AI transcript
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0:01:08 If you had $5,000 to invest, which side hustle would you do? Now, starting with money is definitely
0:01:13 better slash easier than starting with no money, but I’m not sure that’s the right question because
0:01:18 there’s a lot of things you could go out and spend $5,000 on. You could go get a beat-up pickup truck,
0:01:22 you could start a moving service, you could buy 3D printers and try and sell that stuff,
0:01:27 you could buy a vending machine and try and find a good location for it, you could invest in some
0:01:34 specific side hustle training and go do that thing. But what all of those neglect is what’s important to
0:01:40 you. What do you care about? What unique skills, interests, connections do you have? What types of people
0:01:46 do you love working with? It’s kind of like asking, what’s the best side hustle? I don’t know. I’ve been
0:01:50 covering this stuff for 12 years, and I still don’t know. There are certainly some that are better than
0:01:55 others that we’ve come across when it comes to their upside and their profit potential, but there’s
0:02:02 no return without risk. The $5,000 is better to have than not having it, but it’s almost irrelevant.
0:02:09 Is it best, quote unquote, best to start a software company because some guy on some podcast said,
0:02:14 well, those can be really profitable. Well, not if you don’t have some level of validation on product
0:02:20 market fit, I would venture that millions, maybe even billions, have been spent building stuff that
0:02:26 nobody wanted. It’s an expensive education. So absolutely great that you got some savings for
0:02:32 startup costs. That’s a really strong position to be in. And what it really does is it just opens up
0:02:38 the playbook of potential side hustles a little bit wider than if you didn’t have it. But unfortunately,
0:02:43 you still got to go through that decision phase, that ideation phase of figuring out,
0:02:48 what problem can I solve in the market? There’s a few different exercises and frameworks to help
0:02:54 with that in episode 683. Or you can just binge on the archives and see what kind of inspiration
0:03:00 strikes. That question came in from Kylie. And this is the 18th installment of Q&A with Nick.
0:03:05 Appreciate you joining me today. And every day you put a little side hustle show in your earbuds.
0:03:10 This is the podcast to help you make extra money in your spare time. And we’ve got more questions and
0:03:15 answers to help you do just that today. Question two comes in from Amanda. She says,
0:03:21 we live in a small town. I’ve got two little kids under two that I take care of all day. I’ve sold
0:03:26 some homemade preserves, pesto and other homemade products on Facebook. But they’re kind of one off
0:03:34 sales. Any ideas on what I can do, preferably from home? Well, Amanda, kudos to you. Two under two is
0:03:39 what I like to call survival season. It doesn’t have to be side hustle season. So lots of respect for you for
0:03:45 even trying to do something productive with little ones underfoot. I know for me, nothing happened when
0:03:50 my kids were that age, unless it was nap time. But you know, give me a one and a half hour toddler
0:03:55 nap time. Oh, I can knock out some podcast editing and some other blog post stuff during that time.
0:04:00 But the fact that you’re already making some sales with homemade products tells me you’ve definitely
0:04:05 got some entrepreneurial instincts and admire you for even trying to get something off the ground. So
0:04:10 let’s see if we can build on something that’s already working. So you’ve got some proven validation here.
0:04:16 People are already buying your stuff. Is there a way to turn those one off sales? Sure, there was some
0:04:21 interest, there was some demand around when we posted it, but then it kind of falls off or maybe it’s somewhat
0:04:27 seasonal. So could we turn those one off sales into more recurring revenue? Could we partner with a local
0:04:33 coffee shop or cafe and have them be kind of a regular like a wholesale customer for your preserves or for
0:04:38 your pesto or something like that? Could you for the customers you’ve already sold to, could you expand
0:04:46 into a meal prep or meal planning type of service for local customers instead of this one off sale,
0:04:51 it becomes something that you do every week or every month if you have capacity for that? Could you
0:04:57 partner with a local shop that likes to sell, you know, locally made type of products? There’s a handful
0:05:02 of those in our town that kind of come to mind. And so I could, I could see like a cutesy little
0:05:08 packaging jar of jam or preserves and, you know, people would pay a premium price for that if it’s even
0:05:14 remotely touristy or something like that. Another idea that comes to mind is we’ll teach you other people
0:05:21 how to do this. It sounds kind of interesting, unique, almost, you know, homesteady in a way where
0:05:27 I think people would be interested in learning this stuff either in person or online. Maybe you could
0:05:34 film during nap time or put a class up on out school or something like that. We’ve seen some examples of
0:05:41 guests on the show doing pretty well there with a more unique type of class. And maybe there’s something
0:05:47 like that. I’m a little bit reminded of my friend Jen who started her custom cookie business. She is at
0:05:54 SoHereIsTheDough. She started this when her twins were really little. And so it was a lot of local word of
0:06:01 mouth with other moms. Instagram was big. Custom orders for parties. She would do big cookie batches for
0:06:07 holidays and decorate them really nicely. I think those were mostly pre-sold so she didn’t end up with a bunch of
0:06:11 wasted inventory. Oh shoot, I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of cookies and nobody wanted them.
0:06:14 She’s like, no, no, I’m going to reduce my risk. I’m only going to make what I’ve already sold.
0:06:22 And because they were so cute and unique, she commanded premium prices for them, like $50 a dozen,
0:06:29 I want to say. So she was on episode 403, if you want to go way back in the archives to find that one.
0:06:35 Or I could be way off base and you actually hate cooking, in which case a pivot to something purely
0:06:41 online might make sense where your small townness doesn’t really matter at all. Data annotation,
0:06:47 prolific freelancing, some remote virtual assistant service, you know, remote agency type of model,
0:06:53 something like that. Flexible, limited hours for nap time or after bedtime. The good news is you’re
0:06:58 already making sales and that’s the hardest part, proving demand. So now it’s just kind of a matter
0:07:03 of systemizing or finding something that you want to scale. And again, seasons of life is totally okay
0:07:09 to just be present with these two little kids and not worry about a side hustle at this point if you have
0:07:14 the financial breathing room and the flexibility to do just that. Question three was from Glenn who says,
0:07:21 for privacy reasons and workplace relationships, I’d like to set up a website, LLC and email newsletter,
0:07:26 but I want to do it anonymously. Do you have any experience with virtual addresses or would you
0:07:33 recommend any alternative solutions? So Glenn, on the website side of things, what you can do is use
0:07:41 domain privacy protection or domain privacy registration, something it’s called. A lot of registrars are going
0:07:48 to charge you 10 or 15 bucks extra for this. Most of my domains are now registered at Porkbun, which I
0:07:55 want to say includes this free who is registration privacy in their registration fee. So that is one
0:07:59 way to do that on the website side. Then all you got to do is be professionally vague when it comes to
0:08:05 your about page or create nowadays an AI avatar to represent the brand. Like Hey Jen, even if you want to
0:08:10 do video, Hey Jen is looking really realistic these days. On the virtual address side of things,
0:08:18 I’ve used these. This is like my local neighborhood UPS store mailbox, which is around 20 bucks a month,
0:08:24 but it saves me from having to put my home address in the footer of my emails. So on the email side,
0:08:30 yes, you can use a virtual address like that. I use a PO box for years and years. It just has to be a
0:08:36 real address where you can receive mail. And I believe that’s the canned spam requirement. And you’ve seen
0:08:40 this at the bottom, like the footer of every email will have some kind of mailing address. And then you just
0:08:46 got to put the brand name or the persona that you create in the from field, which is really common.
0:08:51 I get emails from brands and not individuals all the time. So I don’t see any issues there. Now,
0:08:56 depending on the type of content or service at some point, it does get a little weird. Like,
0:09:03 am I going to sign up for a high ticket service without talking to a real person? Probably not.
0:09:08 So you’re gonna have to build that trust and maybe one-on-one with clients. It’s okay to be you.
0:09:13 You just don’t want to broadcast it to the world. I get that. And then on the LLC side,
0:09:17 most states are going to allow you to use what’s called a registered agent service,
0:09:23 like Northwest Registered Agent or even LegalZoom probably, which keeps your home address off the
0:09:28 public record. Delaware and Wyoming, they’re popular choices for privacy reasons, but I’ve always just
0:09:35 gone with my home state for the sake of simplicity there. Now, marketing anonymously can be challenging,
0:09:40 but maybe less so than it has been in the past because it seems like it’s becoming more and more
0:09:46 common, especially on platforms like Reddit, especially on platforms like Twitter or X, where
0:09:50 you see anonymous accounts can do pretty well. Car dealership guy, I want to say it was one.
0:09:55 There was another one talking about watches. So there’s some precedence for that. Maybe a little
0:10:02 bit harder on the SEO side, since I think still Google is valuing the source, trying to triangulate
0:10:08 author information with broader trust and credibility signals that this person has the expertise and
0:10:13 authority to be writing about what they’re writing about. But maybe we can put our heads together for
0:10:18 an episode on anonymous or faceless side hustles. I think that would be really interesting, though
0:10:25 may be hard to find a guest for. Question four was from Mark, who says, how do I even get started
0:10:29 with AI? Well, Mark, it depends on what you want to do. It’s a pretty broad question here, but I would
0:10:35 challenge you to start integrating it into your day to day life and work just to get a sense of what’s
0:10:40 capable. For example, I signed up for Function this year. This is like the health blood testing
0:10:45 service. Functionhealth.com, I think is the site. So generally looking good. It gave me a biological
0:10:51 age, a decade younger than my actual self. So I felt really good about that. But my LDL cholesterol
0:10:58 numbers were higher than the normal range. So I talked to my doctor about that and got kind of this
0:11:03 unsatisfactory kind of hand wavy response. Well, yeah, everybody’s as high. It’s like, well,
0:11:09 the average person is also unhealthy and obese. Like there’s no desire to be average here. And it just
0:11:14 felt like he was kind of dismissing it. And so what I did was punch that in. I said, hey, chat GPT,
0:11:19 I’m going to upload some blood work results. You know, what questions do you need to know
0:11:24 to help me come up with an action plan here? And it, you know, asked me about height, weight,
0:11:28 exercise, diet, family history, all that stuff. So I punched that back in and said, okay, here’s,
0:11:34 here’s the test results. And it said, and it was just an image. Like it just, it read the image.
