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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Go big or go home, that’s kinda my whole philosophy with SEO,” Matt said.And his results speak for themselves.It’s been more than 200 episodes since we last heard from Matt Giovanisci. Back then, Matt was explaining how he was growing his authority site SwimUniversity.com with epic content and strong SEO.Since then he’s started 3 more authority sites and has fine-tuned his SEO practices for even bigger and quicker results.His latest site BrewCabin.com is just a few months old and Matt is already ranking well for high traffic “money” keywords – without building backlinks or promoting this content.How is he doing this?It’s not through longtail keywords.Quite the opposite, Matt goes after those high traffic keywords and outranks his competitors by producing epic content that people want to read.Tune in to hear Matt explain how he does his keyword research, how he formats his content to ensure strong on-page SEO, and why he’s seeing such rapid growth across all of his sites.Note: This is "round 2" of SEO for Bloggers. Round 1 was this conversation with Joseph Hogue last year.)Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: SEO for Bloggers: The Simple Way to Get More Free Traffic From Google

A $425k exit on a 2.5 year old business!?Recently a friend of mine posted about how he sold his 2.5-year-old Amazon FBA business for over $400k, which I thought was incredible.The twist was it turned out the buyer was a familiar face as well. Spencer Haws of NichePursuits.com was the seller, and Ace Chapman of AceChapman.com was the buyer.They are both previous guests of the show. Spencer was on episodes 18 and 70 of The Side Hustle Show talking about niche sites and software, and Ace was a guest on episode 182, talking about investing in digital real estate.Why did Spencer decide to get into the Amazon FBA business?“I had an idea for a product I used every day, couldn’t find exactly what I wanted on Amazon. So, I decided to find a manufacturer that can make a variation of what I like,” Spencer said.Why was this business an attractive deal for Ace and his investors?“The thing that I liked about the deal was the different sources of income,” Ace said.I decided to invite them both on the Side Hustle Show to give you both sides of the deal.You’ll hear how Spencer built up the business so quickly, why he decided to sell up, and how Ace found himself on the other end of the deal.Tune in to hear how Spencer built an FBA business from $0-400k in less than 3 years with no prior experience in this private label space, and how Ace helps his clients raise the funds to buy online businesses.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Selling an Amazon FBA Business: My $425k Exit ... and the Guy Who Bought It

Paul Brodie is a former special needs teacher turned 11-time Amazon bestselling author.What started as a side hustle writing about his own weight loss journey turned into a string of bestselling titles on Amazon, $3000 paid speaking gigs, 1-on-1 self-publishing coaching, and ultimately the group coaching program I invited Paul on the show to share more about.Why go down the group coaching route?After working with other authors on a 1-to-1 basis and seeing them achieve similar success self-publishing their books on Amazon, Paul had "an epiphany.”By developing a group coaching program there was no limit to the number of authors he could work with.Paul dove right in with a live webinar to test his idea for a group coaching program without a huge audience or list of his own. With 5 students signing up on the spot at $1.5k each, he started work on the content and drip-feeding modules out on a weekly basis.Tune in to hear how Paul used the momentum from self-publishing books on Amazon to open up several other business opportunities before landing on the group coaching program.He covers how he set the price for his program, the methods and tools he uses to automate accepting new students, delivering the weekly modules, and where he goes from here.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Set Up and Sell a Group Coaching Program