The Side Hustle Show

I first met Ryan Gray at New Media Expo in 2014. He introduced himself and when I asked what he did, he said he was a doctor. Turns out that Dr. Gray, along with his wife (also a doctor), was building MedicalSchoolHQ.net, a resource for med school and premed students. It's another perfect example of building an authority site around a particular area of expertise.

Brian Clark has been content marketing since before the term even existed. In fact, he left a miserable corporate job and built several successful businesses using these effective new marketing techniques. Then he started this little side project called Copyblogger to share some his findings, tactics, and ideas with the rest of the world. Fast forward 10 years and Copyblogger is now Rainmaker Digital on track to do more than $10 million in sales this year.

I've had an idea for a new affiliate site kicking around in my head for a while now, so I thought I'd do a live walk-through of my thought-process and analysis of whether this is an opportunity I should pursue or not. The idea? A comparison and review site for meal delivery services like Blue Apron, Plated, Hello Fresh, Gobble, and others.

Tyler Zey turned his web development side hustle into a full-time business, but not without a few twists and turns along the way. Tyler's actually a classically trained musician (clarinet), but now runs EasyAgentPro, one of the leading marketing services for real estate agents -- despite having no background in real estate. What he lacked in real estate knowledge he made up for with hustle.

Jon Schumacher is a side hustler turned full-time entrepreneur. In fact, when we met at Podcast Movement this summer, he'd punched the clock for the last time just a few weeks before. He mentioned he'd been side hustling for years, and finally had hit on a business and marketing plan that worked. His target was $5k in monthly income before he quit, which he achieved this year and made the leap.

A viable startup business in 7 days ... sound to good to be true? Dan Norris is the co-founder of WP Curve, a service that offers unlimited 24/7 WordPress support for small jobs for $79 per month. He went from idea to paying customers in less than 7 days. Based on his experience, Dan penned the bestselling book The 7 Day Startup, and stopped by The Side Hustle Show to share some of his insights.

Navid had been blogging and podcasting about lifestyle business topics, but wrote one epic "round-up" post that went viral on the subject of personal branding. Sensing he was on to something, and noticing the success of virtual summits in other industries (like health and fitness), he decided to put together The Branding Summit. At the time, Navid had a modest list of 1000 email subscribers. The summit quadrupled that number and generated $20,000 in revenue the month it went live.

Should you quit your side hustle? My guest this week says you should, and argues that what you should do instead is find an apprenticeship. Taylor Pearson is the author of the bestselling The End of Jobs, and one of those super-smart individuals we should all pay attention to. The book is largely a historical perspective on where our economy is today and where we're going; and it's at once terrifying yet optimistic.

I met Steve Chou at New Media Expo this spring, and was fascinated by his story. He's built three different six-figure businesses, all while still working a day job in Silicon Valley. In fact, I was really surprised to find out he's still working TODAY, despite all this side hustle success. Those businesses are an ecommerce store at BumblebeeLinens.com, his blog and podcast at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, and his online course teaching others how to get started in ecommerce.

John Logar is the king of pre-selling software. As one of The Foundation's top students, he's broken all their records and even broken the mold on some of the methods they teach. In fact, he sold $120k worth of software within his first 6 months of joining the program. Since he was already a consultant, doing idea extraction and finding pain points for businesses was second nature. He just knew nothing about software before so just added a new weapon to his arsenal. (Without learning how to program.)

I was really excited to sit down with Travis Scott from StuffParentsLike.com to share his success with the Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) clearance arbitrage business, and also to get his insight since I just started playing around with this side hustle myself. Travis has seen impressive results with Amazon, netting $25,000 so far this year through July, in addition to his full-time job and duties as a dad. You may remember Travis from a guest post he contributed on his FBA adventures last year.

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 interviews. (I first did this for episode 50, which was my first-ever solo podcast recording.) 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?

If you're looking for ways to squeeze more out of your limited side hustle hours, this is the episode for you. I'm excited to introduce Julie Sheranosher, host of the Time Hackers podcast. Julie and I met at World Domination Summit in 2013 -- she flew in all the way from Israel -- and she is one of my favorite people and true time management pro. I feel like my productivity has improved over the years, but I'm always learning about new systems and "hacks" to test out. One of those hacks was simply writing down my top 3 priorities for the next day the night before.

This week, I'm joined by fellow online entrepreneur and freedom-seeker, Natalie Sisson. Natalie is a masterful marketer, blogger, podcaster, and speaker, and on this call she breaks down how a blog post idea became a major turning point in her business, and was eventually re-purposed and repackaged more than a half-dozen ways -- all ringing the cash register in some unique fashion. The breakthrough moment was going from $0 to $15,000 in one month, with what I thought was a pretty savvy strategy.