0:11:39 It was really cool. And say they, you know, it kind of created this own little table summary of the
0:11:44 results that these are good. This is higher than normal. Yes. But in the context of everything
0:11:50 else, here’s why it’s actually looking good. And it gave such a more in-depth response than the doctor
0:11:54 did. And, you know, he’s pressed for time and all that jazz, but it was a much more satisfying
0:11:58 experience that I could do kind of asynchronously as I was able to collect the data and not have to
0:12:04 wait six months for an appointment. And it said, you know, look, I wouldn’t stress about this. You know,
0:12:08 I don’t think you’re a cardio risk. And here’s why, if you really want to do something like here,
0:12:13 you could try this, this, and this, it was like such a cool experience. Now on the work side,
0:12:20 what I’m doing is having, having the AI fill in content gaps, like here’s, you know, I’ll take the
0:12:24 first crack at it still. Like, you know, I’m going to come up with my listicle or, you know, 10 best
0:12:30 whatevers. And, but then I’ll ask the same question. Oh, and inevitably it comes up with one or two,
0:12:34 like, Oh, that was good. I didn’t think about that. And so you could add that into the content.
0:12:42 AI takes the first crack at editing transcripts for a lot of episodes where I will upload the
0:12:47 transcript. And it’s done enough of these now where it’s kind of knows the side hustle show style. And
0:12:50 sometimes it’s more aggressive than I would like it to be like, no, no, no, don’t, don’t cut that.
0:12:56 But it is suggesting kind of natural ad breaks and giving me teaser scripts for those. So it is
0:13:02 improving my workflow or saving me some time on the post-production side of things before I hand it
0:13:09 off to the editor. It is helping summarize episodes for show notes, which has sped up the work for the
0:13:15 summarizer writer person that creates those detailed show notes for the website. And there’s really a lot
0:13:20 of different use cases. I know I’m just scratching the surface and plan to try and build out a few more
0:13:27 projects or agents to automate even more workflows. It sounds kind of daunting, but it’s also really
0:13:34 exciting to do because if it works, it frees me up to do, you know, frees me up from these, you know,
0:13:39 tedious nuts and bolts, you know, weekly recurring type of tasks to do more of what I like, you know, creating
0:13:46 content, brainstorming new ideas, new projects, or just taking time off with the family, like been grateful to do a lot of
0:13:52 over the summer. So Mark, I would start with what you’re already interested in or curious about without
0:13:56 the pressure of, well, how do I use AI to make money today? I think that puts a lot of pressure on the
0:14:02 situation and instead look for ways to integrate it into what you’re already doing. And you might find
0:14:08 as you get into it, you stumble onto something useful that maybe you can turn around and offer as a product
0:14:15 or service to other people. Specifically on the vibe coding side, using AI to generate digital products and
0:14:24 software specifically, I recommend our episode with Pete McPherson, number 659. And just to get the juices
0:14:30 flowing on what’s possible, we’ve done a couple crowdsourced roundup style episodes featuring dozens of
0:14:39 side hustle show listeners on how they’re using AI. Those are 566 and 677 in your podcast feed. And of
0:14:44 course, I’m going to link up all of these episodes that we’re referencing in the show notes for this
0:14:49 episode. Or rather, maybe I can have the AI do that. But in any case, I’m going to be right back with more
0:14:56 Q&A right after this. Years ago, this is probably 2009, I’m sitting in this conference in Santa Barbara
0:15:02 and the presenter asks this question, are you working on your business or are you working in your
0:15:09 business? I saw myself as this full-time entrepreneur, but it was this moment of clarity that, no, I was
0:15:13 still very much working in the business day to day. So when I got back home, that’s when I made my first
0:15:19 full-time hire. It was the first in a long series and an ongoing series of steps in trying to take
0:15:26 control by being okay of letting go of certain tasks. Now, when you find yourself in that position
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0:17:12 Question five came in from Helen who asked, in your podcast episode, you often discuss using Google or
0:17:18 other platforms trending search data so you can sell what people are searching for. However, I don’t know
0:17:24 how to get that information. So Helen, my apologies for not taking a pause and talking about these different
0:17:29 tools in the moment there. But there are a lot of different resources in this space. Some of them
0:17:35 are free. Some of them are paid. Like I have an HRF subscription, A-H-R-E-F-S. Other guests have
0:17:40 mentioned SEMrush, another paid tool to help out with keyword research. But on the free side, a few
0:17:45 ones I think are worth checking out just for broad level, you know, market research type of stuff.
0:17:50 Google Trends, it’s trends.google.com. They’ll, you know, you can punch in any keyword and you
0:17:55 can see, is this increasing or decreasing? Or did it already peak? Am I on the downhill slope of this
0:18:00 thing? And it’s hard to predict what the future holds, but you know, I’ll let’s be an equal. I want
0:18:05 to catch a rising tide here. If you create a Google ads account, which I think you can do for free,
0:18:11 they have internally built a tool called Keyword Planner. If you just Google, you know, Google Keyword
0:18:17 Planner, it should come up and it’ll give you the approximate search volume of different terms in
0:18:23 there as well. And it gives a range, or at least it used to like, oh, one to 5,000 searches a month or
0:18:28 10 to 50,000, you know, something like that. But it gives you a sense to compare and contrast different
0:18:33 options there. Another one that I have used off and on for years is a Chrome extension called Keywords
0:18:39 Everywhere, which is kind of cool. An overlay in your browser, whereas you’re messing around with
0:18:43 Google, it’ll show you how many people search for that a month. It may even give you an estimate of
0:18:50 the difficulty around that term. And then Neil Patel bought the Uber Suggest tool. So if you look
0:18:57 up Uber Suggest, like Uber, like the ride-sharing service, Suggest, he’s got, I think, a free tier on
0:19:04 that plan as well. I think all those have a free tier or free plan. On Etsy-related sales,
0:19:09 eRank is the tool that has come up over and over again with Etsy sellers as their keyword research
0:19:16 tool of choice, looking for the green light of something with low competition and a high enough
0:19:20 search volume to make it worthwhile to try and build a product there. And then on YouTube, I’m using a
0:19:26 tool, a browser extension called TubeBuddy, T-U-B-E. And what this does is, or how I use it anyway,
0:19:32 allows me to punch in a bunch of different title variations for a video, and it’ll come back with a
0:19:39 score, which is based on the search volume and competitiveness of that keyword, where, and you
0:19:45 can, what’s mind-blowing is you can type in really similar variations and one score is a 23 and one
0:19:50 score is a 77. And like, well, I’m not married to one title over the other. So all it’s being, well,
0:19:54 I’m going to pick the one with the higher number, which theoretically is, you know, more volume or
0:19:59 easier to rank for. So I hope that helps on the keyword research side of things. Question six was
0:20:05 from Mary who asks, what are the apps that are going to pay me for just watching videos? So Mary, this
0:20:09 was kind of an interesting question. We actually wrote this article last year. There are surprisingly
0:20:16 several different apps that will pay you to watch videos, but in most cases, those videos are just a
0:20:21 code word for advertisements and the pay is really low. Now it would be one thing if you just stick
0:20:25 it in another room and let it play all day and rack up some passive income. I don’t care if it pays
0:20:30 pennies. It’s just running, running into the background at a low volume. But of course the advertisers are
0:20:34 onto that. They make you click on things. They make sure you’re really there. They make you answer a few
0:20:41 questions to earn your pennies. One that we tested was called slice the pie. It’s been around forever and
0:20:46 you can get paid to rate songs, commercials, movie trailers. It’s pretty tedious work, but they did
0:20:53 pay. It was still probably less than 10 bucks an hour, even if you’re fast. Another interesting one
0:20:59 that I came across last year was called Media Probe, which is a market research company. And so how it
0:21:07 works is you apply to be a Media Probe panelist. And if they approve you, they send you this like
0:21:13 electronic sensor that you wear and it measures your emotional response signals to what you’re
0:21:18 watching. Really, really kind of interesting stuff. I could picture this like for political debates or
0:21:23 something. So it doesn’t sound like you get to pick what you watch, but according to Media Probe,
0:21:29 the common use cases are for live sports, for entertainment programs, radio broadcast. And you just
0:21:35 want to get a sense of what gets a rise at you, essentially. Now, according to the site and users
0:21:41 online, you can typically earn the equivalent of $5 to $10 an hour, depending on how long the thing is
0:21:48 that you’re watching, paid through Amazon gift cards. Those are all fine options, those different
0:21:53 apps and tools. They’re probably not scalable. They’re probably not going to make much of a dent in your
0:21:59 budget. So to really get paid to watch videos, you got to think one level higher. For example, could you do
0:22:04 video captioning, although AI is probably eating that? Could you learn video editing and offer that
0:22:11 as a service? Could you learn an AI editing tool and use that in your workflow? Could you build a content
0:22:18 business around movie reviews? For years, some of the most popular podcasts, I swear, were built around
0:22:26 reacting to popular TV series. This is definitely a thing. We came across this YouTube channel last year
0:22:32 called Cat Watches Horror Movies, which the caption is something like, I’m terrified of horror movies.
0:22:36 Let’s watch them together. And it’s her reacting to scary movies on this YouTube channel. She’s over
0:22:42 100,000 subscribers now, probably earning at least a couple grand a month from this little, I assume,
0:22:49 aside project. Cat Watches Horror Movies. So different ways to turn video watching into an extra income
0:22:53 stream. Question seven is related to newsletter sponsorships. From Ryan, he says,
0:22:59 I run a newsletter. I noticed you’re a part of the Paved sponsor platform and wondering how it is.
0:23:03 How many sponsorships do you get from there a month? Do you do any other form of outreach to get
0:23:09 sponsors? What do you do? Draw in sponsors for your newsletter. So Ryan, no real risk in joining Paved or
0:23:19 other newsletter sponsor networks, so to speak. I’ve run 30 campaigns with them since 2022. So around one a
0:23:26 month, maybe a little bit less if my math is correct. So other sources of sponsorships are direct
0:23:31 relationships with advertisers, usually inbound. Actually, I don’t think I’ve done any outbound
0:23:38 marketing trying to sell that sponsorship spot. Kit has sourced a few deals lately, like my email
0:23:42 service provider Kit. So if you’re on Kit, it might make sense to plug yourself into their ads network.
