The Side Hustle Show

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. Full Show Notes: Land Flipping Revisited: From Zero to $10,000 a Month on the Side 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 Full Show Notes: Get Better, Not Bigger: On Growth, Freedom, Online Marketing, and "Enough"

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: Raise your rates Go From one-to-one to one-to-many Hire subcontractors Create productized packages Play Matchmaker Look for affiliate opportunities 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.) Full Show Notes: How to Start a Service Business to Replace Your Income, Step-by-Step

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: Financial Leverage Time Leverage Technology and Systems Leverage Communications and Marketing Leverage Network and Relationship Leverage Knowledge and Experience Leverage Enjoy! Full Show Notes: How to Get Unstuck: 6 Levers to Pull to Level Up Your Business

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. Full Show Notes: Reselling on Amazon with a $1 Million Seller: Let’s Go Pick Up Profit!

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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Million Dollar Hobby: How to Monetize What You’re Already Interested In

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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Financial Independence Fast-Track: How to Replace Your Salary by Buying Mini Businesses

"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! Full Show Notes: My 5 Favorite Books of the Year and My Top Takeaways from Each

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! Full Show Notes: Hosting Trivia Nights for Fun and Profit: Turn Useless Knowledge into Cash

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: Let’s say you’ve got $100. How do you turn it into $200? What's your #1 morning ritual? Should I create a course around self-care? Am I even qualified to? I haven't made a single sale (on Etsy) and am super demoralized. What can I do? How hard is it to make a website? How do you find a "tech" person for a reasonable rate? Why don't you use ads to monetize your website? In starting my online business, which social media platforms should I focus on? What side hustles do you recommend that could generate $100k a year within a year? When you started Side Hustle Nation, how'd you get engagement from Day 1? No one is buying my book. How can I market it? What WordPress template do you suggest? How do you refer to affiliate links when you haven't used the product? How big of a content backlog do you have / should you have? I'm a college senior interested in entrepreneurship. What do you recommend with the "real world" fast approaching? How was your trip to Mexico? Did you feel unsafe? How do you balance family, job, and business? What's the goal of your local meetups? Why'd you give away the PDF version of The Progress Journal for free? How do you organize your side hustle financially? Which gigs should I create first on Fiverr? Full Show Notes: Multiplying Money, Morning Routines, and $100k Side Hustles: 20 Questions with Nick

“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. Full Show Notes: Master, Multiply, and Monetize your Message: From Ranting in His Car to "Immortality"

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Pinterest Marketing for 2019 and Beyond: How to Get More Traffic

“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. Full Show Notes: Licensing or Franchising a Business? How a School Nurse Started a 6-Figure Side Hustle

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: YouTube for Bloggers: From "Accidental" YouTube Channel to Full-Time Income

“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. Full Show Notes: From Toy Guns to a Full-Time Business

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Simple Way to Finally Set up and Sell Your Online Course (And Scale to $40k a Month and Beyond)

“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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Making Money in Your Sleep - By Blogging About Sleep

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: 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? 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. Full Show Notes: 6 Rules to Scale any Side Hustle

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Create Your Own Niche—and Your Own Income

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 Full Show Notes: 10 Creative Side Hustles that Make Real Money

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: 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. 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. Full Show Notes: Side Hustle Coaching: How Can I 10x My Current Business?

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. Full Show Notes: How to Start a Knife Sharpening Business

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start a Business You Care About — With No Business Ideas and No Money

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The $5k a Month Part-Time Girl Scout Blog 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? Full Show Notes: The 15 Income Streams I'm Working on Right Now

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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Catching Up with the $30k a Month Piano Teacher — How He Grew His Business While Cutting Back His Hours 97%

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. Full Show Notes: 5 Listeners Who Took Action and Are Seeing Awesome Results

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! Full Show Notes: Trading Up: From $8.65 an Hour to Retired at 25, Plus the Next 10 Years

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. Full Show Notes: $100k a Year Flipping Random Items: The Return of the Flea Market Flipper

"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. Full Show Notes: Event Hosting: How to Bring Your Tribe Together and Build a 6-Figure Conference on the Side

“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. Full Show Notes: Blogging for Multiple Income Streams – How a Part-Time Blog Became a Diverse Revenue Engine

“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. 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. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: A Local Service Business that Scales - From Zero to $60k a Month in Revenue

