The Side Hustle Show

Would you trade $1000 for $2000? How about $10,000 for $18,000?If you're anything like me, I'll make those trades all day long!Well, Deacon Hayes is doing exactly that every month through his blog, Facebook ads, and affiliate marketing.Although he'd been blogging for years, his traffic and revenue had kind of stagnated.Inspired by the success of The Penny Hoarder using a similar strategy in a similar niche, Deacon decided to jump in and throw $1000 toward his new Facebook Ads experiment. Within a month he'd effectively doubled his investment.Ten months later he's built a beautiful machine that combines compelling helpful content, affiliate relationships, and the massive reach of Facebook.In this episode, you'll hear the type of content Deacon has found most profitable to promote, the types of ads he runs, and how he's able to get his costs per click down to around $0.05.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Facebook Ads Arbitrage: How to Drive Consistent Profitable Traffic to Your Blog

Dustin Lien from StrategicSauce.com reached out to me with an interesting pitch for an episode.Dustin had experienced a side hustle failure and wanted to know if the Side Hustle audience would be interested in hearing his story.I threw the idea out to the Side Hustle Facebook Group and received an overwhelming amount of feedback saying, “Yes,” they wanted to hear the “other side” of a side hustle when it fails.In this episode Dustin lifts the lid on a business he invested a large chunk of time and money into, only to pull the plug on it a year and a half later.He designed a great product that solved a pain point for people in the fitness community.So, what went wrong?Tune in to hear exactly what did and didn’t work for Dustin, and why he decided to throw in the towel on this project.Dustin shares what he would do differently if he had to start over, as well as what he's working on today. He's loaded with valuable insight for anyone starting a new venture.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: When a Side Hustle Fails - Lessons, Pivots, and Next Steps from a Less-Than-Successful Side Project

Guest Christopher Gimmer, Co-founder of Snappa, shares how they bootstrapped Snappa to $33k MRR in 2 years. Topics include idea validation, successful launch, growth strategies, freemium model, user engagement, marketing tactics, and strategies for sustainable growth in SaaS companies.

Three years ago Design Pickle didn't exist. It wasn't even an idea in founder Russ Perry's head yet.That's why it seems crazy to me that today the unlimited graphic design service is doing $400k in monthly recurring revenue!Back in 2014 Russ was running a creative agency, but he started to hate everything about it. “I felt like I was in a prison of my own creation,” he said.By January 2015, he'd shut down his agency and started working as a freelancer. Not wanting to build a similar prison again, he sought out a different business model -- one with a simpler service offering that was designed to scale.From taking on a friend as his first client to now completing more than 800 design jobs a day, it’s been an incredibly quick ascension and a great example of how to scale a service business.Tune in to hear how Russ grew his business from zero to $410k+ in monthly recurring revenue in less than 3 years.We cover his marketing strategies, his hiring best practices, and what Design Pickle does to keep customers coming back month after month.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Scaling Up a Service Business: From Idea to $400k in Monthly Recurring Revenue (in Under 3 Years)

Zeona McIntyre is earning $12-18k a month through her portfolio of vacation rental properties and her "co-hosting" service for other property owners.All this has afforded Zeona financial independence at a very young age, as she built her operation largely by piggybacking on the growing popularity of Airbnb (get $40 off your first trip!).She first became aware of Airbnb and the potential to earn some extra revenue back in 2011. She was in massage school at the time, but a friend of hers in New York subletted his apartment on Airbnb to the tune of $50k for the year -- all while traveling full-time.“I couldn’t ignore it from then; I started right away,” Zeona said.She started by subletting a room in her apartment, then her whole apartment, and now owns five rental properties and manages or "co-hosts" another 15-20 properties on the behalf of her clients.With a small team, some smart decisions, and some online tools, Zeona now manages her business from her home in Boulder, Colorado relatively hands-off.This is the second episode in our recurring revenue series this month. If you missed last week, be sure to check out how a full-time cop built a subscription box service to $15k a month.This week, tune in to hear how Zeona chooses vacation rental properties, how she calculates the potential ROI, and how you can get started in this location independent side hustle today with just a spare room in your home.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How To Shortcut Your Financial Freedom with Short-Term Rentals

