The Side Hustle Show

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 and PDF Bonus: From 6-Figure Blog to 7-Figure Online Business: Catching Up with Robert Farrington

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: 6 Months to 6 Figures … Helping People with Excel

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 PDF Bonus: Building a $60k a Month Business as a Full-Time College Student

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 PDF Bonus: $90k a Month on Fiverr: From Freelancer to Agency

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: 33 Life Hacks to Experiment With in 2022

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: How to Make Money with NFTs: Opportunities for Side Hustlers and Creators

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 and PDF Bonus: $500 a Day Selling Other People’s Products with Facebook Marketplace Dropshipping

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 and PDF Bonus: How One Football Fan Turned Tailgating into an Online Business

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: 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. 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. 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 and PDF Bonus: The 6-Figure Belly Dancing Course

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: 9 Quick Ways to Optimize Your Sleep and Feel Super Human

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: 10 Creative Side Hustles That Make Real Money - Part 4

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 and PDF Bonus: 6 Figures in 18 Months: Building a Photo Booth Rental Business

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 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 and PDF Bonus: $1K/Week: How to Flip Phones for Profit

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: 16 Business Ideas You're Free to Run With: The Business Idea Giveaway Show

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: 16 Marketing Ideas from Side Hustle Nation to Grow Your Business

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: What I’ve Learned and Applied from 49 Awesome Entrepreneurs Part 8

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: Online Drop Servicing - Building a $10k/mo Niche Productized Service Agency

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: 6-Figure Growth Hack: Partner Workshops

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: The $8k a Month Curly Hair Blog

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: Memberships vs. Online Courses: Which Business Model is Right for You?

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 and PDF Bonus: Zero to 50,000 Followers in 12 Months: How to Build and Monetize an Audience on Facebook

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 PDF Bonus: How to Grow and Monetize a TikTok audience: 1.6M Followers in 13 Months

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: Side Hustle Showdown: Buying a Business vs. Investing in Real Estate

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: Online Arbitrage: Make Money with Amazon FBA from Home

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: $80k on This Site: How to Get More Freelance Gigs

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: Growing a 6-Figure Side Hustle in 12 Months

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 and PDF Checklist: 16 Marketing Tips for Books (and Other Products) From Bestselling Authors

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: The Side Hustle Snowball: Erase Your Expenses One Extra Income Stream at a Time

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: Easy Website Wins: Marketing and Monetization Lessons From 175 Website Flips

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: 12 Expert SEO Tips for 2021: Get More Free Traffic

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: Blogging vs. YouTube: Which Platform is Best to Grow an Online Business?

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: How I can use my knowledge for a blog or a podcast or affiliate marketing? How have your attitudes about side hustling changed over the last 8 years in the space? How do bundle sales work? Why would these product creators give their work away for so little? What's the table of contents plugin you're using on your site? How is the "You Might Also Like" box in your newsletter working for you in terms of boosting clicks, pageviews, etc.? I noticed that you are using Teachable -- any particular reason? Which WordPress theme should I use? How much do podcasters get paid by sponsors? What made you “jump” [from your day job]? How did failure not become an option for you? 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? What are some good potential side hustles for retirees? How can you protect yourself from legal liability related to online content? What's your take on services like Skimlinks? Do you still recommend putting your books in Kindle Unlimited / KDP Select? When registering a business, can I be my own registered agent? I have 11 separate websites for the local towns where we operate. Should I consolidate domains? I'm just getting started. Should I write and publish a book or start a service business? How much is enough to retire at 35? What side hustles or gigs grew the most in the last year? How would you speed up the process of growing a community? Full Show Notes: Affiliate Marketing, Early Retirement, and Side Hustle Shifts Over 8 Years of Podcasting: 20 Questions with Nick

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: How to Make Money with Kids Books on Amazon

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: $10,000 a Month Selling Digital Products on Etsy

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 per week. He also helps people get started doing the same at Website Rental Coaching. 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: Rank and Rent: $1000 a Month From Simple Local Websites Free Listener Bonus: 50+ Rank and Rent Niches Next Steps: Luke's Website Rental Coaching Want More? Since this episode, I've actually interviewed a couple of Luke's Website Rental Coaching students: Ep. 597: Miao Rios: Website Rentals: The Simple Local Websites That Earn $1000/mo Ep. 693: John Michael - $300-$1,000/mo Renting Out Websites? How to Build Recurring Revenue with Simple, Local Sites

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: $10k a Month Going to Parties

"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: From Kickstarter Success to a Sustainable Brand [Side Hustle Coaching]

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: $80,000 in Etsy Sales: How to Grow from Here? [Side Hustle Coaching]

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: $10k a Month Blogging: How to Grow from Here?

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: 10 Life and Business Lessons from Mom: The Best Mom Advice

$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: $10k a Month Teaching Online Part-Time

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: $225k in 18 Hours a Week: The Path to High-Paying Consulting Gigs

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 Full Show Notes and Free Bonus: $10k a Month Investing in Mobile Homes

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: 500 Million Users: Pinterest Marketing in 2021

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!