Tim Johnson is a man of many hustles. In fact, when he applied for my Inner Circle Mastermind last year, I had a hard time keeping them all straight. Between his day job as a product engineer, his awesome self-publishing business, his Amazon FBA activities, and an upcoming brick-and-mortar project -- and twin 2 year old boys -- there's no doubt he's keeping busy! On this call, we focus on his book business, which has earned a consistent $1000-1500 a month in author royalties.

One podcast I've been following for a really long time is the Empire Flippers show with Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti. It's been fun to watch their evolution from building tiny Adsense sites, running an outsourcing company in the Philippines, selling WordPress themes, and now really focusing in on their website brokerage business. Consider this: it's MUCH easier to buy an existing cash flow than to create one entirely from scratch. In this episode we get into the business model of investing in sites, where to look for these "digital real estate" opportunities, some pitfalls to avoid, and even some creative financing options.

Travis Marziani is the co-founder of BDancewear.com, an ecommerce store specializing in dance-clothing handmade in the US. On this week's show, Travis joins me to talk about why ecommerce is such an awesome business model, especially for side hustlers, and the story behind the dance site -- since he is clearly not the target demographic. He's got some innovative content marketing ideas for online stores as well as how people can get started in ecommerce without massive overhead or investment.

Ankur Nagpal is the founder of Fedora, an online course-hosting platform with more than 4000 instructors. From his unique vantage-point, he's got some insight into what separates top-selling courses from the rest of the pack. Ankur gives some innovative ideas on how to use free distribution platforms like YouTube and even Udemy to build an interested audience and drive them to your premium course. We get into how to come up with your course topic, the tools to create your course quickly, and some pricing strategies as well.

Last year, Lise "came out of nowhere" as they say, and published 13 books in 6 months, and now earns between $3000 and $4000 a month in author royalties. Of course the truth is she didn't come out of nowhere at all; she came out of New Zealand and had already built a successful freelance writing business. However, the hustle of delivering work for clients all day had her seeking a more time-leveraged use of her skills. Since she already knew how to write well and write quickly, she figured book publishing was a natural next step.

Freelancing or selling some useful service is one of the fastest ways to earn more money. It may not be as sexy as "passive income" but it does come with instant gratification. Make deals, deliver awesome work, and get paid. In today's show, I'm excited to welcome back Daniel DiPiazza from Rich20Something.com. You may remember Daniel from Episode 35, where he talked about how his "marsupial method" took his tutoring business from $18 an hour to $1000 an hour.

On this week's show, I'm joined by Steph Halligan, who runs ArtToSelf.com. She's a talented cartoonist who began a daily blog and email newsletter with inspirational and affirmational art -- all created by her. The site is 100% supported by donations from her followers, and even though it's very early in the journey, I think there's enough validation to say she's on the path her 1000 true fans doing work she loves.

I was very excited to sit down with Mark Podolsky, The Land Geek, to talk about his side-hustle-turned-full-time-biz of investing in raw land. In fact, he was able to replace his day job income and quit his job only 18 months after starting. Mark calls it the best passive income model because you don't have to worry about building a website, building a product, dealing with tenants, dealing with repairs, or selling a service.

Dorie's latest book is called Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It, and it is the perfect companion to anyone trying to build a personal brand, an authority website, or an audience-based business. This episode is a little different from other Side Hustle Show episodes because we actually don't talk much about Dorie's personal story or experience at all, but rather dive into the research and examples that went into Stand Out. Listen in to learn how you can generate your next killer idea, get people to pay attention to you, and find a way to monetize it.

I've been medium-obsessed with the idea of early retirement ever since I discovered this little blog called Mr. Money Mustache a couple years ago. The basic formula goes like this: once you have 25x your annual spending in invested net worth, you can theoretically live off growth/interest/dividends in perpetuity. On today's episode you'll meet Jeremy Jacobson, who retired at 37 and now spends his days traveling with his wife and soaking up new cultures and experiences -- and blogging about financial independence.

Four months ago, Andy Slamans gave us a detailed look at Amazon FBA product selection, working with manufacturers, and bringing those products to market. But the most common question I get from listeners is how to find that first product to import. How do I find a profitable product? How do I measure the competition? How do I validate the demand and the pricing? In today's episode, I sit down with Will Mitchell from StartupBros.com to dive into those exact questions.

