AI transcript
It’s time for the 10 best side hustles of the year.
What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
It’s the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply.
Now, the end of the year is upon us,
which means it’s time to reflect back on
the side hustles that stood out,
the ones that got people talking,
the ones that I was most excited to share.
Now, the mark of a good episode for me is when I hang up the call thinking like,
“Dang, I need to drop what I’m doing and go do that.”
Whatever it was we just talked about,
I could totally do that.
I should totally do that.
I try and exercise some level of discipline and restraint
because the shiny object syndrome is real,
but when the shiny object shines for me,
I know it’s going to be a hit episode.
I have selected my top 10 for the year.
If you’re new to the show,
I’ll do my best to reference episode numbers.
You can go back and check out the ones that you’re interested in.
I’ve also put all of those into a Spotify playlist that I will link up in the description.
Make it easy to go add that to your device.
If you’re a longtime listener,
see if your favorites made the list.
Which ones did I miss?
There’s room for debate in all of this.
Best is always subjective.
These are in mostly chronological and numerical order,
starting at the beginning of the year with an absolute banger of an episode.
The most downloaded episode of the year,
almost 75,000 downloads to date,
was Jackie Mitchell and her $100 per day side hustle challenge.
This was episode 594,
and Jackie broke down how she successfully earned over $10,000 in 100 days
from her personal $100 per day challenge.
A good chunk of that income came from what I would call plug-and-play side hustles.
For example, she mentioned paid surveys,
mobile game testing through swag bucks.
Could be worthwhile if you like playing mobile games.
Now, her best paying spot for surveys was through a platform called Prolific.
Prolific is going to always be at the top of my list.
This is a survey site that researchers use.
A lot of times, they’re post-grad students or medical researchers or psychological researchers.
They’re paying pretty well per hour for short little surveys.
Maybe it’s a 10-minute survey,
but it pays like $7.00.
Well, that’s really good if you break down.
In terms of an hour.
Yeah, exactly.
So Prolific gives you mostly,
I would say 30-minute and under surveys.
It’s just prolific.com.
Anyone can sign up.
I do believe that they are often on a wait list because of demographics.
I would say consistently,
when surveys are available,
I can make anywhere from like $10 to $30 a day doing that.
$10 to $30 a day, nothing to sneeze at,
especially if that is in alignment with your side hustle goals.
Jackie also mentioned paid focus groups,
kind of few and far between,
but can pay $50 to $200 an hour.
I’ll link up some of my favorite resources for those in the show notes
at sidehustlenation.com/bestof24.
Another side hustle she talked about was data annotation,
which I ended up testing out myself as well.
Data annotation is one that I would rate a three out of five,
just as my disclaimer,
in terms of accessibility and kind of like,
is the work enjoyable to do?
I would say most likely no,
but it pays well and it’s an interesting site.
So data annotation and I’ll group another site,
remote tasks are both in the business of training large language models.
So AI, think of things like Google Bard,
think of things like open AI, chat GPT.
So a lot of it is kind of veiled to the workers
in terms of like which ones you’re training.
And some of that is just because you’re signing different disclosures.
You’re essentially freelancing for one of these major companies,
but the majority of your work is going to be editing and classifying
and fact-checking large language model responses.
So maybe you’re given two responses
from two different versions of a language model.
You’re fact-checking it for accuracy
that it’s not making up information.
You’re looking at if it was too verbose,
did it run on and just give you way too much information
that it didn’t really need to give you?
Was the grammar okay, stuff like that?
So there’s a lot of different subsets
within both remote tasks and data annotation.
You can get put on a lot of different tasks.
There’s more specific ones for people who code,
which I know pay a ton, which is amazing if you code.
I don’t, every time I see a qualification pop up for that,
I wish I did.
But typically these will pay anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour,
in my experience.
-Okay, it’s not bad, it’s not nothing. -No, I don’t think so, no.
What’s the primary site that you’re doing this through?
Data annotation is the name of the site, yep.
-Data annotation.tech, yep. -Data annotation.tech, yep.
Okay, the one that I signed up for was remote tasks
to try and check it out.
And I was almost deterred.
It was like, I got to do it for the blog post,
I got to stick through this.
But like the onboarding process took probably a couple of hours
worth of training the things.
Like you had to do an editing task,
like that’s easy enough, like okay,
I would cross out this sentence
or this is the way I would phrase that instead
to be more concise or whatever.
But then you had to come up with a prompt response on your own.
And there was one that was factual,
like make an argument for X, Y, Z.
I forget what he was like,
“Well, why should we cut NASA’s budget or something?”
I was like, “Oh, okay, well, people are starving,
so the money would be better allocated.”
Like you can make that argument.
But the other one was like a fiction response
or like a creative response.
And that one was like, dang, it’s been,
I was really proud of what I came up with in the end.
But 500 words was like pretty decent sized,
what I considered like the opening of a book.
But it was like almost through the towels,
like this is pretty time consuming.
– Yeah, I feel that way data annotation is super similar.
And to my understanding,
they really do screen out a lot of people through that test.
Which is not to say that you pass because you have X, Y, Z.
It is heavily geared towards people who enjoy long form
writing, who enjoy fact checking and editing,
who have very strong grammar skills.
I think data annotation says something like
grammar and writing skills and like critical reasoning
are the things that they look for.
So you don’t have to have degrees, anything like that.
But it is grueling work.
So I don’t know how far you got into remote tasks after that.
But people who come to my page and say like,
I took the data annotation test, that was awful.
I can’t wait to get in.
I’m like, well, that’s all that it is though.
That’s exactly what you’re,
if you take the test and you don’t like it,
that’s all the prompts and all the work.
– Once I was accepted into remote tasks,
I earned 15 bucks for my first hour of actual annotation work,
which isn’t bad.
If that’s something that you might like to do,
I’ll link up my full remote tasks review in the show notes
as well, again, signupsonlation.com/bestof24.
I just got a kick out of the whole episode with Jackie.
So make sure to go back and check that one out.
If you missed it, episode of 594 in your podcast player app.
Moving on to number two,
and I should add that this list isn’t in order
from best to worst or anything like that.
I’m just going in the order that the episodes aired.
But number two is website rentals.
And this was a unique side hustle shared in episode of 597,
where the name of the game is to build out
a descriptive website for a local niche service.
I want to say concrete driveway repair
in Wellington, New Zealand was one that we talked about
as one example, but niche service plus location.
Step two, get that site ranking in Google,
open up your local SEO playbook, do what works there.
And then number three, where the side hustle comes in
or step three is to rent out that site
to a qualified local service provider
who’s hungry for more leads.
In some cases, these sites can rent for 500 to a thousand
to maybe 1500 bucks per month, or maybe even more
depending on the traffic and the customer value.
And they’re relatively hands off.
Once you’ve got a service provider in place,
they’ll handle the inbound customer inquiries.
And you’re just in charge of making sure the site
stays at the top of Google.
This is Meow Rios describing what makes a good niche
for this rank and rent model.
I like something that’s service-based
that you don’t have a storefront.
Basically like a plumber, the concrete guy or a roofer,
you go to the client’s site to work.
So it’s not that people come into your office.
So service-based business.
The second one is I really like those high ticket type
of work, like concrete, driveways, patios,
earthwork, demolition, roofing, nothing sexy, nothing sexy.
But those niche work, they work.
– And that’s because the value of these jobs
is worth quite a bit to the service provider.
And so if we can get more leads in,
if we can book up our calendar, then yeah,
it’s worthwhile.
We’ll just add this to our monthly marketing budget.
– Yeah, exactly.
I’ve done the smaller niche like handyman.
I probably would not do handyman again.
Having said that, I have a handyman side
that’s producing lots of, lots of leads.
And business has been with me since the beginning
when I started business.
So, and sometimes like a smaller niche,
like a gutter cleaning can be good
because it’s high volume.
So you get like a 60 to 90 leads per month.
But the thing with gutter cleaning is
sometimes you start a job with gutter cleaning
and you find out the gutter needs a repair,
the roof needs a repair, the roof needs repaint.
So a small job can turn into a bigger job.
You just never know.
So, but my personal favorite is still a bigger ticket niche.
– Do you like to go deep in one location
or deep in one niche?
Or like it’s really a matter of like trying to find
the sweet spot of I’m going to do carpet cleaning in Dallas
and then I’m going to build out all these other niches
for Dallas or I’m going to go do carpet cleaning
in a hundred different cities.
– There’s two way to tackle this.
So if it’s a big city, like with a population of a million
and above, I like to go either niche down.
So for example, if it’s concrete, I don’t do all concrete.
I just specialize at certain type of concrete,
either as a stand concrete or concrete resurfacing
or concrete driveway.
So you have to be the specialist in the service
that you provide.
I found you get a lot more success
than just do something every general in the big city.
– Now, the bigger the city, the more niche down.
– Yeah, so niche down for a big city.
And if it’s a big city, also you can,
let’s say for New York city, it’s just too big.
So you have to niche down to a different boroughs
like Manhattan or Brooklyn or Queens, Long Island.
So yeah, either niche down to the specialized area
or niche down to the local area.
So that’s a general rule.
I found anything above 50K should work the population wise.
I’m talking about 400K population wise
seems to be very sweet spot.
So it’s not too big city.
Your local competition is not that strong
and you have enough volume.
The population produce enough leads,
enough search volume that is gonna help you
to render side out.
– Okay, cool.
And I swear I was on Wikipedia at one point.
Like here’s the list of cities with population,
you know, 100,000 to 250,000
or you can probably just ask chat GPT at this point.
Like come up with this list for me
and there’s a potential starting point.
Anything else that goes on trying to cross-reference
these cities, am I looking at the local competition yet?
Or am I?
– Yes.
Well, one thing I’m doing,
I’ll just actually give you an example
that just shows you the initial research.
Sometimes it’s not about what you provide
has to be good enough, is about your competition.
So I’ll give you an example of two side I built.
One is a, that’s in Wellington, the capital city in New Zealand.
And the data shows that the landscaping business
has a huge demand, very high volume.
The keyword difficulty is medium.
So you have the local competition.
So I thought, given that how much demand,
I’m gonna build a site for landscaping.
A few months down the track,
the site is ranking however, the quality of leads
and the number of leads are not great.
So we still have producing the leads,
but it’s just not ideal.
So what I did is I built a specialized,
so I work at this landscaping company
and they do all the paving concrete artificial grass,
retaining wood, everything.
And then what we did is we found the concrete driveway
in the local area.
There’s no company just do concrete driveway.
There’s a lot of landscaping company.
There’s a lot of concrete company.
Just does a very general, general contractor,
but no company does concrete driveway.
So I built a site for concrete driveway in Wellington
and that site blew up.
It’s completely blew up.
So what happened is this contractor,
if a client wants a concrete driveway down
in front of the house,
sometimes they’re gonna do the backyard.
They need a retaining work again.
They need paving work again.
So it’s finding the right market to get into,
therefore dominate.
So you’re still providing the same service.
However, it is extremely important
to actually pick the niche
that was very little competition.
– Interesting.
So it was the landscaping company
that was doing the driveways?
– Yes, so that’s the same.
It’s the same company.
The local landscaping company,
there are a few big one that have a good name.
So they dominate the market.
So it’s very hard for someone small to medium business
to just get into the market.
‘Cause when people think about landscaping,
there’s a big name out there.
But if you change your arena to the concrete driveway,
while no company is doing that,
like specializing that,
so it’s just really easy to get into.
And you ended up getting all the landscaping work,
but through the right channel.
– That’s really interesting.
I’m just trying to find that back door,
that side door into the place.
Like, well, maybe it’s number six
on our menu of service offerings.
But if I try to rank for general landscaping,
it’s really tough.
But if I try and rank for concrete driveways.
– Paving, yeah, a different, just.
– Yeah, okay.
– Specializing it, yeah.
– Male mentioned looking at SEMrush data
for keyword difficulty
and trying to find those keywords
with a difficulty score under 20.
This is a metric of competitiveness,
how hard it’s gonna be to rank
for a certain keyword combination
of service plus location.
That is episode 597 in your podcast feed.
Really interesting one.
And where it’s really common
to stack a bunch of these sites together
to form a really strong income
that’s somewhat diversified
and somewhat predictable month after month.
You’ve got recurring revenue.
And if your client is making money from your leads,
it’s a service that they’re unlikely to cancel.
And if you’ve got the skills
to build one of these sites and get it up and running,
you can rinse and repeat in a new niche or new city.
I forget how many meow had,
but I wanna say it was 20 or more.
So we got more of the best scientists of the year
coming up right after this.
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The next episode that really got people talking,
including my then 10 year old neighbor
was number 599 on how to start a vending machine business.
I mean, these are literally money making robots
that can make you passive sales when you’re not around.
So I get the appeal.