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. Your role is to drive traffic to your storefront, forward the purchase order details to your supplier when a visitor makes a purchase, collecting the retail price and buying the goods at wholesale. Rene went through a very specific product research process and ended up starting BounceHouseStore.com, where he sells bounce houses and other products related to bounce houses. He’s already started scaling his business on the success of his bounce house store. Rene has now outsourced the day-to-day operations of this store and started a new drop shipping store that has already turned over double what his bounce house did in its first year. There’s no luck here. “It’s hard work,” Rene said. That and some careful planning and execution. Tune in to hear why Rene was attracted to drop shipping, the criteria he used to find the bounce house niche, and how he generated $300k of sales in his first year in business. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start an Online Store with No Ideas and No Inventory (and still sell $300k in your first year)

Bill Nowicki has a unique side hustle. He has a podcast show called MariettaStories named after Marietta GA, a suburb of Atlanta with a population of about 60,000. Having a podcast show isn’t unique but producing a show that’s focused on a local community is something a little different – and something you might consider doing for your local community after hearing Bill’s story. Bill is a former Navy submariner, still a nuclear engineer by day, and had different side hustle aspirations at first – he wanted to make videos for local businesses but was finding it hard to land clients. After meeting a charismatic 78-year-old woman at his local church he had the idea to start a podcast about people in his local community, for his local community. He thought this would be a great way to generate videography leads. But as his show has grown and become a profit-center of its own, Bill realized that not only in his time better spent on his show but the medium of audio is more enjoyable and profitable for him than video. Tune in to hear how Bill started his podcast show, how he marketed his show and became known in his local community, how he’s monetized the show to turn it into a revenue generating side hustle and some of the exciting things he has planned for the future. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Local Podcasts: How to Become the Voice of Your Community — and Get Paid

Austin Miller built a $1.2 million real estate portfolio at 31 years old -- for free. He's a side hustling real estate investor specializing in "creative" financing deals -- houses he can buy without using his own money. Austin is the author of Free Houses: How To Build Your Real Estate Investment Portfolio With No Money. His basic strategy is this: Find a killer deal on a house that needs some work. Buy it with the creative financing methods Austin talks about in this episode. Either do the work yourself or hire contractors. Put a paying tenant in the newly rehabbed home. Refinance the home with a traditional bank loan and pay back the original funding source. The end game is positive monthly cash flow from rental income, plus building a long-term wealth through tenants paying off the mortgage. Austin has developed some unique and interesting ways to hard money and private money to fund his property purchases. The best part – it’s truly a side hustle that can be done in a few hours a week the end result is passive income from rental revenue. Tune in to hear how Austin finds killer deals, buys the houses without risking his own capital, and then rehabs them to get ready to rent. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Free Houses: How to Build a $1 Million Real Estate Portfolio on the Side

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 6th installment of “20 Questions” so feel free to go back and binge on the older ones too: 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 questions on conferences, affiliate marketing, ebooks, staying motivated and organized, and even bulletproof coffee. Tune in to hear my responses to those questions and a dozen more below. Full Show Notes: Email, Ebooks, Platforms, and Conferences: 20 Questions with Nick

Willpower predicts academic and professional success better than IQ, or charisma, or having rich parents. It’s not the only ingredient in our success recipe, but it’s a critical one -- and one I certainly struggle with at times. Derek Doepker of ExcuseProof.com is an expert when it comes to increasing willpower and strengthening this critical success muscle we all have. He is the author of 7 bestselling books in personal development, a speaker, consultant, trainer, and specializes in helping individuals create permanent change and achieve mind, body, and business success in as little as 5 minutes a day. In this episode, we walk through several powerful willpower strategies you can start with today. Big thanks to my brother Chris for the inspiration for this one. Check out his excellent willpower article at BecomingBetter.org. Full Show Notes: Willpower 101: 8 Ways to Strengthen This Critical Success Muscle

