“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