I’ve hung up the call to see and like,
“Man, I want to start a vending machine business.”
Now the challenge is finding the right location
with a hungry crowd.
This is Mike Hoffman from that episode explaining
what makes a good location
and how he might make that pitch.
– It’s super easy.
I think the first thing is the examples you just rattled off.
So senior center and let’s say an apartment complex.
The thing they all have in common
is they have a front desk person that works there.
So you can just roll right in there.
They’re not gonna know you from anyone else.
And you can just say, “Hey, is your general manager
or your property manager in today?”
And if she’s like, “Oh no, you can always ask
for the business card and send an email.”
But yeah, that’s exactly what I did
that first location I landed.
I was like, “Hey, is your manager in?”
And she happened to be in.
She’s like, “Oh my gosh, coming with COVID,
we can’t put out refreshments, blah, blah, blah.
We want to move forward.”
It’s just such a low barrier to entry
by just doing that pop in.
– Your ask was like,
“Tell me about your current vending situation.
Like what’s that line?”
– Yeah, or just like,
do you want to provide modern amenities?
And then you just start asking questions
about foot traffic to qualify them.
So how many people live here?
Or how many units are here?
And they’ll say, “Okay, Nick, there’s 200 units.”
And then you’re like, “Okay, well,
how many people live in those units?
‘Cause some might be two or three bedroom.”
They’re like, “Oh, 400 people, like right away,
you’re sitting on a 1500 to two grand gold mine,
just with that.”
– Is there a minimum residency or occupancy
that you’re looking for?
– Yeah, we like to target 100 units as a minimum
or 100 plus employees.
– Okay, 100 residential units or 100 employees.
– It’s hard to imagine an office building
without this in there already,
but you’re finding like,
“This building has been here for 25 years.
No one has ever asked us about vending before.”
You know, that’s a great idea.
Like, does that happen?
– All the time.
And in fact, what you’d be really surprised about
is we’re taking over a lot of the market.
So current user, let’s say that location,
they probably already have vending machines
that aren’t being stocked
because the baby boomer generation doesn’t use a cell phone.
The only way they can track inventory
is driving by the property,
where like on my phone across the country,
I can look at all my vending machines,
even my micro market in Philadelphia
and see what I’ve done in sales in the last hour.
So then I can get ahead of what needs stocked
before it actually shows up empty customer facing.
I’m like, “Okay, we’ve sold eight out of 10 solids.
We have two left.
We need to backfill those solids.”
Where right now, these places we’re taking over for,
they either have vending machines that are broken,
they have vending machines that don’t allow credit card usage.
Well, guess what?
80% of your sales are gonna be with card, not cash anymore.
– Yeah.
So it’s not so much that they have never considered vending.
It’s that their existing provider
is not living up to expectations
or it could be doing better.
– Yeah, it’s like either that existing provider
took on a bigger, let’s say the Coke provider
of Washington has vending as a side service.
Well, is that Coke provider more worried
about topping off the cafeteria with Coke in the school
or are they more worried
about the teacher’s lounge vending machine?
– A good location with the right product mix
can earn 500 bucks a month.
You place 10 of these machines,
you got yourself a $5,000 a month side hustle.
I think Mike had 10 or 15 when we spoke
and maybe a couple employee less automated micro markets
as kind of the next stage of the business.
Now you still gotta stock the machines.
It’s not totally passive,
but you can find people to help with that.
And that’s a good problem.
If you need to restock,
it means you moved some inventory.
To learn more, definitely check out that episode
with Mike, number 599.
We talk startup costs, logistics, all that jazz
and he’s helping other people get started in this world
as well at vendingpreneurs.com.
Kind of tricky to spell.
I will link that up in the show notes.
For this episode, again at sidehustlenation.com/bestof24.
The next side hustle I wanna highlight
is one that you probably drive by every day
without even thinking about it.
That is, until you heard episode 608 with Chris Brown.
Chris runs a billboard business in Arkansas
that generates thousands of dollars a month
in again, relatively passive income.
Now, just like real estate and like vending machines,
it’s all about location and the level of a local competition
that dictate how much you can charge.
Here’s Chris describing his first billboard deal
and how much it made.
– Yeah, the first deal was very interesting.
So he was just willing to get out.
He actually showed me the invoice of his cost
to put it in the ground, what he had on it.
That included the land.
He didn’t even want the land or anything.
He was about to go bankrupt, so he really didn’t care.
– Oh, okay.
– So he actually showed that to me.
So that was $75,000, which again,
I didn’t know that the point was a great deal,
but it was a great deal.
And I was able to purchase that from him.
And he sold it to me.
It’s right in the middle of a intersection.
So it’s literally surrounded by three roads.
People have to drive underneath the billboard,
which is very interesting and was a little concerning.
So I actually had to get the city to sign off on it
to say, “Hey, look, we’re good with it staying.”
‘Cause I was really not sure about that
if they were gonna make it take down or not
and didn’t want to buy something
and if that was gonna happen.
So it did get hit a few times.
– Oh my God, like by a really tall truck or something?
– Yes, yes.
‘Cause the original road did not actually have
the road that went underneath it.
So people would normally have curved around it
and then they added this as all my property,
but it never was addressed.
And so it started out as like a little dirt cut through
and then people, they paved it
and it became a main part of the road.
So really interesting spot.
Yes.
– There’s a combination of this real estate play
plus a media play.
How many eyeballs like am I gonna get over here?
They go to turn around and then sell that and inventory.
Okay, so 75 grand for the land and the structure
to go out there.
And then you go out and try and find a new advertiser for it.
What happens next?
– Yeah, so once I acquired it, I actually then did,
I called up a few local businesses and said,
hey, I had some friends that own businesses,
some heating and air companies,
some furniture companies, some car dealerships.
And I said, hey, would you guys be interested?
And it was on the middle of a great location.
It was kind of a random spot right by a bunch of neighborhoods
where you wouldn’t expect a billboard.
So they jumped on it and some of those people
are still advertising today and that was in 2011.
So we’re talking 13 years later,
they still have the same advertisers on a few of them.
– Okay, yeah, long-term.
I mean, yeah, if they’re seeing a positive ROI on it,
yeah, just keep it rolling.
– Yes, ’cause there’s three elementary schools
and junior highs and high schools right by it.
So it’s a great location.
So that’s how I got the first one is I’m driving around.
I found one, decided I would kind of wanted that.
I was already looking for real estate itself.
So I was into single family flips.
I was into land acquisition and commercial property
and multifamily.
But then I saw that and I thought about,
that was a very interesting way to play the land game
or as just a different play to own the business,
have the media and have the passive income
from the billboards themselves.
– What did you end up selling the first spot on that
first billboard for?
– Yeah, so each spot on the billboard.
So that first billboard had four billboards on it,
four signs, each one of those was about $600 each.
That was the first day I had no idea how to price them.
So what I did was just called some of the other billboards
around and said, all right,
what are you guys pricing these at?
‘Cause I just acted like an interested billboard buyer
and they were glad to tell me what their rates were.
And so I was able to find that and give that deal to people.
I just wanted them full to cover my cost on that
so that I would have just some positive cashflow
coming in every month.
– A four-sided thing or it’s like one of these
mechanic rotating type of thing?
– Yeah, it was a top and a bottom on both sides.
So it was a good old fashioned,
there was four static billboards.
Yeah, so we call them static.
So in billboards, there’s static, there’s digital,
and then there’s actually tri-vision.
Most are static or digital.
So you have just the ones that are flat.
They don’t change.
They say the same 24/7 and then you have the digital
that actually then rotate in as a LED screen.
– The one that’s closest to us that I can think of,
I think it, so it’s two-sided, right?
So you get people going both directions
and I want to say it,
there’s two different advertisers on each side.
Like it somehow flips and then every now and again.
– Yep, so then there’s a tri-vision.
So that was actually flipped.
– Yeah, the slats get broken.
It says like half of one and half of the other and stuff.
– Okay, so about four signs, 600 bucks each.
We’re at $2,400 a month in income there.
Okay, and so then pencil that against the acquisition costs.
And I have learned to not do math on air,
but that’s close to $29,000 for the year,
which pencils out.
– ROI is about three.
– Yeah, three years and you’re even on that purchase cost.
– Total purchase cost, yeah, paid back in three.
– Okay, I promise you’ll never look at billboards
the same way again.
Again, that was episode 608 with Chris Brown.
Really interesting side hustle.
That’s equal parts, real estate and media.
Next on my list is one that I shared with a ton of people
just because of the novelty factor.
I never knew this was a thing.
And that was Cheryl DeFrank’s photo organizing business
in episode 619.
In that episode, she said she had more than enough work
to keep herself busy full time
and that the average rate is around a hundred bucks an hour
and that the average project could be 20 hours or more.
It seems like a relatively low competition side hustle.
Like there simply aren’t that many service providers
doing this yet.
And there’s a novelty factor
when you strike up a conversation about it.
Cheryl did her first project for free to get the hang of it,
which gave her the confidence
to go after paid photo organizing work.
Here’s how she described getting the business off the ground.
– I just started talking to friends
and my first actual paying client was another friend
who just said, “Hey, can you help me out
with the photos on my phone?
‘Cause they’re such a mess
and I know I’ve got so many duplicates.
Everybody has tons of duplicates.”
It was a relatively small project
but I helped her out and she was grateful
and then she just started talking to other people.
A lot of people would say to start with friends and family
and that’s a good idea.
I mean, they obviously will already kind of have
a certain amount of faith in you
and already want to support you,
but it can also be a little bit hard
to work with friends and family.
So I kind of started spreading the word
as quickly as possible.
I’m on a neighborhood listserv,
so which is kind of like next term.
It’s basically an email listserv.
All the families in my kid’s school are on a listserv,
all the people that belong to our pool
are on another listserv and so on.
So you’ve got all these different kind of groups.
Either I would post something about my services
and sometimes there’s rules about self promotion
but either I would post something
or a friend would post something for me,
kind of maybe even a scripted thing like,
“Hey, you guys wouldn’t believe this person I found
to organize all your photos and give her a call.”
And of course now, years later,
my previous clients will post things
on their own listservs.
So just the word kind of spreads
and the phone hasn’t really stopped ringing in 10 years
based on just kind of word of mouth.
I always say like someone told me early on,
and this is probably true in every business,
someone told me early on to put your company name
and kind of a little tagline of what you do
at the bottom of every single email you write,
no matter who you’re sending it to,
whether it’s business email or not.
Yeah, and it’s not a new concept,
but in my case, because it is so unique,
I’ll send an email to somebody about my son’s La Crosse game
or something or La Crosse team,
and they’ll see what I do and they’ll write me back,
having nothing to do with La Crosse,
but say, “Wait, what is that you do?
I see you’re a photo artist.”
They’re like, “What’s that?”
And then might turn into a job,
might turn into a project.
So conversation starter, if nothing else,
and we’ve talked about that.
It absolutely is.
That email signature space,
underutilized, marketing real estate.
Exactly.
I was assuming this was gonna be almost all digital,
but when starting locally,
I get maybe it is in person.
So it’s that box in the attic.
It’s like the physical pictures.
And so does it need to be kind of a local radius for it?
It’s both.
It’s really both.
The three main areas of photo organizing.
Number one is the print photos.
These are usually maybe older families
that still have print photos in the attic.
It’s a mess.
They’ve been hiding up there for years,
and so they’ll give me the boxes of print photos
for me to organize and sort,
and usually it’s chronologically.
For the most part,
because there is a physical exchange there,
those are usually local clients,
but I’ve had people mail me boxes and boxes of photos
from other places.
So that’s one area.
And then the other area is digital photo organizing,
which is, again, the photos on the phone
and the hard drives and all those little camera cards
that we have in all kinds of drawers around the house
and so on, that clients also have no idea
where everything is or what’s on these hard drives.
So in that case, again, it certainly can be local,
but then you can have people either send me hard drives
or sometimes, for instance,
and we’ll log into their online storage.
So for instance, I can log into a person’s iCloud
or a person’s Google photos or something,
obviously with their permission
and organize straight online
and never meet the client in person.
And then the third aspect,
which is kind of one of the main areas,
is scanning or digitizing photos.
There are certain photo organizers that just do that.
So they just do scanning
and they don’t really even do the sorting process.
So there’s lots of different aspects.
And then there’s other kind of offshoots
like just creating photo books.
There’s certain organizers,
their specialty is creating photo books
for all kinds of different events or slide shows,
kind of anything having to do with photos
that a lot of people either just have no idea how to do
or don’t want to spend the time figuring it out.
Or the other thing too is working with your own photos,
whatever you’re doing, whether you’re sorting them,
whether you’re creating a slideshow,
trying to pick the photos for the slideshow,
is a very emotional process
when you’re working with your own photos.
So what I tell clients, which is true,
is there’s no emotion for me.