May Najafabadi earned $12,000 in 8 weeks -- working just 1 hour a day. Her side hustle? After school enrichment classes teaching crafts and jewelry making. As a long-time entrepreneur in the e-commerce space, May was used to enrolling her son in these classes to buy herself an extra hour in the afternoons. Over the last couple years though, she wanted to diversify her income away from Amazon and wondered if she could be the one selling those classes instead. May chose arts and crafts, a subject her son enjoyed in first grade but didn’t see available for second grade and above. With no experience working with crafts or teaching children May jumped right in with a lunchtime demonstration and handing out flyers to the kids. “The kids went crazy, they just loved the crafts. It was a big hit,” May said. With her hopes set on 6 or more kids for that first class, May had 18 sign up at $120 each. She soon expanded to larger schools, with larger groups of kids, and hired helpers. She's released a book, a training course, and hosts birthday parties and summer camps, and has hopes of franchising her model. Tune in to hear how May has grown her after school class business and how you may be able to borrow this creative side hustle idea. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Make $200 an Hour Playing with Kids: An Intro to After School Programs

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 5 years and 5.5 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 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 #1 tips I heard were: Take action; learn as you go. Be persistent. It doesn't happen overnight. Charge more. Don't undervalue yourself. While those might sound overly generic, don’t be quick to dismiss them. If all these really smart and successful people keep saying these episode after episode as their “#1 tip,” I think they’re worth paying attention to. What action can you take today to apply those tips? My #1 Tip this time? Make progress every day. Full Show Notes: What I've Learned and Applied for 49 Awesome Entrepreneurs - Part 5

10 months! Just 10 months after starting his side hustle, Jonathan Mendonsa was ready to quit his 6-figure job and take the business full-time. What's the hustle? A podcast called Jonathan co-hosts with this partner Brad Barrett ChooseFI. “You need to either be first or be different. We couldn’t be first, so we wanted to pivot and be a little different,” Jonathan said. When the project started, he was working full-time as a pharmacist, living a frugal lifestyle, and was an avid consumer of financial independence content. From the offset, he knew that, “If we can create a show that’s information, accurate, good, entertaining, and also inspirational, that’ll be addictive.” In this episode Jonathan shares some of the unique tactics and tips he and Brad used to grow their audience, community, and business so fast. Tune in to hear how ChooseFI earned 2 million downloads in its first year, and how they monetize the show to support two families. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Choose Financial Independence: A Case Study in Audience Building

“It’s the best-kept secret in the real estate industry,” Mark said, talking about becoming a loan signing agent. You can make $100 an hour as a part-time, and the only real requirements are that you know what you’re doing, and you have a notary license. (A loan signing agent is the person who walks you through the giant stack of forms and contracts you have to sign when you close on a new home loan.) I was first introduced to this side hustle early last year, when I first sat down with Mark Wills and his business partner Roman Rosario. That conversation turned into episode 215 of the Side Hustle Show, where the pair walked me through how they built and sold an online course starting with no audience. At that time, the Loan Signing System course, which he teaches people how to become loan signing agents, was doing around $4k a month. A year and half later, and they're doing around $30k a month and hosting a national conference! But what we didn’t really cover in that episode was how to become a loan signing agent and what that business is actually like -- to the frustration of many listeners. So in response to audience feedback and several listener testimonials, I invited Mark back on the show, along with one of his successful students, to dive into the loan signing side hustle. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Become a Loan Signing Agent and Earn $100 an Hour Part-Time

“I set up a big business just selling somebody else’s stuff,” Wes said. Wes runs TheSalesWhisperer.com and is the host of The Sales Podcast which started around the same time as The Side Hustle Show back in 2013. He’s an Air Force vet, a father of 7, and has built up an interesting side hustle that on the surface looks like a typical consulting business but is done in such a way that it’s set up to generate recurring passive income. Wes has been side hustling since the 90’s and started his online business around a decade ago. He saw an opportunity to become one of the first Infusionsoft resellers, a piece of software that not only streamlined his own business but offered attractive recurring affiliate commissions. Wes became one of the top earners in the world and was netting $15k a month in mostly passive income, all on the side from his primary consulting, speaking, and sales training practice. He’s adapted his strategies over the years and diversified his income streams but his business model stays similar to this day – scalable affiliate marketing with recurring passive income. Tune in to hear how Wes started generating passive income through affiliate marketing and how you may be able to use a similar strategy in your service business. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Passive Income Service Business