Dan Faggella sent me an email last month that essentially said, "Hey Nick, I'm a fan of the show. I have some expertise in email marketing, and I know many of your listeners are working to build their online presence and their email lists. Would it make sense to do an episode on some list building and email best practices?" And then he added the kicker: "I'm making $50k/mo selling martial arts training videos right now, and I have other businesses as well..." OK, I'm listening!

This week my friend Alex Barker co-hosts and interviews me on my entrepreneurial beginnings, my first side hustle, and the origins and future of Side Hustle Nation. We also go through a few listener questions as well. I realized I've told some of these stories only in bits and pieces on the show and on the Side Hustle Nation blog before, despite having mentioned them on several other podcasts. This episode is admittedly a little "fluffy" -- so I promise a return to the hard-hitting tactical stuff next week!

Nate and his brother earned $300,000 in passive income by licensing one of their ideas to Mattel. They didn't have to design it, produce it, or sell it. But they found someone who could, and they cashed the checks. And to be fair, Nate will be the first to tell you these kind of results aren't typical -- but he's proof they ARE possible. Nate's actually a dentist by day, but a pretty serious side hustler by night, and on this call we take a deep dive into the world of product licensing.

John Corcoran is well-known in online business circles for being "the connections guy," but I was more curious in how he's built his own online business than networking tips. Today he sells his own premium course on Connecting with Influencers, plus earns money as an affiliate for other high-dollar, high-value online products. In January, he earned $30,000 in one month, through sales of his own product and as an affiliate for others. In this call we get into building and selling a course of your own, the best ways to get it done, and maybe a little bit about building the partnerships to make a powerful impact.

In Hawaii and on the plane home I read two books with very similar themes: The ONE Thing by Gary Keller Essentialism by Greg McKeown Both titles share the common message of FOCUS -- de-cluttering your day, your work, your mind, and your life. They came at a good time because I was starting to feel overwhelmed with projects and wanting to pursue new ideas and opportunities as they came up.

Twenty months and 90 episodes ago, I was introduced to the incredible story of AnarchoFighter, the Top-Rated Fiverr seller who earned enough cash on the platform to buy a house. That episode convinced me to give Fiverr a shot as a seller myself, and it's turned into a fun side hustle income stream. Since we last spoke, Fiverr has implemented a bunch of changes, including the option to create custom quotes up to $10,000. And Mark was the first to make that $10k deal, taking a buyer from $5 to 5-figures:

It's tax season, and I think it would be foolish to give Uncle Sam more than you're legally required to. This week I'm joined by Joshua Sheats from RadicalPersonalFinance.com and the host of the Radical Personal Finance podcast. He explains there are 2 tax codes: the personal tax code and the business tax code. As a business owner, even as a side hustler, there are a number of distinct tax advantages available to you. Listen in and keep your hard-earned dollars!

Dayne Shuda runs GhostBlogWriters.com, a done-for-you blogging service that commands premium prices, and oversees a team of 20 part-time writers to deliver the work for clients around the country. But like most businesses, Ghost Blog Writers came from some pretty humble beginnings. In fact, Dayne started it as a side hustle with $0 upfront investment.

Here's a guy who built an online business, and had the courage to up and move to Cozumel, Mexico -- with his wife and 3 young daughters. It's not your typical single-23-year-old-dude digital nomad type of story, though Sean's business itself is simple enough to be replicated. This is a fun chat about hustling for business and building a lifestyle on your own terms. I think you're going to like it, even if you have no desire to move abroad.

This may surprise people, but I'm a pretty slow writer. I have a challenging time writing in "rough draft" mode. You know, where you just brain dump onto the page and clean it up later. That's one reason I wanted to have Chandler Bolt back on the show; because he's got a cure for that I'm anxious to try out. In this episode, we talk about his 3-step writing process to quickly create a new book project, along with Kindle launch tactics for new and aspiring authors.

You want traffic? You want readers? You want customers? You'll want to listen to this episode. Your free book is essentially your epic "guest post" -- only a MUCH bigger site than you could ever hope to publish on regularly. Like a good guest post, it leads readers back to more of your content, where they opt-in with their email to continue their relationship with you. This works for authors and non-authors alike. In fact, Nick pretty much convinced me I need to be doing this as well!

I'm thrilled to welcome Benny Hsu back to The Side Hustle Show! Remember Benny from way back in episode 17, when we talked about dominating the app store? In 2014, his app business took a backseat to a new side hustle: selling t-shirts through Teespring. I ran into Benny at Podcast Movement last summer, where I was proudly rocking my "Every day I'm hustling" tee, and we got to chatting about his new Teespring business.