From the spare bedroom to $15k in monthly recurring revenue, Sam Gonzalez has grown the subscription style service UrbaneBox.com (affiliate link) all on the side from his day job as a police officer.He noticed his wardrobe was getting pretty outdated and with family and work life, he didn’t have any time (or desire, really) to go shopping. So he decided to do something about it and create an online subscription box business with a cool value proposition: $120 worth of designer clothes for $60.In this episode Sam talks through the steps he took from building his website, pitching suppliers, experimenting with different pricing models, and outsourcing the order fulfillment.He’s used a combination of AdWords, social media promotion, collaborating with other bloggers and YouTube influencers, and an interesting Facebook “hack” to rapidly grow his business.Tune in to hear how Sam went from idea to 6-figures in 3 years, from packing and shipping his first order from his spare bedroom to a business that now does $15k in monthly recurring revenue.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start a Subscription Box Service: From Spare Bedroom to $15k in Monthly Recurring Revenue

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.It’s been 6 months since the last Q&A show I did (where does the time go??) and I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since then. I picked 20 to talk through in today’s show.Like this format? This is the 4th installment of "20 Questions" so feel free to go back and binge on the older ones too: 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 affiliate marketing, audience building, network marketing, imposter syndrome, my income streams today, and my side hustle mistakes.Tune in to hear my responses to those questions and a dozen more below.Full Show Notes: Network Marketing, Imposter Syndrome, My Side Hustle Mistakes, and More: 20 Questions with Nick

Chris Green is one of the foremost advocates for the side hustle lifestyle. He has 10+ years’ experience as an Amazon seller, author, software provider to others involved in the Amazon ecosystem, and most recently as a t-shirt designer selling shirts on the Merch by Amazon platform.Chris calls Merch by Amazon “the best side hustle out there right now.” With no upfront capital, no shipping or returns, no customer service, and no risk, it’s certainly one of the easiest side hustles to get started with.If you’re just getting started with Merch, Elaine Heney (who made $50k selling shirts last year) shared how to sign up and get your first t-shirts for sale on the Merch platform back on episode 216.Chris picks up where Elaine left off and goes into detail sharing some of his best tips for optimizing your listing, where he finds ideas for t-shirt designs and a few of the methods he uses to market his shirts.Tune in to hear some the unique and interesting ways Chris comes up with t-shirt designs ideas, as well as how he markets them through paid ads and organic outreach.You can find out more at merch.life, and pick up a free copy of Chris’ book Merch Resources (just pay shipping).Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Merch by Amazon Marketing: How to Drive Traffic and Sales to Your T-Shirt Designs

Sarah Miller is still in college (and plays soccer for her school) but that hasn't stopped her from starting a pretty cool side hustle: painting custom pet portraits.She's done 300 paintings so far!But the business isn't without its challenges. She'd like to raise her rates, expand her marketing efforts to land new clients, and figure out how to make her work less of a time-for-money tradeoff.To help me brainstorm some ideas for Sarah, I invited Don the Idea Guy back on the program to join us on a call.As you might remember, Don is a creative genius and in this episode he definitely doesn't disappoint. Together we walk through a dozen different ways Sarah could take her operation to the next level and open up new income streams.Even if your business has nothing to do with painting wiener dogs, I think this conversation will get your gears turning because the broader strategies can apply to lots of different business models.Among the suggestions: Raise prices for the custom work. Create off-the-shelf prints for the most popular breeds (from the library of work Sarah's already done). Use print-on-demand marketplaces to instantly expand inventory and sales options. Her various upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Partner with influential pet bloggers and Facebook group administrators. Partner with pet-related stores w/ a low-tech coupon code-based affiliate program. Partner with other pet-related Etsy sellers to cross-promote each other's products. Tap into your database of existing customers for upsells and referrals. Turn the preliminary pencil sketches into other product offerings and maybe even adult coloring book templates. Teach others the skill of painting on Udemy. I think you'll like it!Full Show Notes: Side Hustle Coaching: I've Got Some Traction, Now What?Here's an example of Sarah's work:

Over the last decade, Cathy Heller has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from her music and helping other musicians license their songs.In fact, you've probably heard some of her music without realizing it. Songs of hers have been featured in ads for huge brands, like McDonald’s, Walmart, Kellogg’s, as well as many popular TV shows.Today, the mother of 3 balances family, her art, her agency, her online course, and her new Don't Keep Your Day Job podcast, where she interviews other entrepreneurs, artists, and influencers.Cathy's story is an inspiring one, and it follows a familiar trajectory: freelancer to agency to product.When she moved to LA to be a rockstar, she didn't know where it would lead. That didn't pan out, but she landed at something perhaps even more fulfilling. She called it reverse engineering her dream job, and thinks other people can do the same.Tune in to hear how Cathy walked The Hustler's Path from freelancer to agency to product, and how you can apply her ideas and tactics to find your dream job.Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Reverse Engineer your Dream Job: How a Struggling Songwriter Built a Multiple 6-Figure Business Doing What She Loves