result was looking for.

As a personal trainer for swimmers, he was looking for more clients to coach online.

Not a single one signed up.

Still, the summit was a serious turning point in his business--one that turned into a 6-figure side project in its first year. He started serving an entirely different set of customers, and went from working one-on-one to one-to-many.

Note: Click here to download Chris' top tips from this episode.

His multi-year journey includes in-person personal training, seeking online clients, writing blog posts, selling an e-book, hosting a hit virtual summit, and more.

Listen in because you’ll pick up some tactics and ideas you can apply to your own side hustle as this is one that’s ripe for replication across different niches.

It’s a story about leveling up your reach and impact and income, and evidence that opportunities start to appear once you’re in motion.

There's a topic that no one really talks about in entrepreneurship or online business, and that's the unfair advantages someone had starting out.

Behind every killer case study, every income report, every "overnight" success, there's a backstory you don't always hear.

The truth is, no one ever really starts from scratch. We bring our own history, perspectives, and baggage to the table.

We also have the advantage of learning from everyone who's gone before us. Like Newton said, we "stand on the shoulders of giants."

In this episode, I'll share some unfair advantages that undoubtedly helped me, and offer up some you probably have working in your favor as well.

Kimberly Gauthier has been running KeepTheTailWagging.com since 2011, but things really started to take off when she niched down her focus to raw feeding for dogs.

Raw feeding is basically the paleo diet for dogs -- attempting to mimic their ancestral diet.

Her blog had than 2 million page views last year -- almost entirely from organic search in Google, and she’s monetized the traffic with a few different income streams.

Tune in to hear how Kimberly arrived at his niche, what drives content and marketing today, and how the business makes money -- all on the side from her day job.

WTF man!?

Are you willing to fail!

Let that be your new mantra.

That's the rule Brian Scudamore -- the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK -- lives by.

What started with a $1000 investment (Brian's life's savings at the time) has turned into a home services empire that does $1 million in sales on any given day.

Brian's come a long way since that beat-up pickup truck going door-to-door that first summer.

His portfolio now includes house painting, moving services, and home detailing--all under the umbrella of Ordinary 2 Exceptional Brands. He’s formulated some unique and effective ways to build teams of passionate employees that share his goals and has leveraged the franchise model to grow his businesses and revenue from $0 to $444 million and beyond.

Tune in to hear how Brian started the junk hauling business as a soon-to-be college student, his thoughts on marketing and hiring, and how you can apply nearly 30 years of his own successes and failures to your business.

A few years ago, a side hustler named Brock McGoff reached out to me with a guest post pitch.

The post detailed how he was making, at that time, $4,000 a month, from his blog about men’s fashion, on the side from his day job.

Since then, Brock has turned TheModestMan.com into his full-time focus, into a 6-figure income, and into a media empire that expands well beyond the blog itself.

Note: Click here to download Brock's top tips for growing an online business from this episode.

In this episode, Brock talks me through how he generates content ideas, how the business makes money, where he’s focusing his energy for the best results, and how he’s taken his site from a side hustle to a full-time business.

Don't have a website of your own yet? Check out my free video series on how to get up and running in no time.

Roberto Chavez started his raw land flipping side hustle a little over a year ago, and with persistence, has already built it into 5-figure of monthly revenue.

This is a business model that was first introduced to me by Mark Podolsky, from TheLandGeek.com, in episode 108 of The Side Hustle Show.

He called it "the best passive income model" because it avoids "the 3 T’s" of traditional real estate investing: tenants, toilets, and termites.

How the model works is you:

• acquire parcels of land on the cheap because the owners don’t want them anymore
• re-sell them either for a quick cash flip, or more commonly, as an owner-financed sale.

This is where the passive income comes in as you collect monthly payments for a period of 3-7 years, or whatever terms you agree on.

For example, buy a $10,000 parcel upfront for $2,500, and resell it for $199 a month for 5 years. In that scenario, your total payments collected would be almost $12,000, and you'd breakeven on your initial investment after about a year.

Where the persistence comes in, is the initial seller outreach. It’s very much a numbers game, as you’ll hear Roberto explain. I think that’s what separates those who have success in it from, those who don’t.

Tune in to learn how Roberto finds parcels to buy for 25 cents on the dollar, how he figures out how much to offer, the due diligence that goes into these deals, and how he re-sells them for profit.

Note: Roberto is actually a student of Mark's. When I told Mark we were recording this episode, he offered his Land Investing Launch Kit (normally $97) free for Side Hustle Show listeners. I'm also an affiliate for his paid program; use code "sidehustle" for $500 off.

"Growth isn't the byproduct of success," Paul Jarvis told me. "Or at least it shouldn't be. The byproduct of success should be freedom."

Paul is a talented writer and designer who’s made a living--and a name for himself--by often taking the counterpoint to the conventional wisdom, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship and business growth.

His latest book, Company of One, caught my attention. It’s about why building a better business doesn’t necessarily mean building a bigger business.

