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 t...
Aug 05, 2021•37 min
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 ...
Jul 29, 2021•33 min
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
Jul 27, 2021•21 min
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 th...
Jul 22, 2021•47 min
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 a...
Jul 15, 2021•41 min
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 rec...
Jul 08, 2021•54 min
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?...
Jul 01, 2021•39 min
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 fr...
Jun 24, 2021•55 min
What advice would you give your 18-year-old self? Here's my actual valedictorian speech from 20 years ago!
Jun 18, 2021•9 min
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 t...
Jun 17, 2021•44 min
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...
Jun 10, 2021•48 min
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 t...
Jun 03, 2021•41 min
"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...
May 27, 2021•57 min
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 sacrifi...
May 20, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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 memb...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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 w...
May 06, 2021•30 min
$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 a...
Apr 29, 2021•49 min
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...
Apr 22, 2021•51 min
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 purcha...
Apr 15, 2021•44 min
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 sta...
Apr 08, 2021•55 min
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!
Apr 02, 2021•26 min
Anthony and Jhanilka Hartzog erased $114k of debt in 23 months. The couple were making good money at their day jobs, but realized there's only so much you can cut from your budget. That’s when they turned to the income side of the equation and started a ton of different side hustles. They picked up second jobs at their gym, rented out their car on Turo, dogsitted, and — inspired by my episode with Chris Schwab — they started a residential cleaning business called Maids2Match.com. Today, that bus...
Apr 01, 2021•42 min
Can you still make money in domain flipping? Last year, Mark Levine flipped 70 domain names, for around $160k in gross profit. Of that, he spent a little over half on renewal fees for his domain name portfolio and acquiring new domains to add to it, netting $70-80k for the year. Not bad for a part-time hobby! In his spare time, Mark manages a portfolio of 3500-4000 domains. That's not huge by domain investor standards, but still a good-sized collection. With established investors like Mark, I wa...
Mar 25, 2021•51 min
Speedos, systems, and niche strategy -- this episode has it all. John Lee Dumas to share some insights from 2000+ interviews with successful entrepreneurs. (Turns out, I have an informal tradition of hosting John every 4 years. In 2013 we chatted podcasting and monetization, and in 2017 we dove into productivity, discipline, and focus.) His latest project is a book: The Common Path to Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment. Inside, he unpacks a 17-step guide to business...
Mar 18, 2021•35 min
How do you make time for a side hustle? That's one of the questions I get the most, and one of the reasons we return to the theme of productivity so often. In this post (and podcast episode), I'll share a 10-step process for making — and optimizing — time for your business, inspired by Side Hustle Show guests. Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: 10 Steps to Make Time for Your Side Hustle
Mar 11, 2021•37 min
Last May, Monisha Misra reluctantly accepted her first customer. Nine months later, she'd eclipsed $100k in total sales -- all on the side from her day job. BoardsByMo.com is a charcuterie board prep company, and the early success and attention in that arena has spun off other revenue streams including virtual live charcuterie board building classes. Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free! Monisha has covered a lot of ground in the last year. She started out donating snack platters to es...
Mar 04, 2021•54 min
Are laundromats "the ultimate side hustle," like my guest Jordan Berry described? These simple, local, cash-flowing businesses have been around forever, but surprisingly this is the first time discussing them in detail on the show. Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free! Jordan is a former pastor turned laundromat mogul. Along the way, he's become an advocate for the industry through his website and podcast at LaundromatResource.com. Jordan got the idea to buy a laundromat after his wife...
Feb 25, 2021•47 min
From burned out freelance writer to making $200+ a day in affiliate sales ... all in less than a year. That’s Tami Smith's story. Tami was writing affiliate content for clients when she had a “why don’t I try that?” moment. Starting in late 2019, Tami went from watching clients make money from the articles she wrote, to making her own affiliate commissions on a site of her own. Her effort and results on FitHealthyMomma.com are extraordinary, all while combining two things she loves -- fitness an...
Feb 18, 2021•47 min
It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show. I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show. Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free! Here are the questions I cover: How do you get over the fear of asking someone to buy your service or product? (1:42) Should I gain a skill to start a side hustle or just jump on some ones that have litt...
Feb 11, 2021•37 min
Service businesses can get a bad rap. After all, there are clients to deal with, and actual labor involved in fulfillment. They’re just not as glamorous as other more “passive” income models. But you should know that more Side Hustle Show guests started with a service-based business model than any other. This week’s guest has a unique approach to service businesses -- one that doesn't rely on your skills as the expert. Tyler Gillespie has built two successful service businesses and had a clean e...
Feb 04, 2021•49 min
