Brian Winch calls it “America’s Simplest Business.”What started as a side hustle way back in 1981 has now grown into a $650k a year operation.So what does Brian do?His company picks up litter from parking lots. Sadly, it's still an essential service (boo litterbugs!), but has very low startup costs and Brian says you can earn $30-$50 an hour doing this on the side.What prompted Brian to pick up the phone and ask property management companies if he could handle their litter picking contracts?“I decided I liked my job but I couldn’t see myself doing this for the rest of my life and I wanted more,” Brian said. In just a few months he was earning more part-time in this side hustle than he was at his full-time job.It's freelancing -- brick-and-mortar style.Tune in to hear how Brian landed his first clients, how he priced his service, and how he scaled the business to remove himself from the day-to-day trash pickup.With the decent pay, hours that fit around most day jobs, minimal start-up costs, and no prior experience necessary, it’s a side hustle success story that's worth checking out.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Simplest Side Hustle Ever? How to Earn $30-50 an Hour Picking up Trash

"I teach women how to get dressed in the morning."That's how Kelly Snyder from AdoreYourWardrobe.com introduced herself to me at FinCon.(The more "official" tagline is that Adore Your Wardrobe teaches women how to confidently dress their unique bodies through the principles found in math and science.)There's a niche for everything, right!It’s a really cool business idea that sits firmly outside of the usual internet marketing space and has helped thousands of women be less frustrated and a lot happier with their wardrobe.Kelly has used an interesting strategy of challenge marketing to grow her business to multiple 6-figures in under two years.But the 14 Day from Frustration to Functional Closet Challenge is just one piece of the puzzle, or one piece of the "customer success path," as she put it.As the challenge wraps up, she invites participants to join her flagship course, and she's added a couple more upsells beyond that as well in response to customer feedback.So how about results? Each time she runs a challenge she adds another $100k in revenue to her business!There are some interesting and unusual techniques to her challenge marketing strategies, and definitely some scope to apply these techniques to your own business if you sell courses or any other service.Tune in to hear how Kelly structures her challenges, how she gets people in the door, and how she converts free participants into paying customers.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Challenge Marketing – How to Explode Your List and Revenue with Free Challenges

It's no secret that Amazon FBA is one of the hottest side hustles going right now, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.FBA is Fulfillment by Amazon, the program that allows you to list your own products for sale on Amazon, tap into their giant audience of customers, and have them handle all the shipping when orders come in.The trick is figuring out which which products to sell, and that's where Greg Mercer comes in.Greg has launched over 100 successful products on Amazon, including a few public examples like bamboo marshmallow sticks and hooded baby towels he shared on the JungleScout.com blog.Just those two products alone are earning $12k a month in profit, and he’s formed some cool partnerships with Doctors without Borders and Pencils of Promise to put the proceeds to good use.Now, you might remember Greg from an episode we did a couple years ago, How to Find Your First Amazon FBA Private Label Product.At that time, we talked about private label research and strategies for starting an FBA business. Since the landscape has changed a bit since then, I invited Greg back on the show to dive into how he's picking products today.The 3 strategies we cover are: Big demand / bad reviews. Big sales / poor marketing. New markets / immature listings. Greg also breaks down the criteria he likes to see in new private label products, how Amazon ranks products in their internal algorithm, and how he successfully launches his new products quickly.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Top 3 Amazon FBA Private Label Product Research Strategies for 2018 and Beyond

Is your website guilty of these common sins? How secure is your site, really?WordPress is like the new toy you unwrap on Christmas morning -- you know it's going to be awesome, but there's some assembly required.To break down some of the most common website mistakes, I invited my friend Anthony Tran on the show.Anthony runs MarketingAccessPass.com, a web design and development agency, as well as AccessWP.com, a WordPress support company offering unlimited support for a low monthly subscription.(Get $20 off your first month of Access WP through my affiliate link)With years of experience building websites for himself and for clients, he definitely knows his stuff.In this episode, we walk through how you can tighten up the security of your site, speed up your load times, and some quick changes that’ll improve your SEO and user experience.Whether you’re new to WordPress or have been blogging for years, I think you’ll take something away from this episode as Anthony shares his tips, tools, and best practices from years of working online for himself and for clients.Note: If you don't have a website up and running yet, my free video series will show you how to get online quickly and affordably.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Most Common Website Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