In this episode Paul talks me through:

• The decision-making frameworks he uses in his business and how you can apply them to yours
• How he’s intentionally set up his own operation to maximize time leverage and freedom
• How he’s built a list of 33k+ email subscribers over the 8 years and how this list drives his business today

As we’ve mentioned, “scaling” a service business can be one of the biggest challenges with this business model. In fact, it’s a sticking point that keeps a lot of people away from freelancing altogether.

But if your goal is to get big or even to just avoid trading time for money your whole life, there are lots of ways to scale a service business.

If you'd like to learn more about starting a service business and connecting with your first clients, check out this in-depth interview with Abbey Ashley (Episode 328).

Abbey's claim to fame is she booked enough virtual assistant work during her maternity leave that she didn't have to back to that job she hated when her leave was up!

Abbey also put together this killer free training on how to launch and grow your freelance business.

In the meantime, here are the 7 Ways to Scale a Service Business from this episode:

1. Raise your rates

2. Go From one-to-one to one-to-many

3. Hire subcontractors

4. Create productized packages

5. Play Matchmaker

6. Look for affiliate opportunities

7. Create a product

Enjoy!

Starting a service business on the side is one of the fastest ways to build extra income. It's flexible, low-overhead, and you can probably start with skills you already have.

“I had a lot of drive underneath me," Abbey Ashley told me, about starting her service business back in 2013. "I was super pregnant and I hated my job so much,”

Abbey started offering her services as a virtual assistant, and connected with her first clients at local networking events in Washington, DC. My the time her maternity leave was up--just a few short months--Abbey had booked enough work to not have to go back to that job she hated.

On top of that, she only had to work 20 hours a week to do it, and could work from home.

There are almost no barriers to entry to starting a freelance service business, and the startup costs are minimal. (All Abbey did was make business cards for networking.)

In fact, it was a service business, a house painting business in my case, that was one of my first entrepreneurial adventures.

Over time, Abbey scaled her virtual assistant business from just herself at $20-30 an hour, to her own little virtual agency, to $75 an hour and up for some specialized work. Before long, the questions started coming in:

• How can I do what you do?
• How can I work from home and set my own hours?
• How can I do work I enjoy?

In response, she built up a complete training program for would-be virtual assistants. She's helped thousands of people start their own service businesses and has built a thriving free community of virtual assistants. 

If you want to dive in deeper, check out her free training called Become a Booked Out Virtual Assistant. (That's an affiliate link; if you buy her full program, I'll receive a commission.)

Todd Tresidder took his own personal net worth from less than zero at 23, to self-made millionaire and retired at 35.

When it comes to building wealth, he's the smartest guy in the room.

His latest book is The Leverage Equation: How to Work Less, Make More, and Cut 30 Years Off Your Retirement Plan.

We met through the FinCon community several years ago and I've learned a ton from our conversations. Todd has a unique perspective on business and investing, and our conversations over the years always get me thinking a little differently. He blogs at FinancialMentor.com.

Tune in to hear Todd talk me through his 6 types of leverage and how you can apply those as needed in your business:

1. Financial Leverage
2. Time Leverage
3. Technology and Systems Leverage
4. Communications and Marketing Leverage
5. Network and Relationship Leverage
6. Knowledge and Experience Leverage

Enjoy!

Jessica Larrew and her husband Cliff have been reselling on Amazon for years. And though it started as a part-time side hustle, it turned into a serious business--they've sold more than $1 million worth of stuff on Amazon!

What's surprising – and I think exciting – is that they’ve done this is by finding profitable products to resell primarily in nearby retail stores.

How Reselling on Amazon Works

Jessica takes advantage of Amazon’s FBA program, or Fulfillment by Amazon. This is Amazon's way of crowdsourcing its inventory, and letting regular people like us tap into its world-class logistics network.

That means this Selling Family doesn't have to ship anything to the end customer, handle returns, or write up product descriptions.

How the business works is like any other retail business: you profit on the spread between the cost of your product and what it sells for. Now you have to account for Amazon's fees and shipping costs, but it's basically buy low, sell high.

And the best part of this side hustle is that you can get started today with whatever initial inventory investment you're comfortable with.

Note: Click here to download Marc’s top tips for turning a hobby into a profitable website from this episode.

Marc Andre made over $1.1 million dollars from his photography hobby.

But what’s interesting is that he never:

• got paid to take pictures
• sold any of his photos
• held any photography workshops

So, what did he do instead?

He built and subsequently sold 3 websites related to photography – that sold digital products to other photographers.

His journey started in 2012. Marc wanted to upgrade from a point-and-shoot camera to a nice DSLR and some lenses but couldn’t justify the $5k price tag for the equipment.

Instead of settling for something else, Marc set himself a challenge to see if he could raise the $5k starting a photography-related side hustle.

Things escalated quickly, from starting a site to creating digital products, he made that $5k in a few months.

Marc carried on scaling his business, creating more products, starting two more photography-related sites, and over the next 6 years pulled in more than a million dollars in revenue.

Tune in to hear Marc’s unique process for starting and growing sites, why he decided to create products before having an audience to sell to, how he used sites that already had traffic to drive sales, and how he scaled up his business to more than a million dollars in revenue in such a short space of time.