So I can do it much, much faster
and I’m not reliving my son’s three-year birthday party
in the process and so on.
– What do you think?
Is this a side hustle you could take action on?
Would you hire a photo organizer yourself?
Again, episode 619 with Cheryl
to get the full scoop on her unique service business.
I selected the next side hustle on this list
because it’s the one I probably tell more people
to start than any other and that’s software consulting.
The specific example I want to highlight from this year
is Christie De Silva from De Silva Life.
Christie’s built a really strong brand in business
specializing in support for two different software tools,
HoneyBook and ClickUp.
The reason I like this model so much
is you don’t have to create demand from scratch.
If you find the right software,
maybe it’s one you’re an early user of, you’re a fan of,
they’ll likely be heavily investing
in growing their user base.
A lot of times these companies have raised venture capital
and they’re investing in user acquisition,
customer acquisition.
So if you can create content to help those people,
those new customers, it’s easy to get found
or at least easier than shouting into the void of the internet
without piggybacking on some built-in search volume
around the name of a specific software
like Christie does with HoneyBook and ClickUp.
The other reason it’s so powerful is by niching down
and becoming a sought-after expert in a specific software
is the pricing power that comes with it.
– I started my rates a lot lower
than other people may have been charging
because I’m like, I’m not like a top tier expert yet
but I know that I know a lot more about these products
than the people that I’m serving
and these softwares than the people that I’m serving.
And so I was still able to charge more technically hourly
except a lot of our stuff is flat right now.
For example, yeah, I’m making about 30 to 40 bucks an hour
as a VA where now I charge $300 an hour
for a strategy session, like so crazy that jump
but now being an expert in this for four years,
it’s really cool to see.
– It is really cool to see.
She 10x’d her hourly rate by niching down
from generalist to specialist.
And how does she find customers?
Well, in most cases, they find her.
That’s what’s cool about this.
She creates helpful keyword targeted Q and A content
for YouTube and invites viewers to take the next step
either scheduling a call or downloading some free resources.
Here’s how she described the YouTube strategy.
– We get the majority of our leads from YouTube
and I will say like probably 80% of the time
people come on, they’re like, oh my gosh,
it’s so nice to meet you.
I’ve been subscribed to your channels
for like two or three years
and they feel like they already know me
even though I have no idea who they are yet.
It’s funny because it’s a huge thing
in sales is that like no like in trust factor
and we already solved that piece
before we even ever get on a sales call.
– Yes, you know, you’re showing your face, your voice.
Yeah, I build a lot of trust that way.
Deciding what type of content to make
any sort of like keyword research tools
or search volume that goes into it.
I’m just looking at like broad Google searches,
400,000 monthly searches for ClickUp
and then 60,000 for HoneyBook.
And so there’s some decent like top level search volume
but then I imagine it kind of goes into that long tail
for like how to run your agency in HoneyBook
like more specific type of searches.
– We actually really love vidIQ.
We were using TubeBuddy for a while
and then we started getting into vidIQ.
They have some really cool things with like AI
and their platform is a bit more robust, I feel.
We look at our channel
and we do quarterly content planning.
We do yearly at a high level and then we do quarterly
and we try to do like themed content, like themed months
and now we’re starting to get into like different series
and we’ll look at what performed best on our channels
or like what’s ranking highest.
Like for example, our ClickUp dashboards video
was ranking highest for like a long time
are how to use HoneyBook and ClickUp like yearly videos
like in 2024, those always do really well as well.
So we’re like, okay, we’ll always do those
in the beginning of the year
but we’ll look back at our previous content,
what’s highly ranking, knowing people want more of that
and then we’ll really just start doing
long tail keyword research in vidIQ.
You know, kind of going down a rabbit hole of like,
okay, how are these ranking in terms of search volume
and things like that.
– Is there a minimum search volume
that is interesting to you or worthwhile
to make the video about?
– It’s more like how it scores in vidIQ.
I think we’re looking over like a 60 or 70 ranking.
– Which is a combination of volume and competitiveness.
– Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so we also, speaking of competitiveness,
we’ll definitely do competitor research as well
because we have like a few competitors.
We’re very niche, but we absolutely have competitors.
And so we’ll look at their channels,
what’s ranking high on their channels
and by no means do we ever just copy their video
but we’ll be like, okay, cool.
They did something on this specific topic.
How can we do something similar but have our own spin?
And so we’ll do that research as well.
– Again, this is something you can replicate
across any number of different niches.
We’ve seen examples of people doing this with Asana,
with QuickBooks, with FreshBooks, with Salesforce,
with Excel, with different WordPress themes and plugins.
It’s one that is ripe for replication.
Be sure to check out the full episode number 627
with Christy to learn more.
The rest of our best side hustles of the year
are coming up right after this.
This year, I was lucky enough to connect
with a pair of Jacks, Jack Fleming and Jack Limbach,
both really inspiring young college-aged entrepreneurs.
Jack Fleming had built up his lawn mowing
and yard care service to 70 grand in profit as a teenager
and ended up selling off a portion of the business.
It was a great story.
Starting out pushing the lawn mower up and down the sidewalk,
I think starting at 13 years old
and then continuing to level up and bid
bigger and more complex projects.
That was episode 610, and a little bit later in the year,
in episode 630, we met Jack Limbach,
who had a similar local service business,
only instead of lawn mowing, it was window washing.
When we recorded, Jack was about to start
his sophomore year in college,
but was already selling 10 grand worth
of window washing every month.
Now, like the other Jack,
the business started out by going door-to-door
and that worked, but it was tedious.
And if you’ve ever gone cold calling,
you know you deal with a lot of rejection
and sometimes just flat out rude people.
So, it was when Jack layered on a level
of online advertising and combined that
with some better equipment when the business
really started to blow up.
– Made my first Instagram ad and I posted it on,
I posted it on Facebook, I posted it on Instagram.
Facebook didn’t do very good.
So I just, I took it off Facebook,
kind of put all the money towards Instagram.
And I was just spending $10 a day, like really nothing.
And then I was knocking on the side of it,
but just that one ad after spending $600,
it generated me $10,000 in revenue just from the ad.
And that doesn’t even include the word of mouth I got from it
or recurring customers, whatever it is.
But the return on investment on online advertising is huge.
– Wow, that’s crazy ’cause you,
it’s probably like super location targeted.
Probably, I imagine you’d like wanna target homeowners,
you know, above average income level.
I know you could probably set it really targeted.
– Yeah, there’s a bunch of little things
you can add in, like I want it to be a woman
that’s 35 to 65 and I want it to be right in my area.
But in all these ads, the super important part is,
so I made a video, they were all super funny.
I tried to make them like super entertaining to listen to.
But the most important part was right at the beginning,
I’d say, hey Evergreen or hey Auburn,
that way people know I’m talking to them
and they’re not just gonna skip it
because they see the send message,
which shows it’s an ad.
So they’re not just gonna skip it right away
and they actually might listen
because they know I’m targeting it right to them
and then I’m gonna throw in the joke a little bit after.
So for example, for my Auburn ad,
I posted this one about six days ago
and I’ve just, I put in 60 bucks into it.
I’ve already booked $2,500 worth of jobs with it.
It’s been doing super good, but what I said, I said,
hey Auburn, there’s a huge epidemic
going around the Auburn and Opalika area.
Your windows are looking like this or this or this
and it’s gonna cause some serious permanent damage
that’s gonna seriously lower your property value.
And then I did this funny little transition
where I did a little jump
and I went from my normal clothes
to my uniform with my belt on and people love that.
But then I have all these moms texting me
and they’re like, or DMing me and they say,
“Hey, I love a quote.”
And then you get there and then you do your spiel.
– Okay, so that’s the call to action.
I love that.
There’s a huge epidemic of dirty windows going around
and then you show the visuals, you’re like,
and then you can see people looking up at there.
It’s like, yeah, when was the last time those were clean?
So then the call to action is message me for a quote
or message me to schedule an appointment.
– Yeah, so at the very end,
I tell them all the services I do
and I say, “I know you need at least one of these done.
“So give me a text and I point up
“and then my number pops up.”
But most people just DM me and it says at the bottom,
like the whole time you’re reaching, it says send message
and then they can just send a message
and it’s super duper easy.
Most people just say, “Hey, I love a quote.”
And then maybe they send their address and I say,
“Okay, I’ll be there tomorrow, blah, blah.”
And then they’re like, “Oh, that’s super easy.”
– Okay, how cool, what a great return on investment on that.
And then while you’re out on the job,
of course there’s opportunity to go get some warm
or semi-warm leads from the neighbors.
Hey, we’re working on someone’s house next door
and try and turn one job into two.
– Yeah, so typically how we structure
our business plan for the day
is we schedule one house from an ad
or that we’ve knocked on a previous day
and we schedule one house per day,
like per morning or whenever we start working.
And then when we get to that house,
normally one person starts cleaning
while the other goes knocking
to line up the rest of the day.
And that’s how we’re able to fill up our schedule so often
just ’cause we hardly have that name.
And so we can say, “Oh, Michelle, down the road,
like that’s where we’re at.”
And that builds that level of trust.
We’re more likely to land the client.
– Yeah, leaning on the job that you were able to book
and then being able to say,
“As soon as we’re done there, we’ll come over here.”
Versus, “Well, let’s book it.”
Like, well, the motivation might wane if you wait too long.
We’re only gonna schedule one per day
and then trust and hope that we can get some more jobs
to fill up the schedule.
– Yeah, when people are calling you out,
usually they got a couple of people
that are asking for a quote.
And so you’re trying to just beat those other people.
But when you’re doing door to door,
you know, there’s that appeal of the homeowner
to just like get it done right away.
And so, you know, you’re not really competing
with other people and the homeowner just loves the fact
that like, okay, these guys can do it in literally an hour.
They can get me a price in 30 seconds.
Like, I might as well just hear the price
and then, you know, if I want it done today,
like that’d be great.
What both the jacks showed me was that the money’s out there
if you’re willing to go and get it.
And maybe they had the advantage of youth
when knocking on doors,
but I still think there’s a big opportunity
in local home services, lawn care, window washing,
house cleaning, car detailing, gutter cleaning, you name it.
Another side hustle I just couldn’t help
but tell people about was Wayne Seminoff’s
junk land flipping business highlighted in episode 629.
Wayne holds the record as the most experienced
side hustle show guest at age 81 when we recorded.
And he said he’s been doing his unique land business
for the last 40 years.
Now, the name of the game here is to find
these unwanted, unloved vacant parcels.
Maybe they’ve got title issues.
Maybe they’re too small to get a building permit.
Maybe there’s no sewer or septic.
Wayne picks a handful of these up every year
at the tax auction or sometimes is able to make a deal
with a seller before the public sale
and then opens up his bag of tricks
and works with City Hall to make the lot buildable.
It’s more like legal and red tape work
than it is bulldozers and hammers.
But if you can get that stamp of approval
for a building permit, all of a sudden
that lot is worth 10 to 100 times what he paid for it.
– And the key to it is pretty simple.
Generally, junk land is junk because you can’t build on it.
But I found there was like seven tools you can use
to change junk land into buildable land.
And one is like variances.
You get a variance from the building code
or let’s say you need a boundary line adjustment
or title problems or whatever the problem is
on the property, if you can isolate that problem
and then correct it, your value dramatically increases
a hundred times, I mean like literally a hundred times.
I’ll give you an example of that as I bought a property
a year ago in Issaquah, which is a really hot area,
bought a half acre lot with water, sewer, power,
road access right across from Target
and I paid $1,000 for it.
And then the reason I bought it for $1,000
is the guy who’d owned it for like 20 years
couldn’t sell it to anybody because it had a title problem.
He couldn’t get clear title from a title insurance company.
So he was gonna let it go in the tax sale.
So I called him before the tax sale and I said,
“Hey, are you gonna let it go in the tax sale?”
And he says, “Yes, I’m gonna let it go in the tax sale.”
And I go, “Well, I’ll buy it from you
“and don’t let it go in the tax sale.”
And I said, “I’ll give you $500 for it.”
And he goes, “No, no, no, no, no, no, you think I’m crazy?”
And I said, “Well, how much do you want for it?”
And he goes, “I’ll take $1,000 for it.”
– I need to pause and say like any piece of land
just given the path of development in this area
is worth significantly more than even $1,000.
So you’re thinking, he’s like,
“Hey dude, don’t low ball me, come on.
“I know what I’m sitting on.”
But he’s like, “No, I didn’t really want that much more.”
– It always shocks me and I always come back
do that low ball thing.
And they always come back with low, low counter offers.
And so he said, “If you write me,
“if you send me $1,000, I’ll sign over the deed to you.”
And so I’m gonna sister owned it.
So I got his sister and him to sign it.
And we did, I just sent him the deed electronically.