0:23:47 A lot of the placements lately are pretty committed to podcast sponsors right now as part of their
0:23:53 package. But all in all, Paved, specifically in newsletter sponsorships more broadly, have been
0:24:00 kind of a nice little incremental income stream. Now, when I talked to Ryan Sneddon from Naptown Scoop,
0:24:08 this is a local newsletter focused on Annapolis, Maryland. He was selling five ad spots a day at a
0:24:15 $70 estimated CPM cost per thousand impressions. And he was selling these long-term packages and he was
0:24:21 selling out. And so this was worth a listen because he had this proactive outreach approach and he was
0:24:27 landing what stood out to me. He landed what he called an anchor tenant, this well-known local realtor
0:24:33 that lended a lot of credibility and social proof that allowed him to improve his conversion rate with
0:24:41 other advertisers. That was episode 615. And what Ryan had done, he kind of reached this golden
0:24:48 milestone of a dollar per subscriber per month in a town of 40,000 people. You know, he had 18,000 of
0:24:53 them on his newsletter. He had like half the town on his newsletter earning a dollar per subscriber per
0:24:58 month. But he was sending five days a week instead of, in my case, like five to six times a month. So
0:25:04 different ways to get sponsors and definitely a cool monetization angle, especially you can see
0:25:09 similar to podcast advertising. It’s like amplitude. How many people can you reach and frequency? You
0:25:13 know, how often can you reach them? So if you have a big list and you can send every day, like you can
0:25:18 really, really turn any of multiple spots in the newsletter and readers have come to expect that,
0:25:23 like it can turn into a really viable business. Question eight was from Valentina in the
0:25:28 side hustle nation Facebook group. She asks, I’ve been learning, drawing and painting lately.
0:25:33 What do you think are some good simple ways to earn money drawing? I don’t want to do portraits or
0:25:38 caricatures at markets because I don’t think I’m good at that. And I wouldn’t enjoy that. But I saw
0:25:43 someone in a touristy city selling handmade paintings and cards of the city views that sold quite well.
0:25:48 Pet portraits used to be a gold mine, but now everyone and their dog does them with AI. Can you think of
0:25:52 something else that would get me some quick bucks without spending time doing marketing? I don’t know if
0:25:57 there’s any quick bucks without doing any marketing. She says also no YouTube channels either. I’m not
0:26:02 that good. And there’s like a million of them made by highly trained professionals. Well, Valentina,
0:26:07 I think this is awesome that you are learning a new skill and looking for ways to monetize that.
0:26:13 We’ve got some several examples. I’ll get to that in a minute. One way that you might have taken a page
0:26:18 out of this selling handmade paintings of the city views and stuff like that would be approaching local
0:26:26 coffee shops, restaurants, businesses. But she fits is a local institution, a local landmark. I think you
0:26:32 could probably give the painting away to the owner of the business free, and then maybe they could sell
0:26:38 prints and then you could make a commission split on something like that as a way to market yourself.
0:26:44 You mentioned not wanting to do live portraits, but if you’d be open to selling pre-made work,
0:26:50 maybe the craft fair or farmer’s market circuit would be worthwhile. Those city view paintings
0:26:56 could be really cool, especially if you have five or ten different prints of local landmarks,
0:27:01 cute neighborhood scenes. I think that would be really a viable way to do it because I’m looking
0:27:07 at my parents’ house whenever I go over there. It seems like on every trip, at least for a while,
0:27:13 like on every trip they would get a little painting of where they went to commemorate the trip. In the
0:27:24 book 1K100 Ways, we profiled Wade from a business called googenius.com, who is making around $500 a week
0:27:31 teaching, drawing, and cartooning classes for kids. And he mentioned finding clients through Facebook and
0:27:35 with partnerships with local schools and art teachers, where it sounds like I’ll come in
0:27:39 and do a demo class and pass out flyers and the kids would take it back home and eventually want
0:27:45 to sign up with him. And so I thought that was a really cool business. And it sounds like you’re
0:27:51 still learning, but you’re probably a few steps ahead of these kids. And so maybe like the after
0:27:57 school class thing could be a thing. And also in that book, again, 1K100ways.com is where to find it.
0:28:03 We highlighted Jesse Spencer Smith, who specializes in these really cool pen and ink
0:28:08 architectural drawings of buildings. So he’s got over 100,000 followers on Instagram now,
0:28:15 which I imagine is generating quite a few commission requests from people who want him to draw their
0:28:21 house or their building next. And on the content creation side, I know you mentioned, I don’t want
0:28:28 to do YouTube. But there might be something to doing a daily drawing series, a daily drawing challenge,
0:28:33 especially if you can position it as like, look, I’m not the best artist in the world. I’m learning
0:28:39 right alongside with you. We talked about this recently with Pat Flynn, the power of a daily series
0:28:44 gets people following along, especially I want to hit follow because I don’t like, okay, it’s it’s
0:28:48 interesting. This video I saw was interesting, but I want to learn what comes next. I’m kind of
0:28:52 committed. Now I’m on this journey with you. And I think that can work really well with this
0:28:58 learn with me style of content. We’ve seen people do this in fitness, in dancing. I’m on a journey to
0:29:03 become a better dancer over the course of the year. We’ve seen people do it with side hustles. I think
0:29:09 it can work really well in art as well. Ryan Trahan’s 50 States in 50 Days series comes to mind,
0:29:14 right? Every day I’m going to tune in. It’s like now it feels like there’s a hole in our morning now
0:29:19 that it’s now that it’s over. So the other example, this is an interesting one we profiled
0:29:27 a few years ago. It was Priscilla Molina, and she was making money redesigning people’s signatures.
0:29:31 And I was like, well, when was the last time my autograph changed? Like probably middle school.
0:29:38 She is planet of names on TikTok and her website is planet of names where she charges 25 to $120
0:29:45 at least the time of this profile per custom signature. Each order included three different
0:29:52 unique signature concepts tailored to the customer’s desired style. You do simple, you do professional,
0:29:58 you do dramatic. And Priscilla says, look, people are unhappy with their current signatures. It doesn’t
0:30:03 match their personality. It doesn’t convey their desired image. I thought this was a really,
0:30:09 really creative way to monetize kind of a somewhat art, but somewhat calligraphy, like a handwriting
0:30:14 type of skill. And at that time, she shared in an Associated Press interview, she was earning around
0:30:21 $5,000 a month driven primarily from TikTok. And some of her most popular videos were just based around
0:30:27 drawing stylized versions of a single letter. Like here’s eight different ways to draw an H. It’s like,
0:30:33 this is, this is compelling content. It worked really well. And as a total aside, I think this
0:30:39 kind of makeover type of side hustle could work for other creative services too, like redesigning your
0:30:48 home studio, your fireplace mantle, your sales copy on your website, kind of doing a quick tear down and
0:30:53 then building it back up in a different way. That is question number eight about how to monetize
0:31:00 an art or drawing hobby. More Q&A, including a side hustle addict, my appearance on a TV commercial
0:31:06 and the most unique side hustle niches coming up right after this. You know, when you’re shopping
0:31:12 online and you see that little purple shop pay button at checkout, that’s a sign that the store you’re on
0:31:19 is one of the millions of businesses powered by our partner Shopify. Shopify makes it incredibly easy
0:31:23 to start and run your business. For starters, you don’t even have to start from scratch. They’ve got
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0:31:52 got. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it’s time to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your
0:31:58 one dollar per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to
0:32:08 Shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. I’m excited to partner with OpenPhone for
0:32:13 this episode. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer
0:32:19 communication for both calls and texts, all in one easy to use centralized hub. But before OpenPhone was
0:32:24 sponsoring podcasts, they took a more guerrilla marketing approach. You probably don’t remember
0:32:29 this. This is a while back. But when we just started OpenPhone, one of the ways that we got our first
0:32:35 customers is through Facebook groups. And I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, including yours. Thank you
0:32:41 for not kicking me out. But I posted a couple of times. And I actually remember seeing there were some of
0:32:48 your listeners and folks in your community interested in solving the problem we solve, which is not using your
0:32:54 personal phone number for work. And those posts got us some of our first customers. So thank you. It’s
0:33:00 a full circle moment. Oh, that’s super fun. Very cool. That’s Darina, the co-founder of OpenPhone. And
0:33:05 sure enough, her posts are still there. OpenPhone is offering SideHustle show listeners 20% off your first
0:33:13 six months at OpenPhone.com slash SideHustle. That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E, OpenPhone.com slash SideHustle.
0:33:18 And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra
0:33:24 charge. Question nine comes from Reddit user FarPen3186, who writes,
0:33:30 A friend of mine is really deep into the, quote unquote, make money online scene. I’m talking years of
0:33:36 YouTube uploads for a few hundred views, hundreds of Amazon reviews for maybe 250 bucks a month,
0:33:41 always chasing the next earn money while you sleep idea. It’s not that he’s lazy. He puts in a ton of
0:33:46 hours, but he completely avoids traditional jobs or careers with benefits, even though money’s always
0:33:52 tight. He does not understand opportunity cost. He’s got money problems. I’m worried about him.
0:33:59 So there is an element of shiny object syndrome here, chasing the latest thing. But it sounds like
0:34:04 your friend is able to focus and dedicate the time to push through, at least in the example of publishing
0:34:10 hundreds of Amazon reviews. And I get that there’s a very real opportunity cost in chasing side hustle
0:34:17 dreams or passive income dreams, especially at the expense of a traditional career. But I also
0:34:23 sympathize with your friend because I’ve been there at a low point in my own online business.
0:34:29 I contemplated going back to the corporate world, the steady paycheck, which would have been a lot
0:34:34 higher of a paycheck than what I was making on my own. And if he’s in the position of having near-term
0:34:41 money problems, the best near-term solution probably isn’t to upload another video in the hopes that
0:34:47 that that is the one that goes viral. The best near-term solution is probably to follow the pride,
0:34:53 get a job, at least to stabilize the finances. And that’s worst case. Worst case, stabilize your
0:34:57 finances. Best case, you build a new network, you get paid to learn some new skills, and you can tackle
0:35:03 your next side hustle project with a bit more of a safety net. But some people are never going to be
0:35:07 happy working for someone else. I’m probably in that camp. An entrepreneur, you’ve heard this quote,
0:35:13 is somebody who will work 80 hours for themselves to avoid working 40 for someone else. Now, I might
0:35:20 refer him back to the episode we did with Nathan Berry on the ladders of wealth creation, which
0:35:25 starts with active income. We want to skip straight to the passive stuff. I get it. I’ve been there too.