I felt gross. I was tired from chasing a toddler around, out of shape, and fighting a series of frustrating injuries.And I realized it was hurting my output at work. Building a business takes real energy and real brainpower, and I wasn't performing optimally because my body wasn't performing optimally.I knew I had to do something about it.A friend introduced me to Rob Dionne, a certified personal trainer who works with clients online and in person. He also co-hosts the Open Sky Fitness podcast with his wife Devon and runs the really active Open Sky Fitness Facebook group.Since we started working together, I've lost 5 pounds, gained strength, and generally feel more energized during the day. On the surface, investing 20 minutes in a workout seems like going backward; that's 20 minutes I should be working! But I've found it pays dividends in better energy the rest of the day and better sleep at night.During our coaching calls, I'd often find myself saying, "This is really good stuff, we should be recording this."And that's how this episode came to be.Tune in to hear the most important health and fitness factors, how they can fit into any schedule, and Rob's analysis of one Side Hustle Show listener's daily routine.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Health and Fitness for Busy Entrepreneurs - The Most Overlooked Productivity Hack?

A lot has changed in Ryan's "buy low, sell high" business built on Amazon's FBA program.This week’s episode is a “where are they now?” show as I catch up with Ryan Grant from OnlineSellingExperiment.com.Ryan first appeared on the show back in 2014 on episode 61. Back then he had just quit his $50k a year job to sell online full-time using retail arbitrage.(He’d started out flipping textbooks in college and then got into Amazon FBA retail arbitrage; buying low from stores locally and re-selling on Amazon.)Fast forward 3 years and Ryan’s business has grown at an incredible pace.He’s had some pretty impressive media exposure off the back of a Reddit AMA and is on track to sell more than $4 million worth of stuff in 2017.What were the driving forces behind this accelerated growth?“I wanted to make it a true business,” Ryan said.He now has a team of 11 people working for him, has put processes in place to find more items in retail stores, has started buying at wholesale, and can now use his own time more efficiently to work on growing his business and finding expansion opportunities.Ryan’s success is proof that retail arbitrage is still a viable side hustle. In this episode he explains what he’s learned over the last 3 years, and how the retail arbitrage landscape has changed for new sellers.Tune in to hear Ryan explain how he grew his business into a multi-million-dollar operation, how he grew his team and developed processes to scale up, and what he’s focusing on in 2018.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: From Flipping Textbooks to $4 Million in Sales: How to Scale Your Amazon FBA Retail Arbitrage Business

This week’s show is a roundtable episode on the topic of YouTube, and specifically how 3 different channel hosts have gone about growing their presence and profits on the YouTube platform.My esteemed panelists are: Jon Shanahan from The Kavalier, a men’s style / men’s fashion channel. Pete Sveen from DIY Projects with Pete and DIYPete.com, a home improvement channel and website. Matt Tran from Engineered Truth and EngineeredTruth.com, a career advice channel. They explain how and why they started using the free YouTube platform to grow significant followings and income streams, and share some actionable advice on how you can do the same.They each raise some interesting points as they have very different approaches to how they publish content and monetize their channels, proving there are many ways to turn a YouTube channel into a side hustle or a full-time business.Jon uses what he calls a “spray and pray" strategy for content creation. Pete’s DIY videos are edited down from 3-5 hours of footage to just 8-12 minutes and he releases one a month, while Matt publishes once a week (usually interviews) to, “try to get the weekend crowd.”On the monetization side, Jon has opted to go ad-free for a better viewer experience and earns $4-5k per month from affiliate income part-time.Pete has taken a different approach making around $1400 a month from YouTube ads, but has several other income streams including courses, affiliate offers, sponsorship deals, website ad revenue, and direct donations.Matt makes $10k a month funneling his subscribers to his money-making videos selling a digital marketing course, and $3k a month from YouTube ad revenue.With more than 450k subscribers between them, this episode is packed with actionable tips to grow and monetize a YouTube channel that has worked for Jon, Pete, and Matt.Listen in for actionable advice on how to grow and monetize your own YouTube channel.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: YouTube Roundtable: How 3 Video Creators Built an Audience and a Business on YouTube