And then I venmoed him the money.
So he had the money immediately.
And then he just sent it back to me.
And I had a deal.
So then I took this gorgeous piece of land,
right now it’s zoned for one unit.
In that area, one unit of land is worth $500,000,
one housing unit.
And so I went to my attorney and I said,
“I need to do a quiet title on clear of this title.”
And I looked into what the problems were on the title
and I found some supporting data to give to the attorney
to make the title quiet title action go smoother.
And it took him four and a half months.
And then the four and a half months he gave me clear title
and I got a title report that says,
“I’m the sole owner of the property
and nobody else can challenge it.”
And now today that $1,000 property is worth $500,000
right now.
– Yeah, so you have $1,000 into it plus some legal fees.
– Yeah, they cost me $15,000 for clearing the title.
So for $16,000, I’m gonna make $500,000.
– Right, wow.
That sounds pretty good, right?
That’ll get people on their toes, right?
But that’s not enough.
Okay, so this lot is subdividable.
So I’m applying for a short subdivision.
I’m gonna split the lot in two.
And two lots in that area are worth $1,000,000.
So in four months from now,
when the short subdivision is over in Issaquah,
I’ll have two separate lots
and I’ll have $1,000,000 worth of land.
For about $25,000 total investment,
I’ll have a million dollar property.
– Now, there’s a lot to unpack here,
but it was such an interesting conversation.
And Wayne just happened to be local to me.
It definitely got me looking
at some vacant parcels nearby.
I think the side hustle might be best
if you’ve got a little bit of legal background,
maybe a little bit of real estate background.
You enjoy a little bit of a treasure hunt.
And I got the impression that at this stage of his life,
Wayne’s just in it for the game, the thrill of the big win.
And I could be wrong on that, but that was my impression.
Episode 629, fascinating one, definitely check it out.
And I think what I love most about my job
is even 11 years into the show,
I’m still coming across people like Wayne,
people like Cheryl, people like Chris
with the billboard business who’ve got businesses
I’ve never heard of, never thought about before.
Number nine on our list of the best side hustles of the year
is Debbie Gartner’s digital products business on Etsy.
This is episode 637.
This episode stood out to me for a few reasons.
First, it’s low risk, low overhead.
It’s a business where you can sell the same product
to multiple different customers.
That always appeals to me.
Second, it wasn’t an overnight hit.
It took Debbie a couple of years
of admittedly very part-time effort
to build the business to $1,000 a week
or around $4,000 a month.
I think a lot of people will see that result,
but not the slow, consistent asset building effort
that it took together.
And third, what was maybe most interesting to me
was her product idea generation methods,
which went all the way back to her as a kid thinking,
well, what did she really like to do?
Just like with blogging, you start with what do you know?
What do you like and how can you leverage that?
So the simplest thing, like a blood pressure,
one page tracker is all I did.
I did other things like that.
And then I started getting into games
because I’ve always loved games.
So I created a July 4th trivia game
just because I had a blog post on my website
that was for July 4th fireworks in my county.
So I did that.
And of course it was, I don’t know, November.
So it wasn’t very relevant.
Oh, okay.
You gotta skate where the puck is going, right?
Okay, come July, there’s gonna be some demand for this, okay?
Exactly.
So then I said, okay, I made it done,
but it proves to me that there’s an opportunity here.
So now let me do another trivia game.
So I did a trivia game for Thanksgiving.
And then I said, okay, well, there’s Hanukkah
and there’s Christmas.
And you just keep going through all the different holidays.
I would do that, I would do different games.
And I just had fun with that
because it was really interesting.
I just enjoyed it.
There was the solar eclipse this year.
So I did several solar eclipse games.
So whatever is kind of of the moment or coming up,
let’s call it two to three months in advance,
I would do it.
And then I would just keep doing different things.
I was interested in or that I wanted to learn more about.
And that’s kind of how I did it.
At some point I had this realization
that when I was younger, like in high school,
I had this conversation with one of my friends
in math class, like what do you wanna do when you grow up?
And I told them I wanted to be a puzzle master.
Okay, okay.
You know, like Will Shortz does,
except at that point in time, Will Shortz,
I didn’t know who he was.
He wasn’t anyone famous,
but I’m like, I want to do something like that,
but there’s no such job.
So I just went to college and had a regular job.
– Yeah, like a virtual escape room coordinator
or that’s a really interesting one.
I had a similar net ’cause now you’re making money
doing that, like taking it back to high school.
I had, you know, my job shadow day
would have been junior or senior year.
It was going down to like the sports broadcast office
for Channel Five in Seattle.
And it was like, yeah, it’s super irrelevant
to what I’m doing today.
And then my buddy was like, you’re kind of in media.
You know, that seems actually pretty relevant.
So I was like, oh, it’s kind of this weird full circle moment
of, yeah, I guess it’s kind of in this broadcast media
in a way.
– Exactly, there’s so many things I’ve done in my life
in different jobs and different courses I took
in college or high school or just, you know,
continuing ed courses or hobbies or anything.
And so then I just kept going through my brain like,
what do I like?
What am I interested in?
And then I would try to understand,
is there a need for whatever that is?
Do a little bit of keyword research, try some stuff out.
Some of it worked, some of it didn’t.
Then do more of what works like rinse and repeat.
And that’s basically what it is.
– So I’m picturing like a trivial game,
like trivial pursuit where I’ve got a bunch of these cards,
like these, you know, question cards
that people are cutting out at home.
It’s just like a big list.
Like tell me just like a little bit of the structure
of what the product looks like.
– Exactly.
So you can’t use trivial pursuit
because that’s a trademark,
but you can take games like that or something else
and call them something else
and make sure you don’t use the trade colors of them
or anything like that.
But yes, that’s exactly the idea.
And what happens is when you make some products,
Essie recommends other products that are like this.
And you kind of can’t help but notice other games.
So as I start creating more games,
I see more games that are available.
And then I try those and then some work, some don’t.
And then whichever ones of those work,
I make more of those.
And then I get more suggestions
and then it gets my brain going
because I am not naturally a creative person, like not at all.
– I don’t know.
I’ll give yourself some credit.
You’ve been creating content on the internet
for 14 years here.
– Well, you get better at it.
So the point is you don’t need to be creative.
My mom would always say, “You’re so creative.”
I’d say, “No, I’m not.”
Really honestly, I’m good at creative problem solving,
but I’m not a creative person.
But it doesn’t matter because you can just learn it
because as you do it, you become more creative.
Just like I did not know anything about flooring,
but you learn it.
And then I became good at home decor.
So you just, as your interest level increases,
your curiosity does too.
And then so does your knowledge.
They all work together.
And then ideas, they just come to you.
It’s like, I don’t even try anymore.
I can, I mean, you’ve seen one of my things where I wrote,
like I have 1014 ideas of things I can create on Etsy.
– I hope that little sample sparks some inspiration
to start thinking about what kind of digital products
you could create or even a little bit broader,
what kind of side hustle might be in your wheelhouse?
Episode 637 with Debbie, The Flooring Girl Gartner.
All right, let’s bring it home with number 10.
To round out this list,
I wanna highlight Skyler Sullivan’s remote cleaning business.
And let this be an example of or a lens into
any number of drop servicing style businesses
where you’re essentially playing a matchmaker
between qualified service providers
and people who need that work done.
You’ve got a little more skin in the game
than with Meow’s website rental model,
but I would say their cousins.
Business models are related.
In Skyler’s case, it was super impressive
building Nebraska Elite Cleaning to $60,000 a month
as a side hustle in episode 645,
just aired a couple of weeks ago.
The premise here is to build a strong online brand
in presence, nail the operations and logistics,
and then find people who are excited
to do the delivery for you.
In fact, that’s where Skyler recommended starting.
After all, if you book a job
and you don’t have anyone to go out and do it,
it’s gonna be you.
And that’s not the end of the world,
but that wasn’t his ultimate goal.
I asked him how he sourced and onboarded new cleaners
so then he could go out and market the business.
– Yeah, well, everybody’s cleaned.
I’ve cleaned before, you know, don’t love it,
but everybody’s clean.
And so cleaning to me is like,
you don’t have to be a star or a machine.
Yeah, we can learn tips and tricks
and be more efficient and be better.
But if you’re just detailed and diligent,
anybody can do it.
If you’re high character, detailed and diligent,
you probably, anybody can do it.
And then after that,
I mean, there’s tips and tricks for different chemicals,
but so that’s what I knew.
That’s what I knew is that it doesn’t take a master.
I just need to find some people who are probably good
and maybe they’ve worked in a hotel or something like that.
So I would use Indeed, Facebook a little bit,
but Craigslist, Indeed was really, really helpful at first.
And then after I found a couple,
we would use referrals from cleaners
who knew other cleaners who, you know, had worked out.
So what’s that pitch like though?
The pitch is like, hey, I just created
an elite cleaning company,
a company that I’m looking for pros.
We are pros, we have a professional mantra
and I’m looking for pros like you,
based on your resume and who you are, you know,
does this sound like something you’d be interested in,
you know, making some more money and taking more jobs?
And most of the time it’s yes, not always, but most of the time.
– Okay, so it’s like the pitch is,
we’re building this elite culture.
We’d love for you to be a part of it if that’s a fit
and we’ll help you fill up your schedule.
We’ll help you get more hours.
– Absolutely, yep, exactly.
We’ll help you fill up your schedule.
All you have to worry about is doing the cleaning.
We’ll do the, you know, the scheduling.
We’ll do the notes.
All you have to do is just show up, do the cleaning.
You have to worry about reschedules
and collecting payments.
We’ll take care of all that for you.
– Got it.
And so it appeals to the people who want,
kind of like an easy button way.
I mean, of course it’s still manual labor,
but like they don’t have to be the entrepreneur.
They don’t have to be the marketer.
You don’t have to be the administrator.
Like they can just be, you just show up and do the work.
You know, I think a lot of people
are looking for something like that.
– Yeah, exactly.
Advertising, they don’t have to worry about sales,
negotiation with customers, customer cancellations,
getting payments, you know,
in the communication with customers,
it can be literally 24/7.
Like we’ll get calls, texts from people
and all day, all night.
And so if you’re not an entrepreneur
or don’t have that mindset,
you can get walked over by customers as well
or taken advantage of.
– What’s typical in terms of an hourly rate
or a payment per clean?
Or how do you have things structured with the cleaners?
– We like to be around that $25, $25 an hour ish,
because they’re also supplying equipment
of their own equipment as well,
their own cleaning supplies and driving there.
So $25 and then they get tips as well.
And it can be a little bit higher around that.
– Schuyler went on to explain
that he typically would aim for a 40 to 50% margin
on the residential jobs he’d book,
lower on commercial cleaning work
because it’s more competitive and more frequent,
like lower margin, but higher volume, if that makes sense.
And I highlight Schuyler’s business
because it’s another one like Christie’s
where you could replicate it
in any number of different niches.
The key is looking for an industry
that’s pretty fragmented, like cleaning,
where there really aren’t any single companies
that you could probably think of
that command a big chunk of market share.
On top of that, like we might have talked about
in that episode, it’s an industry
where the pie keeps getting bigger.
It’s a chore that more and more people
are choosing to hire out.
So you don’t necessarily need to conquest business
from another provider.
Again, episode 645, remote cleaning business.
That’s number 10 on our list.
To recap, number one was the $100 a day challenge
with Jackie Mitchell.
Number two was the website rental business,
the rank and rent model.
Number three was vending machines.
I think we could all use a money-making robot in our life.
Number four was the billboard business.
You’ll never look at billboards the same way again.
Number five was photo organizing.
Number six was software consulting,
highlighting the piggyback principle,
go where there’s already some level of demand
and establish some credibility and expertise there.
Number seven was window washing,
one of our college side hustles examples.
Number eight was the super, super interesting
junk land flipping business,
looking for those unloved parcels
and making them buildable.
Number nine was digital products on Etsy,
an example of creating something once,
selling it over and over again.
And number 10 was Skyler’s remote cleaning business.
If you want to learn more about
any of these individual businesses,
make sure to check out those specific episodes.
Again, I will link those up in the show notes.
And for the sake of convenience,
I put them all into a Spotify playlist for you,
which is also linked up in the show notes,
sidehustlenation.com/bestof24,
or just hit the link in the episode description
and it’ll get you right over there.
Big thanks to all our incredible guests
for sharing their insight.
Thanks to our sponsors for helping make
this content free for everyone.
That is it for me.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
and I’ll catch you in the next edition
of The Side Hustle Show.
What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
It’s the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply.
Now, the end of the year is upon us,
which means it’s time to reflect back on
the side hustles that stood out,
the ones that got people talking,
the ones that I was most excited to share.
Now, the mark of a good episode for me is when I hang up the call thinking like,
“Dang, I need to drop what I’m doing and go do that.”