0:35:32 But the ladders of wealth creation starts with active income, trading time for money either at a job or as
0:35:38 a freelance service provider before climbing onto the more passive rungs of the ladder, agencies, products,
0:35:44 platforms, etc. And in that episode, Nathan says, yeah, you can skip some rungs, you can skip some steps, but you
0:35:51 can’t skip learning the skills. Now, there is some level of irony that people like your friend, and myself as
0:35:59 well, will work for hours, months, far below minimum wage, for the chance of one day making money while we’re not
0:36:06 working. That is a powerful draw. And it can take time. It was probably three years before this show
0:36:12 started earning a meaningful income on its own. But had I quit during those three years, had I quit before
0:36:19 that moment, I would never know this life. And that is a pretty scary thought. Question 10 came in from
0:36:25 Jason who asked, are you still married to your high school sweetheart? Jason, I don’t know. Are there some
0:36:31 rumors floating around? No, we’re still very happily married, spanning four decades of this
0:36:37 relationship to the late 1900s, as the kids say. The last year we celebrated 25 years together, which I
0:36:42 called our silver jubilee, and that definitely earned me an eye roll. In fact, going back to that last
0:36:48 question, it was during that low point when I was dusting off the old resume and thinking about starting to
0:36:55 look for a real job again, where my beautiful bride said something along the lines of, stop, pause,
0:37:01 time out. You’re going to be miserable. You can figure this out. And I did. And I’m so glad that
0:37:07 that was her advice at that time, instead of stressing about near term income. Question 11 came in from Chris.
0:37:14 He sent me a message. He said, wait, did I just see you on a CNBC commercial? Yes, yes, you did. So late last
0:37:20 year, CNBC was putting together a course on side hustles to complement the side hustle content that
0:37:28 they have under the CNBC Make It section of their site. And I’ve been a collaborator and a source for
0:37:32 them a bunch of different times. And I was pretty flattered when they invited me to be part of this
0:37:39 course. My friends Kathy from SideHustle.com, H-U-S-L, SideHustle.com, and Kevin from Financial Panther
0:37:46 were the other experts involved, along with myself. Now, this wasn’t a huge moneymaker, but they did pay
0:37:53 me for my travel to New York in a small performance slash appearance fee. I think less than a thousand
0:37:57 dollars, but sometimes you got to do it because it’s such a unique experience. When else are you going to
0:38:02 have a chance to do something like this? Now, originally we were going to shoot at 30 Rock, which
0:38:07 would have been super cool. I think Kathy shot her segments there, but Kevin and I were relegated to a
0:38:13 different studio space across the river. Still, I think it ended up being really well produced. It’s
0:38:20 shot in kind of a masterclass style where they fed us prompts or questions and then let us talk and
0:38:26 stitched it all together. It was a little weird and stressful with five other production professionals
0:38:32 in the room from, like, big media, this big media company, NBC, and, you know, having trying to be
0:38:41 on, so to speak, trying to balance brevity with enough meat to make it useful still. Very different
0:38:47 from my typical podcast recording in the spare bedroom studio. In any case, always enjoy visiting
0:38:54 New York. The big city energy is such a contrast from my day-to-day suburban life. It’s fun to step into
0:38:58 every once in a while. I feel like in New York, there’s, like, famous stuff around every corner.
0:39:04 It’s really cool. I got to do a tour of 30 Rock, even though I didn’t get to record there. I got to
0:39:09 host a little meetup for Side Hustle Show listeners. We had a pretty good turnout, including Kevin,
0:39:14 including Alex Gennadynick, who was one of the very first guests on the show, I think, like,
0:39:19 episode three. So it was cool to see him for the first time in a long time. And Mau Rios from the
0:39:24 Rank and Rent episode also came out. But that’s a roundabout way to say yes. That was
0:39:32 me briefly on a TV commercial for this CNBC-produced Side Hustle course. I will link that up in the
0:39:37 show notes if you want to go check it out. Again, it’s me. It is Kevin from Financial Panther and
0:39:44 Kathy from SideHustle.com. Question 12 is, should rich people have side hustles? So this is,
0:39:51 back in the spring, a few people sent me this Tina Fey clip where she is on Amy Poehler’s podcast
0:39:57 saying she’s got a problem with rich people having a side hustle. And specifically in the context of
0:40:04 celebrities slapping their name on a brand of alcohol or hair care or skin care when they very
0:40:09 clearly don’t need the money. Now, I don’t have a problem with this. Like, if George Clooney wants to
0:40:14 sell tequila in between movies or Rihanna wants to sell makeup in between songs, that’s fine,
0:40:18 right? They’re free to use the power of their personal brands however they want. But maybe
0:40:23 the more interesting way to frame it is for non-celebrity rich people. When is enough enough?
0:40:28 When’s enough to stop? Why can’t we be content with what we have? And I just asked Dustin Heiner
0:40:33 about this last month. Look, you’ve already got 30 plus houses. You live a great life. Why do you need
0:40:37 more? And he says, well, I got five kids. I’d love to be able to pass down 10 properties to each kid.
0:40:44 Legacy. And I think that’s a legit answer, even if it might be a little self-justifying. And in Dustin’s
0:40:50 case, he’s got the systems and processes in place where adding the incremental 15, 20 houses he needs
0:40:54 to get to that goal doesn’t take up that much more of his time because what you’d hate to see is
0:41:00 sacrificing time and presence with your family now in their formative years in the pursuit of something
0:41:08 that may not be necessary. The line I heard recently from Sean on My First Million was some people,
0:41:13 they’ve already earned the last dollar they’re ever going to spend. And now they’re trading good time,
0:41:19 good hours, good years for useless dollars. And that kind of hits you. They’re in it for the love
0:41:24 of the game or they just don’t know how to stop or they have this scarcity mindset, this fear of running
0:41:30 out or the goalposts keep moving. Some, you know, dad, well, how much is enough? Double, double what
0:41:35 I have. That’ll be enough. Right. And then once you get there, of course, it moves again. So I read the
0:41:42 die with zero book this year or late last year. Good read for that mindset shift. Very much written,
0:41:49 you know, by a rich person for rich people, but gets you thinking about how much is enough and trading
0:41:54 good hours for useless dollars. Like you may have already earned the last dollar you’re ever going
0:42:00 to spend. I think that was an interesting line. Now, I think about this all the time and the concept
0:42:06 of 18 summers. You get 18 summers with your kids at home and with our oldest being nine, we’re already
0:42:11 halfway there. That’s why I try and take as much time off during the summers as possible and have done
0:42:18 at least a month almost every year for the last seven years. Is there a cost to doing that? Of
0:42:24 course there is. But feeling rich in time is just as important and maybe even more so than feeling
0:42:28 rich with money. Should rich people have side hustles? Look, if that’s how they want to spend their
0:42:34 time, more power to them. Because after all, where does money come from? It comes from creating value
0:42:40 for other people. Question 13 came in from Brian who asked, what’s the most unique niche you’ve come
0:42:48 across? And this is honestly the best part of my job because there are no shortage of unique stories,
0:42:53 unique side hustle niches. And I mean, just this year we’ve heard from Charlotte Liebling reselling
0:42:59 stuffed animals that she gets donated. Never thought that would be a thing, but with some expert branding
0:43:06 positioning, she’s getting it done. Dean Kinzer built a business around his ancient coin collecting
0:43:11 hobby, turned into a YouTube content creator and reseller of ancient coins. You know, there’s a
0:43:18 niche within a niche of the coin collecting hobby. Hef Gerlach, who is running a business all about
0:43:24 Australian fantasy football, started with a fantasy football podcast. We talked to Summer Fisher, who is
0:43:30 making money renting out dresses, a unique rental business. And of course, no discussion about unique
0:43:36 niches would be complete without talking about Devin Ricks making money teaching video game classes on
0:43:41 outskool. Come hang out with me. We’ll play Zelda together. Like you can make money doing that. You can
0:43:48 make money doing anything, right? We went to the Rubik’s Cube competition this summer and the grand prize
0:43:54 is $5,000. Hey, if you, you can monetize just about any, uh, any skill here. And the winner was a kid,
0:43:57 right? It was a, you know, 11 year old kid or something like, you know, competing against all
0:44:02 the grownups, fast twitch muscle memory. I don’t know. Um, and then in some of our roundup episodes
0:44:08 of creative side hustles, we’ve seen stuff like pay what you want poetry, go hang out at a, you know,
0:44:13 popular area on the weekends and set up, set up shop with a old fashioned typewriter. I think I was
0:44:18 doing really well. We seen interior design for dorm rooms, thousands and thousands of dollars for
0:44:22 these dorm room setups, which blew my mind. It’s like, it’s such a temporary space. You’re going to
0:44:27 live here for nine months, but people pay in it. We saw, uh, headstones for pets, pretty significant
0:44:36 business, uh, on Etsy. We saw the baby name consultant charging anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 per name.
0:44:44 What a cool niche. And, uh, the white noise podcast, which was earning like $18,000 a month
0:44:49 on, um, I had to be a pre-roll ad, you know, I guess otherwise it would, that would interrupt the
0:44:56 white noise, but the white noise podcast, I came across a really interesting one in Seattle. This
0:45:00 is actually the same weekend that we went to the Rubik’s cube competition, but this was just up the
0:45:06 street from Pike place market in Seattle. So some pretty prime real estate and it was called the purple
0:45:12 store. And you want to know what the unifying theme of the purple store is? It’s just that every product
0:45:18 in there was purple. That was it. Purple clothes, purple books, purple mugs, purple shoes, purple
0:45:26 dog leashes, purple candy. But that was it. It was like catering people who love purple stuff. And I was
0:45:30 like, that’s, that’s a niche. It turns out they’ve been in business for over 20 years. Have to imagine
0:45:35 that they’re profitable despite what I imagine is pretty high rent there. So the purple store,
0:45:41 there’s a niche for everything, lots and lots of unique side hustle examples, side hustle niches
0:45:46 in the archives. Encourage you to check those out. We’ll link up some of those resources in the show
0:45:52 notes for this episode. So big thanks to all of our listeners, all of our readers, all of our subscribers
0:45:57 who submitted questions for this round. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for
0:46:03 everyone. Side hustle nation dot com slash deals is where to go all the latest offers from our sponsors
0:46:09 one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you’re finding value in the show, you can
0:46:15 help me out for free by simply texting it to a friend. Appreciate your help in spreading the word. Until next
0:46:20 time, let’s go out there and make something happen. And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show.
0:46:21 Hustle on.
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0:01:01 and see how much you could save. That’s PolicyGenius.com. And now, on to the show.