If you're not already following Bryan Harris, I recommend you do. The guy is super smart and has a unique way of breaking things down so that they're easy to understand and implement. He doesn't mess around, and gives super-detailed actionable advice with some awesome examples, but gives the caveat that it takes real work. This is not a 4-hour workweek passive income system -- at least not at first. But that's OK, because we're hustlers and ready to make something happen in 2015, right?

Scott Oldford sent me a proposal for a podcast episode about part-time podcasting, and included the hook, "I've made $1900 in revenue from my first episode." OK, I'm listening! In this episode we discuss how a podcast can be a very part-time venture but still reach a wide audience and begin to earn revenue on its own.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you're having an amazing holiday with friends and family, and taking a moment to reflect and recharge. Even though it's an American holiday, the idea behind giving thanks for what we have is universal. What's your Turkey Day tradition? I'm behind the mic solo this week, talking about 6 habits I believe have made me a better entrepreneur, and how you can implement them in your own life.

When I asked listeners last month who they'd like to hear on the show, Rob Cubbon is a name that came up from a couple different people. Rob's been crushing it lately between is online teaching efforts and his Kindle publishing business, and as luck would have it, is a Side Hustle Show listener himself. I've been following Rob's blog for some time myself, and have been really impressed with his journey. In fact, it's pretty inspiring and eye-opening to see some his quarterly income reports, with much of the money coming from Udemy.

J. Massey discovered real estate as a business out of necessity. He and his wife were both in poor health, and as he explains, had a 398 credit score and $75 to their name. Then, introduced to real estate wholesaling, the picture began to turn around. This strategy allowed J. to develop some cash flow without risking his own limited assets, and he says he got started by dedicating just 2 hours a day, or 10 hours a week to this new side hustle.

Today, Alexis Grant runs a social media, content marketing, and blog management agency and manages a team of 10 people to get it all done. But like many of us, she started off as a side hustler, working her way up and adding clients until it was time to make the leap. She took some very strategic steps along the way, including setting up clients on a retainer model instead of a one-off project basis, and building a "personal brand" and audience of her own through her blog.

One of the surprising bright spots in my side hustle portfolio (my strategy of building multiple income streams) has been Fiverr. After hearing the incredible story of AnarchoFighter last year, I knew I had to give the platform a shot! While I haven't exactly earned house-buying money, it has turned into a nice little revenue source. I'm up $7490 through 14 months, or a little over $500 a month on average.

Everybody's an expert in something, right? Well this week's guest, Matt Giovanisci, is an expert in pool care. He describes it as the most boring industry that serves such a fun product. He's taken an innovative approach to rank his site, SwimUniversity.com, in Google and monetize it with affiliate relationships and private advertising. I feel like Matt's process is proven and repeatable -- but takes real work.

Ryan Finlay from ReCraigslist.com makes a full-time living (and supports his family of 7) buying and selling items on Craigslist. In fact, he used this business to pull himself out from $25,000 in debt and now teaches others to do the same. This is really one of the most fascinating side hustle stories I've come across because there's a Craigslist for your city that is probably teeming with "inventory" for you to run a similar business.

One of my favorite questions to ask guests on The Side Hustle Show is how they got their first customer. Because that's an empowering moment! So today, I'll take you through how I got my first customers in a half dozen different business ventures. This show covers some formative moments in my journey, my struggles with sales, and some of my biggest takeaways from these businesses.

It's been quite a while since our last discussion of a software business here on the show. Even though we touched briefly on Long Tail Pro with Spencer Haws, I really have to go all the way back to Josh Isaak in episode 12 to find an in-depth breakdown of a Software as a service business. So that means today's conversation with Garrett Moon from CoSchedule is long overdue! After all, the low incremental cost and recurring revenue potential of the SaaS model is such a trendy holy grail of business right now.

Corrina Gordon-Barnes is a sought-after coach and mentor, and today she shares with Side Hustle Nation exactly how she built her business from the ground up. There are some surprising turns and some eye-opening responses in this one, as I ask Corrina about how she prices her services, how she landed her first clients, how she's scaling her business, and how she made blogging work as an effective marketing channel.

I'm excited to welcome Scott Britton from Life-LongLearner.com and The Competitive Edge podcast to The Side Hustle Show. In this chat, we talk about how he built up a passive income stream from online courses on Udemy, which gave him the freedom to travel and live in South America for several months. He's a super smart guy and really delivers a ton of excellent tips in this episode. I think you'll like it! Full Show Notes: How to Make Money on Udemy