Whatever it was we just talked about,
I could totally do that.
I should totally do that.
I try and exercise some level of discipline and restraint
because the shiny object syndrome is real,
but when the shiny object shines for me,
I know it’s going to be a hit episode.
I have selected my top 10 for the year.
If you’re new to the show,
I’ll do my best to reference episode numbers.
You can go back and check out the ones that you’re interested in.
I’ve also put all of those into a Spotify playlist that I will link up in the description.
Make it easy to go add that to your device.
If you’re a longtime listener,
see if your favorites made the list.
Which ones did I miss?
There’s room for debate in all of this.
Best is always subjective.
These are in mostly chronological and numerical order,
starting at the beginning of the year with an absolute banger of an episode.
The most downloaded episode of the year,
almost 75,000 downloads to date,
was Jackie Mitchell and her $100 per day side hustle challenge.
This was episode 594,
and Jackie broke down how she successfully earned over $10,000 in 100 days
from her personal $100 per day challenge.
A good chunk of that income came from what I would call plug-and-play side hustles.
For example, she mentioned paid surveys,
mobile game testing through swag bucks.
Could be worthwhile if you like playing mobile games.
Now, her best paying spot for surveys was through a platform called Prolific.
Prolific is going to always be at the top of my list.
This is a survey site that researchers use.
A lot of times, they’re post-grad students or medical researchers or psychological researchers.
They’re paying pretty well per hour for short little surveys.
Maybe it’s a 10-minute survey,
but it pays like $7.00.
Well, that’s really good if you break down.
In terms of an hour.
Yeah, exactly.
So Prolific gives you mostly,
I would say 30-minute and under surveys.
It’s just prolific.com.
Anyone can sign up.
I do believe that they are often on a wait list because of demographics.
I would say consistently,
when surveys are available,
I can make anywhere from like $10 to $30 a day doing that.
$10 to $30 a day, nothing to sneeze at,
especially if that is in alignment with your side hustle goals.
Jackie also mentioned paid focus groups,
kind of few and far between,
but can pay $50 to $200 an hour.
I’ll link up some of my favorite resources for those in the show notes
at sidehustlenation.com/bestof24.
Another side hustle she talked about was data annotation,
which I ended up testing out myself as well.
Data annotation is one that I would rate a three out of five,
just as my disclaimer,
in terms of accessibility and kind of like,
is the work enjoyable to do?
I would say most likely no,
but it pays well and it’s an interesting site.
So data annotation and I’ll group another site,
remote tasks are both in the business of training large language models.
So AI, think of things like Google Bard,
think of things like open AI, chat GPT.
So a lot of it is kind of veiled to the workers
in terms of like which ones you’re training.
And some of that is just because you’re signing different disclosures.
You’re essentially freelancing for one of these major companies,
but the majority of your work is going to be editing and classifying
and fact-checking large language model responses.
So maybe you’re given two responses
from two different versions of a language model.
You’re fact-checking it for accuracy
that it’s not making up information.
You’re looking at if it was too verbose,
did it run on and just give you way too much information
that it didn’t really need to give you?
Was the grammar okay, stuff like that?
So there’s a lot of different subsets
within both remote tasks and data annotation.
You can get put on a lot of different tasks.
There’s more specific ones for people who code,
which I know pay a ton, which is amazing if you code.
I don’t, every time I see a qualification pop up for that,
I wish I did.
But typically these will pay anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour,
in my experience.
-Okay, it’s not bad, it’s not nothing. -No, I don’t think so, no.
What’s the primary site that you’re doing this through?
Data annotation is the name of the site, yep.
-Data annotation.tech, yep. -Data annotation.tech, yep.
Okay, the one that I signed up for was remote tasks
to try and check it out.
And I was almost deterred.
It was like, I got to do it for the blog post,
I got to stick through this.
But like the onboarding process took probably a couple of hours
worth of training the things.
Like you had to do an editing task,
like that’s easy enough, like okay,
I would cross out this sentence
or this is the way I would phrase that instead
to be more concise or whatever.
But then you had to come up with a prompt response on your own.
And there was one that was factual,
like make an argument for X, Y, Z.
I forget what he was like,
“Well, why should we cut NASA’s budget or something?”
I was like, “Oh, okay, well, people are starving,
so the money would be better allocated.”
Like you can make that argument.
But the other one was like a fiction response
or like a creative response.
And that one was like, dang, it’s been,
I was really proud of what I came up with in the end.
But 500 words was like pretty decent sized,
what I considered like the opening of a book.
But it was like almost through the towels,
like this is pretty time consuming.
– Yeah, I feel that way data annotation is super similar.
And to my understanding,
they really do screen out a lot of people through that test.
Which is not to say that you pass because you have X, Y, Z.
It is heavily geared towards people who enjoy long form
writing, who enjoy fact checking and editing,
who have very strong grammar skills.
I think data annotation says something like
grammar and writing skills and like critical reasoning
are the things that they look for.
So you don’t have to have degrees, anything like that.
But it is grueling work.
So I don’t know how far you got into remote tasks after that.
But people who come to my page and say like,
I took the data annotation test, that was awful.
I can’t wait to get in.
I’m like, well, that’s all that it is though.
That’s exactly what you’re,
if you take the test and you don’t like it,
that’s all the prompts and all the work.
– Once I was accepted into remote tasks,
I earned 15 bucks for my first hour of actual annotation work,
which isn’t bad.
If that’s something that you might like to do,
I’ll link up my full remote tasks review in the show notes
as well, again, signupsonlation.com/bestof24.
I just got a kick out of the whole episode with Jackie.
So make sure to go back and check that one out.
If you missed it, episode of 594 in your podcast player app.
Moving on to number two,
and I should add that this list isn’t in order
from best to worst or anything like that.
I’m just going in the order that the episodes aired.
But number two is website rentals.
And this was a unique side hustle shared in episode of 597,
where the name of the game is to build out
a descriptive website for a local niche service.
I want to say concrete driveway repair
in Wellington, New Zealand was one that we talked about
as one example, but niche service plus location.
Step two, get that site ranking in Google,
open up your local SEO playbook, do what works there.
And then number three, where the side hustle comes in
or step three is to rent out that site
to a qualified local service provider
who’s hungry for more leads.
In some cases, these sites can rent for 500 to a thousand
to maybe 1500 bucks per month, or maybe even more
depending on the traffic and the customer value.
And they’re relatively hands off.
Once you’ve got a service provider in place,
they’ll handle the inbound customer inquiries.
And you’re just in charge of making sure the site
stays at the top of Google.
This is Meow Rios describing what makes a good niche
for this rank and rent model.
I like something that’s service-based
that you don’t have a storefront.
Basically like a plumber, the concrete guy or a roofer,
you go to the client’s site to work.
So it’s not that people come into your office.
So service-based business.
The second one is I really like those high ticket type
of work, like concrete, driveways, patios,
earthwork, demolition, roofing, nothing sexy, nothing sexy.
But those niche work, they work.
– And that’s because the value of these jobs
is worth quite a bit to the service provider.
And so if we can get more leads in,
if we can book up our calendar, then yeah,
it’s worthwhile.
We’ll just add this to our monthly marketing budget.
– Yeah, exactly.
I’ve done the smaller niche like handyman.
I probably would not do handyman again.
Having said that, I have a handyman side
that’s producing lots of, lots of leads.
And business has been with me since the beginning
when I started business.
So, and sometimes like a smaller niche,
like a gutter cleaning can be good
because it’s high volume.
So you get like a 60 to 90 leads per month.
But the thing with gutter cleaning is
sometimes you start a job with gutter cleaning
and you find out the gutter needs a repair,
the roof needs a repair, the roof needs repaint.
So a small job can turn into a bigger job.
You just never know.
So, but my personal favorite is still a bigger ticket niche.
– Do you like to go deep in one location
or deep in one niche?
Or like it’s really a matter of like trying to find
the sweet spot of I’m going to do carpet cleaning in Dallas
and then I’m going to build out all these other niches
for Dallas or I’m going to go do carpet cleaning
in a hundred different cities.
– There’s two way to tackle this.
So if it’s a big city, like with a population of a million
and above, I like to go either niche down.
So for example, if it’s concrete, I don’t do all concrete.
I just specialize at certain type of concrete,
either as a stand concrete or concrete resurfacing
or concrete driveway.
So you have to be the specialist in the service
that you provide.
I found you get a lot more success
than just do something every general in the big city.
– Now, the bigger the city, the more niche down.
– Yeah, so niche down for a big city.
And if it’s a big city, also you can,
let’s say for New York city, it’s just too big.
So you have to niche down to a different boroughs
like Manhattan or Brooklyn or Queens, Long Island.
So yeah, either niche down to the specialized area
or niche down to the local area.
So that’s a general rule.
I found anything above 50K should work the population wise.
I’m talking about 400K population wise
seems to be very sweet spot.
So it’s not too big city.
Your local competition is not that strong
and you have enough volume.
The population produce enough leads,
enough search volume that is gonna help you
to render side out.
– Okay, cool.
And I swear I was on Wikipedia at one point.
Like here’s the list of cities with population,
you know, 100,000 to 250,000
or you can probably just ask chat GPT at this point.
Like come up with this list for me
and there’s a potential starting point.
Anything else that goes on trying to cross-reference
these cities, am I looking at the local competition yet?
Or am I?
– Yes.
Well, one thing I’m doing,
I’ll just actually give you an example
that just shows you the initial research.
Sometimes it’s not about what you provide
has to be good enough, is about your competition.
So I’ll give you an example of two side I built.
One is a, that’s in Wellington, the capital city in New Zealand.
And the data shows that the landscaping business
has a huge demand, very high volume.
The keyword difficulty is medium.
So you have the local competition.
So I thought, given that how much demand,
I’m gonna build a site for landscaping.
A few months down the track,
the site is ranking however, the quality of leads
and the number of leads are not great.
So we still have producing the leads,
but it’s just not ideal.
So what I did is I built a specialized,
so I work at this landscaping company
and they do all the paving concrete artificial grass,
retaining wood, everything.
And then what we did is we found the concrete driveway
in the local area.
There’s no company just do concrete driveway.
There’s a lot of landscaping company.
There’s a lot of concrete company.
Just does a very general, general contractor,
but no company does concrete driveway.
So I built a site for concrete driveway in Wellington
and that site blew up.
It’s completely blew up.
So what happened is this contractor,
if a client wants a concrete driveway down
in front of the house,
sometimes they’re gonna do the backyard.
They need a retaining work again.
They need paving work again.
So it’s finding the right market to get into,
therefore dominate.
So you’re still providing the same service.
However, it is extremely important
to actually pick the niche
that was very little competition.
– Interesting.
So it was the landscaping company
that was doing the driveways?
– Yes, so that’s the same.
It’s the same company.
The local landscaping company,
there are a few big one that have a good name.
So they dominate the market.
So it’s very hard for someone small to medium business
to just get into the market.
‘Cause when people think about landscaping,
there’s a big name out there.
But if you change your arena to the concrete driveway,
while no company is doing that,
like specializing that,
so it’s just really easy to get into.
And you ended up getting all the landscaping work,
but through the right channel.
– That’s really interesting.
I’m just trying to find that back door,
that side door into the place.
Like, well, maybe it’s number six
on our menu of service offerings.
But if I try to rank for general landscaping,
it’s really tough.
But if I try and rank for concrete driveways.
– Paving, yeah, a different, just.
– Yeah, okay.
– Specializing it, yeah.
– Male mentioned looking at SEMrush data
for keyword difficulty
and trying to find those keywords
with a difficulty score under 20.
This is a metric of competitiveness,
how hard it’s gonna be to rank
for a certain keyword combination
of service plus location.
That is episode 597 in your podcast feed.
Really interesting one.
And where it’s really common
to stack a bunch of these sites together
to form a really strong income
that’s somewhat diversified
and somewhat predictable month after month.
You’ve got recurring revenue.
And if your client is making money from your leads,
it’s a service that they’re unlikely to cancel.
And if you’ve got the skills
to build one of these sites and get it up and running,
you can rinse and repeat in a new niche or new city.
I forget how many meow had,
but I wanna say it was 20 or more.
So we got more of the best scientists of the year
coming up right after this.
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The next episode that really got people talking,
including my then 10 year old neighbor
was number 599 on how to start a vending machine business.
I mean, these are literally money making robots
that can make you passive sales when you’re not around.
So I get the appeal.
I’ve hung up the call to see and like,
“Man, I want to start a vending machine business.”
Now the challenge is finding the right location
with a hungry crowd.
This is Mike Hoffman from that episode explaining
what makes a good location
and how he might make that pitch.
– It’s super easy.
I think the first thing is the examples you just rattled off.
So senior center and let’s say an apartment complex.
The thing they all have in common
is they have a front desk person that works there.