When Abbey made $8000 from her 1000-person email list, she knew she was on to something. Over the last several years, Abbey Ashley has gone from earning $25 as a virtual assistant, to coordinating monster 6-figure launches of her own product. I actually met Abbey at the bar during Traffic and Conversion Summit. Her “Virtual Assistance Is My Jam,” t-shirt caught my attention and I had to know more. Eight months pregnant with her first daughter, she couldn't imagine putting her child in day care just to go back to work at a job she hated. So she started devouring everything she could find online about working from home and virtual assisting. Before long, she'd landed her first clients and booked enough work not to have to go back to her old job when her leave was up. Eventually she started subcontracting out some of the work, which was her first taste of passive income. As some of her clients were doing really well selling online courses, Abbey tried to enter that world as well. Her first course launches were major flops. Then she did what all good entrepreneurs do when a first attempt doesn’t go as planned. She looked at what went wrong, made the necessary changes, and tried again. She pre-sold her next course idea to the tune of $8000 from a 1000-person list. Her second launch generated $40k in sales, and 6 months later her next launch generated $160k in sales. Tune in to how Abbey walked The Side Hustle Path, her actionable hacks and strategies along the way, and how she built and sold her online course even without a huge audience starting out. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: From Active to Passive Income: From $25 an Hour to 6-Figure Launches

You've got less than 3 seconds to make a first impression online. Is your website turning would-be customers away without you even knowing it? Your site and the words you use -- your copy -- could either be making you money or costing you big time. I invited copywriting pro Laura Belgray on the show to do some live "copy audits" of listeners' sites. Laura is a professional copywriter with nearly 20 years of experience. During this time, she has written everything from TV promos, launch campaigns, online content, and tons more. She is also the co-creator of The Copy Cure, an online copywriting course with Marie Forleo to help you "write like you talk and make people love and buy what you sell." In this episode, we check out the sites from our brave volunteers and critique their language and structure. We looked at sites in e-commerce, service businesses, and blogs. Listen in for some common mistakes that could be killing your conversion rates along with Laura's copywriting tips for compelling lead magnet offers and taglines. I'm confident you'll get a ton of value from listening in on these website reviews and have some homework to go home and implement on your own site right away. Full Show Notes: Your Copy Sucks! Website Reviews from a Professional Copywriter

FoodTruckEmpire.com generates $60k a year on the side from Brett Lindenberg's marketing consulting job. Why'd he start a blog about the food truck industry? “I started the blog at a time in my life when I was looking at just a whole bunch of different business ideas,” Brett said. Originally, Brett wanted to start his own food truck. While researching how to start a food truck business he discovered there wasn’t enough quality information online. So, he did what all good entrepreneurs do – capitalized on this gap in the market and started his own blog. Brett creates the bulk of his content interviewing food truck owners and influencers in the industry. He’s grown his blog to $60k a year in just 4 years through building an academy course, securing paid advertising, running AdSense, and selling ebooks. And spoiler alert: he never ended up starting that food truck! Tune in to hear Brett's content strategy, the different ways he monetizes his business, and how you can apply these methods to your own blog. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Build a $60k a Year Part-Time Blog

In his first 3 months, he'd booked more than $4000 worth of work. “I’ve never been very good at working with people, so I wanted something that was flexible,” James said. Sound familiar? These are the words of someone who was not happy being a shoe salesman and wanted out. James was looking for that location independent lifestyle, and when he was approached to ghostwrite a book for $300 he knew what he wanted to do from that point on. Fast-forward a couple of years and James now charges $300 per 1000 words for his freelance writing, and most of his work is at least 2500 words ($750). He’s also started up a cool business at FreelanceWritersSchool.com teaching others how to follow in his footsteps. Tune in to hear how James landed his first clients, his strategies for growing a portfolio, and some of his favorite hacks to overcome writer's block. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start a $1000/Month Freelance Writing Business in 60 Minutes a Day

Corey Jeffreys turned an $800 investment into $3k in the first year and has been growing his business and adding more automated processes each year. His entrepreneurial adventure began by exploring the world of real estate investing, when he happened upon a slightly different rental business model: inflatable bounce houses. Corey started out renting a bounce house to his aunt as his first customer and doing all the labor himself, to where he is now with a virtual assistant from Upwork taking bookings and a delivery guy from Craigslist handling the delivery. This is a very different side hustle from the online businesses we see more often, but Corey managed it with a small up-front investment and it set the cogs turning with possibilities of other industries this can be applied to. Tune in to hear how Corey found his first customers, grew his business through word-of-mouth and online marketing channels, and hired help to automate his business processes and remove himself from the day-to-day operations. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start a Bounce House Rental Business (Investing in "Inflatable" Real Estate)