Mitch Davis is selling around $9,000 per month with private label products on Amazon Japan on the side from his day job.

(Of that, around $3000 is profit, which cover's his family's living expenses.)

Selling on Amazon Japan via FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) opens up a whole new marketplace for Amazon sellers, and one that Mitch says is a lot less competitive than the US.

Tune in to hear Mitch talk me through:

• his process for researching profitable products
• how he deals with manufacturers and the shipping process,
• some of the nuances that come with selling on a platform that’s not in your native language

For more, be sure to check out Mitch's YouTube channel and join his free Amazon FBA Japan Facebook Group.

Note: Click here to download Stacy’s top tips for buying, improving, and managing online businesses from this episode.

Stacy Caprio was desperate to leave her day job.

She ended up doing just that after acquiring – and improving – a portfolio of mini online businesses. In her case, these were websites that make money from advertising.

Now, this asset class can be risky, and Stacy is open about her early failures.

But if you have some online skills, (or management skills to bring people in if you don’t want to run the site yourself) this can be a fast-track to the cash flow you need to fund your lifestyle.

Since websites often sell for 20x monthly earnings, they're perhaps 10-15x "cheaper" than if you were to rely solely on traditional investments and a 4% withdrawal rate.

Sound like the kind of investment that suits your lifestyle?

Tune in to hear where Stacy finds these businesses to buy, her unique filtering criteria, and a few quick ways she’s been able to accelerate the cash flow of her portfolio for even better returns.

"We are simultaneously gods and worms.”—Abraham Maslow

Power plus humility, right? It's a great combination and something to keep in mind as we try and build our businesses.

We can accomplish amazing things, and yet, we're gone in a flash. Mere blips on the historical radar.

But let's be the gods of our side hustle universe today, and focus on shaping that business in a way that best serves ourselves and others.

In this special solo edition of The Side Hustle Show, I'm breaking down my Top 5 books from last year, and the actions I took (or am taking) as a result of reading them.

Hopefully there are a few nuggets you can borrow!

Can you make money hosting trivia nights at local restaurants and bars?

I’m a bit of a trivia nerd, so this week’s show was especially interesting to put together!

To help walk me through how this business works, is probably the best-qualified guy in the country to do so.

Adam Johnston is the co-founder of LastCallTrivia.com, a business that started with just $300 and now powers trivia nights all around the country and provides tools for side hustlers to do the same.

Over the last 10 years, Adam has managed to help turn "useless knowledge" into a 7-figure operation.

Tune in to hear how this business works, how to pitch and price a trivia night, how to get a new venue off the ground, and most importantly, what makes for a great game.

Adam and I even fire some trivia questions at each other, so have your score sheets ready!

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show.

I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show, including:

1. Let’s say you’ve got $100. How do you turn it into $200?
2. What's your #1 morning ritual?
3. Should I create a course around self-care? Am I even qualified to?
4. I haven't made a single sale (on Etsy) and am super demoralized. What can I do?
5. How hard is it to make a website?
6. How do you find a "tech" person for a reasonable rate?
7. Why don't you use ads to monetize your website?
8. In starting my online business, which social media platforms should I focus on?
9. What side hustles do you recommend that could generate $100k a year within a year?
10. When you started Side Hustle Nation, how'd you get engagement from Day 1?
11. No one is buying my book. How can I market it?
12. What WordPress template do you suggest?
13. How do you refer to affiliate links when you haven't used the product?
14. How big of a content backlog do you have / should you have?
15. I'm a college senior interested in entrepreneurship. What do you recommend with the "real world" fast approaching?
16. How was your trip to Mexico? Did you feel unsafe?
17. How do you balance family, job, and business?
18. What's the goal of your local meetups?
19. Why'd you give away the PDF version of The Progress Journal for free?
20. How do you organize your side hustle financially?
21. Which gigs should I create first on Fiverr?

“What I want is immortality," Jack told me. "But I don’t want it in my name, I want it in actions of others.”

With the size of his audience today and the number of people he’s helped along the way, there is a very real chance of this happening.

Jack Spirko of is a little bit of a legend in the podcasting space, and he’s built a really cool and unique business on the back of his show--which of course started as a side hustle.

Actually, it started with him recording the first year and a half of episodes in his car on his commute to work!

For the last 10 years and 2300+ episodes, The Survival Podcast has covered topics related to “modern survival.” That is, things like growing your own food, generating your own power, and of course starting your own business.

Tune in to hear how Jack built an incredibly loyal and active listener base, how he started leveraging his audience to help grow his podcast, how he built his no-extra-content-required membership site model that drives 90% of his revenue, and his tips for starting and growing your own podcast and audience today.

With 250 million active users, Pinterest is a content discovery platform nearly every blogger and business owner should be spending some time on.

The Pinterest tactics shared on this podcast in late 2015 by Rosemarie Groner were extremely effective ... for a while.

But I began to see declines in traffic, and today Pinterest brings in perhaps a quarter of the visitors it used to.

Still, I’m convinced I could be doing better on the platform to reach more people and help more people with my content.

Just like Google, a top-ranking pin can bring in consistent qualified traffic month after month after month.