So you can just roll right in there.
They’re not gonna know you from anyone else.
And you can just say, “Hey, is your general manager
or your property manager in today?”
And if she’s like, “Oh no, you can always ask
for the business card and send an email.”
But yeah, that’s exactly what I did
that first location I landed.
I was like, “Hey, is your manager in?”
And she happened to be in.
She’s like, “Oh my gosh, coming with COVID,
we can’t put out refreshments, blah, blah, blah.
We want to move forward.”
It’s just such a low barrier to entry
by just doing that pop in.
– Your ask was like,
“Tell me about your current vending situation.
Like what’s that line?”
– Yeah, or just like,
do you want to provide modern amenities?
And then you just start asking questions
about foot traffic to qualify them.
So how many people live here?
Or how many units are here?
And they’ll say, “Okay, Nick, there’s 200 units.”
And then you’re like, “Okay, well,
how many people live in those units?
‘Cause some might be two or three bedroom.”
They’re like, “Oh, 400 people, like right away,
you’re sitting on a 1500 to two grand gold mine,
just with that.”
– Is there a minimum residency or occupancy
that you’re looking for?
– Yeah, we like to target 100 units as a minimum
or 100 plus employees.
– Okay, 100 residential units or 100 employees.
– It’s hard to imagine an office building
without this in there already,
but you’re finding like,
“This building has been here for 25 years.
No one has ever asked us about vending before.”
You know, that’s a great idea.
Like, does that happen?
– All the time.
And in fact, what you’d be really surprised about
is we’re taking over a lot of the market.
So current user, let’s say that location,
they probably already have vending machines
that aren’t being stocked
because the baby boomer generation doesn’t use a cell phone.
The only way they can track inventory
is driving by the property,
where like on my phone across the country,
I can look at all my vending machines,
even my micro market in Philadelphia
and see what I’ve done in sales in the last hour.
So then I can get ahead of what needs stocked
before it actually shows up empty customer facing.
I’m like, “Okay, we’ve sold eight out of 10 solids.
We have two left.
We need to backfill those solids.”
Where right now, these places we’re taking over for,
they either have vending machines that are broken,
they have vending machines that don’t allow credit card usage.
Well, guess what?
80% of your sales are gonna be with card, not cash anymore.
– Yeah.
So it’s not so much that they have never considered vending.
It’s that their existing provider
is not living up to expectations
or it could be doing better.
– Yeah, it’s like either that existing provider
took on a bigger, let’s say the Coke provider
of Washington has vending as a side service.
Well, is that Coke provider more worried
about topping off the cafeteria with Coke in the school
or are they more worried
about the teacher’s lounge vending machine?
– A good location with the right product mix
can earn 500 bucks a month.
You place 10 of these machines,
you got yourself a $5,000 a month side hustle.
I think Mike had 10 or 15 when we spoke
and maybe a couple employee less automated micro markets
as kind of the next stage of the business.
Now you still gotta stock the machines.
It’s not totally passive,
but you can find people to help with that.
And that’s a good problem.
If you need to restock,
it means you moved some inventory.
To learn more, definitely check out that episode
with Mike, number 599.
We talk startup costs, logistics, all that jazz
and he’s helping other people get started in this world
as well at vendingpreneurs.com.
Kind of tricky to spell.
I will link that up in the show notes.
For this episode, again at sidehustlenation.com/bestof24.
The next side hustle I wanna highlight
is one that you probably drive by every day
without even thinking about it.
That is, until you heard episode 608 with Chris Brown.
Chris runs a billboard business in Arkansas
that generates thousands of dollars a month
in again, relatively passive income.
Now, just like real estate and like vending machines,
it’s all about location and the level of a local competition
that dictate how much you can charge.
Here’s Chris describing his first billboard deal
and how much it made.
– Yeah, the first deal was very interesting.
So he was just willing to get out.
He actually showed me the invoice of his cost
to put it in the ground, what he had on it.
That included the land.
He didn’t even want the land or anything.
He was about to go bankrupt, so he really didn’t care.
– Oh, okay.
– So he actually showed that to me.
So that was $75,000, which again,
I didn’t know that the point was a great deal,
but it was a great deal.
And I was able to purchase that from him.
And he sold it to me.
It’s right in the middle of a intersection.
So it’s literally surrounded by three roads.
People have to drive underneath the billboard,
which is very interesting and was a little concerning.
So I actually had to get the city to sign off on it
to say, “Hey, look, we’re good with it staying.”
‘Cause I was really not sure about that
if they were gonna make it take down or not
and didn’t want to buy something
and if that was gonna happen.
So it did get hit a few times.
– Oh my God, like by a really tall truck or something?
– Yes, yes.
‘Cause the original road did not actually have
the road that went underneath it.
So people would normally have curved around it
and then they added this as all my property,
but it never was addressed.
And so it started out as like a little dirt cut through
and then people, they paved it
and it became a main part of the road.
So really interesting spot.
Yes.
– There’s a combination of this real estate play
plus a media play.
How many eyeballs like am I gonna get over here?
They go to turn around and then sell that and inventory.
Okay, so 75 grand for the land and the structure
to go out there.
And then you go out and try and find a new advertiser for it.
What happens next?
– Yeah, so once I acquired it, I actually then did,
I called up a few local businesses and said,
hey, I had some friends that own businesses,
some heating and air companies,
some furniture companies, some car dealerships.
And I said, hey, would you guys be interested?
And it was on the middle of a great location.
It was kind of a random spot right by a bunch of neighborhoods
where you wouldn’t expect a billboard.
So they jumped on it and some of those people
are still advertising today and that was in 2011.
So we’re talking 13 years later,
they still have the same advertisers on a few of them.
– Okay, yeah, long-term.
I mean, yeah, if they’re seeing a positive ROI on it,
yeah, just keep it rolling.
– Yes, ’cause there’s three elementary schools
and junior highs and high schools right by it.
So it’s a great location.
So that’s how I got the first one is I’m driving around.
I found one, decided I would kind of wanted that.
I was already looking for real estate itself.
So I was into single family flips.
I was into land acquisition and commercial property
and multifamily.
But then I saw that and I thought about,
that was a very interesting way to play the land game
or as just a different play to own the business,
have the media and have the passive income
from the billboards themselves.
– What did you end up selling the first spot on that
first billboard for?
– Yeah, so each spot on the billboard.
So that first billboard had four billboards on it,
four signs, each one of those was about $600 each.
That was the first day I had no idea how to price them.
So what I did was just called some of the other billboards
around and said, all right,
what are you guys pricing these at?
‘Cause I just acted like an interested billboard buyer
and they were glad to tell me what their rates were.
And so I was able to find that and give that deal to people.
I just wanted them full to cover my cost on that
so that I would have just some positive cashflow
coming in every month.
– A four-sided thing or it’s like one of these
mechanic rotating type of thing?
– Yeah, it was a top and a bottom on both sides.
So it was a good old fashioned,
there was four static billboards.
Yeah, so we call them static.
So in billboards, there’s static, there’s digital,
and then there’s actually tri-vision.
Most are static or digital.
So you have just the ones that are flat.
They don’t change.
They say the same 24/7 and then you have the digital
that actually then rotate in as a LED screen.
– The one that’s closest to us that I can think of,
I think it, so it’s two-sided, right?
So you get people going both directions
and I want to say it,
there’s two different advertisers on each side.
Like it somehow flips and then every now and again.
– Yep, so then there’s a tri-vision.
So that was actually flipped.
– Yeah, the slats get broken.
It says like half of one and half of the other and stuff.
– Okay, so about four signs, 600 bucks each.
We’re at $2,400 a month in income there.
Okay, and so then pencil that against the acquisition costs.
And I have learned to not do math on air,
but that’s close to $29,000 for the year,
which pencils out.
– ROI is about three.
– Yeah, three years and you’re even on that purchase cost.
– Total purchase cost, yeah, paid back in three.
– Okay, I promise you’ll never look at billboards
the same way again.
Again, that was episode 608 with Chris Brown.
Really interesting side hustle.
That’s equal parts, real estate and media.
Next on my list is one that I shared with a ton of people
just because of the novelty factor.
I never knew this was a thing.
And that was Cheryl DeFrank’s photo organizing business
in episode 619.
In that episode, she said she had more than enough work
to keep herself busy full time
and that the average rate is around a hundred bucks an hour
and that the average project could be 20 hours or more.
It seems like a relatively low competition side hustle.
Like there simply aren’t that many service providers
doing this yet.
And there’s a novelty factor
when you strike up a conversation about it.
Cheryl did her first project for free to get the hang of it,
which gave her the confidence
to go after paid photo organizing work.
Here’s how she described getting the business off the ground.
– I just started talking to friends
and my first actual paying client was another friend
who just said, “Hey, can you help me out
with the photos on my phone?
‘Cause they’re such a mess
and I know I’ve got so many duplicates.
Everybody has tons of duplicates.”
It was a relatively small project
but I helped her out and she was grateful
and then she just started talking to other people.
A lot of people would say to start with friends and family
and that’s a good idea.
I mean, they obviously will already kind of have
a certain amount of faith in you
and already want to support you,
but it can also be a little bit hard
to work with friends and family.
So I kind of started spreading the word
as quickly as possible.
I’m on a neighborhood listserv,
so which is kind of like next term.
It’s basically an email listserv.
All the families in my kid’s school are on a listserv,
all the people that belong to our pool
are on another listserv and so on.
So you’ve got all these different kind of groups.
Either I would post something about my services
and sometimes there’s rules about self promotion
but either I would post something
or a friend would post something for me,
kind of maybe even a scripted thing like,
“Hey, you guys wouldn’t believe this person I found
to organize all your photos and give her a call.”
And of course now, years later,
my previous clients will post things
on their own listservs.
So just the word kind of spreads
and the phone hasn’t really stopped ringing in 10 years
based on just kind of word of mouth.
I always say like someone told me early on,
and this is probably true in every business,
someone told me early on to put your company name
and kind of a little tagline of what you do
at the bottom of every single email you write,
no matter who you’re sending it to,
whether it’s business email or not.
Yeah, and it’s not a new concept,
but in my case, because it is so unique,
I’ll send an email to somebody about my son’s La Crosse game
or something or La Crosse team,
and they’ll see what I do and they’ll write me back,
having nothing to do with La Crosse,
but say, “Wait, what is that you do?
I see you’re a photo artist.”
They’re like, “What’s that?”
And then might turn into a job,
might turn into a project.
So conversation starter, if nothing else,
and we’ve talked about that.
It absolutely is.
That email signature space,
underutilized, marketing real estate.
Exactly.
I was assuming this was gonna be almost all digital,
but when starting locally,
I get maybe it is in person.
So it’s that box in the attic.
It’s like the physical pictures.
And so does it need to be kind of a local radius for it?
It’s both.
It’s really both.
The three main areas of photo organizing.
Number one is the print photos.
These are usually maybe older families
that still have print photos in the attic.
It’s a mess.
They’ve been hiding up there for years,
and so they’ll give me the boxes of print photos
for me to organize and sort,
and usually it’s chronologically.
For the most part,
because there is a physical exchange there,
those are usually local clients,
but I’ve had people mail me boxes and boxes of photos
from other places.
So that’s one area.
And then the other area is digital photo organizing,
which is, again, the photos on the phone
and the hard drives and all those little camera cards
that we have in all kinds of drawers around the house
and so on, that clients also have no idea
where everything is or what’s on these hard drives.
So in that case, again, it certainly can be local,
but then you can have people either send me hard drives
or sometimes, for instance,
and we’ll log into their online storage.
So for instance, I can log into a person’s iCloud
or a person’s Google photos or something,
obviously with their permission
and organize straight online
and never meet the client in person.
And then the third aspect,
which is kind of one of the main areas,
is scanning or digitizing photos.
There are certain photo organizers that just do that.
So they just do scanning
and they don’t really even do the sorting process.
So there’s lots of different aspects.
And then there’s other kind of offshoots
like just creating photo books.
There’s certain organizers,
their specialty is creating photo books
for all kinds of different events or slide shows,
kind of anything having to do with photos
that a lot of people either just have no idea how to do
or don’t want to spend the time figuring it out.
Or the other thing too is working with your own photos,
whatever you’re doing, whether you’re sorting them,
whether you’re creating a slideshow,
trying to pick the photos for the slideshow,
is a very emotional process
when you’re working with your own photos.
So what I tell clients, which is true,
is there’s no emotion for me.
So I can do it much, much faster
and I’m not reliving my son’s three-year birthday party
in the process and so on.
– What do you think?
Is this a side hustle you could take action on?
Would you hire a photo organizer yourself?
Again, episode 619 with Cheryl
to get the full scoop on her unique service business.
I selected the next side hustle on this list
because it’s the one I probably tell more people
to start than any other and that’s software consulting.