0:01:08 If you had $5,000 to invest, which side hustle would you do? Now, starting with money is definitely
0:01:13 better slash easier than starting with no money, but I’m not sure that’s the right question because
0:01:18 there’s a lot of things you could go out and spend $5,000 on. You could go get a beat-up pickup truck,
0:01:22 you could start a moving service, you could buy 3D printers and try and sell that stuff,
0:01:27 you could buy a vending machine and try and find a good location for it, you could invest in some
0:01:34 specific side hustle training and go do that thing. But what all of those neglect is what’s important to
0:01:40 you. What do you care about? What unique skills, interests, connections do you have? What types of people
0:01:46 do you love working with? It’s kind of like asking, what’s the best side hustle? I don’t know. I’ve been
0:01:50 covering this stuff for 12 years, and I still don’t know. There are certainly some that are better than
0:01:55 others that we’ve come across when it comes to their upside and their profit potential, but there’s
0:02:02 no return without risk. The $5,000 is better to have than not having it, but it’s almost irrelevant.
0:02:09 Is it best, quote unquote, best to start a software company because some guy on some podcast said,
0:02:14 well, those can be really profitable. Well, not if you don’t have some level of validation on product
0:02:20 market fit, I would venture that millions, maybe even billions, have been spent building stuff that
0:02:26 nobody wanted. It’s an expensive education. So absolutely great that you got some savings for
0:02:32 startup costs. That’s a really strong position to be in. And what it really does is it just opens up
0:02:38 the playbook of potential side hustles a little bit wider than if you didn’t have it. But unfortunately,
0:02:43 you still got to go through that decision phase, that ideation phase of figuring out,
0:02:48 what problem can I solve in the market? There’s a few different exercises and frameworks to help
0:02:54 with that in episode 683. Or you can just binge on the archives and see what kind of inspiration
0:03:00 strikes. That question came in from Kylie. And this is the 18th installment of Q&A with Nick.
0:03:05 Appreciate you joining me today. And every day you put a little side hustle show in your earbuds.
0:03:10 This is the podcast to help you make extra money in your spare time. And we’ve got more questions and
0:03:15 answers to help you do just that today. Question two comes in from Amanda. She says,
0:03:21 we live in a small town. I’ve got two little kids under two that I take care of all day. I’ve sold
0:03:26 some homemade preserves, pesto and other homemade products on Facebook. But they’re kind of one off
0:03:34 sales. Any ideas on what I can do, preferably from home? Well, Amanda, kudos to you. Two under two is
0:03:39 what I like to call survival season. It doesn’t have to be side hustle season. So lots of respect for you for
0:03:45 even trying to do something productive with little ones underfoot. I know for me, nothing happened when
0:03:50 my kids were that age, unless it was nap time. But you know, give me a one and a half hour toddler
0:03:55 nap time. Oh, I can knock out some podcast editing and some other blog post stuff during that time.
0:04:00 But the fact that you’re already making some sales with homemade products tells me you’ve definitely
0:04:05 got some entrepreneurial instincts and admire you for even trying to get something off the ground. So
0:04:10 let’s see if we can build on something that’s already working. So you’ve got some proven validation here.
0:04:16 People are already buying your stuff. Is there a way to turn those one off sales? Sure, there was some
0:04:21 interest, there was some demand around when we posted it, but then it kind of falls off or maybe it’s somewhat
0:04:27 seasonal. So could we turn those one off sales into more recurring revenue? Could we partner with a local
0:04:33 coffee shop or cafe and have them be kind of a regular like a wholesale customer for your preserves or for
0:04:38 your pesto or something like that? Could you for the customers you’ve already sold to, could you expand
0:04:46 into a meal prep or meal planning type of service for local customers instead of this one off sale,
0:04:51 it becomes something that you do every week or every month if you have capacity for that? Could you
0:04:57 partner with a local shop that likes to sell, you know, locally made type of products? There’s a handful
0:05:02 of those in our town that kind of come to mind. And so I could, I could see like a cutesy little
0:05:08 packaging jar of jam or preserves and, you know, people would pay a premium price for that if it’s even
0:05:14 remotely touristy or something like that. Another idea that comes to mind is we’ll teach you other people
0:05:21 how to do this. It sounds kind of interesting, unique, almost, you know, homesteady in a way where
0:05:27 I think people would be interested in learning this stuff either in person or online. Maybe you could
0:05:34 film during nap time or put a class up on out school or something like that. We’ve seen some examples of
0:05:41 guests on the show doing pretty well there with a more unique type of class. And maybe there’s something
0:05:47 like that. I’m a little bit reminded of my friend Jen who started her custom cookie business. She is at
0:05:54 SoHereIsTheDough. She started this when her twins were really little. And so it was a lot of local word of
0:06:01 mouth with other moms. Instagram was big. Custom orders for parties. She would do big cookie batches for
0:06:07 holidays and decorate them really nicely. I think those were mostly pre-sold so she didn’t end up with a bunch of
0:06:11 wasted inventory. Oh shoot, I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of cookies and nobody wanted them.
0:06:14 She’s like, no, no, I’m going to reduce my risk. I’m only going to make what I’ve already sold.
0:06:22 And because they were so cute and unique, she commanded premium prices for them, like $50 a dozen,
0:06:29 I want to say. So she was on episode 403, if you want to go way back in the archives to find that one.
0:06:35 Or I could be way off base and you actually hate cooking, in which case a pivot to something purely
0:06:41 online might make sense where your small townness doesn’t really matter at all. Data annotation,
0:06:47 prolific freelancing, some remote virtual assistant service, you know, remote agency type of model,
0:06:53 something like that. Flexible, limited hours for nap time or after bedtime. The good news is you’re
0:06:58 already making sales and that’s the hardest part, proving demand. So now it’s just kind of a matter
0:07:03 of systemizing or finding something that you want to scale. And again, seasons of life is totally okay
0:07:09 to just be present with these two little kids and not worry about a side hustle at this point if you have
0:07:14 the financial breathing room and the flexibility to do just that. Question three was from Glenn who says,
0:07:21 for privacy reasons and workplace relationships, I’d like to set up a website, LLC and email newsletter,
0:07:26 but I want to do it anonymously. Do you have any experience with virtual addresses or would you
0:07:33 recommend any alternative solutions? So Glenn, on the website side of things, what you can do is use
0:07:41 domain privacy protection or domain privacy registration, something it’s called. A lot of registrars are going
0:07:48 to charge you 10 or 15 bucks extra for this. Most of my domains are now registered at Porkbun, which I
0:07:55 want to say includes this free who is registration privacy in their registration fee. So that is one
0:07:59 way to do that on the website side. Then all you got to do is be professionally vague when it comes to
0:08:05 your about page or create nowadays an AI avatar to represent the brand. Like Hey Jen, even if you want to
0:08:10 do video, Hey Jen is looking really realistic these days. On the virtual address side of things,
0:08:18 I’ve used these. This is like my local neighborhood UPS store mailbox, which is around 20 bucks a month,
0:08:24 but it saves me from having to put my home address in the footer of my emails. So on the email side,
0:08:30 yes, you can use a virtual address like that. I use a PO box for years and years. It just has to be a
0:08:36 real address where you can receive mail. And I believe that’s the canned spam requirement. And you’ve seen
0:08:40 this at the bottom, like the footer of every email will have some kind of mailing address. And then you just
0:08:46 got to put the brand name or the persona that you create in the from field, which is really common.
0:08:51 I get emails from brands and not individuals all the time. So I don’t see any issues there. Now,
0:08:56 depending on the type of content or service at some point, it does get a little weird. Like,
0:09:03 am I going to sign up for a high ticket service without talking to a real person? Probably not.
0:09:08 So you’re gonna have to build that trust and maybe one-on-one with clients. It’s okay to be you.
0:09:13 You just don’t want to broadcast it to the world. I get that. And then on the LLC side,
0:09:17 most states are going to allow you to use what’s called a registered agent service,
0:09:23 like Northwest Registered Agent or even LegalZoom probably, which keeps your home address off the
0:09:28 public record. Delaware and Wyoming, they’re popular choices for privacy reasons, but I’ve always just
0:09:35 gone with my home state for the sake of simplicity there. Now, marketing anonymously can be challenging,
0:09:40 but maybe less so than it has been in the past because it seems like it’s becoming more and more
0:09:46 common, especially on platforms like Reddit, especially on platforms like Twitter or X, where
0:09:50 you see anonymous accounts can do pretty well. Car dealership guy, I want to say it was one.
0:09:55 There was another one talking about watches. So there’s some precedence for that. Maybe a little
0:10:02 bit harder on the SEO side, since I think still Google is valuing the source, trying to triangulate
0:10:08 author information with broader trust and credibility signals that this person has the expertise and
0:10:13 authority to be writing about what they’re writing about. But maybe we can put our heads together for
0:10:18 an episode on anonymous or faceless side hustles. I think that would be really interesting, though
0:10:25 may be hard to find a guest for. Question four was from Mark, who says, how do I even get started
0:10:29 with AI? Well, Mark, it depends on what you want to do. It’s a pretty broad question here, but I would
0:10:35 challenge you to start integrating it into your day to day life and work just to get a sense of what’s
0:10:40 capable. For example, I signed up for Function this year. This is like the health blood testing
0:10:45 service. Functionhealth.com, I think is the site. So generally looking good. It gave me a biological
0:10:51 age, a decade younger than my actual self. So I felt really good about that. But my LDL cholesterol
0:10:58 numbers were higher than the normal range. So I talked to my doctor about that and got kind of this
0:11:03 unsatisfactory kind of hand wavy response. Well, yeah, everybody’s as high. It’s like, well,
0:11:09 the average person is also unhealthy and obese. Like there’s no desire to be average here. And it just
0:11:14 felt like he was kind of dismissing it. And so what I did was punch that in. I said, hey, chat GPT,
0:11:19 I’m going to upload some blood work results. You know, what questions do you need to know
0:11:24 to help me come up with an action plan here? And it, you know, asked me about height, weight,
0:11:28 exercise, diet, family history, all that stuff. So I punched that back in and said, okay, here’s,
0:11:34 here’s the test results. And it said, and it was just an image. Like it just, it read the image.
0:11:39 It was really cool. And say they, you know, it kind of created this own little table summary of the
0:11:44 results that these are good. This is higher than normal. Yes. But in the context of everything
0:11:50 else, here’s why it’s actually looking good. And it gave such a more in-depth response than the doctor
0:11:54 did. And, you know, he’s pressed for time and all that jazz, but it was a much more satisfying
0:11:58 experience that I could do kind of asynchronously as I was able to collect the data and not have to
0:12:04 wait six months for an appointment. And it said, you know, look, I wouldn’t stress about this. You know,
0:12:08 I don’t think you’re a cardio risk. And here’s why, if you really want to do something like here,
0:12:13 you could try this, this, and this, it was like such a cool experience. Now on the work side,
0:12:20 what I’m doing is having, having the AI fill in content gaps, like here’s, you know, I’ll take the
0:12:24 first crack at it still. Like, you know, I’m going to come up with my listicle or, you know, 10 best
0:12:30 whatevers. And, but then I’ll ask the same question. Oh, and inevitably it comes up with one or two,
0:12:34 like, Oh, that was good. I didn’t think about that. And so you could add that into the content.