But also like Google, there’s a certain science to the Pinterest algorithm.

To help me breathe new life into my account — and walk through how you can do the same even if you’ve never used Pinterest before, I invited Kate Ahl from SimplePinMedia.com to join me on the show.

Note: Click here to download Kate’s top tips for creating and optimizing your Pinterest account from this episode.

She’s an expert on all things Pinterest marketing, and in this episode, she breaks down everything I’m doing wrong and what you and I should be doing instead to start reaching more people and driving more traffic.

Tune in to hear the right way to set up your profile, how to set up and optimize your pins and boards to increase your reach, and how to rank you content in Pinterest's search results to drive more traffic to your site.

“It’s a business with training wheels,” Timika told me.

Timika Downes is a school nurse by day but was looking for ways to add income after hours, and ended up licensing someone else’s business idea.

Her side hustle is a lice clinic; a brick-and-mortar facility that helps parents and kids get rid of lice.

Not the most glamorous niche in the world, but Timika’s clinic did 6-figures in her first year, all on the side from her day job, and it now runs with little time investment from her.

The lice clinic is actually just one of several side hustles Timika has going on – she also co-hosts the House of FI podcast, blogs at ReluctantFrugalist.com, and she has 3 kids.

Her story is an interesting one. It highlights the differences between licensing and franchising a business, and Timika explains how you can leverage the support of a licensing company to get a business off the ground quickly.

Tune in to hear how Timika evaluated the risks and benefits of the licensing opportunity, how she drives business, and how she’s set this up to be a hands-off 6-figure business.

Meredith Marsh is a “total introvert with over 3 million views on YouTube.”

When Meredith started VidProMom.com she didn’t set out to be a “YouTuber”. She started a blog and YouTube channel because she wanted to help families better capture those classic, picture-perfect family moments.

What she discovered was “a pretty big gap in the whole video creation side of things for people who are creating videos for fun,” Meredith said.

She started creating a video series on how to use a GoPro and some of the software - and things quickly snowballed.

Her YouTube channel was getting more subscribers than all her other social media metrics and blog visitors added together – so it was obvious that YouTube was the ideal platform for her content.

Note: Click here to download Meredith’s top tips for growing a YouTube channel from this episode.

A year after starting her channel Meredith left her day job, and her blog/YouTube channel that started as a side hustle is now her full-time job.

Tune in to hear how to set up your YouTube channel for success, how to master the YouTube algorithm to reach more people, and how to make money from your new video content.

“There was no safety net, it had to work,” Kelly told me.

Kelly Hardwick was talking about her business and blog, FemmeFataleAirsoft.co.uk.

It’s a site she built to write about her new hobby in airsoft, which Kelly described as a war games sport, like the Call of Duty video games in real life.

Kelly started playing airsoft regularly in 2014. However, she was disappointed with the lack of airsoft content online for women. "Be the change you want to see in the world, right?" she told me about why she started her blog. 

She started her blog along with an Instagram account, and it’s actually been her Instagram following that has become the linchpin of her business.

Her Instagram following has gone from 0-65k in less than 4 years, and it's this popularity on Instagram that has helped her land paid guest posts, social media sponsorships, grow her social media management business, and secure other business opportunities.

Tune in to hear how Kelly has grown her audience from 0 to more than 60k followers, how she first monetized her blog, and how she develops profitable relationships with other companies in the airsoft space.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at my latest experiment, an Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing skill called The Money Making Minute.

I think there's an opportunity for entrepreneurs to begin creating content for the popular smart speaker while competition is relatively low. 

Here's how I'm getting started with it and how you can join in.

To learn more, visit TheMoneyMakingMinute.com. 

After sitting in on a free webinar and seeing dozens of people buying a course about urban farming, Nate knew he could also create and sell his own course.

Nate Dodson of MicroGreensFarmer.com began urban farming initially to take greater control over the food he was eating and to combat Crohn’s disease.

But he soon found himself growing more than he could reasonably consume, so like any good entrepreneur, he started selling his produce – and specifically microgreens.

With a little bit of effort, he was selling $400 a week worth of microgreens to farmer’s market vendors, local restaurants, and home delivery in his town.

But Nate’s little side project has absolutely exploded in the last 2 years, and it hasn’t come from selling more produce. Instead, it’s come from teaching other people how to do what he did.

Note: Click here to download Nate’s top tips for selling an online course from this episode.

Today Nate is selling $40-50k worth of his microgreens business course a month, mostly on autopilot, and he’s followed a very straightforward path to get there that anyone can apply to their own business.

Tune in to hear how he created his product, how he drives consistent traffic, the simple sales funnel he uses to convert browsers into buyers, and the changes he’s made in his business to increase his revenue to $50k+ a month.

“Everyone needs it, people tend not to get enough of it – so that’s how the site came about,” said Kieran.

Kieran MacRae is talking about sleep.

The site he started is called TheDozyOwl.co.uk, a UK-based site that Kieran has taken from $0 to $2.5k a month in revenue in its first 12 months.

Note: Click here to download Kieran’s top tips for building a profitable site from this episode.