The specific example I want to highlight from this year
is Christie De Silva from De Silva Life.
Christie’s built a really strong brand in business
specializing in support for two different software tools,
HoneyBook and ClickUp.
The reason I like this model so much
is you don’t have to create demand from scratch.
If you find the right software,
maybe it’s one you’re an early user of, you’re a fan of,
they’ll likely be heavily investing
in growing their user base.
A lot of times these companies have raised venture capital
and they’re investing in user acquisition,
customer acquisition.
So if you can create content to help those people,
those new customers, it’s easy to get found
or at least easier than shouting into the void of the internet
without piggybacking on some built-in search volume
around the name of a specific software
like Christie does with HoneyBook and ClickUp.
The other reason it’s so powerful is by niching down
and becoming a sought-after expert in a specific software
is the pricing power that comes with it.
– I started my rates a lot lower
than other people may have been charging
because I’m like, I’m not like a top tier expert yet
but I know that I know a lot more about these products
than the people that I’m serving
and these softwares than the people that I’m serving.
And so I was still able to charge more technically hourly
except a lot of our stuff is flat right now.
For example, yeah, I’m making about 30 to 40 bucks an hour
as a VA where now I charge $300 an hour
for a strategy session, like so crazy that jump
but now being an expert in this for four years,
it’s really cool to see.
– It is really cool to see.
She 10x’d her hourly rate by niching down
from generalist to specialist.
And how does she find customers?
Well, in most cases, they find her.
That’s what’s cool about this.
She creates helpful keyword targeted Q and A content
for YouTube and invites viewers to take the next step
either scheduling a call or downloading some free resources.
Here’s how she described the YouTube strategy.
– We get the majority of our leads from YouTube
and I will say like probably 80% of the time
people come on, they’re like, oh my gosh,
it’s so nice to meet you.
I’ve been subscribed to your channels
for like two or three years
and they feel like they already know me
even though I have no idea who they are yet.
It’s funny because it’s a huge thing
in sales is that like no like in trust factor
and we already solved that piece
before we even ever get on a sales call.
– Yes, you know, you’re showing your face, your voice.
Yeah, I build a lot of trust that way.
Deciding what type of content to make
any sort of like keyword research tools
or search volume that goes into it.
I’m just looking at like broad Google searches,
400,000 monthly searches for ClickUp
and then 60,000 for HoneyBook.
And so there’s some decent like top level search volume
but then I imagine it kind of goes into that long tail
for like how to run your agency in HoneyBook
like more specific type of searches.
– We actually really love vidIQ.
We were using TubeBuddy for a while
and then we started getting into vidIQ.
They have some really cool things with like AI
and their platform is a bit more robust, I feel.
We look at our channel
and we do quarterly content planning.
We do yearly at a high level and then we do quarterly
and we try to do like themed content, like themed months
and now we’re starting to get into like different series
and we’ll look at what performed best on our channels
or like what’s ranking highest.
Like for example, our ClickUp dashboards video
was ranking highest for like a long time
are how to use HoneyBook and ClickUp like yearly videos
like in 2024, those always do really well as well.
So we’re like, okay, we’ll always do those
in the beginning of the year
but we’ll look back at our previous content,
what’s highly ranking, knowing people want more of that
and then we’ll really just start doing
long tail keyword research in vidIQ.
You know, kind of going down a rabbit hole of like,
okay, how are these ranking in terms of search volume
and things like that.
– Is there a minimum search volume
that is interesting to you or worthwhile
to make the video about?
– It’s more like how it scores in vidIQ.
I think we’re looking over like a 60 or 70 ranking.
– Which is a combination of volume and competitiveness.
– Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so we also, speaking of competitiveness,
we’ll definitely do competitor research as well
because we have like a few competitors.
We’re very niche, but we absolutely have competitors.
And so we’ll look at their channels,
what’s ranking high on their channels
and by no means do we ever just copy their video
but we’ll be like, okay, cool.
They did something on this specific topic.
How can we do something similar but have our own spin?
And so we’ll do that research as well.
– Again, this is something you can replicate
across any number of different niches.
We’ve seen examples of people doing this with Asana,
with QuickBooks, with FreshBooks, with Salesforce,
with Excel, with different WordPress themes and plugins.
It’s one that is ripe for replication.
Be sure to check out the full episode number 627
with Christy to learn more.
The rest of our best side hustles of the year
are coming up right after this.
This year, I was lucky enough to connect
with a pair of Jacks, Jack Fleming and Jack Limbach,
both really inspiring young college-aged entrepreneurs.
Jack Fleming had built up his lawn mowing
and yard care service to 70 grand in profit as a teenager
and ended up selling off a portion of the business.
It was a great story.
Starting out pushing the lawn mower up and down the sidewalk,
I think starting at 13 years old
and then continuing to level up and bid
bigger and more complex projects.
That was episode 610, and a little bit later in the year,
in episode 630, we met Jack Limbach,
who had a similar local service business,
only instead of lawn mowing, it was window washing.
When we recorded, Jack was about to start
his sophomore year in college,
but was already selling 10 grand worth
of window washing every month.
Now, like the other Jack,
the business started out by going door-to-door
and that worked, but it was tedious.
And if you’ve ever gone cold calling,
you know you deal with a lot of rejection
and sometimes just flat out rude people.
So, it was when Jack layered on a level
of online advertising and combined that
with some better equipment when the business
really started to blow up.
– Made my first Instagram ad and I posted it on,
I posted it on Facebook, I posted it on Instagram.
Facebook didn’t do very good.
So I just, I took it off Facebook,
kind of put all the money towards Instagram.
And I was just spending $10 a day, like really nothing.
And then I was knocking on the side of it,
but just that one ad after spending $600,
it generated me $10,000 in revenue just from the ad.
And that doesn’t even include the word of mouth I got from it
or recurring customers, whatever it is.
But the return on investment on online advertising is huge.
– Wow, that’s crazy ’cause you,
it’s probably like super location targeted.
Probably, I imagine you’d like wanna target homeowners,
you know, above average income level.
I know you could probably set it really targeted.
– Yeah, there’s a bunch of little things
you can add in, like I want it to be a woman
that’s 35 to 65 and I want it to be right in my area.
But in all these ads, the super important part is,
so I made a video, they were all super funny.
I tried to make them like super entertaining to listen to.
But the most important part was right at the beginning,
I’d say, hey Evergreen or hey Auburn,
that way people know I’m talking to them
and they’re not just gonna skip it
because they see the send message,
which shows it’s an ad.
So they’re not just gonna skip it right away
and they actually might listen
because they know I’m targeting it right to them
and then I’m gonna throw in the joke a little bit after.
So for example, for my Auburn ad,
I posted this one about six days ago
and I’ve just, I put in 60 bucks into it.
I’ve already booked $2,500 worth of jobs with it.
It’s been doing super good, but what I said, I said,
hey Auburn, there’s a huge epidemic
going around the Auburn and Opalika area.
Your windows are looking like this or this or this
and it’s gonna cause some serious permanent damage
that’s gonna seriously lower your property value.
And then I did this funny little transition
where I did a little jump
and I went from my normal clothes
to my uniform with my belt on and people love that.
But then I have all these moms texting me
and they’re like, or DMing me and they say,
“Hey, I love a quote.”
And then you get there and then you do your spiel.
– Okay, so that’s the call to action.
I love that.
There’s a huge epidemic of dirty windows going around
and then you show the visuals, you’re like,
and then you can see people looking up at there.
It’s like, yeah, when was the last time those were clean?
So then the call to action is message me for a quote
or message me to schedule an appointment.
– Yeah, so at the very end,
I tell them all the services I do
and I say, “I know you need at least one of these done.
“So give me a text and I point up
“and then my number pops up.”
But most people just DM me and it says at the bottom,
like the whole time you’re reaching, it says send message
and then they can just send a message
and it’s super duper easy.
Most people just say, “Hey, I love a quote.”
And then maybe they send their address and I say,
“Okay, I’ll be there tomorrow, blah, blah.”
And then they’re like, “Oh, that’s super easy.”
– Okay, how cool, what a great return on investment on that.
And then while you’re out on the job,
of course there’s opportunity to go get some warm
or semi-warm leads from the neighbors.
Hey, we’re working on someone’s house next door
and try and turn one job into two.
– Yeah, so typically how we structure
our business plan for the day
is we schedule one house from an ad
or that we’ve knocked on a previous day
and we schedule one house per day,
like per morning or whenever we start working.
And then when we get to that house,
normally one person starts cleaning
while the other goes knocking
to line up the rest of the day.
And that’s how we’re able to fill up our schedule so often
just ’cause we hardly have that name.
And so we can say, “Oh, Michelle, down the road,
like that’s where we’re at.”
And that builds that level of trust.
We’re more likely to land the client.
– Yeah, leaning on the job that you were able to book
and then being able to say,
“As soon as we’re done there, we’ll come over here.”
Versus, “Well, let’s book it.”
Like, well, the motivation might wane if you wait too long.
We’re only gonna schedule one per day
and then trust and hope that we can get some more jobs
to fill up the schedule.
– Yeah, when people are calling you out,
usually they got a couple of people
that are asking for a quote.
And so you’re trying to just beat those other people.
But when you’re doing door to door,
you know, there’s that appeal of the homeowner
to just like get it done right away.
And so, you know, you’re not really competing
with other people and the homeowner just loves the fact
that like, okay, these guys can do it in literally an hour.
They can get me a price in 30 seconds.
Like, I might as well just hear the price
and then, you know, if I want it done today,
like that’d be great.
What both the jacks showed me was that the money’s out there
if you’re willing to go and get it.
And maybe they had the advantage of youth
when knocking on doors,
but I still think there’s a big opportunity
in local home services, lawn care, window washing,
house cleaning, car detailing, gutter cleaning, you name it.
Another side hustle I just couldn’t help
but tell people about was Wayne Seminoff’s
junk land flipping business highlighted in episode 629.
Wayne holds the record as the most experienced
side hustle show guest at age 81 when we recorded.
And he said he’s been doing his unique land business
for the last 40 years.
Now, the name of the game here is to find
these unwanted, unloved vacant parcels.
Maybe they’ve got title issues.
Maybe they’re too small to get a building permit.
Maybe there’s no sewer or septic.
Wayne picks a handful of these up every year
at the tax auction or sometimes is able to make a deal
with a seller before the public sale
and then opens up his bag of tricks
and works with City Hall to make the lot buildable.
It’s more like legal and red tape work
than it is bulldozers and hammers.
But if you can get that stamp of approval
for a building permit, all of a sudden
that lot is worth 10 to 100 times what he paid for it.
– And the key to it is pretty simple.
Generally, junk land is junk because you can’t build on it.
But I found there was like seven tools you can use
to change junk land into buildable land.
And one is like variances.
You get a variance from the building code
or let’s say you need a boundary line adjustment
or title problems or whatever the problem is
on the property, if you can isolate that problem
and then correct it, your value dramatically increases
a hundred times, I mean like literally a hundred times.
I’ll give you an example of that as I bought a property
a year ago in Issaquah, which is a really hot area,
bought a half acre lot with water, sewer, power,
road access right across from Target
and I paid $1,000 for it.
And then the reason I bought it for $1,000
is the guy who’d owned it for like 20 years
couldn’t sell it to anybody because it had a title problem.
He couldn’t get clear title from a title insurance company.
So he was gonna let it go in the tax sale.
So I called him before the tax sale and I said,
“Hey, are you gonna let it go in the tax sale?”
And he says, “Yes, I’m gonna let it go in the tax sale.”
And I go, “Well, I’ll buy it from you
“and don’t let it go in the tax sale.”
And I said, “I’ll give you $500 for it.”
And he goes, “No, no, no, no, no, no, you think I’m crazy?”
And I said, “Well, how much do you want for it?”
And he goes, “I’ll take $1,000 for it.”
– I need to pause and say like any piece of land
just given the path of development in this area
is worth significantly more than even $1,000.
So you’re thinking, he’s like,
“Hey dude, don’t low ball me, come on.
“I know what I’m sitting on.”
But he’s like, “No, I didn’t really want that much more.”
– It always shocks me and I always come back
do that low ball thing.
And they always come back with low, low counter offers.
And so he said, “If you write me,
“if you send me $1,000, I’ll sign over the deed to you.”
And so I’m gonna sister owned it.
So I got his sister and him to sign it.
And we did, I just sent him the deed electronically.
And then I venmoed him the money.
So he had the money immediately.
And then he just sent it back to me.
And I had a deal.
So then I took this gorgeous piece of land,
right now it’s zoned for one unit.
In that area, one unit of land is worth $500,000,
one housing unit.
And so I went to my attorney and I said,
“I need to do a quiet title on clear of this title.”