0:12:42 AI takes the first crack at editing transcripts for a lot of episodes where I will upload the
0:12:47 transcript. And it’s done enough of these now where it’s kind of knows the side hustle show style. And
0:12:50 sometimes it’s more aggressive than I would like it to be like, no, no, no, don’t, don’t cut that.
0:12:56 But it is suggesting kind of natural ad breaks and giving me teaser scripts for those. So it is
0:13:02 improving my workflow or saving me some time on the post-production side of things before I hand it
0:13:09 off to the editor. It is helping summarize episodes for show notes, which has sped up the work for the
0:13:15 summarizer writer person that creates those detailed show notes for the website. And there’s really a lot
0:13:20 of different use cases. I know I’m just scratching the surface and plan to try and build out a few more
0:13:27 projects or agents to automate even more workflows. It sounds kind of daunting, but it’s also really
0:13:34 exciting to do because if it works, it frees me up to do, you know, frees me up from these, you know,
0:13:39 tedious nuts and bolts, you know, weekly recurring type of tasks to do more of what I like, you know, creating
0:13:46 content, brainstorming new ideas, new projects, or just taking time off with the family, like been grateful to do a lot of
0:13:52 over the summer. So Mark, I would start with what you’re already interested in or curious about without
0:13:56 the pressure of, well, how do I use AI to make money today? I think that puts a lot of pressure on the
0:14:02 situation and instead look for ways to integrate it into what you’re already doing. And you might find
0:14:08 as you get into it, you stumble onto something useful that maybe you can turn around and offer as a product
0:14:15 or service to other people. Specifically on the vibe coding side, using AI to generate digital products and
0:14:24 software specifically, I recommend our episode with Pete McPherson, number 659. And just to get the juices
0:14:30 flowing on what’s possible, we’ve done a couple crowdsourced roundup style episodes featuring dozens of
0:14:39 side hustle show listeners on how they’re using AI. Those are 566 and 677 in your podcast feed. And of
0:14:44 course, I’m going to link up all of these episodes that we’re referencing in the show notes for this
0:14:49 episode. Or rather, maybe I can have the AI do that. But in any case, I’m going to be right back with more
0:14:56 Q&A right after this. Years ago, this is probably 2009, I’m sitting in this conference in Santa Barbara
0:15:02 and the presenter asks this question, are you working on your business or are you working in your
0:15:09 business? I saw myself as this full-time entrepreneur, but it was this moment of clarity that, no, I was
0:15:13 still very much working in the business day to day. So when I got back home, that’s when I made my first
0:15:19 full-time hire. It was the first in a long series and an ongoing series of steps in trying to take
0:15:26 control by being okay of letting go of certain tasks. Now, when you find yourself in that position
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0:16:06 podcast. Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need.
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0:17:12 Question five came in from Helen who asked, in your podcast episode, you often discuss using Google or
0:17:18 other platforms trending search data so you can sell what people are searching for. However, I don’t know
0:17:24 how to get that information. So Helen, my apologies for not taking a pause and talking about these different
0:17:29 tools in the moment there. But there are a lot of different resources in this space. Some of them
0:17:35 are free. Some of them are paid. Like I have an HRF subscription, A-H-R-E-F-S. Other guests have
0:17:40 mentioned SEMrush, another paid tool to help out with keyword research. But on the free side, a few
0:17:45 ones I think are worth checking out just for broad level, you know, market research type of stuff.
0:17:50 Google Trends, it’s trends.google.com. They’ll, you know, you can punch in any keyword and you
0:17:55 can see, is this increasing or decreasing? Or did it already peak? Am I on the downhill slope of this
0:18:00 thing? And it’s hard to predict what the future holds, but you know, I’ll let’s be an equal. I want
0:18:05 to catch a rising tide here. If you create a Google ads account, which I think you can do for free,
0:18:11 they have internally built a tool called Keyword Planner. If you just Google, you know, Google Keyword
0:18:17 Planner, it should come up and it’ll give you the approximate search volume of different terms in
0:18:23 there as well. And it gives a range, or at least it used to like, oh, one to 5,000 searches a month or
0:18:28 10 to 50,000, you know, something like that. But it gives you a sense to compare and contrast different
0:18:33 options there. Another one that I have used off and on for years is a Chrome extension called Keywords
0:18:39 Everywhere, which is kind of cool. An overlay in your browser, whereas you’re messing around with
0:18:43 Google, it’ll show you how many people search for that a month. It may even give you an estimate of
0:18:50 the difficulty around that term. And then Neil Patel bought the Uber Suggest tool. So if you look
0:18:57 up Uber Suggest, like Uber, like the ride-sharing service, Suggest, he’s got, I think, a free tier on
0:19:04 that plan as well. I think all those have a free tier or free plan. On Etsy-related sales,
0:19:09 eRank is the tool that has come up over and over again with Etsy sellers as their keyword research
0:19:16 tool of choice, looking for the green light of something with low competition and a high enough
0:19:20 search volume to make it worthwhile to try and build a product there. And then on YouTube, I’m using a
0:19:26 tool, a browser extension called TubeBuddy, T-U-B-E. And what this does is, or how I use it anyway,
0:19:32 allows me to punch in a bunch of different title variations for a video, and it’ll come back with a
0:19:39 score, which is based on the search volume and competitiveness of that keyword, where, and you
0:19:45 can, what’s mind-blowing is you can type in really similar variations and one score is a 23 and one
0:19:50 score is a 77. And like, well, I’m not married to one title over the other. So all it’s being, well,
0:19:54 I’m going to pick the one with the higher number, which theoretically is, you know, more volume or
0:19:59 easier to rank for. So I hope that helps on the keyword research side of things. Question six was
0:20:05 from Mary who asks, what are the apps that are going to pay me for just watching videos? So Mary, this
0:20:09 was kind of an interesting question. We actually wrote this article last year. There are surprisingly
0:20:16 several different apps that will pay you to watch videos, but in most cases, those videos are just a
0:20:21 code word for advertisements and the pay is really low. Now it would be one thing if you just stick
0:20:25 it in another room and let it play all day and rack up some passive income. I don’t care if it pays
0:20:30 pennies. It’s just running, running into the background at a low volume. But of course the advertisers are
0:20:34 onto that. They make you click on things. They make sure you’re really there. They make you answer a few
0:20:41 questions to earn your pennies. One that we tested was called slice the pie. It’s been around forever and
0:20:46 you can get paid to rate songs, commercials, movie trailers. It’s pretty tedious work, but they did
0:20:53 pay. It was still probably less than 10 bucks an hour, even if you’re fast. Another interesting one
0:20:59 that I came across last year was called Media Probe, which is a market research company. And so how it
0:21:07 works is you apply to be a Media Probe panelist. And if they approve you, they send you this like
0:21:13 electronic sensor that you wear and it measures your emotional response signals to what you’re
0:21:18 watching. Really, really kind of interesting stuff. I could picture this like for political debates or
0:21:23 something. So it doesn’t sound like you get to pick what you watch, but according to Media Probe,
0:21:29 the common use cases are for live sports, for entertainment programs, radio broadcast. And you just
0:21:35 want to get a sense of what gets a rise at you, essentially. Now, according to the site and users
0:21:41 online, you can typically earn the equivalent of $5 to $10 an hour, depending on how long the thing is
0:21:48 that you’re watching, paid through Amazon gift cards. Those are all fine options, those different
0:21:53 apps and tools. They’re probably not scalable. They’re probably not going to make much of a dent in your
0:21:59 budget. So to really get paid to watch videos, you got to think one level higher. For example, could you do
0:22:04 video captioning, although AI is probably eating that? Could you learn video editing and offer that
0:22:11 as a service? Could you learn an AI editing tool and use that in your workflow? Could you build a content
0:22:18 business around movie reviews? For years, some of the most popular podcasts, I swear, were built around
0:22:26 reacting to popular TV series. This is definitely a thing. We came across this YouTube channel last year
0:22:32 called Cat Watches Horror Movies, which the caption is something like, I’m terrified of horror movies.
0:22:36 Let’s watch them together. And it’s her reacting to scary movies on this YouTube channel. She’s over
0:22:42 100,000 subscribers now, probably earning at least a couple grand a month from this little, I assume,
0:22:49 aside project. Cat Watches Horror Movies. So different ways to turn video watching into an extra income
0:22:53 stream. Question seven is related to newsletter sponsorships. From Ryan, he says,
0:22:59 I run a newsletter. I noticed you’re a part of the Paved sponsor platform and wondering how it is.
0:23:03 How many sponsorships do you get from there a month? Do you do any other form of outreach to get
0:23:09 sponsors? What do you do? Draw in sponsors for your newsletter. So Ryan, no real risk in joining Paved or
0:23:19 other newsletter sponsor networks, so to speak. I’ve run 30 campaigns with them since 2022. So around one a
0:23:26 month, maybe a little bit less if my math is correct. So other sources of sponsorships are direct
0:23:31 relationships with advertisers, usually inbound. Actually, I don’t think I’ve done any outbound
0:23:38 marketing trying to sell that sponsorship spot. Kit has sourced a few deals lately, like my email
0:23:42 service provider Kit. So if you’re on Kit, it might make sense to plug yourself into their ads network.