Do you remember Alan Donegan from PopupBusinessSchool.co.uk in episode 306? He told the story of one of his students getting frustrated with the business generation process; they were having a hard time coming up with anything that really got them excited.

"I just really like sleeping," they said in exasperation.

And for a while, Alan didn't have a great response. That is, until he learned about Kieran, who was earning a full-time income blogging about sleep and sleep-related products.

Tune in to hear how Kieran came up with the idea for his site, how he creates the content, and how the site makes money – without a server-shattering volume of traffic.

If you're still doing all the work in your side hustle or business yourself, you're limiting your growth.

This is an episode about getting out of your own way--about the transformation from technician to business owner.

To help me work through the 6 Rules of Scale, I invited Sean Marshall from FamilyRocketship.com back to the program.

We last heard from Sean way back in episode 92 in early 2015. I think he’s someone worth paying attention to because he’s set up his business (an online marketing agency) in such a way that the day-to-day operations don’t require much of his direct involvement at all.

On the surface, his is a freelancing business, but Sean has avoided the common freelancing trap (or ceiling) of trading his own time for money.

In doing so, that affords him and his family a pretty cool lifestyle. Last time we caught up they were living in Cozumel Mexico, and today, he and his wife and 3 daughters are spending several months in Scotland.

Before we dive into the 6 Rules with Sean, he proposed two questions to ponder as pre-requisites:

1. Why did you start your business in the first place? What do you want out of it? How big do you want it to be?
2. What’s the highest and best use of your time? To achieve that ultimate why from question #1, what things do you need to do to get there, and equally important, what are the things you need to stop doing.

So those are 2 questions to keep in mind as we go through this episode.

Her escape plan was an interesting one.

April Whitney was staring at a future of pharmaceutical copywriting, and wanted out.

Today, April is the leading voice in the niche of petite fitness.

Where the story gets exciting, is that it’s a niche that for all intents and purposes, April invented.

Nobody was searching for this stuff, which would normally be a huge red flag. But when women came across April and her content, something resonated.

Note: Click here to download April’s top tips from this episode.

Starting a little over a year ago, she’s built a tribe of over 10,000 followers, raised $8,000 on Kickstarter for her first product, and now sells $1000 worth of that product on autopilot every month.

April built most of her tribe on Instagram, a platform that’s saturated with fitness-related content and notoriously difficult to convert followers into customers.

Tune in to hear how April found her tribe, converted them into followers and customers, and the products and services she created that ultimately funded her quitting that cubical job to do something she loves.

In this episode of the Side Hustle Show I’ve put together a round up of creative side hustle ideas that people have shared with me over the last couple of years.

Here are the 10 creative side hustles I cover in this episode:

1. Flyer Distribution Business

2. Moose Poop Art

3. Tumbleweed Sales

4. BabyQuip

5. Subleasing Airbnb

6. Snuggling

7. Waiting in Line

8. Penny Posters

9. Funeral Cryer Service

10. The Death Reminder App

Tune in or check out the show notes at https://www.sidehustlenation.com/310 for the full details. 

Nikko Mendoza is one listener who’s taken a lot of action this year building his side hustle

He runs a really cool business in the 3D printing niche that today has 2 main revenue streams:

1. Selling digital files for masks and customer armor inspired by well-known comic book characters, where customers can print out their own physical products at home with their own 3D printers.
2. A Patreon campaign, where fans of Nikko pay him monthly for behind the scenes access and members-only content.

Currently, those 2 income streams combine to earn around $2k a month, but Nikko told me he had the goal of 10x-ing that income in the next year.

To help me brainstorm ways to get that done, I invited Don the Idea Guy back to the program for this special coaching episode.

As you listen in, we talk traffic generation and revenue generation for Nikko’s business, and I’m confident you’ll find some parallel opportunities to pursue in your own business too.

Busy doesn’t always mean effective!

It's not just about getting more stuff done; it's about getting more of the right stuff done.

So how can we be more intentional, proactive, and destination-driven with our days, instead of just reacting to everything life throws at us?

Today I want to share 5 ways -- 5 key habits -- I’ve found that will help you be more effective, excited, satisfied every day.

And because I've seen their power firsthand, these are the 5 habits I've baked into my brand new Progress Journal. (Official subtitle: A Simple Daily Planner to Make Meaningful Progress on Your Most Important Work.)

Click here to order yours on Amazon today!

Now let's dive into those 5 ways to be more effective every day.

Every house in the country is a potential repeat customer...

Matt Rowell set himself the goal of generating an extra $5k over 5 years to fund some passion projects, and he’s well on his way.

Matt runs AmericanEdgeSharpening.com on the side from his day job as captain of a research vessel. It’s a knife sharpening business, which was up to $250-500 a month when we spoke and is earning him $30-60 per hour.

He saw an ad while posted abroad with the Navy that gave him the idea for his business. 

And then he took action. Matt:

• Picked up a knife sharpening kit
• Taught himself how to sharpen knives by watching YouTube videos
• Offered to sharpen knives for family and friends for the practice
• Found paying customers

The best thing about the knife sharpening business?