It's like owning a parking lot, Jefferson Lilly explained. And you can earn 20% cash on cash returns too.That got my attention, though those returns are coming from a surprising real estate niche: mobile home parks.Jefferson Lilly is a mobile home park investment expert, educator, and industry consultant who has been featured in the New York Times, Bloomberg Magazine, and on the ‘Real Money’ television show.Through his company Park Street Partners, they currently own about $50 million worth of mobile home parks coast-to-coast.Jefferson is also the host of the Mobile Home Investors podcast, so it’s fair to say he knows this niche inside and out.The mobile home park niche doesn’t fit the typical real estate guidelines. It’s a shrinking market and offers some interesting and unique investment opportunities if you know where to look.In addition to the shrinking supply, the tenant turnover is lower than other real estate niches, and most tenants own their own homes -- meaning lower maintenance costs.Tune in to hear how Jefferson went from purchasing his first park after receiving 58 "no's" from banks when trying to raise the capital, to forming Park Street Partners and boasting a rapidly growing portfolio with more $50 million invested in mobile home parks.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: 20% Cash on Cash in Mobile Home Park Investing? The Real Estate Side Hustle You Probably Hadn’t Considered

You might know Michelle Schroeder-Gardner from her super-popular blog MakingSenseofCents.com where she gets hundreds of thousands of readers and makes 6-figures a month.Around $50k of that monthly revenue (or more) comes from affiliate marketing.Michelle’s online journey started in the summer of 2011 when she decided to start blogging about paying off her student debts, “I didn’t know what blogs were at the time… I literally didn’t know that you could make money with a blog,” she said looking back.It was when she made her first $100 six months later with a sponsored post that she knew she wanted to build an online business.“It became super addicting,” Michelle said.Fast-forward just two years and Michelle had become a full-time blogger making money through affiliate marketing sponsored posts, working as a freelance staff writer and selling display advertising.She started to focus on affiliate marketing, and with her most profitable post making more than $400k to-date it's fair to say she's nailed the right way to do affiliate marketing.The secret to her success?Listening to her audience and providing relevant content that solves a pain point.Sounds simple, right?Tune in to hear Michelle explain how she finds the right affiliate products to promote to her audience, as well as her tips to maximize conversions, increase your social media following, diversify your traffic sources, and much more.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: How Michelle Makes $50,000 a Month Selling Other People's ProductsDon't have a blog yet? My free video course will help you get started!

In my annual member survey, one of the 3 most common obstacles I hear is the money needed to start a business. As in, "I don't have enough money to start a business."(The other 2 are time and ideas.)It's kind of a chicken vs. egg problem: you need money to start the business and you need the business to earn the money!But the truth is that most side hustles these days don't take a ton of cash to get off the ground. In fact, most of the businesses I've started have cost less than $500 to start.In this episode I'll share 8 business models that have no startup costs, and one of them even has a "better than zero" startup cost -- meaning you can get paid to acquire your inventory.The 8 Models: The Perceived Value Plan The Dealmaker Model The Connector Email Model The Curator Email Model One Man’s Trash is a Another Man’s Treasure Repackaging The Pay for Performance Model The Agency Model Tune in to hear my examples of real businesses making it work under each of those models. It's sure to get your creative juices flowing on what kind of side hustle you could start!Stick around to the end of the show and I'll also share the actual startup costs for all of my businesses over the last 20 years.Full Show Notes: Bootstrapped Business Idea Brain Dump: 8 Business Models You Can Borrow w/ Zero (or Better than Zero) Startup Costs