And I looked into what the problems were on the title
and I found some supporting data to give to the attorney
to make the title quiet title action go smoother.
And it took him four and a half months.
And then the four and a half months he gave me clear title
and I got a title report that says,
“I’m the sole owner of the property
and nobody else can challenge it.”
And now today that $1,000 property is worth $500,000
right now.
– Yeah, so you have $1,000 into it plus some legal fees.
– Yeah, they cost me $15,000 for clearing the title.
So for $16,000, I’m gonna make $500,000.
– Right, wow.
That sounds pretty good, right?
That’ll get people on their toes, right?
But that’s not enough.
Okay, so this lot is subdividable.
So I’m applying for a short subdivision.
I’m gonna split the lot in two.
And two lots in that area are worth $1,000,000.
So in four months from now,
when the short subdivision is over in Issaquah,
I’ll have two separate lots
and I’ll have $1,000,000 worth of land.
For about $25,000 total investment,
I’ll have a million dollar property.
– Now, there’s a lot to unpack here,
but it was such an interesting conversation.
And Wayne just happened to be local to me.
It definitely got me looking
at some vacant parcels nearby.
I think the side hustle might be best
if you’ve got a little bit of legal background,
maybe a little bit of real estate background.
You enjoy a little bit of a treasure hunt.
And I got the impression that at this stage of his life,
Wayne’s just in it for the game, the thrill of the big win.
And I could be wrong on that, but that was my impression.
Episode 629, fascinating one, definitely check it out.
And I think what I love most about my job
is even 11 years into the show,
I’m still coming across people like Wayne,
people like Cheryl, people like Chris
with the billboard business who’ve got businesses
I’ve never heard of, never thought about before.
Number nine on our list of the best side hustles of the year
is Debbie Gartner’s digital products business on Etsy.
This is episode 637.
This episode stood out to me for a few reasons.
First, it’s low risk, low overhead.
It’s a business where you can sell the same product
to multiple different customers.
That always appeals to me.
Second, it wasn’t an overnight hit.
It took Debbie a couple of years
of admittedly very part-time effort
to build the business to $1,000 a week
or around $4,000 a month.
I think a lot of people will see that result,
but not the slow, consistent asset building effort
that it took together.
And third, what was maybe most interesting to me
was her product idea generation methods,
which went all the way back to her as a kid thinking,
well, what did she really like to do?
Just like with blogging, you start with what do you know?
What do you like and how can you leverage that?
So the simplest thing, like a blood pressure,
one page tracker is all I did.
I did other things like that.
And then I started getting into games
because I’ve always loved games.
So I created a July 4th trivia game
just because I had a blog post on my website
that was for July 4th fireworks in my county.
So I did that.
And of course it was, I don’t know, November.
So it wasn’t very relevant.
Oh, okay.
You gotta skate where the puck is going, right?
Okay, come July, there’s gonna be some demand for this, okay?
Exactly.
So then I said, okay, I made it done,
but it proves to me that there’s an opportunity here.
So now let me do another trivia game.
So I did a trivia game for Thanksgiving.
And then I said, okay, well, there’s Hanukkah
and there’s Christmas.
And you just keep going through all the different holidays.
I would do that, I would do different games.
And I just had fun with that
because it was really interesting.
I just enjoyed it.
There was the solar eclipse this year.
So I did several solar eclipse games.
So whatever is kind of of the moment or coming up,
let’s call it two to three months in advance,
I would do it.
And then I would just keep doing different things.
I was interested in or that I wanted to learn more about.
And that’s kind of how I did it.
At some point I had this realization
that when I was younger, like in high school,
I had this conversation with one of my friends
in math class, like what do you wanna do when you grow up?
And I told them I wanted to be a puzzle master.
Okay, okay.
You know, like Will Shortz does,
except at that point in time, Will Shortz,
I didn’t know who he was.
He wasn’t anyone famous,
but I’m like, I want to do something like that,
but there’s no such job.
So I just went to college and had a regular job.
– Yeah, like a virtual escape room coordinator
or that’s a really interesting one.
I had a similar net ’cause now you’re making money
doing that, like taking it back to high school.
I had, you know, my job shadow day
would have been junior or senior year.
It was going down to like the sports broadcast office
for Channel Five in Seattle.
And it was like, yeah, it’s super irrelevant
to what I’m doing today.
And then my buddy was like, you’re kind of in media.
You know, that seems actually pretty relevant.
So I was like, oh, it’s kind of this weird full circle moment
of, yeah, I guess it’s kind of in this broadcast media
in a way.
– Exactly, there’s so many things I’ve done in my life
in different jobs and different courses I took
in college or high school or just, you know,
continuing ed courses or hobbies or anything.
And so then I just kept going through my brain like,
what do I like?
What am I interested in?
And then I would try to understand,
is there a need for whatever that is?
Do a little bit of keyword research, try some stuff out.
Some of it worked, some of it didn’t.
Then do more of what works like rinse and repeat.
And that’s basically what it is.
– So I’m picturing like a trivial game,
like trivial pursuit where I’ve got a bunch of these cards,
like these, you know, question cards
that people are cutting out at home.
It’s just like a big list.
Like tell me just like a little bit of the structure
of what the product looks like.
– Exactly.
So you can’t use trivial pursuit
because that’s a trademark,
but you can take games like that or something else
and call them something else
and make sure you don’t use the trade colors of them
or anything like that.
But yes, that’s exactly the idea.
And what happens is when you make some products,
Essie recommends other products that are like this.
And you kind of can’t help but notice other games.
So as I start creating more games,
I see more games that are available.
And then I try those and then some work, some don’t.
And then whichever ones of those work,
I make more of those.
And then I get more suggestions
and then it gets my brain going
because I am not naturally a creative person, like not at all.
– I don’t know.
I’ll give yourself some credit.
You’ve been creating content on the internet
for 14 years here.
– Well, you get better at it.
So the point is you don’t need to be creative.
My mom would always say, “You’re so creative.”
I’d say, “No, I’m not.”
Really honestly, I’m good at creative problem solving,
but I’m not a creative person.
But it doesn’t matter because you can just learn it
because as you do it, you become more creative.
Just like I did not know anything about flooring,
but you learn it.
And then I became good at home decor.
So you just, as your interest level increases,
your curiosity does too.
And then so does your knowledge.
They all work together.
And then ideas, they just come to you.
It’s like, I don’t even try anymore.
I can, I mean, you’ve seen one of my things where I wrote,
like I have 1014 ideas of things I can create on Etsy.
– I hope that little sample sparks some inspiration
to start thinking about what kind of digital products
you could create or even a little bit broader,
what kind of side hustle might be in your wheelhouse?
Episode 637 with Debbie, The Flooring Girl Gartner.
All right, let’s bring it home with number 10.
To round out this list,
I wanna highlight Skyler Sullivan’s remote cleaning business.
And let this be an example of or a lens into
any number of drop servicing style businesses
where you’re essentially playing a matchmaker
between qualified service providers
and people who need that work done.
You’ve got a little more skin in the game
than with Meow’s website rental model,
but I would say their cousins.
Business models are related.
In Skyler’s case, it was super impressive
building Nebraska Elite Cleaning to $60,000 a month
as a side hustle in episode 645,
just aired a couple of weeks ago.
The premise here is to build a strong online brand
in presence, nail the operations and logistics,
and then find people who are excited
to do the delivery for you.
In fact, that’s where Skyler recommended starting.
After all, if you book a job
and you don’t have anyone to go out and do it,
it’s gonna be you.
And that’s not the end of the world,
but that wasn’t his ultimate goal.
I asked him how he sourced and onboarded new cleaners
so then he could go out and market the business.
– Yeah, well, everybody’s cleaned.
I’ve cleaned before, you know, don’t love it,
but everybody’s clean.
And so cleaning to me is like,
you don’t have to be a star or a machine.
Yeah, we can learn tips and tricks
and be more efficient and be better.
But if you’re just detailed and diligent,
anybody can do it.
If you’re high character, detailed and diligent,
you probably, anybody can do it.
And then after that,
I mean, there’s tips and tricks for different chemicals,
but so that’s what I knew.
That’s what I knew is that it doesn’t take a master.
I just need to find some people who are probably good
and maybe they’ve worked in a hotel or something like that.
So I would use Indeed, Facebook a little bit,
but Craigslist, Indeed was really, really helpful at first.
And then after I found a couple,
we would use referrals from cleaners
who knew other cleaners who, you know, had worked out.
So what’s that pitch like though?
The pitch is like, hey, I just created
an elite cleaning company,
a company that I’m looking for pros.
We are pros, we have a professional mantra
and I’m looking for pros like you,
based on your resume and who you are, you know,
does this sound like something you’d be interested in,
you know, making some more money and taking more jobs?
And most of the time it’s yes, not always, but most of the time.
– Okay, so it’s like the pitch is,
we’re building this elite culture.
We’d love for you to be a part of it if that’s a fit
and we’ll help you fill up your schedule.
We’ll help you get more hours.
– Absolutely, yep, exactly.
We’ll help you fill up your schedule.
All you have to worry about is doing the cleaning.
We’ll do the, you know, the scheduling.
We’ll do the notes.
All you have to do is just show up, do the cleaning.
You have to worry about reschedules
and collecting payments.
We’ll take care of all that for you.
– Got it.
And so it appeals to the people who want,
kind of like an easy button way.
I mean, of course it’s still manual labor,
but like they don’t have to be the entrepreneur.
They don’t have to be the marketer.
You don’t have to be the administrator.
Like they can just be, you just show up and do the work.
You know, I think a lot of people
are looking for something like that.
– Yeah, exactly.
Advertising, they don’t have to worry about sales,
negotiation with customers, customer cancellations,
getting payments, you know,
in the communication with customers,
it can be literally 24/7.
Like we’ll get calls, texts from people
and all day, all night.
And so if you’re not an entrepreneur
or don’t have that mindset,
you can get walked over by customers as well
or taken advantage of.
– What’s typical in terms of an hourly rate
or a payment per clean?
Or how do you have things structured with the cleaners?
– We like to be around that $25, $25 an hour ish,
because they’re also supplying equipment
of their own equipment as well,
their own cleaning supplies and driving there.
So $25 and then they get tips as well.
And it can be a little bit higher around that.
– Schuyler went on to explain
that he typically would aim for a 40 to 50% margin
on the residential jobs he’d book,
lower on commercial cleaning work
because it’s more competitive and more frequent,
like lower margin, but higher volume, if that makes sense.
And I highlight Schuyler’s business
because it’s another one like Christie’s
where you could replicate it
in any number of different niches.
The key is looking for an industry
that’s pretty fragmented, like cleaning,
where there really aren’t any single companies
that you could probably think of
that command a big chunk of market share.
On top of that, like we might have talked about
in that episode, it’s an industry
where the pie keeps getting bigger.
It’s a chore that more and more people
are choosing to hire out.
So you don’t necessarily need to conquest business
from another provider.
Again, episode 645, remote cleaning business.
That’s number 10 on our list.
To recap, number one was the $100 a day challenge
with Jackie Mitchell.
Number two was the website rental business,
the rank and rent model.
Number three was vending machines.
I think we could all use a money-making robot in our life.
Number four was the billboard business.
You’ll never look at billboards the same way again.
Number five was photo organizing.
Number six was software consulting,
highlighting the piggyback principle,
go where there’s already some level of demand
and establish some credibility and expertise there.
Number seven was window washing,
one of our college side hustles examples.
Number eight was the super, super interesting
junk land flipping business,
looking for those unloved parcels
and making them buildable.
Number nine was digital products on Etsy,
an example of creating something once,
selling it over and over again.
And number 10 was Skyler’s remote cleaning business.
If you want to learn more about
any of these individual businesses,
make sure to check out those specific episodes.
Again, I will link those up in the show notes.
And for the sake of convenience,
I put them all into a Spotify playlist for you,
which is also linked up in the show notes,
sidehustlenation.com/bestof24,
or just hit the link in the episode description
and it’ll get you right over there.
Big thanks to all our incredible guests
for sharing their insight.
Thanks to our sponsors for helping make
this content free for everyone.
That is it for me.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
and I’ll catch you in the next edition
of The Side Hustle Show.
The end of the year is upon us, which means it’s time to reflect back on the side hustles that stood out — the ones that got people talking and that I was most excited to share.
“Best” is always subjective. But what marks a good episode is when I hang up the call, thinking, “I need to drop what I’m doing and go do something else. I should totally do that.”
And I try and exercise some level of discipline and restraint because the shiny object syndrome is real.
But when the shiny object shines for me, I know it’s going to be a hit episode.
So here are the top 10 side hustles for 2024.
(Here is the Spotify playlist to make it easy to go add that to your device: Best Side Hustles of the Year 2024)
Full Show Notes: The 10 Best Side Hustles of the Year
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
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