“If you drive down the road, every house that you pass has a bunch of knives in it,” Matt said. That means an almost limitless number of potential customers.

Tune in to hear how Matt got started with this idea while he was deployed in Djibouti, Africa, including his equipment, how he learned how to do it, and how he’s marketed and priced his service.

Can you find Amazon FBA profit from the comfort of your couch?

Amit Desai of CreditCard101.us has built a business doing exactly that, and now he’s on track to sell $250k worth of stuff this year – all on the side from his day job.

We’ve covered Amazon FBA and retail arbitrage before on the Side Hustle Show, but Amit has a unique angle in that he sources most of his inventory online.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Finding Amazon FBA Profit from Home

Amit’s side hustle background is actually as a travel hacker. He’s one of those guys that racks up a bunch of points and frequent flier miles, so he can go on awesome trips for free.

It was at a travel hacking conference where one of the speakers presented about his Amazon business, and how he was racking up tones of credit card points by buying inventory for his business that a light bulb went off for Amit.

Flipping Items for Profit on Amazon

Amit realized that if he could figure out a way to flip items on Amazon and breakeven he could step up his travel game. However, he soon found out there was real profit out there, not just from credit card cashback offers and free flights.

He shares some interesting examples of how he's stacked cashback and other discounts on the items he's flipping to effectively increase the ROI on his products while being able to sell them at a competitive price.

You'll hear where you should be spending your time if you’re starting out in the FBA space, loads of cool apps, websites, and tools that have helped automate most of his business, and the criteria he uses when sourcing goods.

Tune in to hear Amit’s favorite tools for sourcing profitable inventory, his buying criteria, and how you can stack different discounts and rewards offers to improve your margins and get a leg up on the competition.

From no business ideas and no money, to making your first sales in 2 weeks.

It’s not a far-fetched goal according to this week’s guest.

Alan Donegan from PopUpBusinessSchool.co.uk specializes in guiding people through this transformation, and he says that everyone has a profitable business idea in their heads – and he knows how to find it.

Click here to download Alan’s top tips for turning a passion into a business from this episode.

He does this through in-person workshops that are free to attend by forming partnerships with government bodies in cities across the UK, and he’s bringing his workshops to the US soon.

Alan is adamant about bootstrapping and not taking on a load of debt to start a business because he saw his family go through a multi-million dollar bankruptcy and doesn’t want anyone else to have to experience the same fate.

He preaches starting a business around a passion or something that excites you. Because running a business you’re passionate about sets you apart from the competition and makes the process so much easier.

He shares how he teaches his students to pre-sell and validate their ideas before putting down cash for stock that might end up collecting dust in the garage, and he outlines what makes a successful pitch.

Alan also shares how he practiced what he preaches when he sold his first PopUpBusiness workshop to a housing authority in the UK selling his highest priced package right out of the gate, and his business has been gaining momentum ever since.

Tune in to hear how Alan pulls business ideas out of people who don’t think they have any, how he has his students quickly and cheaply validate those ideas, and what makes for a successful pitch.

Could ethically “hack” the minds of your customers and prospects to persuade them to take action?

It’s not some kind of magic or marketing trick. I’m talking about triggering a response in someone by triggering a response in their primal or reptilian brain.

Patrick Renvoise of Salesbrain.com is a neuromarketing specialist, he’s the author of his recently released book - The Persuasion Code, and his TEDx talk has more than 140,000 views.

Patrick argues that we basically have two systems competing in our head. Our 500 million year old primal brain, and our more modern rational brain.

And however rational we think we are, it’s that ancient, self-centered, emotional, visual, primal brain that really drives decision making.

Click here to download Patrick’s modern marketing techniques to ethically make more sales by stimulating your customers' primal brain from this episode.

In this episode, you’ll learn how, as entrepreneurs, marketers, and side hustlers, we can tap into that ancient “buy button” to be more persuasive.

Tune in to hear how to more clearly explain the value proposition, and ultimately make more sales and grow your business.

Patrick breaks down the 6 stimuli that matter to the primal brain, and how you can work your marketing techniques around these “triggers”, which are:

1. Personal – Patrick explains how certain words in your sales copy can trigger a person’s “Buy button” and stimulate the response you’re aiming for.
2. Contrast – He explains why it’s important to show customers a contract between you and your competitors, and how you can do this in your industry.
3. Tangible – He explains why you should be using marketing information that a 4-year old would understand, and how using a story can impact our reptilian brains.
4. Visual – “Around 90-95% of all brain activity it about processing images,” Patrick said. He explains how you can use images to make a more powerful impact than the written or spoken word.
5. Beginning and End – By design, we remember more about the beginning and end of a conversation, film, book, and so on, so understanding the importance of writing a compelling hook and call-to-action can make a difference in sales conversions.
6. Emotional – We make decisions based on our emotions, then rationalize them later. He explains how to tap into your customer's emotional responses.

Tune in to hear Patrick explain the 6 stimuli of the reptilian brain you need to be aware of, his Pain/Claim/Gain/Brain framework for crafting effective emails, marketing materials, sales copy, etc, and how you can apply these techniques in your business to ethically make more sales.