0:23:47 A lot of the placements lately are pretty committed to podcast sponsors right now as part of their
0:23:53 package. But all in all, Paved, specifically in newsletter sponsorships more broadly, have been
0:24:00 kind of a nice little incremental income stream. Now, when I talked to Ryan Sneddon from Naptown Scoop,
0:24:08 this is a local newsletter focused on Annapolis, Maryland. He was selling five ad spots a day at a
0:24:15 $70 estimated CPM cost per thousand impressions. And he was selling these long-term packages and he was
0:24:21 selling out. And so this was worth a listen because he had this proactive outreach approach and he was
0:24:27 landing what stood out to me. He landed what he called an anchor tenant, this well-known local realtor
0:24:33 that lended a lot of credibility and social proof that allowed him to improve his conversion rate with
0:24:41 other advertisers. That was episode 615. And what Ryan had done, he kind of reached this golden
0:24:48 milestone of a dollar per subscriber per month in a town of 40,000 people. You know, he had 18,000 of
0:24:53 them on his newsletter. He had like half the town on his newsletter earning a dollar per subscriber per
0:24:58 month. But he was sending five days a week instead of, in my case, like five to six times a month. So
0:25:04 different ways to get sponsors and definitely a cool monetization angle, especially you can see
0:25:09 similar to podcast advertising. It’s like amplitude. How many people can you reach and frequency? You
0:25:13 know, how often can you reach them? So if you have a big list and you can send every day, like you can
0:25:18 really, really turn any of multiple spots in the newsletter and readers have come to expect that,
0:25:23 like it can turn into a really viable business. Question eight was from Valentina in the
0:25:28 side hustle nation Facebook group. She asks, I’ve been learning, drawing and painting lately.
0:25:33 What do you think are some good simple ways to earn money drawing? I don’t want to do portraits or
0:25:38 caricatures at markets because I don’t think I’m good at that. And I wouldn’t enjoy that. But I saw
0:25:43 someone in a touristy city selling handmade paintings and cards of the city views that sold quite well.
0:25:48 Pet portraits used to be a gold mine, but now everyone and their dog does them with AI. Can you think of
0:25:52 something else that would get me some quick bucks without spending time doing marketing? I don’t know if
0:25:57 there’s any quick bucks without doing any marketing. She says also no YouTube channels either. I’m not
0:26:02 that good. And there’s like a million of them made by highly trained professionals. Well, Valentina,
0:26:07 I think this is awesome that you are learning a new skill and looking for ways to monetize that.
0:26:13 We’ve got some several examples. I’ll get to that in a minute. One way that you might have taken a page
0:26:18 out of this selling handmade paintings of the city views and stuff like that would be approaching local
0:26:26 coffee shops, restaurants, businesses. But she fits is a local institution, a local landmark. I think you
0:26:32 could probably give the painting away to the owner of the business free, and then maybe they could sell
0:26:38 prints and then you could make a commission split on something like that as a way to market yourself.
0:26:44 You mentioned not wanting to do live portraits, but if you’d be open to selling pre-made work,
0:26:50 maybe the craft fair or farmer’s market circuit would be worthwhile. Those city view paintings
0:26:56 could be really cool, especially if you have five or ten different prints of local landmarks,
0:27:01 cute neighborhood scenes. I think that would be really a viable way to do it because I’m looking
0:27:07 at my parents’ house whenever I go over there. It seems like on every trip, at least for a while,
0:27:13 like on every trip they would get a little painting of where they went to commemorate the trip. In the
0:27:24 book 1K100 Ways, we profiled Wade from a business called googenius.com, who is making around $500 a week
0:27:31 teaching, drawing, and cartooning classes for kids. And he mentioned finding clients through Facebook and
0:27:35 with partnerships with local schools and art teachers, where it sounds like I’ll come in
0:27:39 and do a demo class and pass out flyers and the kids would take it back home and eventually want
0:27:45 to sign up with him. And so I thought that was a really cool business. And it sounds like you’re
0:27:51 still learning, but you’re probably a few steps ahead of these kids. And so maybe like the after
0:27:57 school class thing could be a thing. And also in that book, again, 1K100ways.com is where to find it.
0:28:03 We highlighted Jesse Spencer Smith, who specializes in these really cool pen and ink
0:28:08 architectural drawings of buildings. So he’s got over 100,000 followers on Instagram now,
0:28:15 which I imagine is generating quite a few commission requests from people who want him to draw their
0:28:21 house or their building next. And on the content creation side, I know you mentioned, I don’t want
0:28:28 to do YouTube. But there might be something to doing a daily drawing series, a daily drawing challenge,
0:28:33 especially if you can position it as like, look, I’m not the best artist in the world. I’m learning
0:28:39 right alongside with you. We talked about this recently with Pat Flynn, the power of a daily series
0:28:44 gets people following along, especially I want to hit follow because I don’t like, okay, it’s it’s
0:28:48 interesting. This video I saw was interesting, but I want to learn what comes next. I’m kind of
0:28:52 committed. Now I’m on this journey with you. And I think that can work really well with this
0:28:58 learn with me style of content. We’ve seen people do this in fitness, in dancing. I’m on a journey to
0:29:03 become a better dancer over the course of the year. We’ve seen people do it with side hustles. I think
0:29:09 it can work really well in art as well. Ryan Trahan’s 50 States in 50 Days series comes to mind,
0:29:14 right? Every day I’m going to tune in. It’s like now it feels like there’s a hole in our morning now
0:29:19 that it’s now that it’s over. So the other example, this is an interesting one we profiled
0:29:27 a few years ago. It was Priscilla Molina, and she was making money redesigning people’s signatures.
0:29:31 And I was like, well, when was the last time my autograph changed? Like probably middle school.
0:29:38 She is planet of names on TikTok and her website is planet of names where she charges 25 to $120
0:29:45 at least the time of this profile per custom signature. Each order included three different
0:29:52 unique signature concepts tailored to the customer’s desired style. You do simple, you do professional,
0:29:58 you do dramatic. And Priscilla says, look, people are unhappy with their current signatures. It doesn’t
0:30:03 match their personality. It doesn’t convey their desired image. I thought this was a really,
0:30:09 really creative way to monetize kind of a somewhat art, but somewhat calligraphy, like a handwriting
0:30:14 type of skill. And at that time, she shared in an Associated Press interview, she was earning around
0:30:21 $5,000 a month driven primarily from TikTok. And some of her most popular videos were just based around
0:30:27 drawing stylized versions of a single letter. Like here’s eight different ways to draw an H. It’s like,
0:30:33 this is, this is compelling content. It worked really well. And as a total aside, I think this
0:30:39 kind of makeover type of side hustle could work for other creative services too, like redesigning your
0:30:48 home studio, your fireplace mantle, your sales copy on your website, kind of doing a quick tear down and
0:30:53 then building it back up in a different way. That is question number eight about how to monetize
0:31:00 an art or drawing hobby. More Q&A, including a side hustle addict, my appearance on a TV commercial
0:31:06 and the most unique side hustle niches coming up right after this. You know, when you’re shopping
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0:32:08 Shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. I’m excited to partner with OpenPhone for
0:32:13 this episode. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer
0:32:19 communication for both calls and texts, all in one easy to use centralized hub. But before OpenPhone was
0:32:24 sponsoring podcasts, they took a more guerrilla marketing approach. You probably don’t remember
0:32:29 this. This is a while back. But when we just started OpenPhone, one of the ways that we got our first
0:32:35 customers is through Facebook groups. And I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, including yours. Thank you
0:32:41 for not kicking me out. But I posted a couple of times. And I actually remember seeing there were some of
0:32:48 your listeners and folks in your community interested in solving the problem we solve, which is not using your
0:32:54 personal phone number for work. And those posts got us some of our first customers. So thank you. It’s
0:33:00 a full circle moment. Oh, that’s super fun. Very cool. That’s Darina, the co-founder of OpenPhone. And
0:33:05 sure enough, her posts are still there. OpenPhone is offering SideHustle show listeners 20% off your first
0:33:13 six months at OpenPhone.com slash SideHustle. That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E, OpenPhone.com slash SideHustle.
0:33:18 And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra
0:33:24 charge. Question nine comes from Reddit user FarPen3186, who writes,
0:33:30 A friend of mine is really deep into the, quote unquote, make money online scene. I’m talking years of
0:33:36 YouTube uploads for a few hundred views, hundreds of Amazon reviews for maybe 250 bucks a month,
0:33:41 always chasing the next earn money while you sleep idea. It’s not that he’s lazy. He puts in a ton of
0:33:46 hours, but he completely avoids traditional jobs or careers with benefits, even though money’s always
0:33:52 tight. He does not understand opportunity cost. He’s got money problems. I’m worried about him.
0:33:59 So there is an element of shiny object syndrome here, chasing the latest thing. But it sounds like
0:34:04 your friend is able to focus and dedicate the time to push through, at least in the example of publishing
0:34:10 hundreds of Amazon reviews. And I get that there’s a very real opportunity cost in chasing side hustle
0:34:17 dreams or passive income dreams, especially at the expense of a traditional career. But I also
0:34:23 sympathize with your friend because I’ve been there at a low point in my own online business.
0:34:29 I contemplated going back to the corporate world, the steady paycheck, which would have been a lot
0:34:34 higher of a paycheck than what I was making on my own. And if he’s in the position of having near-term
0:34:41 money problems, the best near-term solution probably isn’t to upload another video in the hopes that
0:34:47 that that is the one that goes viral. The best near-term solution is probably to follow the pride,
0:34:53 get a job, at least to stabilize the finances. And that’s worst case. Worst case, stabilize your
0:34:57 finances. Best case, you build a new network, you get paid to learn some new skills, and you can tackle
0:35:03 your next side hustle project with a bit more of a safety net. But some people are never going to be
0:35:07 happy working for someone else. I’m probably in that camp. An entrepreneur, you’ve heard this quote,
0:35:13 is somebody who will work 80 hours for themselves to avoid working 40 for someone else. Now, I might
0:35:20 refer him back to the episode we did with Nathan Berry on the ladders of wealth creation, which
0:35:25 starts with active income. We want to skip straight to the passive stuff. I get it. I’ve been there too.
0:35:32 But the ladders of wealth creation starts with active income, trading time for money either at a job or as
0:35:38 a freelance service provider before climbing onto the more passive rungs of the ladder, agencies, products,
0:35:44 platforms, etc. And in that episode, Nathan says, yeah, you can skip some rungs, you can skip some steps, but you
0:35:51 can’t skip learning the skills. Now, there is some level of irony that people like your friend, and myself as
0:35:59 well, will work for hours, months, far below minimum wage, for the chance of one day making money while we’re not
0:36:06 working. That is a powerful draw. And it can take time. It was probably three years before this show
0:36:12 started earning a meaningful income on its own. But had I quit during those three years, had I quit before
0:36:19 that moment, I would never know this life. And that is a pretty scary thought. Question 10 came in from
0:36:25 Jason who asked, are you still married to your high school sweetheart? Jason, I don’t know. Are there some
0:36:31 rumors floating around? No, we’re still very happily married, spanning four decades of this
0:36:37 relationship to the late 1900s, as the kids say. The last year we celebrated 25 years together, which I
0:36:42 called our silver jubilee, and that definitely earned me an eye roll. In fact, going back to that last
0:36:48 question, it was during that low point when I was dusting off the old resume and thinking about starting to
0:36:55 look for a real job again, where my beautiful bride said something along the lines of, stop, pause,
0:37:01 time out. You’re going to be miserable. You can figure this out. And I did. And I’m so glad that
0:37:07 that was her advice at that time, instead of stressing about near term income. Question 11 came in from Chris.
0:37:14 He sent me a message. He said, wait, did I just see you on a CNBC commercial? Yes, yes, you did. So late last
0:37:20 year, CNBC was putting together a course on side hustles to complement the side hustle content that
0:37:28 they have under the CNBC Make It section of their site. And I’ve been a collaborator and a source for
0:37:32 them a bunch of different times. And I was pretty flattered when they invited me to be part of this
0:37:39 course. My friends Kathy from SideHustle.com, H-U-S-L, SideHustle.com, and Kevin from Financial Panther
0:37:46 were the other experts involved, along with myself. Now, this wasn’t a huge moneymaker, but they did pay
0:37:53 me for my travel to New York in a small performance slash appearance fee. I think less than a thousand
0:37:57 dollars, but sometimes you got to do it because it’s such a unique experience. When else are you going to
0:38:02 have a chance to do something like this? Now, originally we were going to shoot at 30 Rock, which
0:38:07 would have been super cool. I think Kathy shot her segments there, but Kevin and I were relegated to a
0:38:13 different studio space across the river. Still, I think it ended up being really well produced. It’s
0:38:20 shot in kind of a masterclass style where they fed us prompts or questions and then let us talk and
0:38:26 stitched it all together. It was a little weird and stressful with five other production professionals
0:38:32 in the room from, like, big media, this big media company, NBC, and, you know, having trying to be
0:38:41 on, so to speak, trying to balance brevity with enough meat to make it useful still. Very different
0:38:47 from my typical podcast recording in the spare bedroom studio. In any case, always enjoy visiting
0:38:54 New York. The big city energy is such a contrast from my day-to-day suburban life. It’s fun to step into
0:38:58 every once in a while. I feel like in New York, there’s, like, famous stuff around every corner.
0:39:04 It’s really cool. I got to do a tour of 30 Rock, even though I didn’t get to record there. I got to
0:39:09 host a little meetup for Side Hustle Show listeners. We had a pretty good turnout, including Kevin,
0:39:14 including Alex Gennadynick, who was one of the very first guests on the show, I think, like,
0:39:19 episode three. So it was cool to see him for the first time in a long time. And Mau Rios from the
0:39:24 Rank and Rent episode also came out. But that’s a roundabout way to say yes. That was
0:39:32 me briefly on a TV commercial for this CNBC-produced Side Hustle course. I will link that up in the
0:39:37 show notes if you want to go check it out. Again, it’s me. It is Kevin from Financial Panther and
0:39:44 Kathy from SideHustle.com. Question 12 is, should rich people have side hustles? So this is,
0:39:51 back in the spring, a few people sent me this Tina Fey clip where she is on Amy Poehler’s podcast
0:39:57 saying she’s got a problem with rich people having a side hustle. And specifically in the context of
0:40:04 celebrities slapping their name on a brand of alcohol or hair care or skin care when they very
0:40:09 clearly don’t need the money. Now, I don’t have a problem with this. Like, if George Clooney wants to
0:40:14 sell tequila in between movies or Rihanna wants to sell makeup in between songs, that’s fine,
0:40:18 right? They’re free to use the power of their personal brands however they want. But maybe
0:40:23 the more interesting way to frame it is for non-celebrity rich people. When is enough enough?
0:40:28 When’s enough to stop? Why can’t we be content with what we have? And I just asked Dustin Heiner
0:40:33 about this last month. Look, you’ve already got 30 plus houses. You live a great life. Why do you need
0:40:37 more? And he says, well, I got five kids. I’d love to be able to pass down 10 properties to each kid.
0:40:44 Legacy. And I think that’s a legit answer, even if it might be a little self-justifying. And in Dustin’s
0:40:50 case, he’s got the systems and processes in place where adding the incremental 15, 20 houses he needs
0:40:54 to get to that goal doesn’t take up that much more of his time because what you’d hate to see is
0:41:00 sacrificing time and presence with your family now in their formative years in the pursuit of something
0:41:08 that may not be necessary. The line I heard recently from Sean on My First Million was some people,
0:41:13 they’ve already earned the last dollar they’re ever going to spend. And now they’re trading good time,
0:41:19 good hours, good years for useless dollars. And that kind of hits you. They’re in it for the love
0:41:24 of the game or they just don’t know how to stop or they have this scarcity mindset, this fear of running
0:41:30 out or the goalposts keep moving. Some, you know, dad, well, how much is enough? Double, double what
0:41:35 I have. That’ll be enough. Right. And then once you get there, of course, it moves again. So I read the
0:41:42 die with zero book this year or late last year. Good read for that mindset shift. Very much written,
0:41:49 you know, by a rich person for rich people, but gets you thinking about how much is enough and trading
0:41:54 good hours for useless dollars. Like you may have already earned the last dollar you’re ever going
0:42:00 to spend. I think that was an interesting line. Now, I think about this all the time and the concept
0:42:06 of 18 summers. You get 18 summers with your kids at home and with our oldest being nine, we’re already
0:42:11 halfway there. That’s why I try and take as much time off during the summers as possible and have done
0:42:18 at least a month almost every year for the last seven years. Is there a cost to doing that? Of
0:42:24 course there is. But feeling rich in time is just as important and maybe even more so than feeling
0:42:28 rich with money. Should rich people have side hustles? Look, if that’s how they want to spend their
0:42:34 time, more power to them. Because after all, where does money come from? It comes from creating value
0:42:40 for other people. Question 13 came in from Brian who asked, what’s the most unique niche you’ve come
0:42:48 across? And this is honestly the best part of my job because there are no shortage of unique stories,
0:42:53 unique side hustle niches. And I mean, just this year we’ve heard from Charlotte Liebling reselling
0:42:59 stuffed animals that she gets donated. Never thought that would be a thing, but with some expert branding
0:43:06 positioning, she’s getting it done. Dean Kinzer built a business around his ancient coin collecting
0:43:11 hobby, turned into a YouTube content creator and reseller of ancient coins. You know, there’s a
0:43:18 niche within a niche of the coin collecting hobby. Hef Gerlach, who is running a business all about
0:43:24 Australian fantasy football, started with a fantasy football podcast. We talked to Summer Fisher, who is
0:43:30 making money renting out dresses, a unique rental business. And of course, no discussion about unique
0:43:36 niches would be complete without talking about Devin Ricks making money teaching video game classes on
0:43:41 outskool. Come hang out with me. We’ll play Zelda together. Like you can make money doing that. You can
0:43:48 make money doing anything, right? We went to the Rubik’s Cube competition this summer and the grand prize
0:43:54 is $5,000. Hey, if you, you can monetize just about any, uh, any skill here. And the winner was a kid,
0:43:57 right? It was a, you know, 11 year old kid or something like, you know, competing against all
0:44:02 the grownups, fast twitch muscle memory. I don’t know. Um, and then in some of our roundup episodes
0:44:08 of creative side hustles, we’ve seen stuff like pay what you want poetry, go hang out at a, you know,
0:44:13 popular area on the weekends and set up, set up shop with a old fashioned typewriter. I think I was
0:44:18 doing really well. We seen interior design for dorm rooms, thousands and thousands of dollars for
0:44:22 these dorm room setups, which blew my mind. It’s like, it’s such a temporary space. You’re going to
0:44:27 live here for nine months, but people pay in it. We saw, uh, headstones for pets, pretty significant
0:44:36 business, uh, on Etsy. We saw the baby name consultant charging anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 per name.
0:44:44 What a cool niche. And, uh, the white noise podcast, which was earning like $18,000 a month
0:44:49 on, um, I had to be a pre-roll ad, you know, I guess otherwise it would, that would interrupt the
0:44:56 white noise, but the white noise podcast, I came across a really interesting one in Seattle. This
0:45:00 is actually the same weekend that we went to the Rubik’s cube competition, but this was just up the
0:45:06 street from Pike place market in Seattle. So some pretty prime real estate and it was called the purple
0:45:12 store. And you want to know what the unifying theme of the purple store is? It’s just that every product
0:45:18 in there was purple. That was it. Purple clothes, purple books, purple mugs, purple shoes, purple
0:45:26 dog leashes, purple candy. But that was it. It was like catering people who love purple stuff. And I was
0:45:30 like, that’s, that’s a niche. It turns out they’ve been in business for over 20 years. Have to imagine
0:45:35 that they’re profitable despite what I imagine is pretty high rent there. So the purple store,
0:45:41 there’s a niche for everything, lots and lots of unique side hustle examples, side hustle niches
0:45:46 in the archives. Encourage you to check those out. We’ll link up some of those resources in the show
0:45:52 notes for this episode. So big thanks to all of our listeners, all of our readers, all of our subscribers
0:45:57 who submitted questions for this round. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for
0:46:03 everyone. Side hustle nation dot com slash deals is where to go all the latest offers from our sponsors
0:46:09 one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you’re finding value in the show, you can
0:46:15 help me out for free by simply texting it to a friend. Appreciate your help in spreading the word. Until next
0:46:20 time, let’s go out there and make something happen. And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show.
0:46:21 Hustle on.
It’s that time again — back into the listener mailbag for another round of Q&A on The Side Hustle Show.
This week, I’ve got 13 brand-new questions to dive into, covering everything from launching a hustle with $5,000, to small-town business ideas, making money with art, navigating anonymity online, and even whether rich people should still have side hustles.
This is the 18th installment of the series, feel free to check out the older ones:
- 641: Starting Over? Podcasting, Newsletters, Competing in a “No Click” World, and more: 10 Questions with Nick
- 616: Lifestyle Creep, Luck, and Why Every Podcast Guest Has an Online Course: Q&A w/ Nick
- 585: Giving Away Ideas, Getting Great Guests, Growing Your Business, and More: 20 Questions With Nick
- 556: Pricing, Podcasting, Permission to Quit, and More: 20 Questions with Nick
- 498: Profitable Podcasting, Getting Clients, and $50k/mo in Passive Income: 20 Questions with Nick
Let’s dive in!
Full Show Notes: The Most Unique Niches, Small Town Side Hustles, Monetizing Art, and More: Q&A with Nick
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About The Side Hustle Show
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