Jodi Carlson has been running her blog LeaderConnectingLeaders.com part-time since 2014 and has slowly built it up to $5-6k a month in revenue.

The earnings come from a combination of mostly digital product sales, as well as advertising, and affiliate relationships.

Click here to download Jodi’s top tips for growing a blog and creating digital products from this episode.

The surprising thing – to me at least – is that she’s done this in a niche that theoretically doesn’t have any money.

Her readers and customers are almost all volunteers and they’re donating their time to local non-profit groups – in this case, Girl Scout groups.

On the surface that makes it seem like it’s as tough a niche as any to tackle, which makes Jodi’s results even more impressive.

She brings more than two decades of experience in Girl Scouts to the table, as a scout, then as a troop leader, and even though the blog didn’t start out with dollar signs in mind she’s turned it into a substantial income stream.

“I actually started it to help myself, and to then help troop leaders in my community,” Jodi said.

Jodi started documenting the activities she was doing with her Scout Troops in her blog and making PDF books so she could refer to them again in the future, and shared her articles with a small circle of other leaders in her community.

It wasn’t long before Troop leaders further afield started asking for her activity books. This sparked the idea to start selling her books and growing her blog.

Tune in to hear how Jodi comes up with product ideas and prices those, how she made her first sales, how she’s grown her traffic to more than 100k pageviews a month, and income to $5k + a month – all while working full-time and raising a family.

Related: Check out my free video series on how to start a blog.

Could you live for free?

That's what The Side Hustle Snowball framework proposes: to erase your expenses with new income streams.

Start out with your smallest monthly expenses and work your way up:

• Gym memberships
• Life insurance
• Netflix
• Utilities
• Cell phone bill
• Car payments
• Car insurance
• Day care
• Student loan payments
• Rent or mortgage

We all want our business to cover our costs of living and then some, but the "Snowball" framework (apologies to Dave Ramsey) allows you to work your way up to that ultimate goal of financial independence.

Celebrate the small wins along the way.

In this post / podcast episode, I'll break down the 15 income streams I'm working on right now. Which ones can you start or add to your existing business?

Things were going great; he had a bunch of happy customers, he’d quit his engineering job to focus on it full-time, and he was doing what he loves.

You might remember Jacques Hopkins from episode 223, where he broke down how he turned his hobby of playing piano into a solid $20k a month online business at Pianoin21days.com.

BUT….

Between customer support, email, social media, phone sales, and all the other day-to-day tasks, it was taking a full 40 hours a week to run.

Since then, Jacques set out to automate, optimize, and outsource different elements of the business. Those initiatives cut back his time commitment to maintain the biz to just 10 minutes a day — and still grew revenue to $30k a month.

Note: Click here to download Jacques’ top tips from this episode.

Jacques isn’t one to sit still, he’s using his newfound time freedom to work on more strategic growth projects and his other project; TheOnlineCourseGuy.com.

He’s launched a podcast interviewing other people who have successfully launched online courses, and sells his own course giving customers a behind the scenes look at how he built and sold his courses on Pianoin21days.com.

Tune in to hear how Jacques “plugged holes” in his course, outsourced time-consuming repetitive tasks to a virtual assistant, and successfully increased his revenue while reducing the time spent on his business.

At a certain point, you reach the ceiling of your own capabilities, of your own capacities, and no amount of productivity hacks are going to get you to the next level.

So what do you do?

You hire some help!

That’s exactly what Bonnie Fahy started doing when she needed help with the day-to-day tasks running her real estate consulting business.

Note: Click here to download Bonnie's top outsourcing and hiring tips from this episode.

Soon after she put a virtual team in place -- headed up by a US-based project manager -- she was able to free up more of her time to focus on sales, marketing, and other areas of her business.

Those shifts ended up quadrupling her income in just a few months.

With more than 300 hires behind her, Bonnie now runs LiveMoreFormula.com where she teaches other entrepreneurs the skills of “Hybridsourcing” she’s learned over the years.

This means finding a balance between hiring domestic and international virtual assistants with the right skills to take some of your workload off your hands – at a cost-effective price.

She uses some interesting techniques too. Preferring to put candidates through “Interview dates” over traditional interviews, she explains the types of questions you should be asking potential hires, and what you should expect to pay for skilled international workers.

Tune in to hear the simple 4-step process Bonnie has refined over the years to make finding hires quick, identify top performers, and start adding virtual assistants to your team.

300!

In this special 300th edition of The Side Hustle Show, I’m excited to feature 5 listeners who took action on specific ideas they heard on the show or read on the Side Hustle Nation blog -- and turned that action into concrete results.

Those results range from their first $1000 on the side, up to a $700k e-commerce empire, but the point is they made something happen.

Tune in to hear how they got it done, and check the text summary below.

Remember the Red Paperclip Guy from a few years ago? In 2005, an out-of-work Kyle MacDonald started with a single red paperclip and traded his way up to a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan.

Remarkably, this barter adventure took only 14 trades and was completed in less than a year. Kyle started out small, each time seeking something “bigger and better” in exchange.

For example, his first trade was the red paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Then he traded the fish pen for a doorknob, and on and on up the ladder.

The story certainly has some feel-good elements to it, and after a while the media attention definitely helped speed the process along, but I think it’s worthwhile to revisit because we’re all trying to “trade up.”

By “trading up”, it’s important to note I’m not necessarily talking about acquiring a bigger house or a better car, but more along the lines of making bigger impacts and living better stories.

I was reminded of the red paperclip story by last week's episode with Rob "The Flea Market Flipper" Stephenson. He talked about a challenge inside his community to start with something small and keep flipping the profits into bigger deals to see how much you could trade up over the course of a year.

I think we all have a red paperclip story. Like Kyle, even starting with almost nothing, you can make big things happen with a little initiative and a little help from others along the way.

This episode is about connecting the events that got you to where you are today, and thinking about where you want to go tomorrow.

What’s the next trade you’d like to make?

In the spirit of the red paperclip story, I’m going to use my own entrepreneurial journey to illustrate this; and similar to Kyle, I’ll use a series of 14 key decisions or trade points. But unlike Kyle, this took me a lot longer than a year!

Rob is a professional "money multiplier."

The good news, he says, is it's a skill that can be learned.

You might remember Rob "The Flea Market Flipper" Stephenson from episode 147 in late 2015. At that time, he was earning $30,000-$40,000 a year flipping random products on the side from his day job.

Since then, the father of 3 has taken his buy low, sell high model and turned it into a full-time 6-figure operation.

Rob doesn’t discriminate what the products are he’s flipping, as long as he can pick it up for a great price he’ll flip it.

I can’t blame him, since some of these single deals are worth thousands of dollars in profit. In fact, Rob only buys items he estimates he can 10x when he flips them.

Since we last spoke Rob has fine-tuned his processes for finding and flipping items. He still hits the flea markets weekly, but he also uses some interesting tools and apps to find more items.

He’s also found a way to save big on shipping cost, enabling him to go after bulky items with even bigger markups.

In this “where are they now” episode, I invited Rob back to learn how he scaled up his business, what his buying criteria or flipping process looks like today, and what he’s got cooking next.

"I'm this close to firing you right now."

That's what Hung Pham's boss told him when he reached out about ways to get his team more engaged with the company's overall mission.

"If you want passion and purpose," she said, "you've got to look somewhere else."

Frustrated with the internal cultures at the organizations he worked in, Hung wanted to attend a culture-building conference.

The only problem? That event didn't exist.

Sensing a void in the market, Hung was inspired to create Culture Summit.

With nothing more than a website, a few contacts booked as speakers, and a whole load of enthusiasm, Hung started emailing prospective attendees and getting the word out within the right circles.

He had more than 200 attendees for that first event and was profitable from day one.

By year two, Hung’s Culture Summit, at CultureSummit.co was a 6-figure business – all on the side from his day job.

This was after Hung almost gave up and his partner left the business when they didn’t sell any tickets for the first three months.

Tune in to hear how Hung validated his idea for his conference, how he sold his first tickets, and how he’s grown this side hustle into a full-time business with attendees from 5 continents, and where he wants to go from here.

“I feel like this is the most important project I’ve ever worked on,” Mike said about his blog YoungArchitect.com.

Mike Riscica runs a blog, podcast, and has built a thriving community for young professionals in the architecture field.

The idea for the blog came from a pain point in Mike’s life, and for many others – passing the Architect Registration Examination (ARE).

After failing to pass the exam 4 times (before passing) and seeing his peers struggling, Mike started blogging about his challenges.

“[My story] resonated with people in a pretty serious way,” he said, and he started seeing traction within the community.

He started monetizing his blog from day one with affiliate products and continued to add more revenue streams to scale up his business with courses, speaking gigs, books, videos, and more as his traffic grew.

Today his blog in a full-time business. He's had the opportunity to travel the country with his dog doing speaking gigs, has helped hundreds of students pass their ARE, and has some interesting plans for the future.

Tune in to hear how Mike grew his blog, how it rings the cash register in at least half a dozen different ways, and the strategies you may be able to lift for your own project.

“I tell people I work on my cleaning business about an hour a day because 5 minutes doesn’t seem believable,” Chris Schwab said.

Chris is the founder of ThinkMaids.com, a residential house cleaning service in the Washington DC area he started on the side while still a university student.

Less than two years later, the business is doing $60k a month worth of cleaning work, all without Chris ever lifting a mop or dusting a shelf himself.

Note: Click here to download Chris’ top tips for starting and growing a local service business that scales from this episode.

In this episode, Chris shares some of the unique tactics he used to start and grow his cleaning business, and then remove himself from the day-to-day operations.

Tune in to hear how Chris came up with the idea for his cleaning business, how he found his first customers and cleaners, and how he manages the entire business remotely.

Rene Delgado started an online drop shipping store with no ideas and no inventory and went from $0-300k in his first year in business.

It was the search for an extra stream of income that led Rene Delgado to consider e-commerce; selling physical products online.

“Drop shipping” is a form of e-commerce where your suppliers ship products directly to customers on your behalf.

Note: