0:00:01 (upbeat music)
0:00:04 $100,000 with AI-coded apps.
0:00:06 Hey, create something once, monetize it over and over again.
0:00:08 That’s a business model that I really like
0:00:12 and historically software and apps,
0:00:13 definitely check that box.
0:00:17 But it used to be, you had to be pretty technical
0:00:18 or pay someone technical
0:00:21 if you wanted to build really any kind of software.
0:00:23 Today, not as much.
0:00:25 I guess has been using AI tools to help build
0:00:28 a series of smallish web apps,
0:00:31 usually to solve a very specific problem
0:00:33 for a very specific customer.
0:00:35 But he’s making thousands of bucks about doing it
0:00:36 and having a lot of fun along the way.
0:00:40 From doyevenblog.com, Pete McPherson,
0:00:42 welcome back to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:43 – Yes, thank you so much for having me, Nick.
0:00:46 It’s a pleasure to be here, talk about techie things.
0:00:49 Hopefully we can get some good takeaways for people,
0:00:50 some good actionable items,
0:00:54 even if we do go a tiny bit into what sounds technical.
0:00:56 So yeah, let’s give it a shot.
0:01:00 – Yeah, the promise of having AI do the work for you
0:01:01 is an interesting one.
0:01:03 ‘Cause software companies
0:01:05 are some of the most profitable businesses in the world.
0:01:08 It’s like, we could sell this same code
0:01:11 to thousands, billions of different customers.
0:01:15 And it has often seemed out of reach for individual creators.
0:01:17 So what’s changed in the past few years?
0:01:19 And what do you see as the opportunity
0:01:20 for side hustlers here?
0:01:22 – The biggest thing that changed
0:01:25 was obviously using chatGPT or Claude
0:01:29 or any of these newer LLMs, AI models,
0:01:32 to do the parts I didn’t know how to do.
0:01:33 I knew how to do a few parts.
0:01:35 I’ve been interested in this, I’ve been coding,
0:01:37 I’ve been fairly techie forever.
0:01:40 And then maybe about a year and a half ago, two years ago,
0:01:43 I was finally able to cross the threshold
0:01:46 and have AI do the heavy lifting.
0:01:49 And the last part of your question there,
0:01:51 more specifically in the past like three months
0:01:55 and six months, we’ve crossed another bridge.
0:01:56 We’re now at a place where you could basically
0:01:58 just type in stuff you want.
0:02:02 And believe it or not, like maybe seven times out of 10,
0:02:05 eight times out of 10, these AI tools are getting better,
0:02:09 they’re getting faster, they’re getting more aware
0:02:10 of its outputs.
0:02:14 And so the opportunity right now is,
0:02:16 well, you said it already, this is, we know this,
0:02:20 creating software products, creating stuff you can use,
0:02:22 you can sell to your existing audience.
0:02:27 Even, I would argue entering in new markets with SAS,
0:02:30 software as a service, has never been easier and faster
0:02:33 for everybody, for all of us, non-developers,
0:02:35 even if you never touched a line of code.
0:02:36 – Yeah, so you’ve built a few of these.
0:02:41 One is an affiliate link tracking tool called Aftracker.
0:02:42 You’ve built one called Topical Map,
0:02:46 which helps come up with, what am I gonna talk about
0:02:47 on my content creation business?
0:02:52 fab.ai is the fully autonomous blog builder,
0:02:54 what does it stand for?
0:02:56 – You’re actually the only person besides myself
0:02:59 who’s ever gotten that correct, so where to go?
0:03:00 Yeah, I sold that company a couple of months ago.
0:03:05 – Okay, well, I’ve been watching as each one of these
0:03:09 has been built and presented and kind of like,
0:03:12 you do a good job of sharing the journey along the way,
0:03:14 which I think is interesting.
0:03:17 So maybe we start there with this idea generation.
0:03:21 If I’m listening and saying like, well, this sounds cool.
0:03:23 I’d like to start playing around with this,
0:03:26 and I probably would recommend that’s where people start
0:03:29 is like, you’re not gonna build anything super beautiful
0:03:31 right out of the gate, but you gotta start tinkering
0:03:33 with something, but you gotta have an idea
0:03:35 before you could start tinkering, like how,
0:03:37 where did these ideas come from?
0:03:39 Or how do you recommend people kind of go through this?
0:03:40 What should I even start to build?
0:03:45 – Sure, I would say it’s a twist on an age old strategy
0:03:47 called scratch your own itch.
0:03:49 I think people who have listened to your show
0:03:50 have probably heard those words before.
0:03:51 Am I right, Chair?
0:03:52 – Yeah.
0:03:56 – So I think approaching how you work on your computer
0:03:57 and a scratch your own itch.
0:03:59 There’s a scratch your own itch off your computer
0:04:00 and there’s a scratch your own itch
0:04:03 when you’re using scheduling software,
0:04:04 when you’re sending emails,
0:04:06 when you are creating a YouTube video,
0:04:08 when you’re editing a YouTube video,
0:04:11 when you’re interacting with the web in general,
0:04:14 cultivating this mindset of scratch your own itch.
0:04:16 And Nick, I think you absolutely nailed it.
0:04:18 I think what I would recommend to anybody who’s like,
0:04:20 oh, this kind of sounds interesting.
0:04:24 I might try that would be to pick one teeny tiny thing.
0:04:26 Like you said, you’re not gonna build
0:04:31 the next huge amazing 10 bajillion ARR software
0:04:35 company probably, but you can build a little Chrome extension.
0:04:37 For example, I play a game.
0:04:37 I won’t mention what it is.
0:04:38 It’s totally stupid.
0:04:42 But I play a game that doesn’t have any tracking whatsoever.
0:04:46 And so basic like multiplication and division things
0:04:49 that I’ve been doing on my phone, on a calculator.
0:04:50 I was like, wait, I could,
0:04:52 I could totally just build a Chrome extension.
0:04:53 I’d never built a Chrome extension before.
0:04:55 I have no idea how that works.
0:04:57 But I went into my code editor.
0:04:59 We could talk about tools later, of course.
0:05:03 And just prompted AI, I told a little bit what I want
0:05:04 and so on and so forth.
0:05:06 And then boom, it’s done.
0:05:06 It’s there.
0:05:08 I’m not gonna make any money off of it.
0:05:13 But it was a tiny challenge, pain point frustration I had.
0:05:15 And again, I’ve cultivated this mindset
0:05:17 of noticing when this happens.
0:05:19 I had this small little problem
0:05:21 and I built a teeny tiny little tool.
0:05:23 It’s like, I don’t know how many lines of code it is
0:05:25 ’cause I actually haven’t looked that much at the code.
0:05:27 But it’s really small and it works.
0:05:30 And I use it every day when I’m playing my silly little game.
0:05:31 – Interesting.
0:05:34 Okay, so some, just as you go through your day to day
0:05:37 and I’m just gonna rattle off a couple, you know,
0:05:39 pain points just from like this week.
0:05:42 One is when you’re pasting anything
0:05:45 from Google Docs into WordPress.
0:05:49 It brings in all of this junk HTML
0:05:53 and you really inflates the size of the page unnecessarily.
0:05:56 And like the formatting maybe looks a little bit janky
0:05:59 with some of the font selections by default.
0:06:01 Same thing with Microsoft Word
0:06:03 or importing images from Google Docs.
0:06:04 You know, getting those into your website
0:06:07 as a blog article, personal pain point
0:06:08 may not resonate with anybody else.
0:06:11 But it’s like, you know, so I built this little,
0:06:13 I can’t even figure out the image piece of it
0:06:15 but just like a little macro in Word
0:06:18 where like we’ll strip all of this stuff out.
0:06:19 So maybe there’s something there.
0:06:21 I don’t know if that would be a WordPress plugin,
0:06:23 if that would be a Chrome extension,
0:06:25 but something like that.
0:06:26 So that’s one idea.
0:06:29 Personal pain point number two is, you know how
0:06:33 pretty much every airline now will let you rebook
0:06:36 if they don’t have any change fees anymore.
0:06:39 And so you can rebook if the price goes down.
0:06:42 And it’s like, but it’s kind of a pain
0:06:44 to go and check and see.
0:06:46 And I’ve set up some Google flight alerts.
0:06:49 There’s gotta be a way to either automate this
0:06:50 or at least get a notification like,
0:06:52 “Hey, your flight went down.
0:06:54 You might as well go and get your $50 in credit.”
0:06:56 And sometimes, you know, sometimes I get
0:06:58 like the sale notifications, but it’s like,
0:07:00 there’s gotta be a smarter way to do this.
0:07:01 – Yes.
0:07:03 Would you like me to tackle those two just really quick?
0:07:04 – Yeah, let’s do it.
0:07:06 – We’ll start with the second one.
0:07:09 There is a tool which I can’t remember the name of.
0:07:12 It is basically Zapier, which I’m sure
0:07:13 most people are probably familiar with.
0:07:16 You can set up automations and end points
0:07:18 between various apps or whatnot.
0:07:20 This is the exact same thing except
0:07:23 with the ability to just insert AI
0:07:27 in between each of your automation steps, so to speak.
0:07:29 And it would be perfect for solving
0:07:31 the second problem you mentioned there.
0:07:34 You could use plain language to kind of say,
0:07:37 “Hey, I usually go to Google flights
0:07:39 or I usually check American Airlines
0:07:40 or I usually do this.
0:07:43 Here’s some of the URLs, here’s my login information.
0:07:45 Like I need you to extract this
0:07:48 and then automatically email me when this happens.”
0:07:50 And it takes a little while to set up,
0:07:52 but you don’t even have to touch code for this.
0:07:54 This is a tool, it is paid,
0:07:56 but I can show that with you later.
0:07:56 – Yeah.
0:07:57 – But that’d be the perfect thing.
0:07:59 – Okay, that’s an interesting one.
0:08:01 – In terms of like building your own thing,
0:08:02 what was your first one again?
0:08:03 I just forgot.
0:08:05 – The first one was just like the tedious formatting
0:08:08 that you junk HTML that gets, you know,
0:08:10 automatically inserted when you paste stuff in?
0:08:11 – Yes, absolutely.
0:08:14 This gets into maybe a strategy
0:08:15 I really wanted to talk about later.
0:08:16 So I’m gonna segue.
0:08:18 This will be valuable I think.
0:08:22 For anybody who’s looking to pick up coding,
0:08:23 even if it’s AI coding,
0:08:25 not saying you’re gonna become a developer,
0:08:30 but I would say pick one specific focus,
0:08:33 text stack, focus, and then just stay with it.
0:08:36 For example, Nick, maybe you’re on a Mac OS device
0:08:41 or Windows, you could learn how to build Mac apps.
0:08:43 On the contrary, it’s actually pretty similar
0:08:45 to build iPhone apps.
0:08:48 You could learn to build web apps.
0:08:50 That’s a lot different.
0:08:50 It’s a lot different.
0:08:53 You’re gonna have to probably choose a new code language.
0:08:56 And again, you don’t have to learn development,
0:08:59 but it’s still going to be so much easier
0:09:00 for anybody listening to this
0:09:02 to just build five different Chrome extensions.
0:09:04 Maybe that’s your thing.
0:09:06 Maybe it’s WordPress plugins
0:09:08 is what you really wanna dive into.
0:09:09 – Okay.
0:09:12 Well, somebody, no, this is actually really golden
0:09:14 because there is an opportunity
0:09:16 in the Chrome extension space,
0:09:17 in the Shopify extension space.
0:09:20 We had, I heard of somebody doing like 10 grand a month
0:09:22 with like a Wix extension or something,
0:09:25 like these kind of micro niche marketplaces
0:09:27 that do something really, really specific.
0:09:30 And because there’s a built-in ecosystem around that,
0:09:33 like it can be, I don’t know, it goes into them,
0:09:36 search, you know, marketing on these different platforms
0:09:38 and, you know, is it a freemium model?
0:09:39 Like, what’s your strategy there?
0:09:44 But no, I love this call to focus on one tiny little thing
0:09:47 first versus trying to, you know, build something
0:09:49 completely standalone and go out and try and sell it.
0:09:50 – Sure.
0:09:51 There’s a reason I bring this up.
0:09:53 By the way, mine’s web apps.
0:09:54 That’s what I do.
0:09:55 I have JavaScript.
0:09:57 I use SvelteKit, but you don’t even have to know
0:09:58 what that is.
0:09:59 It doesn’t matter.
0:10:01 What I mean is it builds web apps.
0:10:03 Apps you access in your browser.
0:10:07 You type in the URL to topical map AI or whatever,
0:10:08 and it just pulls it up.
0:10:09 Or Calendly or whatever.
0:10:10 I just do web apps.
0:10:11 That’s all I do.
0:10:14 Except for my little silly game Chrome extension.
0:10:16 But part of the reason I bring that up
0:10:19 is there are lots of different ways
0:10:20 you could solve your pain point.
0:10:22 You mentioned the formatting.
0:10:24 Removing the formatting and getting things ready
0:10:25 for WordPress.
0:10:27 You could build a Mac app for that.
0:10:28 I know people that have, that’s all they do.
0:10:30 They just build Mac apps.
0:10:32 And if I were doing that, I would probably just do it
0:10:34 where you copy a Google doc.
0:10:37 You can build in a shortcut on your computer
0:10:40 and it just automatically formats it, removes everything,
0:10:41 blah, blah.
0:10:43 And then copies it to your clipboard again
0:10:45 after you hit the hot key.
0:10:47 And then just copy and paste into WordPress.
0:10:50 Or if you want to be the WordPress person,
0:10:52 you build a WordPress plugin, like you mentioned.
0:10:55 Or if you’re Pete, I would do it via web app
0:10:57 because that’s what I know now.
0:11:00 Having built a dozen of these different web apps,
0:11:01 it would be super small.
0:11:04 It would literally just be like maybe a text area
0:11:06 where you just paste in everything.
0:11:10 You click one button and maybe it automatically removes
0:11:12 the formatting and then again,
0:11:14 automatically copies it to your clipboard.
0:11:15 But then you can go into WordPress.
0:11:17 That’s what I would do.
0:11:18 I hope that’s helpful for people.
0:11:20 I really wanted to hint at there’s a ton of different ways
0:11:23 you can approach these sorts of things.
0:11:25 But maybe it’d be helpful if you think about
0:11:27 some of the things you’re interested in,
0:11:29 like WordPress, like Chrome extensions,
0:11:32 like web apps, like iPhone apps, that sort of stuff
0:11:34 before you really go off the deep end here.
0:11:34 – All right, well that’s good.
0:11:37 So this is idea generation method number one,
0:11:40 scratch your own itch, anything else on this,
0:11:41 coming up with ideas phase?
0:11:43 – I have two that I like.
0:11:44 And these are legal.
0:11:46 I think they’re ethical enough,
0:11:47 but it’s somewhat stealing.
0:11:49 I have two examples.
0:11:54 Number one would be to find one tiny feature
0:11:57 in some tool, maybe you’re already using
0:12:00 that has like a bunch of different features.
0:12:03 One tiny feature, steal one feature from one of your tools.
0:12:04 And I’ll give you a good example of this.
0:12:07 So back when I did more SEO blogging,
0:12:12 I used Ahrefs, A-H-R-E-F-S, Ahrefs, there’s an SEO tool.
0:12:15 And they have a ton of different features.
0:12:16 You can do keyword research,
0:12:18 you can do this and that and this and that.
0:12:21 All I really wanted, I canceled my subscription,
0:12:26 but all I really missed was the site explorer tool.
0:12:28 So that’s an idea for a business right there.
0:12:32 You don’t have the $99 to pay a month for Ahrefs,
0:12:33 or however much it costs now.
0:12:37 You can pay $9 for my app, it’s just the site explorer.
0:12:38 I wouldn’t market it as that
0:12:41 ’cause that would be straight up stealing Ahrefs stuff.
0:12:45 But you could just build one tiny feature of some other app.
0:12:47 Maybe it’s an expensive app that you pay for.
0:12:50 That’s idea number one.
0:12:53 – Okay, this unbundling of things
0:12:58 that maybe you’re a user of, or you know are popular,
0:13:01 but people don’t need all of the things under the hood.
0:13:03 You know, just trying to carve out a segment
0:13:06 for people who really are only interested in this one feature.
0:13:08 – This is why Nick makes the big bucks.
0:13:10 ‘Cause that was a far better explanation than I gave.
0:13:12 Unbundling, that’s perfect.
0:13:13 I love it.
0:13:18 Last one is, oh, here’s the example that came to my head.
0:13:22 Calendly is a tool to use, you send a scheduling link
0:13:24 and somebody clicks it and they can see your calendar
0:13:27 and they pick out a time and so on and so forth.
0:13:29 There for a while, there weren’t many alternatives
0:13:31 to Calendly that are now,
0:13:36 but AppSumo, No Kagan’s company, created TidyCal.
0:13:40 TidyCal.com, this was like a year or two ago.
0:13:42 They didn’t use AI, this is completely different.
0:13:46 But it basically was taking an expensive tool
0:13:48 that really doesn’t need to be all that expensive
0:13:50 and then just building a cheap version.
0:13:54 There’s was like $30 lifetime or something.
0:13:56 And I could think of this all the time.
0:13:58 There’s a ton of tools.
0:13:59 I was gonna throw this company into the bus.
0:14:01 I won’t, I won’t mention this company,
0:14:03 but it’s a podcasting tool.
0:14:06 I have my own podcast, Nick has podcasts
0:14:08 that produces podcast transcripts
0:14:10 and you can do some other marketing things
0:14:13 like generate some titles and generate some show notes
0:14:15 using AI and stuff like this.
0:14:18 I did not wanna pay however much it cost.
0:14:19 I don’t remember what it was.
0:14:20 So I just built my own.
0:14:24 It took like a week with like an hour to a day.
0:14:25 It’s technically live.
0:14:26 You can’t go buy it.
0:14:28 So I’m not gonna point people to it.
0:14:31 But I just built my own where I just upload my audio.
0:14:34 It gets the transcript using the same backend tools
0:14:36 probably as this other company.
0:14:39 And then I can click a button and generate some title ideas
0:14:41 and then some timestamps
0:14:43 and some different stuff like that.
0:14:45 So there are very few of those tools
0:14:49 that are really, really cheap, really affordable.
0:14:51 And that was the sort of thing where I was like,
0:14:54 pretty sure I could build my own version of this
0:14:56 for like, not a whole lot of money,
0:14:58 not a whole lot of time and energy.
0:15:00 And I did and it worked and it was good.
0:15:01 – Interesting.
0:15:05 So you could look at even at your own software or tech stack
0:15:08 and what are the ones that you think the price point
0:15:10 kind of grates on you a little bit?
0:15:13 There’s gotta be a better way to say,
0:15:15 how could I build a cheaper version
0:15:19 or even a simpler version that doesn’t do all of the,
0:15:21 it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles,
0:15:22 but maybe there’s something there.
0:15:24 So number one was scratch your own itch,
0:15:26 figure out your own personal pain points
0:15:27 and try and build something around that.
0:15:30 Number two was unbundling of different software tools.
0:15:32 Like I just wanna pull out this one feature.
0:15:34 That’s the most important thing to me
0:15:37 or that’s the one that I think maybe is most valuable
0:15:39 or for whatever reason.
0:15:42 And number three is to rebuild a cheaper version
0:15:45 or compete on, this is kind of the app sumo playbook.
0:15:48 You see companies on there doing this all the time.
0:15:51 Like, hey, we’re an alternative to fill in the blank software.
0:15:52 – Right, exactly.
0:15:53 One huge thing I wanna mention.
0:15:56 This is like the thing that makes me the happiest
0:15:59 in all of this, building my own apps,
0:16:02 learning how to code via AI.
0:16:06 The thing I like the most about this is you have control.
0:16:10 We don’t have to put up with how this other software did this.
0:16:11 We could build our own.
0:16:12 More with Pete in just a moment,
0:16:15 including validating your idea and marketing it
0:16:17 to find your first paying customers right after this.
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0:17:23 – And I mentioned scratching your own niche.
0:17:25 Well, there’s more to it than that.
0:17:29 Not only is that a good way to find ideas that sure,
0:17:31 you could market to other people,
0:17:33 but first and foremost, you solve your own problems.
0:17:36 And if you know how to leverage AI,
0:17:38 if you know how to code for this stuff,
0:17:40 you can make it how you want,
0:17:42 which is, it sounds pretty obvious,
0:17:44 but I think that’s underrated.
0:17:46 I think people don’t think about that enough.
0:17:47 I built my own podcasting tool,
0:17:50 trained on my own podcasting data,
0:17:51 the prompts I send to AI,
0:17:54 I wrote like there was so much control
0:17:57 and it gives me exactly what I want,
0:17:58 exactly how I want it,
0:18:02 and my exact formatting that I want it like every time.
0:18:03 I think that’s really underrated.
0:18:06 – Yeah. Now, if you’re following these methods,
0:18:07 especially the second and third one,
0:18:10 there’s some level of market validation.
0:18:12 Hey, we know these companies have been around for a long time,
0:18:15 people are used to paying for this functionality.
0:18:20 Does anything else go into your market validation
0:18:22 or competitive analysis phase
0:18:26 before you start prompting the code generators?
0:18:28 – Yes and no, no, in one sense,
0:18:32 because a lot of my own projects,
0:18:34 again, just me personally,
0:18:37 they are based on that scratch your own itch.
0:18:39 So part of me doesn’t care so much.
0:18:41 – Okay, yeah, I’m gonna build this for myself
0:18:44 and if anybody buys it, that’s gravy, okay.
0:18:47 – I use my podcasting, I call it a pod promo.
0:18:47 Don’t go sign up for it,
0:18:49 but I just call it a pod promo.
0:18:51 I’m probably never gonna sell it
0:18:52 just ’cause I don’t really wanna focus on that.
0:18:54 I still use it every week,
0:18:56 but yes, on the other hand,
0:18:58 I do think if you are going to approach this
0:19:02 first and foremost as a money-making venture,
0:19:03 which I think most people should,
0:19:06 yeah, I do think you should validate these ideas
0:19:08 and this might be skipping ahead a little bit,
0:19:12 but my strategy for this is really obvious.
0:19:14 It’s really annoying to listen to on a podcast,
0:19:17 but that is have an existing audience,
0:19:21 build an audience that follows you
0:19:25 from platform to platform, from project to project,
0:19:28 from this idea to that idea, that sort of thing.
0:19:31 This is, in my opinion, the one,
0:19:35 the only marketing strategy that is pretty foolproof, right?
0:19:39 Not based on anything happening with Twitter or X
0:19:42 or Blue Sky or Facebook or TikTok or Instagram
0:19:47 or email open rates or Apple or you get my picture, right?
0:19:49 So for me personally, that’s the validation.
0:19:51 I do have an existing email list
0:19:53 that I’ve been cultivating for years
0:19:57 and I generally send it to them within,
0:19:58 within a couple of weeks of having the idea.
0:20:00 Like, oh, I built this MVP.
0:20:01 – But it’s not huge.
0:20:03 It’s not like hundreds of thousands of followers.
0:20:04 – No, no, no.
0:20:05 I think I have, I don’t mind sharing.
0:20:09 I think I have like 5,500 people on my email list.
0:20:12 – Yeah, which is not nothing, but it’s, you know,
0:20:14 I guess, you know, a micro influencer status.
0:20:16 I’ve heard some people call like this range
0:20:18 between 1,000 and 20,000 or so people,
0:20:21 paying people, paying attention to your work.
0:20:22 Yeah.
0:20:23 – That’s been that way since 2019.
0:20:24 That’s true, yes.
0:20:25 – When you come up with these ideas,
0:20:27 did you do like a pre-sale thing?
0:20:30 Well, how serious is anybody about this?
0:20:32 Would they actually, you know, enter their PayPal?
0:20:34 Would they actually swipe their credit card for this?
0:20:36 Before I go through the trouble of building it,
0:20:37 or now it’s, I’m gonna build it
0:20:38 ’cause I don’t take that much time
0:20:40 and then we’ll see what the reaction is.
0:20:44 – So I do like to build something
0:20:46 that people can access first.
0:20:49 I think if people are going into online courses
0:20:52 or membership sites or any of these more
0:20:55 traditional digital product ideas,
0:20:57 I do think validating the idea,
0:20:59 getting people to, a pre-sale,
0:21:01 getting people to pay you before you build it,
0:21:02 totally valid.
0:21:05 Because I think these are much bigger projects.
0:21:09 I think for these software products,
0:21:12 especially since we’re staying small to begin with,
0:21:13 and that’s what I do,
0:21:15 I try and stay really small, really tight,
0:21:20 one tiny feature, one tiny solution to a problem,
0:21:21 I built them first.
0:21:26 And usually that can take anywhere from two or three hours
0:21:30 to maybe 20, 30 hours over a couple of weeks.
0:21:32 It’s like my longest one.
0:21:33 But generally I can whip something up now
0:21:35 in a couple of hours.
0:21:36 It’s not gonna look very pretty,
0:21:38 but I’ll put it in front of my audience
0:21:40 for a very small offer.
0:21:43 And sometimes not even my entire email list.
0:21:46 I have a group of about 100 to 200 people
0:21:50 that used to be paying members of my membership community,
0:21:52 people I know that I could literally text on the phone,
0:21:54 like people that are close to me.
0:21:56 And I’ll generally offer it to them first
0:22:00 for a very small lifetime deal, topical map AI.
0:22:04 I think I sold for like $39 lifetime, period.
0:22:07 Does anyone going to pay for this at all?
0:22:09 That’s what I was going for.
0:22:12 – Right, and if there is some positive feedback
0:22:13 and reaction in purchasers,
0:22:17 then I can invest the time to polishing it up,
0:22:19 making it look pretty, all this other stuff.
0:22:22 – Totally, I sold one product called EasyCourse,
0:22:24 which was terrible, by the way, in retrospect.
0:22:26 And part of the reason I know it was terrible
0:22:29 is because it got exactly two sales,
0:22:32 and it was a really cheap price point.
0:22:33 It got exactly two sales.
0:22:36 And those two people both had major issues
0:22:37 and they couldn’t figure it out.
0:22:40 And I was like, this was not it.
0:22:41 It was really clear.
0:22:43 – This was gonna be like a learning management system?
0:22:44 – It was basically like never ever paid
0:22:47 for online course software again, and it works.
0:22:49 – Like a think-effect, teachable, that kind of, okay.
0:22:52 – Really dumbed down, simplified version.
0:22:54 Yes, but yes, that’s exactly that.
0:22:59 And I was going to teach people how to build that themselves.
0:23:00 They had actually, they had my template.
0:23:02 They could just duplicate the template
0:23:04 and they changed the content and they have an online course
0:23:07 that people could buy or that they could sign up for.
0:23:09 It did not go over well at all.
0:23:10 No one was interested in the two people
0:23:12 that bought, didn’t have a good time.
0:23:13 So that was a big fail.
0:23:15 And there’ve been one or two other projects
0:23:17 where it’s, again, dirt cheap price point,
0:23:21 but it’ll be like 25 sales, 50 sales, 100 sales, 200 sales.
0:23:25 And that is when I like, okay, now I can double down,
0:23:28 fill out this product, do a little bit more marketing,
0:23:30 maybe, and that sort of stuff.
0:23:31 – Okay, now I like that.
0:23:33 I want to dive deeper into different marketing strategies,
0:23:38 but tell me about this two to 20 hour creation phase
0:23:42 of, you know, from idea to having something
0:23:45 that is viable and something somebody might even have
0:23:46 the opportunity to pay for.
0:23:47 What goes into that time?
0:23:50 – The very first app I built that went public
0:23:52 and that people could actually sign up for
0:23:57 took about six weeks and like 40 hours a week.
0:23:59 It took a really long time.
0:24:01 This was two years ago at this point.
0:24:04 And I wasn’t really using AI a whole lot.
0:24:08 I was going through a YouTube course that I found
0:24:10 and like doing what this person did.
0:24:12 It’s a change it for my app and doing with,
0:24:15 doing with this next lesson and change it for my app.
0:24:18 And I got lost so many times, couldn’t figure out or whatnot.
0:24:22 The next app, which was maybe six months later,
0:24:24 it’s about a year and a half ago-ish,
0:24:26 is a little bit more AI friendly.
0:24:29 Like I kind of had that experience under my belt
0:24:32 and I swear Nick, it took like less than a week,
0:24:34 maybe 15 hours total.
0:24:36 This was me sitting down at my computer
0:24:39 and like whipping up some code
0:24:42 and then going back and forth with chat GPT
0:24:44 and back and forth and back and forth, back and forth.
0:24:45 And then we get an app.
0:24:47 – What would be like a starting prompt?
0:24:51 And this is in chat GPT versus some other software
0:24:52 specific tool?
0:24:57 – The past three to six months have shown us
0:25:01 an explosion in AI code editors.
0:25:03 They call these IDEs.
0:25:05 I don’t even know what that stands for, to be honest with you.
0:25:08 But VS Code has been around for decades
0:25:11 and it’s a software on your computer.
0:25:13 Windows or Mac, Ted Matter, you open it up
0:25:15 and this is where you actually write your code.
0:25:17 But now it has AI in there.
0:25:19 And there are two or three other tools
0:25:21 I can throw out later if you’d like me to.
0:25:23 I use one called cursor.
0:25:27 And cursor, I would literally fired up
0:25:30 and let’s say you wanted to make a WordPress plugin
0:25:32 for your Google Doc formatting issue.
0:25:35 You could literally just fired up, no folders open,
0:25:38 no files open, just like a blank screen
0:25:39 that you’re basically staring at.
0:25:40 And you could tell it,
0:25:43 “Please create me a WordPress plugin
0:25:48 where I can copy and paste in text from a Google Doc
0:25:51 and so on and so on and so on and so on.”
0:25:53 You just tell it that and it’s gonna whip something up.
0:25:55 It’ll do it on its own now.
0:25:56 You’ll sit there and watch it.
0:25:59 It’ll create this file, it’ll implement it.
0:26:00 It’ll create another file.
0:26:01 It’ll analyze this other file.
0:26:04 It’ll create this, it’ll analyze that.
0:26:07 And I would say like 90 seconds later,
0:26:08 you’re probably gonna have something
0:26:10 pretty close to functional.
0:26:13 There’s always gonna be troubleshooting and errors for sure.
0:26:17 But at this day and age, you can try one of these tools.
0:26:19 You can prompt it like you were telling,
0:26:21 like you were talking to another developer.
0:26:22 If you had no idea how to code,
0:26:25 you would just say, “I want an app that does this
0:26:27 and ties into my Google Calendar
0:26:29 and then emails me this and then does this
0:26:30 and then does this.”
0:26:32 And it’s gonna do it.
0:26:33 That sounds overly simple,
0:26:35 but that’s what we’re at these days.
0:26:36 – That’s pretty crazy, okay.
0:26:40 And then you go into the testing phase after that
0:26:42 or it really can’t be that easy.
0:26:46 It’s like just telling it in plain English,
0:26:47 this is what I wanna build.
0:26:49 There’s gotta be, I need login information,
0:26:52 I need API access,
0:26:57 there’s gotta be other things or is there not?
0:26:58 – Yes and no.
0:26:59 You might actually be surprised
0:27:03 how much is not needed these days.
0:27:08 But that said, it can save you a lot of headache down the road
0:27:14 if you kind of prompt an AI for the big picture first.
0:27:16 So I have my notes open here.
0:27:19 I have like a seven step kind of process
0:27:21 to this entire thing.
0:27:22 We’ve already gone over a couple of these.
0:27:25 Number one, have an idea in some way.
0:27:28 I think the second big step is asking AI,
0:27:32 chat, TPT, Claude, Google, doesn’t matter.
0:27:33 Asking for the big picture.
0:27:35 Say I wanna create a WordPress plugin
0:27:38 that does this and does this and does this.
0:27:41 What are the big steps to implementation
0:27:43 and what tools should I use?
0:27:44 And AI is gonna give you a lot of things
0:27:46 you can kind of choose from.
0:27:49 And it’ll be like, oh, Firebase, that’s free.
0:27:50 It’s made by Google.
0:27:54 I can use Firebase for my backend, my database.
0:27:55 I’m not a backend developer at all.
0:27:59 But I know I need to store information somewhere
0:28:01 in a spreadsheet or database or something.
0:28:04 So I use Firebase and I found it from AI
0:28:06 that was like, oh, you could use Firebase for this
0:28:08 ’cause it’s free.
0:28:10 It has a database, it has authentication
0:28:12 where people can log in to your app
0:28:15 and creates a cookie and this sort of stuff.
0:28:16 Again, I don’t even know how all of these things work.
0:28:19 But start with the big picture.
0:28:22 Start by kind of choosing some tools.
0:28:24 Even if you don’t know what tools you need yet,
0:28:25 no one does, right?
0:28:27 Ask AI, ask the big picture.
0:28:28 – Okay.
0:28:31 – And then the next two steps we kind of mentioned already.
0:28:34 The next one will be to actually go into one of your code
0:28:37 editors or whatever and then start.
0:28:38 Prompt it to build something.
0:28:42 Create this page, create this app, create this plugin,
0:28:43 whatever.
0:28:46 And then there’s only really two more steps here.
0:28:49 Number one, try it, fire it up.
0:28:50 Figure out how to do that.
0:28:52 It’s generally not that hard
0:28:55 because of how advanced AI is these days.
0:28:56 And if you can’t figure something out,
0:28:57 why don’t you just ask it again?
0:29:00 Like, how do I open this in my browser?
0:29:01 That was one of the first things I Googled.
0:29:03 Like, oh, I have code on my computer.
0:29:04 How do I test this?
0:29:06 How do I see it in my browser?
0:29:08 And AI is like, oh, yeah, click this link.
0:29:12 It’s localhost colon five, seven, three,
0:29:13 I don’t know what it was.
0:29:14 – Yeah, okay, okay.
0:29:15 – Right?
0:29:18 And then test it out and then fix errors.
0:29:19 And that’s it.
0:29:21 It’s that over and over and over again.
0:29:24 Test it out, something’s not gonna work.
0:29:27 And they’re gonna be like, AI, this did not work.
0:29:28 Why?
0:29:31 And then hopefully it’s gonna give you some ideas.
0:29:32 It’s gonna change things for you at this point.
0:29:35 It didn’t used to be that way a year ago.
0:29:38 But implement something, test it, ask AI to fix it.
0:29:41 That sounds overly simple,
0:29:43 but that’s like my entire workflow these days.
0:29:45 Get AI to build something, test it out.
0:29:47 – Yeah, that’s interesting.
0:29:48 ‘Cause my first thought was,
0:29:51 and then you gotta go to Upwork to find somebody,
0:29:54 but it’s like, no, just ask, hey, how come this didn’t work?
0:29:57 It’s, I mean, what are the implications of like,
0:30:00 you know, at least $300,000 a year,
0:30:03 software developers, salaries, and–
0:30:03 – I don’t know.
0:30:04 – It’s cool.
0:30:05 Like from a side hustle, you know,
0:30:07 builder creator perspective,
0:30:11 but it’s terrifying from a job security
0:30:13 if that’s your role in the world.
0:30:14 – Sure, I don’t know.
0:30:18 And nobody knows for the most part.
0:30:22 But I think maybe a more relevant question
0:30:23 for me personally,
0:30:25 not to hijack your question there, Nick.
0:30:28 But if this is such a golden opportunity now,
0:30:31 and everybody can do it, can’t everybody do it?
0:30:35 Can’t Nick go home and spit out like five apps tonight
0:30:36 over the course of like an hour,
0:30:41 just because of these AI technology advances?
0:30:43 Yes, absolutely.
0:30:46 And I think we have a very limited window.
0:30:46 – Yeah.
0:30:47 – I’m not selling anything.
0:30:49 So, you know, I’m telling the truth here.
0:30:52 There’s a very limited window to do this,
0:30:56 to use AI to build apps for money
0:30:59 before, this is just not a thing anymore.
0:31:01 Before, now you just tell Siri on,
0:31:03 I’m talking about now, a year from now,
0:31:04 you might just tell Siri,
0:31:06 hey, could you build me an app
0:31:08 and go ahead and install it to my WordPress site
0:31:13 at doobnblog.com and go ahead and test it three or four times
0:31:14 to make sure it’s functional.
0:31:16 Oh, and by the way, can you whip up a sales email
0:31:18 to my list and go ahead and schedule that for tomorrow?
0:31:20 Like, that’s where we’re going.
0:31:24 And so I think the next 12 months, 18 months,
0:31:29 is where we as humans can build these software products
0:31:31 and hopefully capitalize on it,
0:31:33 at least a little bit before that happens.
0:31:35 – And yeah, the developer jobs, I don’t know,
0:31:36 but it’s looking grim.
0:31:39 – Okay, that’s interesting.
0:31:40 I mean, that’s like, you know,
0:31:43 this whole neighborhood is a lot of Microsoft,
0:31:46 a lot of Amazon, a lot of tech jobs
0:31:48 in the Seattle suburbs where I’m at.
0:31:51 So it’s interesting for sure.
0:31:56 Okay, so we’ve kind of described what we want in AI.
0:31:58 Now it’s kind of this back and forth,
0:32:01 the troubleshooting process and testing process.
0:32:03 You know, like any project, this QA phase,
0:32:05 and this was my biggest pain point
0:32:07 working with any software development project.
0:32:10 You know, I’d send them over my spec
0:32:13 and they would, and even if it was just updates
0:32:14 to an existing project,
0:32:16 there’s like for the shoe business I used to have.
0:32:19 And it’d be like, hey, we did all the things that you asked for.
0:32:21 And you’d send it, like the very first thing would be like,
0:32:23 broke and be like, did you test this at all?
0:32:25 It was like the most frustrating thing.
0:32:27 They’re so eager to like ship it, get it off their desk.
0:32:31 It’s like, where was the QA phase in any of this?
0:32:32 I don’t know.
0:32:33 Okay, but that’s the next thing.
0:32:36 And then we go into the marketing part.
0:32:38 I don’t know, it was your list.
0:32:42 What was toward the end of this seven steps?
0:32:43 That’s basically it.
0:32:45 I’ll tell you one more very quick lesson
0:32:48 ’cause I think this is incredibly important
0:32:52 for anybody who touches code or apps or anything.
0:32:56 Things will go wrong and you don’t need to know the answer.
0:32:57 So about two years ago,
0:33:01 I hired some person on Reddit in the Svelte community.
0:33:02 I didn’t know a thing.
0:33:03 I didn’t know what I was doing.
0:33:05 I was like, can I just like hire you
0:33:06 for a 30 minute zoom call
0:33:10 to look at some of my code here and like figure this out?
0:33:13 And this person was a complete professional.
0:33:15 He’s one of these like $300,000 a year,
0:33:17 like tech bros, he’s super kind.
0:33:19 And we got on the call.
0:33:21 I hired this guy, he came in here
0:33:23 and he took a look at the problem
0:33:25 and he’s like, yeah, I have no idea.
0:33:29 And my first thought was like, okay, awesome, sweet.
0:33:30 Thanks.
0:33:32 So what am I paying you for, yeah.
0:33:36 – Yeah, but two and a half seconds later, he said,
0:33:37 all right, let’s figure it out.
0:33:40 And he said it in this, this jolly tone like,
0:33:42 oh, I have no idea what the problem is.
0:33:44 I have no idea how to fix this.
0:33:45 Oh, let’s figure it out.
0:33:48 And so he literally, I sat there and watched his screen
0:33:52 as he opened Google and like copied and pasted my code
0:33:55 and then like went to some result and read something
0:33:56 and like two and a half minutes, he’s like,
0:33:58 oh, let’s just copy and paste this
0:34:00 and put it in your code and see if it works.
0:34:00 And it did.
0:34:03 And I was like, oh, okay.
0:34:06 This is what that job looks like, problem solving.
0:34:07 And it’s the same thing.
0:34:09 – And that’s entrepreneurship in a nutshell.
0:34:12 You may remember Brian Harris had this video
0:34:13 years and years ago.
0:34:14 – Just figure it out.
0:34:15 – Just figure it out, right?
0:34:17 You know, you’re always going to hit that next ceiling
0:34:20 and that next problem, that next hurdle obstacle.
0:34:21 What are we going to do?
0:34:22 Let’s figure it out.
0:34:23 Like that’s your job.
0:34:26 So no, I’ll highlight that point for sure.
0:34:27 – Totally.
0:34:29 And I still get stuck in this every now and then.
0:34:32 I will reach something that is not working
0:34:34 and I’m frustrated and I’m frustrated.
0:34:36 And maybe I do one or two Google searches
0:34:39 when I’m frustrated and eventually my mind comes back
0:34:42 around to, oh my gosh, I just need to ask somebody
0:34:45 and by somebody, I mean AI these days.
0:34:48 And so I do and without fail,
0:34:51 I’m generally like five minutes away from the solution.
0:34:54 So again, just to reiterate here,
0:34:57 I like to have an idea, check.
0:35:02 I like to prompt AI for the big picture implementation.
0:35:03 That’s my exact words.
0:35:07 What’s the big picture implementation to building this?
0:35:10 Or what are some different tools I should use for this?
0:35:12 – Okay.
0:35:13 – And if we have time, Nick,
0:35:16 I want to talk about back end as a service,
0:35:17 which is brilliant.
0:35:18 It’s the brilliant, we’ll talk about that later
0:35:22 if we have time, but big picture.
0:35:25 And then ask AI, okay, what’s the first step
0:35:28 if you’re using chat GPT, you might ask it.
0:35:29 What’s the very first step?
0:35:31 What do I need to code first?
0:35:33 What do I do with this?
0:35:34 Where do I put this on my computer?
0:35:36 Do I create a folder or do I, what do I do with this?
0:35:40 Or if you’re using a code editor like cursor,
0:35:43 like VS code, like windsurf, replete,
0:35:46 all these other ones, then you can pretty much just start.
0:35:50 You could say create me a plugin that does X, Y and Z.
0:35:53 Fire it up, test it.
0:35:55 However you test it depends on what you’re building.
0:35:58 If you don’t know how to test it, ask AI.
0:36:00 How do I see if this is working or not?
0:36:02 Try it, try to use it that for me,
0:36:04 that was uploading a podcast episode
0:36:06 and trying to get a transcription.
0:36:08 Didn’t work for a long time.
0:36:11 And then ask AI to fix it.
0:36:14 Ask AI to troubleshoot, find what’s happening here.
0:36:16 And if AI doesn’t work, you can go to Google.
0:36:18 That takes a little bit longer these days.
0:36:20 And then do it again, and then do it again.
0:36:22 And that’s it, that’s the whole process.
0:36:24 – More with Pete in just a moment,
0:36:26 including the marketing and monetization
0:36:29 of these AI coded apps and how we sold one of his creations
0:36:32 for $45,000 right after this.
0:36:36 – Let’s talk about the marketing and monetization piece
0:36:39 and then circle back to this backend as a service.
0:36:42 So obviously it is helpful
0:36:46 if you have your own existing legion of followers,
0:36:48 your 5,500 email subscribers, great.
0:36:50 If you don’t have that, hey, start building in public,
0:36:52 you know, start doing the social media,
0:36:54 start building that up, obviously a good practice.
0:36:58 What happens once you’ve tapped out that audience?
0:37:00 It doesn’t get you necessarily super far,
0:37:02 it doesn’t necessarily get your recurring revenue
0:37:05 if you’re doing it as a one-time, beta,
0:37:07 lifetime deal, super discounted.
0:37:10 Well, what else have you seen work on the marketing side?
0:37:13 – There are two big categories,
0:37:16 one of which I hate and I’ve had no success with,
0:37:18 but I’m gonna tell it to you anyways.
0:37:20 And the other which I’ve had a lot of success with,
0:37:22 and I love it and it’s what I wanna do going forward.
0:37:27 So the first category would be all the traditional advice
0:37:29 that you could literally Google right now
0:37:31 and I’ll just list off some.
0:37:35 Product time, launch your product on product time.
0:37:37 You could do that, it’s actually not hard.
0:37:41 – Yeah, this is huge in like the indie maker community.
0:37:43 – It is, but it’s super hard
0:37:45 because every single day of the week,
0:37:47 dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of companies
0:37:48 are doing this.
0:37:51 Some of which already have an existing audience
0:37:53 of a million people that are gonna go and upvote
0:37:55 their thing or whatever.
0:37:56 – Right, yeah.
0:37:58 – There’s a lot of these types of ideas.
0:38:00 Oh, launch to this.
0:38:02 Oh, go on, it used to be like hacker news.
0:38:04 Hacker news, hacker news, what was that?
0:38:05 Doesn’t matter.
0:38:08 Oh, go to this forum and post it here
0:38:12 and then, oh, post it here and launch it here.
0:38:15 I tried that for a couple of different projects now,
0:38:17 three projects, I’ve tried to go that route
0:38:20 and it has not worked at all for me personally.
0:38:22 Some people swear by it, you can Google
0:38:23 these sort of things, how to launch an app,
0:38:26 how to market your app or whatever
0:38:27 and those things are gonna pop up.
0:38:28 – Yeah.
0:38:31 – I’m gonna, the second category, the second category,
0:38:34 partnerships, I’ve done various partnerships
0:38:37 over the decades of entrepreneurship
0:38:41 and I think this idea of building your own apps
0:38:42 is by far the easiest.
0:38:45 It’s the easiest pitch in the world
0:38:46 and I’ll tell you how I got into this.
0:38:51 So I tried to sell one of my apps almost a year ago,
0:38:53 like nine months ago and I was just trying
0:38:55 to offload it very cheap.
0:38:58 I told somebody like $15,000, that’s it, period.
0:38:59 I was already making a little bit of money,
0:39:01 15 grand, it’s yours.
0:39:05 And I found a buyer, I met with this person on Zoom
0:39:08 and they were like, I’m happy to pay $15,000
0:39:13 or we can come in as 50/50 partners,
0:39:14 we will now be partners in this business,
0:39:16 we’ll split all the profits or whatever.
0:39:19 I know this guy over here who has an audience
0:39:23 of like a bajillion people and he wants to market the app.
0:39:26 And I was like, doing the math in my head,
0:39:28 like even if this barely pans out,
0:39:30 this is like a win-win for me
0:39:33 or this is a zero lose for me, there’s no downside.
0:39:36 And so I told the guy, yeah, sure.
0:39:39 I brought him on at 50/50 partners, he did promote it,
0:39:41 it did grow, it made great money
0:39:43 and my mind was just blown.
0:39:45 I was like, I’ve already done the work,
0:39:47 I’ve already built this app for the most part.
0:39:48 I actually did a little bit more work on it,
0:39:50 but I didn’t have to do any marketing.
0:39:52 They were like sending it to their email list
0:39:54 and they produced a couple of YouTube videos.
0:39:56 They created a social channels and I was like,
0:39:58 oh my gosh, this is amazing.
0:40:01 And I am, so I’m building a new project
0:40:05 as of last week with a new partner
0:40:07 who’s been on your show, a mutual friend of ours.
0:40:09 I won’t name them because the app’s not live yet.
0:40:11 And it was the same sort of pitch.
0:40:13 And in fact, I reached out before I even built it.
0:40:14 I knew this person already, by the way.
0:40:17 So this wasn’t like a completely cold email.
0:40:19 I reached out to this person and I said,
0:40:24 hey, I can build apps now because I’m fancy and I use AI.
0:40:26 I have this idea right here,
0:40:29 which would be perfect for your audience.
0:40:32 So here’s the deal, we’ll split this 50/50.
0:40:35 I’ll do all the work, I’ll build the app,
0:40:38 I’ll handle customer support, I’ll create the documentation.
0:40:40 It’s the things I was gonna do anyways.
0:40:43 All you gotta do is promote the app however you want.
0:40:44 – Okay. – Mention it to your email list.
0:40:47 It’s in the email marketing space, so it’s email related.
0:40:49 And she was like, yeah, okay.
0:40:50 This is the easiest pitch in the world.
0:40:53 So partnerships, finding people
0:40:55 who have the audience that you need.
0:40:57 If you don’t have your 5,000 people already
0:41:00 who are following Nick from project to project,
0:41:02 I think going and finding these people,
0:41:05 which is easier said than done, I realize this,
0:41:08 especially if you don’t have a very strong network yet.
0:41:09 I get that.
0:41:13 But I still think there’s, it’s such a good pitch.
0:41:16 – And your preference is to do it as like almost like a,
0:41:19 like you said, a 50/50 equity split partnership
0:41:21 rather than, you know, trying to go out
0:41:23 and find a hundred different affiliate partners.
0:41:26 I’ll give you 30% to try and promote this thing.
0:41:27 – Oh gosh, yeah.
0:41:29 Affiliates, affiliates are the worst.
0:41:31 Yeah, no, I like this.
0:41:33 It’s just incentives, right?
0:41:38 People have that much more incentive to grow,
0:41:40 to mention it, to promote it, to market it,
0:41:42 to do all that stuff when they are literally invested.
0:41:44 It’s not just like a one-off commission.
0:41:46 It’s not even a recurring commission.
0:41:49 Part of my pitch, by the way, is we’re gonna run this
0:41:50 for a year and then we’re gonna sell it.
0:41:53 Like a sell in apps is like really hot right now.
0:41:54 That’s part of the, and you get half of that.
0:41:56 You get 50% of that.
0:41:59 So yeah, I think it’s a lot easier than affiliates for sure.
0:41:59 – Okay.
0:42:02 On the pricing side, do you find like this one-off,
0:42:05 like, you know, lifetime access for this one price
0:42:07 or do you do a more traditional SaaS model
0:42:10 or do the partners, you know, want, you know,
0:42:12 one pricing model versus the other?
0:42:14 Like, what do you, what do you see?
0:42:15 It’s like, well, you know, give me some examples
0:42:16 of price points on these different tools
0:42:17 that you’re building.
0:42:20 – If you plan on selling your app period,
0:42:23 even if it’s a very small chance of selling your app,
0:42:25 I think you should go a very traditional route,
0:42:29 monthly payment, annual payment, subscription-based business.
0:42:33 For sure, 100% because I don’t think many people
0:42:34 are interested in buying it otherwise.
0:42:36 That’s just the truth.
0:42:40 That said, this is part of the glory of entrepreneurship.
0:42:42 You do however you want.
0:42:47 I think there is a space, especially in the Mac app world.
0:42:49 I have this tool on my computer right now called Clop,
0:42:51 C-L-O-P.
0:42:55 It’s just like a, whenever an image hits my downloads folder,
0:42:57 it just automatically compresses it and like resizes it
0:42:59 for me and then just drag it.
0:43:00 That’s great.
0:43:02 Anyways, no affiliation with these people
0:43:04 and it was like $30.
0:43:06 – Lifetime, just a one-time thing.
0:43:07 – One time, okay, yeah.
0:43:08 – Right.
0:43:09 I don’t think they’re ever planning on selling
0:43:10 any of their apps.
0:43:13 This is like a developer duo.
0:43:14 They have like, I don’t know,
0:43:17 five, 10, 20 different Mac apps.
0:43:17 They’re never gonna sell.
0:43:19 This is like their passion thing.
0:43:21 They don’t even need customer support for the most part.
0:43:24 Like it’s not an ongoing thing
0:43:27 that they’re constantly really releasing features for.
0:43:30 It’s kind of a different thing, a different vibe.
0:43:31 I don’t know how else to say it, Nick.
0:43:33 But I do think if you are gonna sell, yeah.
0:43:35 I think it needs to be traditional subscription,
0:43:37 monthly payments, that sort of thing.
0:43:40 – Okay, so that’s what I’m hearing is the app sumo model
0:43:42 of like the low lifetime access.
0:43:44 I think great for validation,
0:43:46 great for proving a concept.
0:43:48 But not so good.
0:43:49 Well, now I gotta support this thing
0:43:51 for the lifetime that I promised.
0:43:55 And it’s gonna be much harder to sell.
0:43:57 Like, well, it made $10,000 to sales.
0:44:00 Well, yeah, but what has it done for me lately?
0:44:01 How do you gotta keep going back to that well
0:44:04 versus the recurring model here?
0:44:07 Obviously much more attractive to a buyer coming in.
0:44:10 Now, did you have a non-partner exit?
0:44:13 Any marketplaces that you like to put this stuff up for sale?
0:44:15 Is there a rule of thumb on multiples?
0:44:16 What’s going on there?
0:44:18 – I will give credit where credit is due
0:44:21 and give a shout out to acquire.com.
0:44:26 This is the company I use to sell my most recent app.
0:44:29 And I was, again, I’m not affiliated
0:44:31 with these people in any way.
0:44:32 But I was blown away.
0:44:33 – Is this like a brokerage?
0:44:35 – They are a brokerage, correct, yes.
0:44:35 – Okay.
0:44:38 – I was blown away by how easy it was.
0:44:39 They met on a Zoom call.
0:44:41 They walked me through everything.
0:44:43 In fact, we had like two or three calls
0:44:45 just to like stay in close contact
0:44:47 as like buyers were contacted.
0:44:51 And they actually emailed the listing out to their list.
0:44:52 And it was great.
0:44:53 It was absolutely fantastic.
0:44:56 And there’s a couple of these brokerages.
0:44:59 I guess Empire Flippers is another one.
0:45:03 I actually have a listing that’s about to go live there.
0:45:05 Acquire.com, and there’s one or two other ones.
0:45:08 Flippa, they do software products as well.
0:45:09 There’s a couple of these.
0:45:11 I recommend going that route.
0:45:16 Yes, you will pay the 8%, 10%, maybe even 15%, I think.
0:45:18 – Okay.
0:45:21 – In closing fees, the brokerage fee, totally worth it.
0:45:23 Totally worth it.
0:45:26 They make sure all the legal stuff is happening,
0:45:29 dotting the I’s, crossing the T’s, that sort of thing.
0:45:31 Yeah, use the brokerage.
0:45:32 – Which one did you sell?
0:45:33 Like if you’re comfortable sharing the price point
0:45:36 or the multiples of the math behind that?
0:45:37 – Oh, I don’t mind.
0:45:38 I’m super happy with this.
0:45:43 So fabfabb.ai, fully autonomous blog bot as you nailed
0:45:46 early in the upset.
0:45:50 I did not work on this app for nine months straight.
0:45:51 I had touched it.
0:45:54 And I had it on my to-do list to work on it.
0:45:57 And I got to that day on my to-do list.
0:45:59 And I’m like, today is fab.ai day.
0:46:00 I got to work on this thing.
0:46:02 I opened it up on my computer
0:46:04 and I had this sinking feeling in my gut.
0:46:07 Like, I don’t want to do this.
0:46:08 You know what?
0:46:10 Maybe I could just sell it.
0:46:12 And no joke, like 24 hours later,
0:46:15 I was on a Zoom call with the acquire.com people.
0:46:18 I had to get like financials and order.
0:46:19 It was literally just Google Sheets.
0:46:23 I just Google Sheets financials with income and expenses.
0:46:26 And I use Stripe for billing and payments.
0:46:29 So I just kind of connected my Stripe account.
0:46:31 And I kind of wrote like a little blurb.
0:46:35 I wrote how I grew the app, which wasn’t very much at all.
0:46:37 – You didn’t have recurring revenue at that time?
0:46:40 – Very little, less than $1,000 a month at that point.
0:46:44 And so yeah, I use their built-in valuation tool.
0:46:45 You know, they give you like a huge range.
0:46:50 Oh, your app could be worth $10,000 or like $130,000.
0:46:54 Well, mine, I literally just slid the little slider,
0:46:58 the valuation price point slider on my screen
0:46:58 all the way down.
0:47:00 I slid it all the way down.
0:47:01 I was like, I just want to get rid of this.
0:47:05 And it was like $45,000 or something.
0:47:07 And I was like, done, fine.
0:47:08 That’s great.
0:47:10 If I, $45,000, I’ll take.
0:47:11 – Wow, yeah.
0:47:13 – Again, I launched the app
0:47:16 and I had like a hundred subscribers, paying subscribers.
0:47:18 But then I didn’t work on it for like nine months
0:47:21 and people dropped off and it was, it was crazy, right?
0:47:23 I have no idea what the multiple was.
0:47:28 I know that between 30X, 30X monthly net revenue,
0:47:33 – Monthly. – You can literally Google this.
0:47:36 Like SaaS, multiple sales or whatever.
0:47:40 30 to 35 is generally like a pretty normal range,
0:47:43 I think, 30X to 35X.
0:47:44 Mine was a little bit more than that
0:47:47 just ’cause I think it was fairly cheap.
0:47:49 It was, I’m not selling it for like one and a half million
0:47:50 dollars, right?
0:47:51 It was $45,000.
0:47:53 And that’s it, listed it.
0:47:56 I think a week and a half later, it was live.
0:47:59 I had an onslaught of like the initial people
0:48:02 showing interest and then maybe like three or four people
0:48:04 a couple of days later that were having a conversation.
0:48:08 And then one person who was like literally sent over the,
0:48:11 oh, I forgot what it’s called, the purchase agreement,
0:48:15 like intent or whatever to buy it, cash closing.
0:48:17 And I was like, sole, that was easy.
0:48:18 This was great.
0:48:20 – A couple of important things to note here.
0:48:22 One is like, when’s it time to pull the plug
0:48:25 on your side hustle when it’s, you know,
0:48:27 when you have post-poned working on it for nine months
0:48:29 and when you do finally get to it,
0:48:31 you like within 10 minutes, you’re like,
0:48:32 this is awful, why am I doing this?
0:48:34 Like when you come to dread the work,
0:48:36 that’s a good sign that I don’t need this in my life,
0:48:38 but it’s an asset, right?
0:48:39 It’s sort of just shutting it down
0:48:41 and sunsetting it into the, you know,
0:48:43 abyss of the internet.
0:48:45 Hey, this might be worth something to somebody else.
0:48:47 It might be worth $45,000 to somebody else.
0:48:49 I think that’s a really interesting one
0:48:53 where in the case of building tools like this,
0:48:56 okay, I can build near-term cash flow
0:48:58 if I sell it either as a one-time thing
0:49:00 or I sell it as a subscription,
0:49:03 but I’m also building equity in every incremental,
0:49:07 you know, $500 that I’m adding to the bottom line
0:49:08 every month, every $1,000 that I’m adding
0:49:09 in recurring revenue.
0:49:13 That’s worth 30 to 35X as an exit valuation.
0:49:15 It’s like really, really interesting,
0:49:18 this cash flow plus equity component there.
0:49:20 – You know, one of the benefit to this,
0:49:22 this whole building app thing,
0:49:27 the expenses are essentially zero, essentially zero.
0:49:32 A few of my apps do use AI themselves.
0:49:35 Fab2AI was using AI to create blog posts.
0:49:39 So yeah, there were API costs from OpenAI,
0:49:44 from Anthropic, who makes the Claude AI models.
0:49:47 But other than that, like actually hosting the app
0:49:49 and having it live on the internet is,
0:49:53 in most cases, free for all my other projects.
0:49:55 – Yeah, if you already have hosting or something,
0:49:56 yeah, it makes sense.
0:49:57 – No, no, no, not even have hosting.
0:49:59 I mean, you can host it for free.
0:50:01 You can go to Vercel right now
0:50:04 and you can deploy, host your app
0:50:08 with SSL certificates and everything for zero dollars.
0:50:11 Every single month, like this is there.
0:50:14 And the back end I use is zero dollars from Google.
0:50:18 It’s made by Google and Stripe.
0:50:19 You pay Stripe fees when somebody buys your app,
0:50:21 but again, it’s free to sign up.
0:50:23 My expenses for these things are nothing.
0:50:26 So even if they only make, like you said,
0:50:29 a hundred bucks a month, 200, 500 bucks a month, like–
0:50:31 – Yeah, it’s incremental, yeah.
0:50:32 – The expenses are just nothing, yeah.
0:50:34 – Yeah, the margins are out of control, yeah.
0:50:38 Okay, so finding this, we’ll call them like
0:50:40 the audience partner or the marketing partner.
0:50:42 And this is one of the side hustle trends
0:50:43 that have been going on for a long time.
0:50:46 Like you have the founder and then you have,
0:50:47 like, well, how are we gonna market this thing?
0:50:49 Like we need that influencer component,
0:50:52 like somebody who already talks to the people
0:50:53 that we want to talk to.
0:50:55 That would be a good fit for the tool.
0:50:57 So that’s one component.
0:50:59 You tease this back end as a service thing.
0:51:01 So I’ll tee that up for you.
0:51:06 – Sure, I had the most trouble when I first started out
0:51:08 figuring out the back end.
0:51:11 A database hosted on a server somewhere,
0:51:12 what even is a server?
0:51:14 A server’s just a computer.
0:51:15 Took me a while to figure that out,
0:51:18 but literally just a computer that has a database
0:51:22 where I store my user data, their email address,
0:51:25 their name, anything related to my app,
0:51:28 like the transcription for a podcast or whatever it is.
0:51:33 That was so hard for me when I first did this.
0:51:34 It took forever.
0:51:36 I just could not wrap my head around this.
0:51:39 How does my app talk to a database
0:51:42 and back and forth like my mind was just blown?
0:51:46 So back end as a service is relatively new
0:51:50 and it’s basically software products itself
0:51:54 that you can go use for no money, by the way.
0:51:58 That kind of does most of that heavy lifting for you
0:52:00 and you kind of plug it into your app
0:52:01 with a few lines of code
0:52:04 that you can just kind of copy and paste in.
0:52:09 But once you do, you can run a back end database authentication
0:52:13 like for my apps.
0:52:15 People can use the sign in with Google button.
0:52:16 Like they click the button
0:52:18 and then the Google thing pops up
0:52:20 and they sign in with Google.
0:52:20 – Oh, okay.
0:52:22 – I didn’t code any of that.
0:52:23 – Yeah, yeah.
0:52:24 I don’t want to create a new password or anything.
0:52:25 Okay, yeah.
0:52:29 So this is like the off the shelf tools or templates.
0:52:30 Like you kind of plug it.
0:52:32 I don’t have to start completely from scratch.
0:52:34 Some of this functionality already exists
0:52:35 and apparently it’s open source
0:52:40 or it’s available for people to borrow.
0:52:42 – Again, this is why Nick makes the big bucks
0:52:44 because off the shelf is the perfect way
0:52:45 to think about this.
0:52:46 It is.
0:52:48 No one cares about messing with databases.
0:52:50 I do not, I don’t get that.
0:52:51 My brain doesn’t get that.
0:52:55 This is off the shelf solutions for databases,
0:52:58 authentication and other stuff like that.
0:53:00 But those are the two big things.
0:53:03 So I’ll just point out, I use Google’s Firebase.
0:53:06 It’s literally the name of the app, you can Google it.
0:53:08 And it’s completely free.
0:53:11 It’s silly, easy to like set up.
0:53:14 In fact, you can really just ask AI to do it these days.
0:53:15 And it’ll tell you like,
0:53:17 oh, first you need to go create a Google account
0:53:20 and then do this, so on and so forth.
0:53:21 But once you do that,
0:53:23 ChatGP knows how to use Firebase.
0:53:24 They know how to use SuperBase.
0:53:26 They know how to use these back end as a service things.
0:53:30 And if you ever have to manage it yourself,
0:53:33 it’s as simple as going to their website,
0:53:35 Firebase or SuperBase,
0:53:38 and kind of like point and click, searching for things.
0:53:40 It’s the off the shelf things.
0:53:42 You don’t want to touch SQL.
0:53:44 You don’t want to be doing queries for databases
0:53:47 ’cause that’s just, oh, that’s way beyond the scope
0:53:48 of anything I know how to do.
0:53:50 So yes, back end as a service,
0:53:52 you’re gonna have to pick one, that’s what I’m saying.
0:53:53 So Google what that is,
0:53:55 ask ChatGPT, get signed up.
0:53:59 They’re completely free to start with and go from there.
0:54:02 – All right, it sounds like a project for,
0:54:03 after putting the kids to bed,
0:54:06 let me dig around on the internet,
0:54:10 which has always been and found my coding knowledge
0:54:11 is super, super limited.
0:54:13 Like I can read some HTML and, you know,
0:54:16 insert hyperlinks and stuff like that.
0:54:20 But otherwise it’s super, super basic enough to figure out,
0:54:22 you know, every time I hit refresh on,
0:54:24 after I had an updating code and it doesn’t break.
0:54:26 Like, yes, okay, I’m a programming genius.
0:54:27 This is amazing.
0:54:29 But this is really cool.
0:54:31 I mean, we’re going back to like hypercard,
0:54:32 to do hypercard.
0:54:35 It’s this like middle school era of programming,
0:54:38 you know, shout out to like the two people in the audience
0:54:41 who will get that reference if they’re old enough to,
0:54:42 but it was this, you know,
0:54:44 going back to this practice of figuring it out
0:54:48 where the teacher would kind of, you know,
0:54:51 write a very simple instruction or prompt
0:54:53 at end of the beginning of the class,
0:54:56 the beginning of the quarter, super frustrating.
0:54:58 Like, dude, you didn’t tell us how to do any of that.
0:55:00 How are we supposed to do the thing?
0:55:02 And it’s just, you kind of like,
0:55:03 it was super frustrating.
0:55:05 It’s like, give me the instructions.
0:55:06 I will find that was like the kind of student,
0:55:08 like I will knock this out of the park for you.
0:55:12 But it was so open-ended and it took a few weeks
0:55:14 into the class to be like,
0:55:16 there’s a method to your madness here.
0:55:18 I ended up being one of the most fun
0:55:20 and rewarding classes here.
0:55:22 And I can kind of see this being similar,
0:55:25 like creating something just to solve a problem of your own
0:55:28 to like, you know, put something out into the world.
0:55:31 I think it’s really, it’s really unique.
0:55:34 But anything surprised you over the last couple of years
0:55:36 in building these things and trying to market and sell them?
0:55:40 – The most surprising thing is that I actually did it.
0:55:43 I didn’t go to school for this.
0:55:45 I’ve never went to a coding boot camp.
0:55:46 So on and so forth, right?
0:55:49 I’m not a trained developer.
0:55:52 But at some point, like I literally coded something
0:55:53 and built it and got paying customers
0:55:55 and then sold the company.
0:55:57 And not for a million bajillion dollars.
0:55:58 – Yeah, isn’t that crazy?
0:56:00 – But yes, it is crazy.
0:56:04 And I’ve just blown away by not just me,
0:56:08 but the fact that we can all do stuff like this now.
0:56:11 Again, we have AI to thank for the large part.
0:56:13 But for anybody listening to this,
0:56:16 we can all build apps now, software.
0:56:17 It’s just wild.
0:56:20 And every single week that goes by, it gets easier,
0:56:22 which is continuing to be surprising.
0:56:26 – So if you got a checklist of future projects
0:56:29 that you wanna build, what’s next?
0:56:30 Where are you going with this?
0:56:31 – Yeah, you want the ideas?
0:56:32 I will literally just throw them to the ether
0:56:34 and then somebody can steal them.
0:56:36 Number one, an app that will text me
0:56:40 when half time is over for my college football games.
0:56:43 I wanna be able to input Nick’s team,
0:56:46 the Washington Huskies, GoDocs,
0:56:48 but also the George Bulldogs, GoDocs.
0:56:49 I wanna input my team
0:56:51 and I wanna get a text message when half time is over
0:56:52 and the game is starting back.
0:56:54 So I can walk back in the other room
0:56:55 and get in front of my TV.
0:56:56 There’s an app right there
0:56:58 that I would pay $10 a year for.
0:56:59 – Love it.
0:57:00 I mean, it’s like Red Zone, right?
0:57:01 So it’s similar.
0:57:02 – Oh, I don’t know.
0:57:03 I don’t know what Red Zone is.
0:57:04 Maybe you could share this with me.
0:57:05 – Well, this is like NFL Red Zone.
0:57:08 Or like we’ll send you an alert
0:57:09 when your team is inside the 20 year.
0:57:11 Like, didn’t something like that exist?
0:57:12 – I don’t know.
0:57:13 It’s a great question.
0:57:15 Either way, I’d pay for it.
0:57:17 Here’s another one that I think I might actually do
0:57:18 as my Necklace project,
0:57:20 unless somebody else does it better.
0:57:23 And that is an AI mastermind group.
0:57:25 I wanna be able to log in
0:57:27 to something that looks like a chat window
0:57:29 or heck, I might even do voices
0:57:33 since the AIs have voices now, audio.
0:57:35 And I literally just wanna interact with it
0:57:37 as my mastermind group.
0:57:38 In fact, I wanna go more specific.
0:57:43 I wanna be able to define the exact people
0:57:46 that are in my mastermind group, give them names,
0:57:50 give them character traits and life experiences
0:57:53 and pros and cons and strengths and weaknesses,
0:57:57 each person except for their AI.
0:57:58 And I wanna chat with them.
0:57:59 So almost like an AI therapist,
0:58:01 but an AI mastermind group.
0:58:02 That’s another idea.
0:58:02 – Yeah.
0:58:04 And this is something I’ve been exploring.
0:58:07 Like you can easily prompt it to be like,
0:58:09 respond as if you’re Tony Robbins,
0:58:12 respond as if you’re Pat Flynn or Warren Buffett
0:58:14 or Aristotle or, you know.
0:58:16 And it’s, I mean, this is kind of taking it
0:58:17 to the next level.
0:58:19 We, I’m picturing there like talking heads,
0:58:22 you know, Hagen generated on a screen here.
0:58:23 – Totally.
0:58:26 I’ll give you another one that’s somebody else to do
0:58:27 that I don’t want to do.
0:58:32 And that is affiliate tracking software,
0:58:33 but dirt cheap.
0:58:35 So there are a lot of tools out there
0:58:39 like rewardful and what’s the other one?
0:58:41 Link mink, there’s another one.
0:58:43 These are affiliate referral softwares
0:58:46 where you sign up, you pay $49 a month
0:58:47 and they give you this code,
0:58:51 a line of JavaScript or something
0:58:53 that you install into your site.
0:58:56 Maybe it’s WordPress, maybe it’s a software product
0:58:59 like ConvertKit or something like that.
0:59:00 I don’t know.
0:59:03 And then they handle your affiliate marketing, right?
0:59:04 They give you affiliate links.
0:59:06 They give you a page where your affiliates can sign up
0:59:08 so on and so forth.
0:59:11 All of these are way overpriced
0:59:14 and the market is itching for people like me
0:59:18 who are indie developers to pay $9 a month
0:59:21 and just have a dirt simple affiliate tracking thing.
0:59:23 I don’t know why these are so expensive
0:59:24 and somebody needs to create this.
0:59:27 This is like the AppSumo tidy cow versus Calendly.
0:59:29 Somebody should build this right now
0:59:31 and sell it to me and I’ll pay for it.
0:59:32 There you go.
0:59:33 And it can’t be that hard.
0:59:35 I have a Doven yet, but it can’t be that hard.
0:59:36 – All right.
0:59:37 These are great.
0:59:38 Well, you can email Pete, Pete, do you even blog.
0:59:41 Once you got this developed, doyevenblog.com
0:59:43 is where you can check them out.
0:59:46 Thanks so much for schooling me on this stuff.
0:59:49 I think I’m inspired to start playing around with it
0:59:51 or allocate a portion of the week
0:59:53 to just learn new things, start digging around with stuff
0:59:56 and see what comes of it.
0:59:58 I think it’s really exciting what you built
1:00:02 and looking forward to seeing the future projects
1:00:04 in the pipeline what comes down the road.
1:00:06 But let’s wrap this thing up
1:00:09 with your number one tip for side isolation.
1:00:10 – Quit quicker.
1:00:12 I think maybe I’ve heard this on your podcast before.
1:00:14 So this is gonna be a little bit of a cop out.
1:00:19 But my one tip is to drop your projects faster.
1:00:25 Drop your ideas faster and move on to the next thing.
1:00:29 I do think there is a possibility
1:00:33 that you will quote unquote lack a certain focus here.
1:00:35 I do think there’s a possibility
1:00:38 that you might miss out on some opportunity
1:00:42 if you had tripled down on a project instead of quitting.
1:00:46 But on the long run, I actually think it’s better advice
1:00:49 to quit faster and move on to the next thing.
1:00:53 That’s my side hustle and entrepreneurship mantra right now.
1:00:55 – Well, I gave my criteria for when it was time
1:00:58 to throw in the towel when you come to dread the work.
1:01:00 What’s your quick criteria?
1:01:01 – That’s a huge one right there.
1:01:04 I mean, that looks like a lot of different things
1:01:07 for me personally, but I do feel that now.
1:01:10 I don’t want to work on this project anymore.
1:01:12 That’s the number one sign.
1:01:15 Figure out a way to probably not shut it down completely.
1:01:16 I’m with you.
1:01:18 All of these things can be assets.
1:01:20 I mean, I didn’t touch my app for nine months
1:01:21 and then I sold it.
1:01:24 Either just give yourself grace for not working on it
1:01:25 and just put it down.
1:01:27 If it’s not costing you any money,
1:01:30 list it for sale, figure out something else to do with it
1:01:32 when that work becomes tedious.
1:01:33 I’m with you.
1:01:34 – All right, well, this is fair.
1:01:36 And this is the reason why we ask this question
1:01:40 because half the time, or oftentimes,
1:01:41 well, the answer is persistence.
1:01:44 If you just stick with it through the hard times,
1:01:48 eventually you get to the pot of gold at the other side.
1:01:50 Like, well, how long do you really keep digging
1:01:52 before you just throw it in?
1:01:54 It just never comes.
1:01:57 So there’s no shame in quitting.
1:01:57 Same thing.
1:02:00 Like if you’re gonna leave your job to start a business,
1:02:01 I would love to see you start the business
1:02:02 before quitting your job.
1:02:04 Like you have lower the height of that cliff
1:02:05 that you’re jumping off.
1:02:07 If you’re quitting to something rather than from something,
1:02:09 you know, a whole lot of psychology around that.
1:02:12 But you don’t need to hang on to something
1:02:13 that’s making your life worse.
1:02:16 So quit quicker is the number one tip from Pete
1:02:16 in this one.
1:02:17 It’s been awesome.
1:02:20 I love the calls to action of like,
1:02:22 well, if you don’t know how to do it,
1:02:24 ask the AI to troubleshoot it.
1:02:26 I love the call to start small.
1:02:28 I love the call to find a marketing partner
1:02:30 and share the upside with them.
1:02:32 Really, really interesting episode.
1:02:33 Again, one that’s inspired me,
1:02:36 hopefully to go stride and try and build something on my own.
1:02:38 But big thanks to Pete for sharing his insight.
1:02:39 Big thanks to our sponsors
1:02:41 for helping make this content free for everyone.
1:02:44 You can hit upsidehustlenation.com/deals
1:02:47 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
1:02:48 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
1:02:50 that support the show.
1:02:51 That’s it for me.
1:02:52 Thank you so much for tuning in.
1:02:53 If you find a value in the show,
1:02:55 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
1:02:58 So fire off that text message to, you know,
1:03:00 somebody who’s always coming up with different business ideas.
1:03:02 Hey, have you ever thought doing a software project?
1:03:04 This episode is for you.
1:03:05 Until next time, let’s go out there
1:03:06 and make something happen.
1:03:08 And I’ll catch you in the next edition
1:03:09 of the Side Hustle Show.

0:00:05 A hundred sixty grand talking about Australian fantasy football now you know nothing warms
0:00:10 my heart more than listener success stories and for some odd reason the more obscure the
0:00:15 niche the better right so today’s guest started a podcast on the side from his teaching job
0:00:20 not about football not about even fantasy football but about a very specific flavor
0:00:26 of fantasy football for a very specific flavor of football that being Australian rules football
0:00:30 that’s a niche within a niche within a niche if I’ve ever heard of one it’s a really fun
0:00:34 illustration of how you can monetize just about any area of interest from the keeper league
0:00:41 podcast and keeper league pod.com.au have your lock welcome to the side hustle show thanks Nick
0:00:44 for having me it’s a absolute pleasure to be here I’ve been listening to this show for probably
0:00:48 five years now and got plenty of good ideas so it’s pretty exciting to come on here and be
0:00:52 able to kind of you know maybe help some other people get some ideas and doing similar sorts
0:00:55 of things with their side hustles I’m excited to learn as well stick around to hear how
0:01:00 have built his audience from the ground up and the different ways he’s monetized this online
0:01:04 business over the years now if you’re interested in starting a podcast of your own make sure to
0:01:10 download my podcast starter kit with resources on choosing the right software and equipment my
0:01:15 production process marketing your show and of course all the different ways that podcasts can
0:01:22 make money that’s at sidehustle nation.com/heff or just follow the show notes a link in the episode
0:01:27 description and I’ll get you right over there but take me back to the beginning the side hustle
0:01:34 days of like hey I know why don’t we start a podcast about this keeper league flavor of fantasy
0:01:41 football. So yeah it dates back to 2018 just after I had my son at the time I was teaching full
0:01:46 time I’d been about probably I know five six years into my teaching career and I wasn’t really sure
0:01:51 if that’s what I wanted to do full time if that’s the thing that kind of you know filled my desires
0:01:56 I guess I thought it was when I started but you know once you kind of hit that sixth or seventh
0:02:01 year it starts to become a bit of a grind I guess so I was listening to a lot of podcasts at the time
0:02:06 it was probably my favorite thing to do was after work go home go for a walk and listen to a podcast
0:02:11 and because I was listening to so many podcasts it’s basically just I wanted to start my own
0:02:17 I’ve always been a fan of audio and technology I guess my job was teaching music and technology
0:02:22 really and a lot of that was around kind of studio recording teaching kids how to use microphones
0:02:26 record bands and things like that and I’ve always had a bit of a studio set up at home so I thought
0:02:31 why does might as well put it’s a good use start a podcast and here we are about six years later.
0:02:38 Here we go time time flies here so was anybody else covering this topic or were there multiple
0:02:42 different topics that you considered before saying now this is the keeper league is going to be the
0:02:48 one no it’s we never actually really went elsewhere we’ve had our fantasy league and our keeper league
0:02:53 what we’ll call it we’ve had that going for since about 2013 so like you know five years before we
0:02:57 started the podcast and it’s something that we just talked about on whatsapp groups and group chats
0:03:00 every day anyway and it’s kind of the one thing that we’ve we felt like we just knew the most
0:03:03 about we could talk about like a you know we could talk about a few hours type things that’s
0:03:09 like your listeners in in the USA are probably very familiar with draft fantasy like NFL draft
0:03:14 NBA draft and that sort of thing where we go like different I guess is like we play what we call a
0:03:19 keeper league and I think it’s sometimes known as a dynasty league over in the USA as well is like
0:03:24 where you keep players from year to year so instead of picking a new team each year it’s
0:03:28 kind of built like you’re actually like a a team coach or a team manager and you’ve got to think
0:03:32 about at the end of the year who you’re cutting who you’re delisting who you’re trading to other
0:03:36 players in your leagues and then you yeah you do a draft and you pick up the new younger players
0:03:41 and stuff like that so we found that there was no one else talking about that version and we
0:03:45 figured like if we’re that we’re not the only ones in the country that are playing this format
0:03:49 because you know I got the idea from another person and we figured there must be more people
0:03:53 out there doing what we do and it’s been pretty interesting to kind of hear the way different
0:03:57 listeners were we’re doing it like on spreadsheets and stuff like that just totally different ways
0:04:01 people have been doing it but yeah we figured that no one else was doing it that way and
0:04:06 you know I want to start a podcast that was like a niche topic that no one else was really doing
0:04:11 and yeah so we thought we’d run with it and give it a go well I like this niche selection of well
0:04:15 what do you never get tired of talking about hey we were you know we had this group chat going
0:04:20 for years and it was just something that you enjoyed doing and kind of finding this white
0:04:25 space in the market where nobody else is really covering it in the way that we would want to
0:04:31 cover it and you know it’s kind of an upcoming trend towards this keeper league format or this
0:04:36 dynasty type of format and you know those two things kind of combine you know with maybe the
0:04:42 combination of well I already have some level of you know audio production knowledge or interest
0:04:47 or experience and they’re like okay we can kind of find the at the center of all of those concentric
0:04:54 circles is you know this keeper league podcast so what happens next record an episode launch it
0:04:59 to the world instantly internet famous what what’s going on in the early days of the show
0:05:02 not quite not quite internet famous I don’t think we’ve actually reached internet famous yet to be
0:05:09 honest but maybe one day that’s in the pipeline but no we recorded it at my friend’s house around
0:05:14 his dining room table at the time with my audio background like I had decent microphones I kind
0:05:19 of understand acoustics in spaces and stuff like that so how to make things sound good even in the
0:05:24 worst areas we recorded our first episode just kind of introducing ourselves I think we gave
0:05:28 five players each that we think because the whole the whole premise of the podcast is not
0:05:33 talking about the superstars that everyone already knows about and that everyone always talks about
0:05:37 we talk about the next up and coming guys in the fantasy world type thing or guys that haven’t
0:05:41 even played yet they’ve just been drafted haven’t played a game or they’ve been playing in the reserve
0:05:46 leagues to try to get into the main team and to the A team type thing and kind of following those
0:05:50 type of guys so we picked five guys each and we just kind of talked about players that weren’t
0:05:54 really well known okay fantasy I mean AFL fantasy and so that was the kind of premise of the first
0:05:58 podcast and I think because the audio quality was so good like quite often you hear like new
0:06:03 podcasts come up and the audio quality is not good and it can be sometimes a bit jarring to
0:06:06 actually listen to and stuff like that but I think that was probably the main thing like the fantasy
0:06:09 world kind of oh what’s this new podcast we’ll have a listen to it and it’s like oh it actually
0:06:14 sounds professional and so what actually happened was the the guy who runs the official AFL fantasy
0:06:18 podcast for that salary cap version he actually retweeted it and said hey great new podcast good
0:06:25 to see the fantasy community growing and he did a did a retweet and then he actually DM’d the page
0:06:29 on our twitter page and said like great work love the podcast let me know if there’s anything I can
0:06:33 do to help promote it and this is a guy like I’ve been listening to for warning his name is I’ll
0:06:36 I’ll mention his name on the podcast because he’s actually become a really good friend of mine
0:06:40 since doing it but this is a guy I was listening to since I was in high school you know I’m just
0:06:44 following the youtube content or whatever well okay so it was actually like a bit of a I was kind
0:06:49 of starstruck at the time when he kind of got in contact supported the show yeah um so yeah that
0:06:53 was probably the first bit of traction and then you know from there we’re probably getting a few
0:06:57 hundred listeners per week just on the back for our first kind of season just on the back of um
0:07:02 yeah the the main AFL fantasy guys kind of supporting us and retweeting our stuff and
0:07:07 kind of promoting us to the to the wider world I guess okay so did you see some you know download
0:07:13 growth as a result of this retweet or is that I don’t know sometimes you feel like hey you know
0:07:17 with or your boat on social media but I didn’t really move the needle no I think we did I think
0:07:20 I actually did because um but I’m talking like we probably went from like a hundred listeners to
0:07:25 maybe 400 listeners you know like not a huge amount but hey you even find first hundred people to
0:07:29 listen to the show is not nothing correct well that was the assumption that there was enough people
0:07:33 out there playing this format and the kind of at the time and I think it still is like the twitter
0:07:38 I guess the twitter sphere um the x-phere now whatever you want to call it it was where these
0:07:41 people were hanging out I guess talking about because it’s the information you know like people
0:07:44 were going to training and they’re seeing who’s like playing in different positions and stuff
0:07:47 like that and they’ll tweet that to the world and that’s kind of where the community was hanging
0:07:53 out so I think you know having that there was pretty pretty handy but like on the back of that
0:07:58 though then the following year the AFL fantasy platform the official one because it’s like
0:08:02 kind of hard to explain but like before when we were doing this there was no like real official
0:08:06 platform we could play this kind of fantasy on people were either running out on spreadsheets or
0:08:11 we were hacking other platforms kind of doing half on a spreadsheet and then inputting our
0:08:15 teams to these other platforms to kind of play it in a certain way so okay there was no real way
0:08:21 to play it so the big kind of move I guess happened at the end of that season where AFL actually moved
0:08:27 to put keepers into their platform and so they wanted some content around that what is a keeper
0:08:31 league how do you play them what are some strategies what are we looking for all that sort of stuff
0:08:35 and they actually came to us to write some content for the official league website so if you’re
0:08:41 thinking of like you know mba.com nfl.com in america it’s like the equivalent in australia wow yeah
0:08:46 yeah yeah okay so by virtue of being you know one of the only voices in the space is well we need
0:08:51 we want to add this there’s a growing interest or demand of people wanting to play this but we don’t
0:08:55 know what the first thing about or we need some qualified people to come and write for it write
0:08:59 about it for us correct so that’s how it kind of started so they I think ended up writing four or
0:09:05 five articles over five weeks that went on the official AFL website which probably I would
0:09:10 know the numbers but I’d say millions of people I view that in australia so that got some decent
0:09:15 traction there and um yeah since then like you know we’ve done live shows with the official AFL
0:09:20 fantasy people even though we’re not part of the official AFL world or signed to a contract with
0:09:23 them or anything they’ve brought us on to kind of open for their their live shows that they do and
0:09:27 stuff like that and just do like a 10 15 minutes and stuff so we’ve actually moved into like
0:09:31 doing live shows and things like that um yeah so they’re probably like the the main things that
0:09:36 have kind of built traction over the years I guess no that makes a lot of sense it’s it’s I
0:09:40 mean it’s marketing 101 it’s like go where the you know go where the cash is already flowing go
0:09:46 where the the customers already are and in this case you know the official fantasy podcast the
0:09:51 official fantasy platforms if you can get on their radar and kind of you know get exposure to that
0:09:57 audience in an organic way obviously that’s going to be a huge growth driver and I like your point
0:10:02 about well you know the audio quality had to be respectable had to be good enough that people
0:10:07 wouldn’t immediately just dismiss the show as two dudes and you know sit around their kitchen table
0:10:11 and I think that’s probably one of the things that has changed over the last 10 12 years of
0:10:18 podcasting where early on especially in my case you know people were willing to forgive less than
0:10:23 stellar audio and and you know I’ll take ownership of that I’ve made some steps to try and improve
0:10:28 that over the years but it’s becoming a more competitive landscape in people’s earbuds so
0:10:32 trying to step up the production quality a little bit yeah absolutely and the fact that we’d known
0:10:36 each other like the main guy I started with K’s his name is we’ve known each other since we were
0:10:41 little kids as well so everything was very natural the chemistry that sort of stuff yeah all those
0:10:45 few bits and pieces as well as like just doing something that no one else was doing I think
0:10:49 is what probably set it apart the most yeah that it’s helpful to find some some blue space but
0:10:54 also helpful to you know make it entertaining for people tuning in I think that makes sense
0:11:00 since you’re in studio are you doing YouTube syndication with it as well or primarily audio
0:11:05 initially it was primarily audio and I think it was about when TikTok came around so it was a pretty
0:11:12 similar time I kind of realized the the importance of video as well mainly more so just for like
0:11:16 Instagram reels or TikTok videos essentially like essentially is where we kind of started
0:11:20 just even taking clips from the podcast or just doing two camera kind of pieces and things like
0:11:24 that talking about certain players initially yeah it was audio only and then the more I kind of
0:11:29 looked at what the big people were doing in the in the space it was very much leaning towards
0:11:34 video so spend a lot more time investing in video I think we started with GoPro just mounted to our
0:11:39 mic stand so not the worst video quality but not the best either but it was a bit of a pain to
0:11:44 sync up all the high quality audio with the GoPro footage and all that sort of stuff so we did kind
0:11:48 of move toward buying some decent cameras camera switches monitors just looking around at all the
0:11:53 stuff I’ve got lights in here and that’s kind of where the the money that we generated from
0:11:58 we’ll talk about the guest the way we drive money and monetization and stuff in a second but
0:12:01 that’s kind of what all that money went to is to buying all the equipment and stuff like that to
0:12:07 kind of just keep producing quality content and keep improving in that space I guess more with
0:12:12 Heff in just a moment including how he monetized the show after just a few episodes and everything
0:12:18 that comes with a keeper league podcast membership today friends don’t let friends overpay for
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0:13:24 sitting in a conference in Santa Barbara and the presenter asked this question are you working
0:13:29 on your business or are you working in your business and at that point I had already quit my job I
0:13:35 saw myself as a full-time entrepreneur but it was this moment of clarity that no I’m still very much
0:13:40 working in the business so when I got back home that’s when I made my first full-time hire it was
0:13:46 the first in a long series of steps of learning to truly take control by being okay of letting go
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0:14:38 show terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need all right how many episodes or years
0:14:44 or let’s talk about the monetization side before you start to you say like well this is something
0:14:49 I love talking about but now I’ve got equipment expenses you know I how do I justify continuing
0:14:54 to do this so it talked to me about what what you did to monetize the show it kind of happened by
0:14:58 accident so we’re doing all this talk on players that not many people know about and I guess the
0:15:02 key thing with a lot of fantasy and anyone who plays it in any format agrees is like having
0:15:06 data and statistics is very key like you can watch them as many games you want but sometimes you
0:15:11 don’t see the whole picture and don’t see everything unless you’re seeing kind of all the stats and
0:15:16 everything so because we’re talking about guys that aren’t even playing in the main leagues yet or
0:15:20 that haven’t even played a senior game they’re only playing high school football or it’s a bit
0:15:25 different over here they’ve kind of got like underage kind of talent academies and stuff like
0:15:29 that that they go play in I guess but like you’re not seeing them on TV or anything like that it was
0:15:33 very hard to actually kind of understand who was good and who was who wasn’t good and all that sort
0:15:38 of stuff and who was suited for fantasy and that sort of stuff so I kind of began scaring the internet
0:15:43 and looking for stats and data and stuff like that on players and I found a few um few sources online
0:15:47 that kind of had individual games um for for players and stuff like the stats there but it
0:15:52 wasn’t kind of collated into a nice easy to use format where you could kind of track these players
0:15:55 and have a look so what I essentially did was found a way to kind of bring them all into a
0:16:01 spreadsheet using um power query um like a Microsoft XL program and that way then I could
0:16:05 work out like what players average what their high scores were what their low scores were what their
0:16:10 trends were which players track in right directions which kind of players play certain roles that tend
0:16:14 to fantasy scoring all that sort of stuff so essentially just built this kind of big data
0:16:19 warehouse of underage stats okay kind of what we call reserve stats so the guys who aren’t playing
0:16:23 the main leagues they’re playing the reserves leagues reserve stats so we could actually just
0:16:27 like look at it and go this guy averaged this kind of number at this level and if he was playing AFL
0:16:32 that might indicate he would be averaging similar type thing at that level type thing and no one
0:16:36 else really had that kind of data at the time so our podcast was quite like renowned for having
0:16:42 this data that no one else had I guess so what kind of happened was um I was like well why don’t
0:16:47 people wanted to release it and we’re looking at Patreon and stuff at the time so I thought that
0:16:51 might be a good way to kind of give people something without having to do a heap of extra work
0:16:56 was just put the data on the Patreon so I was literally uploading the spreadsheet as an attachment
0:17:01 to Patreon kind of you know weekly or whenever I had some new data or whatever I would chuck it up
0:17:06 there and the users would download it started at $2 a month but I think in the first month we had
0:17:12 about a hundred people sign up at $2 a month so that kind of is how we started I guess funding
0:17:17 the uh the podcast and started to you know build on our equipment there I guess okay and this is
0:17:22 almost you know right out of the gate or this is several months down the road when when does this
0:17:26 probably a couple months two or three months in I reckon we started the end of the year once the
0:17:30 preseason got to full swing so yeah probably about two or three months in we started doing that and
0:17:34 that’s kind of how we kind of generated or monetized for the first year or so and I think we had a
0:17:39 we built it up to a five dollar tier and I don’t think there was anything else added in um other
0:17:43 than you just wanted to support the show more and quite a few people signed up to that as well so
0:17:48 kind of generating you know not heaps but enough to kind of pay for our um pay for our hosting
0:17:52 platform and then I think by the end of the year we maybe bought a couple GoPro’s to kind of sit on
0:17:57 there sit on the mic stands and record us while we did it yeah do you think you are still around
0:18:02 that like 400 listeners an episode audience size at that time yeah probably for that first year
0:18:07 the funny thing with our podcast is so it’s a it’s kind of difficult to kind of keep relevance
0:18:12 because in the preseason everyone’s getting ready to draft everyone wants to know about the new
0:18:15 players whatever but once you hit the draft there’s not a lot you can do with your teams
0:18:20 in this format you kind of draft a big squad of players and then it’s locked for the rest of the
0:18:26 year type thing so yeah we have like a huge influx of listeners um in the preseason so like when I
0:18:30 say 400 listeners it probably averages out through that over the year but we could be getting a few
0:18:35 more and we do get a lot more in the preseason than we do after the kind of season starts because
0:18:38 that’s when everyone starts playing there’s not a lot you can do with your teams got it no I was
0:18:43 just gonna say I like was really impressed with okay we got a hundred signups after we put this
0:18:48 offer out into the world and if we only have 400 people listening we had a 25% offer to conversion
0:18:53 rate like I mean I get that it’s a low ask like two bucks a month for this you know early early
0:18:57 patreon level but that’s still that’s great that you had a listener base that was willing to support
0:19:02 you and take action well you say that 25% because it’s actually like it’s remained pretty consistent
0:19:08 about that 25% I think if not even more conversion rate can when you compare it to podcast listeners
0:19:13 throughout I guess I’ll build on how I expand we expanded from there so um with the with the
0:19:18 patreon with the patreon thing I guess um it was uh like they do take a bit of a cut like in another
0:19:24 life I should have been like a um a computer programmer or a um software developer but I’ve
0:19:28 always had this passion for technology and um learning coding languages and I’ve always wanted
0:19:33 to build websites so it was a bit of a project for me to kind of build our website with and build
0:19:38 in a payment gateway and you know and essentially it’s just wordpress um with a plugin on it that
0:19:43 kind of you know builds a membership site so I kind of went away from the patreon and um moved over
0:19:49 to our own website which is what you mentioned at the start um keepleagepod.com.au and from there
0:19:53 we kind of felt like we we found we could host a whole heap of different things not just spreadsheets
0:19:58 like we started doing our own rankings in kind of user friendly tables and stuff like that and
0:20:03 people could adjust things and stuff from there um started hosting bonus podcasts from there as
0:20:06 well so you could do extra episodes I know you could you do this with patreon but I guess it was
0:20:11 more just like a a project to um to kind of help me build a website and stuff like that instead of
0:20:17 charging monthly we just charge charge a yearly subscription type thing so um I guess that kind
0:20:21 of helped because instead of people signing up for one or two months at the start just to kind of
0:20:25 scrape all your resources and stuff like that they sign up for a full year and I guess that helped
0:20:29 kind of build the um conversion rates a little bit higher as well from there especially for
0:20:33 something so seasonal where it’s like okay I got it for my you know draft period and now well
0:20:37 why am I still paying this every month but yeah I’m blocking in for the year don’t have to think
0:20:40 about it they don’t see that on their statement until the following year or say hey your renewal
0:20:44 is coming up like yeah I want to keep playing yeah I want the latest update so yeah it makes sense
0:20:48 yeah because we’re finding like people could literally sign up a few days before their draft
0:20:53 to the patreon grab everything off there for that we’ve done for the whole pre-season and then
0:20:57 yeah cancel again so we moved to the website made it a yearly subscription instead I think
0:21:01 worked better for everyone and it did work out cheaper for those who were committed and were
0:21:05 staying long time because we’d actually charge less per month but more in full if that makes sense
0:21:10 and then from there like really like we’ve kind of just gone way deeper on the I guess um software
0:21:15 development kind of developed a few apps like a mock draft simulator um that is specific for
0:21:20 keeper league so a lot of people have mock draft simulators but in Australia especially up until
0:21:24 recently we were the only one that had one that you could remove players from specific to your
0:21:28 league so you could just kind of mimic how your league looks which players are already kept and
0:21:32 then you can practice drafting with only the players um that are left in the in the draft pool
0:21:37 and we’ve also built this I’ve also built this new tool called um community rankings where it’s
0:21:41 like it’s kind of like a game where you get presented like three options three players
0:21:45 and you’ve got to choose which player you would prefer in a keeper league and the kind of responses
0:21:50 from that kind of build a full list of rankings for users to use just basically on the community
0:21:55 sentiment type thing and so the members kind of you know for the free version you get the top 100
0:22:00 players but then the if the paid version that the members get the full version of every player in
0:22:04 the league and how the community ranks them type thing um and then of course we’ve got our own
0:22:10 rankings and stuff on top of that too so yeah and this might be a little more of a of a technical
0:22:18 challenge to build out but like is there a way to claw out the the keeper league from AFL like
0:22:22 people wanted to like just run their leagues on your platform is there is there an opportunity to
0:22:28 build something like that and really be the central hub for this well there was I guess because like
0:22:32 even the AFL fantasy platform once they brought keeper leagues in it probably wasn’t to the standard
0:22:37 that people wanted I guess um and just this year actually there is a new platform that’s just come
0:22:43 out called keeper fantasy um which is basically built to do for what keeper it’s called keeper you
0:22:46 know it’s for it’s for keeper leagues um I guess and it has caused a bit of confusion because I get
0:22:51 a lot of their emails directed at me or social media questions coming to me instead of them
0:22:55 but there’s a new platform called keeper which I’ve been involved in I guess with since the
0:23:00 inception in a bit of like a consulting kind of way um and doing a bit of marketing for them and
0:23:04 you know helping promote them as well so there would have been but probably I’m probably not
0:23:09 quite at the level to build something of that scale I’m very much a self-taught hacker I guess
0:23:13 I’m not a guy who’s studied it or anything like that so to the scale of this but there is a new
0:23:17 platform now that’s come out which I am involved in which I’m pretty happy to be because I think
0:23:22 it’s going to kind of elevate this format a lot as well okay so we switched to an annual
0:23:28 billing we switched to hosting this membership on our own platform inside the membership it’s this
0:23:34 you know collection of curated data on these up and coming reserve league or like high school
0:23:39 type of league players that are um are new you know not a lot of information out there on them so
0:23:44 it’s kind of this unique uniquely sourced to go a little bit broader for a second I think this
0:23:50 business model of selling curated or interesting data is uh is one that has been proven out you
0:23:56 know over and over again from trends to industry reports to like there’s definitely value in in
0:23:59 selling data and it’s cool because it’s one of these things where you can sell the same
0:24:03 data to a bunch of different customers it’s you know once you have a kind of
0:24:09 automated way to collect that it’s something that could be really really valuable I think on the
0:24:13 on the back of that too as well it’s not just the um it’s not just the data is one part of it
0:24:18 the self but it’s also the analysis we’ve been able to do on that data and put out the findings
0:24:23 of that as well I think has been a big part of it as well just kind of not just like this is the
0:24:26 numbers it’s like these what the numbers mean you know players playing in this position or getting
0:24:30 this many stats in this kind of spot indicates they’re playing in this position and different
0:24:35 positions can be valuable some positions are more fruitful for fantasy that sort of stuff as well so
0:24:40 kind of goes that step further as well right and then you have some members only content it sounds
0:24:45 like you’ve got the mock draft simulator and then you’ve got this community rankings component so
0:24:51 just try to build up that value stack for people who are going to sign up for this annual membership
0:24:55 is there anything else behind the p-wall there’s certain stats like this thing’s called like cba
0:25:00 analysis so like what that really means is like every time someone kicks a goal there’s a center
0:25:03 bounce so the balls bounced in the middle and the game starts again and the players that generally
0:25:08 attend the center bounce are generally the best players so if you see some of the the lesser
0:25:12 known players start going to the center bounces maybe it might be one might be two it’s always a
0:25:16 good indicator that they might be on an upward trend pretty soon so we kind of do a bit of like
0:25:20 analysis on that as well like look at those cba numbers and go hey this guy’s never been to a
0:25:24 center bounce before and he’s suddenly starting to go are they planning on using him more in this
0:25:28 position because that’s where you kind of get the most points and he might be a different position
0:25:32 that doesn’t score very well but because he’s kind of moving into another position he might start
0:25:35 being one of the better players yeah he might be undervalued in the marketplace is like the money
0:25:40 ball analogy yeah yeah correct so like a few things like that as well that are on the website too
0:25:46 very cool and what do you charge for it these days the gold membership is uh $59 Australian
0:25:51 and then the silver membership is $49 then we have a bronze membership that’s $39 which is
0:25:54 base level not a lot of people tend to sign up for that one it’s usually the silver and the gold
0:26:00 that people go for okay and then just like parsing out well at this at this tier at the silver tier
0:26:03 you only get this this and this at the goal to get everything plus you know just kind of parsing
0:26:08 out features based on those different tiers yeah yeah correct like the the gold members do get
0:26:12 slightly more like silver is definitely probably the best value one that we give away and then the
0:26:15 gold membership you get access to the mock draft simulator plus you get your name read out in the
0:26:20 podcast as well so it’s not a huge difference and we kind of did that intentionally just because
0:26:24 like it’s more for people that because the whole thing is built around support i find it’s more
0:26:30 so than just like having these you know amazing resources to kind of sell like a lot of the time
0:26:33 if i look at the numbers like throughout the year i don’t know how often some people some members
0:26:39 actually using them like i do think there is a high number of like members out there that just
0:26:43 sign up to support the podcast as well to make sure it keeps going because i do kind of say on
0:26:48 the podcast and it’s it’s so true like i can’t actually like being a bit being able to collect
0:26:53 the membership money has been basically allowed me to kind of take a day off work and you know
0:26:57 now two days and now more days off work to actually do all the stuff that i’m doing and it wouldn’t
0:27:02 be the product it was if i didn’t have the time yeah to actually put into it so i think the members
0:27:07 really understand that they kind of allow this podcast to thrive and all the bonus resources
0:27:10 and all that sort of stuff to actually thrive because if they weren’t there like i wouldn’t
0:27:15 be able to do it at the same time so a lot of the members because i’ve i’m pretty much in constant
0:27:20 interaction with my membership group especially my gold members as well i’ve got a discord group
0:27:24 and they’ve got like a members gold members only chat as well which i’m pretty active in there and
0:27:28 they kind of really understand that i think and they a lot of people are just also they don’t
0:27:31 they do get used out of the resources don’t get me wrong but they’re also there just to kind of
0:27:35 ensure the podcast survival and ensure it keeps going because there’s not a lot out there doing
0:27:40 the same type of thing that’s really cool that you’ve got the people who want to support like
0:27:44 they found enough value in this thing we love what you’re doing we want to support the show and
0:27:49 support all the the community around it and so what’s like if you’re comfortable sharing
0:27:55 like the size of the annual membership at this point yeah so right now we’ve got around 1200
0:28:00 members i’m kind of ranging about half of them a gold half of them about silver i think from there
0:28:07 as well yeah okay so doing the math that would be i’ve sworn off trying to do public math on
0:28:13 on the internet i’ll call it like a 60 thousand 65 thousand dollar a year side hustle slightly
0:28:19 less um yeah but then on the back of that like i pay all my guests that come on the show pay all my
0:28:24 riders then there’s obviously hosting fees and all that sort of stuff as well sure it does take like
0:28:30 a fair chunk out of it when you add up in the year but um at the same time you know you can kind of
0:28:35 claim a lot of stuff that you would probably be buying anyway like for microphones and stuff
0:28:40 like that that i’ve always had an interest in or you know i can claim my football tickets on tax
0:28:44 and stuff like that as well so yeah that’s right so it’s a business expense exactly so like you can
0:28:49 kind of you can kind of um yeah like it’s then the number does sound nice but then also there’s
0:28:52 a lot of expenses that go with it but then you kind of get some of it back in stuff you would be
0:28:58 spending on anyway which is kind of good as well yeah and it’s interesting because it’s like not a
0:29:05 huge audience and yes you know percentage-wise like you’ve been able to convert um a really
0:29:09 in my mind like what seems like a really high percentage of listeners into customers which
0:29:13 i think is cool i think on the back of that like the some of the resources that are on the website
0:29:17 kind of transcend the three different kind of formats like you’ve got the the classic format
0:29:21 which is the salary cap one the single season draft where you’re picking a new team each year
0:29:26 and then you got the keeper league like a lot of the stats actually kind of go beyond our kind of
0:29:31 realm of keeper leagues i guess and so that probably drives a few extra membership sales
0:29:36 because i do advertise a little bit on through the meta ad platform and stuff like that so
0:29:40 and i just basically for every um for every resource i have a have an ad for it and so i
0:29:47 think kind of target Australian rules football fans afl fantasy fans all that sort of stuff target
0:29:52 those kind of demographics and so i think you do get a few extras which is probably why the um
0:29:57 the listener rate to membership conversions look so good i guess got it got it yeah so if it was
0:30:01 just the podcast itself um and this is what people always ask me like how do you make money off of
0:30:06 podcast um and if it was a podcast itself it probably wouldn’t make any money you know um it’s
0:30:12 just having the website there that kind of you can direct your listeners to to see more or understand
0:30:16 what you’re talking about in greater detail plus you get kind of the other people from the other
0:30:20 communities coming towards it because there’s some value there for them as well in some of the bits
0:30:25 and pieces of stats also yeah it took me a long time to realize that like a podcast does not a
0:30:29 business make it is you know the idea of making a full-time living just from sponsorship especially
0:30:33 in the early days of the show where the listenership was not anywhere near where it is today it’s like
0:30:39 oh this is going to be a long a long slog yeah correct um yeah and that’s uh if you have a big
0:30:42 audience there are ways to monetize we had to think of other ways to kind of do it and kind of
0:30:48 convert from there more with heff in just a moment including his meta and strategy in plans for the
0:30:54 future of the business right after this running a retail business is no joke especially if you’re
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0:31:56 without complexity shopify.com/side hustle look payday is awesome but when you’re the one running
0:32:01 payroll calculating taxes and deductions staying compliant it’s not as simple as it was when
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0:33:02 months free yeah do you see like outside of these meta ads other ways of growing the audience growing
0:33:06 the customer base like we’re doing a lot more doing a lot more work with that new fantasy platform
0:33:10 that’s coming up in our kind of ads are all over that now as a bit of an exchange for
0:33:15 the help that we’ve done but we’ve done like lots of different things really like we have had some
0:33:20 very good and generous sponsors in the past another fantasy platform that opened up for a
0:33:24 while jumped on for a couple years but we do live shows and things like that and I guess in the way
0:33:30 that kind of I’ve been starting to generate I guess more revenue streams with this is like
0:33:34 because I’ve actually just left my job teaching this year to kind of focus on this a bit more
0:33:38 and that’s not to say I’m anywhere near a level to kind of live off it full time
0:33:42 but who knows what I could do if I put more time into it but I’ve started actually like
0:33:47 doing a bit of consulting for other podcasts producing other podcasts recording other podcasts
0:33:51 helping other businesses and companies with their social media in terms of tiktok reels and
0:33:55 instagram reels and stuff like that I’ve been doing a few running a few ad campaigns through the
0:34:01 meta platform which is the second nature for me now to kind of build their websites as well so
0:34:06 it’s kind of like all the skills I’ve learned through doing this I’ve now been able to kind of
0:34:10 apply to other bits and pieces to kind of help me get to that point where I can live off doing
0:34:15 this sort of stuff full time and move away from the kind of high stress environment that is teaching
0:34:22 I guess okay so yeah starting well could I do my day job one less day a week could I do two days
0:34:26 less a week or you know now could I piece together an income from these side sources
0:34:32 whether it’s directly from the podcast business or is it you know the skills I picked up along
0:34:36 the way I think that makes sense yeah and that’s been it’s it’s been good fun like it’s something
0:34:40 I’ve always genuinely loved doing and not let’s not just say there wasn’t a point where I did love
0:34:43 teaching it just kind of I think it’s like any kind of career you do it for long enough and
0:34:47 you kind of want to move on to something new or try something else but no like this is sort of
0:34:52 stuff that I’ve you know I get to look at fantasy stats and talk about fantasy and analyze it and
0:34:56 stuff that I’ve always kind of lived and breathed or myself anyway and now I can kind of do that for
0:35:00 living plus combining my love for technology and learning new things I guess and kind of
0:35:04 helping other people you know thrive as well it’s been really rewarding I think.
0:35:10 On Facebook on Meta you know are you you’re you’re driving traffic directly to like a membership
0:35:15 sales page you’re driving traffic to like you know a free you know opt-in sampler of what the
0:35:21 membership is look like what is what’s the visitor flow. So for every page I’ve got for every like
0:35:25 what we call premium resources bonus content on our website I do have like a landing page that
0:35:30 kind of gives you a sample and even those like landing pages are pretty useful to people like
0:35:35 so you have the top 100 players to target and if you’re starting a league it’s a really good idea
0:35:39 to know what the top 100 players are so it can be helpful in that respect and then if you want to
0:35:43 get the full version then it’s signed up as a member so with my meta ads I generally target to
0:35:47 like I’ll do a video ad essentially me using the resource talking about it what you can find
0:35:52 in it and then it tracks into a landing page where they kind of get a sample of it and then
0:35:57 the next part is if they want to sign up they can continue on and sign up from there and then
0:36:01 I use the pixel and stuff like that to track conversions and stuff like that through that
0:36:05 and then you can kind of see what the marketing value is actually worth and you know you can see
0:36:09 which ads are actually converting and which aren’t which resources are in art and that sort of stuff
0:36:14 too and then you can work out whether you’re whether to put more money into advertising or
0:36:17 you know bring it back because it’s not working so well there’s lots of ways you can kind of look
0:36:21 at it from there is there a target cost of acquisition where you like to be at as close to
0:36:26 zero as possible sure but yes right now it’s if I can spend a dollar and get two back which is kind
0:36:32 of where my ads are almost at yeah it’s not too bad so I don’t know like it’s at a bit of a sweet
0:36:36 point I’m not sure if it’ll convert in the same way if I did ramp it up too much more but yeah I do
0:36:40 try to be a bit conservative with it as well like not try to spend too much but yeah kind of that’s
0:36:44 where I where I like to be no that’s and if I had a money machine where I could trade a dollar for
0:36:48 two do it all day long correct I’m not sure how much further I could push it than that I’ve tried a
0:36:52 few times but at the kind of level I’m spending I seem to get that kind of money back so you kind
0:36:58 of run into the ceiling of well how many people are actually interested in this this type of fantasy
0:37:03 league it’s so maybe the audience the total addressable market is only so big it’s so once you
0:37:08 kind of saturate that it’s like well well now what yeah correct and I think playing the classic flat
0:37:11 platform you can kind of see on the back end there’s a few a few numbers there and like ownership
0:37:16 percentages and stuff like that so I think there’s around 150,000 people playing one format which is
0:37:20 there for fantasy there’s also another version called super coach which I think has about 300,000
0:37:24 people playing but then most of those people are also the type that would do a draft and maybe do
0:37:29 a keeper league as well like if they’re not very few people I think are just playing keeper leagues
0:37:33 they’ve kind of got to keep leagues from playing these other formats and going a bit deeper but
0:37:37 they kind of keep going on the other one there so the number would probably be significantly less
0:37:42 and yeah that’s the thing I might hit a point where there are no new more players but we are actually
0:37:46 kind of pushing younger generations to actually start as well like that’s the the whole idea
0:37:51 behind the TikTok growth was to actually kind of target not target but just put it out on a
0:37:55 platform that where there is a younger generation with the keeper platform that I’m involved in
0:37:59 which is like the new fantasy platform that we’ve put together yeah and we’ve actually made it free
0:38:04 for students as well and so if you’re a high school student or a university student you get
0:38:09 access to this new platform for free and it is in my opinion and many other people opinion the
0:38:13 best for the best platform out there to do this on because it’s been custom built for it get them
0:38:19 get them hooked while they’re young yeah and do you see a future where you build out a a podcast
0:38:23 network of different shows targeting different fantasy formats or you know where do you want
0:38:28 to go with it I feel like the the space is quite saturated anyway we like especially not in the
0:38:33 keeper league space I guess but in the main kind of other fantasy formats there’s already kind of
0:38:38 a lot of people doing it in Australia and I don’t really think I really need to add a voice to those
0:38:42 kind of areas and obviously it’s honestly it’s probably not something I’m as passionate about
0:38:47 as well like I genuinely love doing this you know and if I had to do it to some of the other
0:38:51 formats which I’m not as kind of into I’m not sure if I’d kind of bring the same kind of enthusiasm
0:38:58 and make it as good as it would be I think more so like perhaps I would like to expand out into
0:39:03 kind of just producing more podcasts that aren’t maybe even related to this kind of topic as well
0:39:06 but just kind of getting from on the production side of things and maybe consulting and helping
0:39:12 other people build up their podcast and stuff like that as opposed to kind of starting the network
0:39:16 myself got it I mean that’s the risk of expanding it’s like well maybe the lighting doesn’t strike
0:39:20 twice or the magic sauce isn’t the same because you’re not as interested or excited about it and
0:39:24 like yeah there’s there’s a risk and expansion there I was going to ask mentioned hey the
0:39:28 membership is now hosted on WordPress what was the membership plugin that you’re using for that
0:39:33 memberpress which I think is a pretty popular one out there cool anything else on the tools and tech
0:39:39 side no that’s about it in terms of the tech lights the microphones I’ve got a tv behind me
0:39:43 that now that I’m doing more podcasts with other people and stuff like that I can change the branding
0:39:46 behind me which is it was a bit hard doing it before when I had posters on the wall that were all
0:39:51 football stuff and if I’m doing something about I don’t know fashion or something like that it’s
0:39:55 a bit weird to have football stuff behind me so yeah if you fancy I need to figure out how to
0:40:00 change the change the background on the closet doors back here correct yeah so yeah chuck the tv
0:40:05 behind me to do that so just a few little bits and pieces in in terms of the tech how often do
0:40:10 you publish a new episode what’s the what’s the release cadence from pretty much the start of
0:40:16 january all the way up until the end of the season which is the start of september we’ll put out one
0:40:21 episode a week one one hour episode and it’s essentially just a deep dive who the undervalued
0:40:25 players performed well and what their outlooks are for the for the rest of the season that sort of
0:40:30 stuff from that week in the preseason it’s very much just like trying to unearth all the players
0:40:35 that could be breaking out in the season or undervalued and stuff like that and we also do I’d
0:40:40 also do a bonus waiver wire podcast on monday mornings so some leagues play waivers where you
0:40:45 can pick up excess players so I kind of just do a 10-minute thing of the players I think that are
0:40:49 the valuable that are under-owned in a lot of leagues you can see the kind of ownership percentages
0:40:54 so any player that’s under 40 owned I’ll go through and just talk up a few that I think are
0:40:58 worth picking up and then yeah that’s generally the frequency once a week and then one bonus episode
0:41:02 and then kind of take take the off season off or or slow down a little bit the off season is a bit
0:41:08 funny like yeah I like I should slow down but I always find ways to kind of fill it up I guess
0:41:11 something else that I haven’t didn’t mention on the revenue stream I guess as well is um I built
0:41:18 like a I built a game in related to AFL football as well that went kind of viral last year it was
0:41:23 called footy numbers and essentially all you did you get a team and you get a number and you have to
0:41:27 guess the player that wears that number and the whole idea is to get the best streaks of how many
0:41:31 players in a row you can get right and it was just something I built to kind of learn how to use
0:41:35 JavaScript and set up applications and stuff like that and I just tweeted out on Twitter and by the
0:41:40 end of the day we had all the commentators playing it in their studios and putting out social media
0:41:45 videos and stuff we had AFL players doing it with people playing on the radio um there’s like a
0:41:50 segment on the radio and that sort of stuff so within a day that kind of went um viral as well
0:41:56 so I just put some ads on that some Google ads on that as well and um that kind of it was in it just
0:42:00 ended up earning like an extra couple hundred dollars a month as well on the back of that
0:42:04 okay okay but that’s kind of what I spent my off season doing is kind of learning ways like like
0:42:10 building things like that I can use in the either on my website for the next season or um learning
0:42:14 kind of new skills and learning new languages or learning new programs and stuff like that to
0:42:19 actually kind of enhance the podcast um I also in the off season where all the draft happens and
0:42:23 also the trades the trade period and all that sort of stuff where players switch teams so that’s
0:42:28 also pretty relevant for for our format as well because that might mean some player leaves a team
0:42:32 it’s usually a star or whatever but that means there’s an up-and-comer that might take their spot
0:42:36 in that team who could be a good fantasy player as a result so we have to kind of talk about that so
0:42:41 we do a bit of content around that in the off season um we also have the the draft whether
0:42:45 all the young players get picked up out of high school so we kind of need to know be on top of
0:42:49 all them and know which players are going to be the ones that are going to make their mark pretty
0:42:53 pretty quickly and the ones that are going to um take a while so the off season’s kind of spent
0:42:57 yeah if it feels like I should take it off but it doesn’t feel like I ever get an off season
0:43:01 you know what I mean like it feels like it just keeps going um because there’s always something I
0:43:07 can do to kind of improve or make it better or learn something new I guess and I think that’s
0:43:12 probably what your listeners and members have come to appreciate is like you you’re one of them
0:43:17 you’re in the space you’re analyzing all this stuff and it’s just from the outside looking in it
0:43:21 seems like very very underpriced it’s everything I get that it’s a hobby niche like nobody is really
0:43:25 like you know learning to make extra money maybe they win their fantasy pool or something they
0:43:32 win their league as a result of you know your information but it does seem like maybe I’m leaving
0:43:36 some money on the table by charging as little as I do that could be the case um and like well
0:43:40 there’s something to think about now that I’m probably not working full-time at the moment and
0:43:45 that might not be the case like I might have to look for a job again in the near future but we’ll
0:43:49 wait and see what happens there um that might be something that we can look at but I want to keep
0:43:54 it accessible and I don’t know like I’m always kind of fearful I guess as well that if you start
0:43:58 charging more maybe some of the people that you have do drop off as well and and the fact that I
0:44:03 guess I haven’t gone backwards any year in fact every year I’ve kind of made big inroads um in
0:44:10 terms of growth usually you know upwards 25 30% each year type thing so I guess at the at the time
0:44:14 I’m just at this time I’m just going to keep writing that until it stops really and then kind
0:44:19 of make a decision what to do from there whether I start charging more or whether I start just kind
0:44:24 of building more products to get people on board or you know spread the revenue streams out in other
0:44:29 ways um we’ll kind of you know get to that when we when we come to it but um at the moment like
0:44:34 yeah I think my listeners appreciate the kind of how accessible it is um in the way it is
0:44:39 and so I’m going to keep it at that for now anyway yeah you five six years into it what’s
0:44:43 surprised you the most along the way probably like personal stuff really like how much you kind of
0:44:50 need to not worry what other people think as much more so like if you if you stuff up the website
0:44:53 like you stuff up a page or something like that or you break one of the apps and it doesn’t work
0:44:58 and you kind of realize that a few hours later you kind of realize that like you know I used to
0:45:02 why I stress so much and worry about it and obsess over it and um think like something’s
0:45:05 broken I had to rush to my computer and fix it if I woke up in the middle of the night and realized
0:45:09 I did something wrong I’d have to rush to my computer and go fix it type thing before anyone
0:45:13 noticed it happened and I guess what surprised me like as much as like no one actually notices
0:45:18 like no one really cares that much or that I’ll get some surprise by every how lenient the community
0:45:21 is like oh yeah that didn’t work for two days and you didn’t realize but that’s okay like
0:45:27 we understand like type thing like I’ve never really had any backlash hey you you got a little
0:45:31 bit of a different audience yeah you said send an email out with a typo and your people are quick
0:45:36 to let you know yeah I think like and another thing I guess that surprised me was like I used to do
0:45:41 this with another another guy and he had to leave because of family reasons essentially um and I was
0:45:46 left on my own to kind of do this and that was a pretty kind of I guess I was really worried if I
0:45:51 could still do it on my own um and keep going with it and you know and and and what surprised me really
0:45:56 was like how much it’s grown since then and it’s not really because like I’ve changed the host or
0:46:00 anything like that it’s because I’ve been able to get more voices on the podcast as well like my
0:46:05 old co-host still comes on once a month but it’s just surprising how much the community is just on
0:46:11 board the kind of the whole brand um and I guess it kind of reaffirmed that it’s more the the content
0:46:14 and the quality of content that comes out and not just the kind of people that are on it if that
0:46:19 makes sense as well that’s great well you’re doing this full time now even though like you said the
0:46:26 income may not be at the full time level just yet but what are some of the top projects or priorities
0:46:30 for this year what are you excited about yeah basically just want to try to scale as much as
0:46:35 possible so I’m coming into like the um the busiest month I guess of the podcast in terms of membership
0:46:41 signups because the season starts in about um about a month from now it starts so um yeah it’s
0:46:45 probably the the busiest time for signups so basically I’m just excited to put out as much
0:46:49 content as I can now I’ve got at the moment I’ve got five days a week to actually put into this I
0:46:54 can put out as much content as much useful kind of resources that kind of help I guess scale and
0:46:58 drive members as much as possible well fair enough half this has been great thank you so much for
0:47:04 joining me and again KeeperLeaguePod.com.au or KeeperLeague Podcast go check them out if you are
0:47:10 an Australian fantasy football fan let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side
0:47:15 hustle nation it’s never too late to learn something new I think I look back at all the stuff like I
0:47:20 didn’t know when I started this like and now fast forward five six years you know semi-literate
0:47:25 I guess in three or four coding languages can build websites I never knew I’d be able to do
0:47:29 build games that go viral build new apps to help users all that sort of stuff none of that stuff I
0:47:34 knew how to do before I started this podcast it was more about the necessity to learn it to kind
0:47:38 of move forward and I guess that’s probably the key thing for anyone out there is if you think
0:47:44 you don’t know something um or you think it’s too challenging it’s not that hard like if there’s enough
0:47:48 resources out there and you can follow instructions as well and read you know different articles or
0:47:51 even now with you know chat GPT and AI and stuff like that can really break down things and help
0:47:57 you learn even better like it’s just never too late to learn something new I reckon and I guess the
0:48:01 other the saying that I’ve always loved is if you can’t figure something out figure out how to
0:48:05 figure it out has always been a big one for me as well so like if you can’t get to the end goal
0:48:10 break it down into small steps um and try to gradually learn that way so I think that’s probably
0:48:15 my my tip for the side hustle nation absolutely no those those are great you gotta if you don’t
0:48:19 know how to figure it out we’ll figure out how to figure it out that’s that’s great and it’s
0:48:24 never too late to learn something new it’s that’s something that hits me it’s like if if you knew
0:48:27 how to do it you probably would have done it already and so it’s like well you gotta figure
0:48:32 out you gotta learn how to do it and so I know that that definitely resonates a couple takeaways
0:48:38 for me um everyone you can really see how have like lives and breathes this stuff he’s like a part
0:48:44 of the community the audience detects that it’s not like some uh you know private equity firm coming
0:48:48 in with some you know puppet co-host trying to speak the language like he’s been in it he’s
0:48:52 been in it for years um on the marketing side it’s going where the audience already is it’s
0:48:58 like these other fantasy platforms these other shows like trying to bring some of those listeners
0:49:04 and players into your ecosystem and and try and be that helpful resource and I mean guesting on
0:49:11 podcasts another way uh to pick up more podcast listeners really like the idea of selling data
0:49:16 and to have some point about selling it alongside some analysis or just you know numbers are one
0:49:20 thing with like well what you know in our quote unquote expert opinion what is that what do the
0:49:25 numbers mean so like that idea of selling data I like the idea of a smaller show having some kind
0:49:30 of membership community where it’s like on a you know a cost per thousand listener bases like
0:49:36 sponsorships may not make a ton of sense but if we can bring our community together with some
0:49:40 compelling offers behind the membership paywall I think that makes a lot of sense
0:49:45 plus you know recurring revenue in exchange for recurring value I definitely all like like all
0:49:52 of that if you’re interested in starting a podcast of your own a challenging medium to grow but a
0:49:56 really powerful one like we’ve both experienced like for relationship building and all that
0:50:01 I want to invite you to download my podcast starter kit it’s got resources on choosing
0:50:06 your right uh software and equipment for recording uh what my production process looks like after we
0:50:11 stop hitting record how to market your show how to climb that listener pyramid so to speak
0:50:15 and all the different ways the podcasts can make money again that’s at side hustle nation
0:50:21 dot com slash heff heff or you can just follow the uh show notes link in the episode description
0:50:26 and I’ll get you right over there big thanks to heff for sharing his insight thanks to our sponsors
0:50:30 for helping make this content free for everyone you can hit up side hustle nation dot com slash
0:50:35 deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place thank you for supporting the
0:50:40 advertisers that support the show and that’s it for me thank you so much for tuning in if you’re
0:50:45 finding value in the show I’d love your help in spreading the word easiest way to do it is just
0:50:51 fire off a text message to that friend of yours who could benefit from hearing this maybe that’s
0:50:54 your friend who’s got you know an obscure hobby that you know maybe they should start a podcast
0:51:00 about until next time let’s go out there and make something happen and I’ll catch you in the next
0:51:03 edition of The Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.

0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:04 Hey, it’s time for another round of Business Idea Giveaways.
0:00:06 And to help me out is a longtime friend
0:00:08 and friend of the show.
0:00:10 You know him as the entrepreneur
0:00:13 from mywifequitherjob.com, Steve Chu.
0:00:15 Welcome back to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:16 – Happy to be back, Nick.
0:00:18 I always enjoyed recording these episodes
0:00:20 and they do well on my podcast as well.
0:00:21 – Awesome, it’s become a tradition.
0:00:24 I think this is our third round of-
0:00:25 – Third time, yeah.
0:00:26 – Business Idea Giveaways.
0:00:28 If you like this format, make sure to go back
0:00:29 and check out the other two.
0:00:32 We’ll link up those episodes in the show notes
0:00:33 for this episode.
0:00:37 Now I wanna pitch you an idea that came to mind recently.
0:00:41 This is a household item that I can almost guarantee
0:00:44 you have several of in your house
0:00:48 that experts recommend you replace probably more often
0:00:49 than you do.
0:00:54 This item experts say can contain up to 16 different species
0:00:58 of fungi and up to 10% of the weight of this item
0:01:01 is now dust mites and their waste.
0:01:02 Do you have a guess of what this is?
0:01:04 – Is it a water filter or air filter?
0:01:07 – Neither of those, this is your pillow on your bed.
0:01:08 – Oh, no way, okay.
0:01:12 – So the idea that I wanna pitch is pillows as a service,
0:01:14 pillow subscription service.
0:01:18 You would take some quiz, determine are you a back sleeper,
0:01:20 are you a side sleeper, okay, what density,
0:01:23 what thickness is gonna be perfect for you.
0:01:25 And then we’re just gonna ship you a new one of those
0:01:27 every three to six months, whatever the cadence is
0:01:31 that turns out to be optimal for cleaning this thing
0:01:34 and having a less gross sleeping experience.
0:01:35 – I kind of like that.
0:01:37 So is it the pillow or the pillow case or both?
0:01:41 – I think it’s the pillow itself that, obviously,
0:01:44 wash your pillow case as often as you care to,
0:01:48 but the pillow itself collects all of this nasty stuff
0:01:51 that just is difficult to get rid of.
0:01:52 – Interesting, I kind of like that idea.
0:01:55 I’m very particular about my pillow though.
0:01:56 So I like it temperpating.
0:01:57 It’s very personalized.
0:01:59 But once you find one that you like,
0:02:01 it’s like, okay, I’ll just keep getting that one.
0:02:02 – I like that idea, actually.
0:02:04 I never thought of that ’cause come to think of it,
0:02:06 one of my buddies cannot sleep at night
0:02:09 and then he started, well, changing his sheets
0:02:12 like three times a week and that actually fixed it.
0:02:14 So this is similar, I think.
0:02:15 – Interesting.
0:02:18 Yeah, we spend, we’re supposed to spend
0:02:20 eight hours a day sleeping.
0:02:21 And so you spend a lot of time,
0:02:24 a third of your hours on top of this thing
0:02:26 and you start to think about like,
0:02:28 oh, this is kind of gross dead skin cells
0:02:31 and everything else is going on in there.
0:02:33 You’re like, yeah, we should probably
0:02:35 replace this more often than we do.
0:02:37 I can’t remember the last time I got a new pillow.
0:02:39 – You know why I like recording these episodes with you, Nick,
0:02:41 is we have completely different ideas.
0:02:46 So mine are kind of very e-commerce focused, selling focused.
0:02:48 – Yeah, well, there’s an e-commerce angle to this.
0:02:50 – There is, there is, there is.
0:02:54 So my idea was, ’cause right now I run an e-commerce store
0:02:57 and a lot of us don’t wanna be doing customer service,
0:02:59 meaning like answering phones and whatnot.
0:03:01 And you know how AI is all the rage right now.
0:03:04 And so a lot of stores are having these chat bots,
0:03:06 just being like the first line of defense.
0:03:07 – Yeah.
0:03:10 – It’s really easy to just train your chat bot
0:03:12 to know your products.
0:03:13 And so I was thinking of service.
0:03:15 And again, you have to figure out how to do all this stuff,
0:03:18 which is not surprisingly not that complicated.
0:03:20 Train them up and then offer it as a service
0:03:22 to just create one of these bots,
0:03:26 a customer service bot for an online store or any store
0:03:28 that just knows the products and can answer simple questions.
0:03:31 – And so this would be a process of feeding in
0:03:34 all the product details and–
0:03:35 – Exactly.
0:03:36 – Kind of like the frequently asked questions,
0:03:38 basically like the database of knowledge.
0:03:40 And you could probably feed in chat transcripts
0:03:44 from like the previous 10 years of human customer support
0:03:47 representatives and say, well, how did they respond to this?
0:03:49 – I mean, the least techie way to do this
0:03:51 is to literally just create a spreadsheet
0:03:53 of all the products, product descriptions, and everything.
0:03:56 And then just send them into an AI bot
0:03:59 and train it just for that store as a service.
0:04:00 – Yeah, okay.
0:04:01 The question is like,
0:04:05 would you just send cold pitches to people on Shopify?
0:04:07 Do random product searches see what stores show up?
0:04:09 – What I would do is I would just go
0:04:11 through the Shopify database of stores
0:04:13 and just start reaching out to them
0:04:14 through their contact forms.
0:04:16 There’s a lot of demand for this, I know,
0:04:18 because I’m a member of all these forums
0:04:20 and people are asking how to do it.
0:04:24 And then there’s like ridiculously overpriced services
0:04:26 that offer more than this, obviously.
0:04:29 At the base level, it’s a very simple thing
0:04:31 that an individual can do for other companies.
0:04:34 – Okay, so you sell it as a service and the pitch being,
0:04:36 we’re gonna save you so many human hours
0:04:39 of customer support time or like that first line
0:04:40 of defense, right?
0:04:42 If we can reduce the number of inquiries
0:04:44 and you see this on so many tech support
0:04:46 where it’s like, you know, check out our knowledge base
0:04:47 or check out our frequently asked questions.
0:04:49 You know, do you still want to submit a ticket?
0:04:51 Did this question, did your question get answered?
0:04:53 Like sometimes it’s not even clear
0:04:55 that you’re gonna get something
0:04:57 that a human is gonna read your question.
0:04:59 – Yeah, and oftentimes like if you look
0:05:01 at our most commonly asked questions
0:05:04 is where’s my order and what should I buy?
0:05:05 Like I’m looking for this, what should I buy?
0:05:08 And you can answer that question really easily
0:05:10 with an AI buy ’cause that knows your products.
0:05:11 – Yeah, that’s interesting.
0:05:13 It helped people on their decision-making,
0:05:16 not just tech support, troubleshooting triage,
0:05:18 but like actually on the front end of well,
0:05:20 this is my situation, help point me in the right direction.
0:05:21 – Pretty much, yeah.
0:05:23 – I’ve got one that I’ll throw out.
0:05:25 This is probably under the umbrella
0:05:28 of smart home automation.
0:05:31 I’m gonna call it the second guess remover
0:05:33 ’cause how many times have you pulled out of the house
0:05:35 and it’s not until you, you know,
0:05:36 turn the corner out of the neighborhood
0:05:39 that you start to think, did I close the garage door?
0:05:40 – I do that all the time.
0:05:42 – And now that you’ve planted that seat of doubt,
0:05:44 your wife is like, I think we did,
0:05:45 but I’m not really sure.
0:05:47 Why don’t we just go back and check?
0:05:50 And so the second guess remover is, you know,
0:05:51 maybe it’s an app on your phone,
0:05:54 maybe it’s some way to either remotely close it
0:05:57 with some smart device or it just, you know,
0:05:59 some way to double check, like, yes,
0:06:00 in fact, we did close it.
0:06:02 And you turn around and nine times out of 10,
0:06:04 of course you closed it ’cause you always do.
0:06:06 But one time, the one time that I can remember
0:06:08 where we didn’t actually close it
0:06:10 was when we were starting our 13 hour drive
0:06:12 from California back up to Washington
0:06:14 and it turned around and we were like,
0:06:15 oh, crap, we were gonna be gone for a couple of weeks.
0:06:17 So this thing was wide open.
0:06:18 So it’s like that.
0:06:20 For that reason, we always do turn around and go check.
0:06:21 – How did you know that it was open?
0:06:23 – It was just that seat of doubt,
0:06:25 like, we better turn around and we better go check.
0:06:26 – Oh, that seat of doubt.
0:06:29 Yeah, so actually, I haven’t talked about this publicly,
0:06:32 but our house got broken into a couple of weeks back.
0:06:35 And so now we’ve got like cameras everywhere.
0:06:38 So I guess that would accomplish the same thing as this.
0:06:40 – Yeah, I guess if you had the camera pointed
0:06:41 at the garage, you could check.
0:06:42 – But yeah, I like that idea.
0:06:44 I do that all the time, actually.
0:06:46 I second guess myself all the time.
0:06:47 – That’s bad, it’s bad.
0:06:49 Yeah, it is like, of course you closed it
0:06:50 because that’s just part of like the
0:06:51 pulling out of the driveway process.
0:06:54 But sometimes it’s like, did I hit the button?
0:06:55 I don’t know.
0:06:57 Another one, you know, while we’re on the topic of,
0:07:00 you know, theft deterrent kind of in this ballpark,
0:07:03 a neighbor of ours has, you know how people have
0:07:06 the yard signs, like this home protected by, you know,
0:07:10 Xfinity monitoring or ADT or even like,
0:07:12 simply safe where you see all the stuff.
0:07:14 This guy went a different route
0:07:16 and his signs had something like,
0:07:18 this home protected by, you know,
0:07:21 a trigger happy second amendment voter or something.
0:07:23 I was like, hey, that’s a bold move.
0:07:24 I don’t know if this guy’s armed or not,
0:07:28 but it’s enough if I’m a prospective criminal to be like,
0:07:30 I’m gonna go to the next house.
0:07:33 – I think that would work in 49 out of the 50 States.
0:07:35 And in California, that would not fly.
0:07:36 – You don’t think so?
0:07:38 – I don’t think so, but you’re right.
0:07:39 I mean, yeah, they might think twice.
0:07:41 I mean, it’s all about being less appealing
0:07:42 than the next house, right?
0:07:45 – Right, right, again, how can I make myself
0:07:47 less of an easy mark, less of an easy target?
0:07:49 – So my next idea also has to do with shopping,
0:07:53 but this is a trend that’s been happening all over Asia.
0:07:55 And I’m not sure if you watch TikTok or any of those,
0:07:57 but so there’s this one lady who’s,
0:07:59 who’s famous for this and made it all over the news.
0:08:03 She made $13.7 million and seven days live selling
0:08:05 on the Chinese version of TikTok.
0:08:08 And she’s just taking other people’s products and just,
0:08:10 – I thought TikTok was the Chinese version of TikTok.
0:08:11 There’s like a different.
0:08:15 – The Chinese version of TikTok has educational videos
0:08:17 and stuff, not the stuff that we have in America,
0:08:19 but it was just this lady holding up stuff,
0:08:22 holding up for like three seconds and then sliding it over.
0:08:23 – Okay.
0:08:26 – And so basically there’s a lot of e-commerce stores
0:08:28 that want exposure to this audience.
0:08:33 So you can offer live selling services.
0:08:35 And again, you don’t need an audience to do this
0:08:37 on TikTok, which is, which is the beauty of it.
0:08:41 But if you just go on, it’s a consistency thing.
0:08:42 And you go on, you sell.
0:08:46 There’s a whole like career of people doing this now,
0:08:48 but they’re not doing it for on a mass market,
0:08:51 trying to recruit other companies to list their goods.
0:08:54 – And so this would be I’m the micro influencer
0:08:55 selling random stuff.
0:08:58 – So basically you, you send me your product
0:09:01 and you reach out and then you will just live sell
0:09:03 on Facebook, TikTok, just stream all at once.
0:09:06 And you just be like a virtual salesman,
0:09:08 kind of like an affiliate in a different way.
0:09:10 Like remember we had affiliates in the web world
0:09:11 where you click on a link.
0:09:14 This is literally like the home shopping network.
0:09:16 – Okay, but if you don’t have any following, like who’s
0:09:18 – That’s the beauty of it.
0:09:20 You don’t need a following on these platforms.
0:09:24 As long as the, your selling style is appealing.
0:09:26 Over time, these platforms like TikTok
0:09:27 will find people that watch you.
0:09:28 – Okay.
0:09:31 So are you sending your wedding linens to people
0:09:32 doing this kind of thing?
0:09:34 I could see if we can move some product.
0:09:36 – Well, so what’s funny about all this,
0:09:38 the reason why I came up with this is like,
0:09:40 I was going to do this for our own products.
0:09:42 Like who wants to see a middle-aged Chinese guy
0:09:44 selling wedding linens, right?
0:09:45 I would want to find someone,
0:09:47 probably female for our products,
0:09:50 probably, you know, in the demographic
0:09:52 that we’re looking for, for doing this.
0:09:53 – Yeah.
0:09:55 – And so what’s funny is a lot of these ideas
0:09:56 that I’ve come up with here today
0:09:59 are things that I actually need for myself.
0:10:01 And I know stores are looking for this.
0:10:02 – Interesting.
0:10:04 – And TikTok affiliates have already been big.
0:10:07 It just hasn’t been organized as much.
0:10:09 – We’ve heard from some e-com sellers
0:10:11 that they’ve had some pretty good success
0:10:13 going after micro influencers in their niche
0:10:16 and even people kind of doing product reviews
0:10:18 and pointing towards a TikTok shop.
0:10:19 – I think the problem is you have to go out
0:10:22 and find these people, whereas if there’s someone
0:10:25 you know who’s very eloquent and good on camera
0:10:28 and you go to the store, more often than not,
0:10:29 they’ll be like, “Hey, sure.”
0:10:31 ‘Cause it’s all on consignment anyways, right?
0:10:33 You don’t have to pay the person until they make a sale.
0:10:35 – Okay, all performance-based
0:10:38 where you kind of set a target with cost of acquisition.
0:10:40 – Yeah, pretty much.
0:10:40 – That’s new to me.
0:10:44 I don’t spend any time on TikTok or these other ones.
0:10:46 – More business idea giveaways with Steve coming up
0:10:47 right after this.
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0:13:10 – Do you have solar panels under your house?
0:13:11 – We do not.
0:13:12 – Okay.
0:13:13 This is something that we’ve been trying to figure out
0:13:15 and contemplate even though we live
0:13:17 at the great gray gloomy Northwest.
0:13:19 We have a South facing roof
0:13:21 and very like simple roof structure
0:13:22 where it’s like, okay, this would be,
0:13:26 it kind of pains me every summer when it does get hot out.
0:13:28 It’s like almost this greenhouse
0:13:31 where it’s like we’re just soaking up all this juice
0:13:33 and just absorbing it.
0:13:34 Like we’re not doing anything with it.
0:13:36 Like how can we harvest this in some way?
0:13:41 But the world of solar sales is pretty opaque
0:13:44 and sometimes a little bit shady
0:13:46 and people making all kinds of promises about,
0:13:49 well, this tax rebate
0:13:51 and then you can claim the depreciation on top of this
0:13:54 and other people are like, yeah, that’s not a thing.
0:13:57 Like who told you that and it’s just,
0:14:02 so the idea here is like the local consultant person
0:14:04 who can kind of play matchmaker,
0:14:06 analyze your situation and your needs.
0:14:08 And they might tell you like, look,
0:14:09 this is just not a fit for you,
0:14:11 but we’ve got relationships with local vendors,
0:14:13 the local installers and figure out, okay,
0:14:16 what is a realistic and good price
0:14:19 for this type of install?
0:14:20 And we also just had a few months ago,
0:14:23 the bomb cyclone 2024.
0:14:25 This was like a mass power outage event
0:14:27 where half a million people or something out of power
0:14:31 and we were down five days or something in the dark
0:14:33 and had to toss all the food out of the fridge.
0:14:35 Thankfully, no property damage in this storm,
0:14:37 but it was like, you got everybody thinking about like,
0:14:41 well, what is my home energy backup plan?
0:14:43 Like is this a battery system?
0:14:44 Is this a generator system?
0:14:46 Is it, what makes the most sense?
0:14:49 And this was a once in a generation event.
0:14:52 So I was like, well, maybe if I just allocate
0:14:54 what I would have spent on a battery towards, you know,
0:14:56 a hotel room or, you know, and restocking the freezer,
0:14:58 like, oh, I can survive the next several storms
0:15:00 and it would still be coming out ahead.
0:15:03 But it’s something that a lot of people were thinking about
0:15:04 in response to that.
0:15:07 So it’s kind of the home energy backup consultant.
0:15:08 I know on a previous one of these,
0:15:09 we talked about the,
0:15:11 you pitched the zombie apocalypse consultant
0:15:15 and it’s like in that same, in that same realm.
0:15:17 – Yeah, yeah, same thing, same thing.
0:15:18 You know, since we’re talking about solar,
0:15:21 there was this article that I was reading where,
0:15:23 like within like the first couple of years,
0:15:27 the effectiveness of your solar panels degrades dramatically
0:15:30 because dirt gets accumulated on this.
0:15:32 So how about like a service where you just go around
0:15:34 and clean people’s solar panels?
0:15:36 – Yeah, we can boost the efficiency.
0:15:37 Yeah, yeah, we can get you back up.
0:15:38 – Exactly.
0:15:39 I mean, that wasn’t one of the ones I had on my list,
0:15:41 but your idea made me think of that.
0:15:42 – Yeah, we’ll put it down.
0:15:45 – All right, here’s one that literally I just thought
0:15:48 of the other day as I was eating at a restaurant.
0:15:50 So I was ordering from a Chinese restaurant
0:15:52 for Chinese New Year, which just passed.
0:15:56 And I noticed that the company that I was ordering from
0:16:01 was offering to pay $3 per photo of their food
0:16:03 so that they could populate the app
0:16:06 with like authentic pictures of their food.
0:16:08 And these photos are meant to be casual.
0:16:10 So they come across as authentic, right?
0:16:12 Not like a stage shot.
0:16:13 – Okay.
0:16:15 – And so I was thinking, my business idea
0:16:17 is to just go around to these restaurants,
0:16:18 clearly there’s this need
0:16:21 and offer to just take organic pictures of their food.
0:16:22 And maybe in the beginning,
0:16:24 you just do it in exchange for a free meal just for kicks,
0:16:27 but maybe over time you could turn this into a real business
0:16:31 ’cause restaurants want people taking pictures
0:16:33 and making videos of their food and posting them,
0:16:36 whether it be on the app or are on their own accounts.
0:16:38 – So they’re trying to incentivize
0:16:41 like a crowd sourced image gallery, basically.
0:16:43 Like, oh, of course we’re gonna have our fancy
0:16:45 professional product photographer come in
0:16:46 and take these shots.
0:16:49 But it looks more legit, looks more official
0:16:52 if it’s just random customers posting pictures
0:16:53 of their food.
0:16:55 – Yeah, if it’s a customer like holding up the plate
0:16:57 or the food or eating it or whatever,
0:16:59 instead of like a stock photo.
0:17:02 And so they’re willing to pay $3 per photo.
0:17:03 – Wow.
0:17:03 – And of course we did this, right?
0:17:05 – Yeah, you take some pictures.
0:17:06 – Yeah, you just take a picture of the food
0:17:08 that you just got, like eating it.
0:17:10 So clearly there’s a demand here
0:17:12 and maybe you can do this on a mass scale.
0:17:14 – And it only takes one to get a toehold
0:17:15 and then you start going to the neighborhood
0:17:18 or the restaurant down the street, like did you know?
0:17:19 These guys must be onto something.
0:17:21 Hey, they’re paying $3 a picture, you know,
0:17:24 to get these different, is it just to like populate Yelp
0:17:26 or where are they putting these things?
0:17:29 – So the one that I used, I can’t remember the service,
0:17:31 there’s a whole bunch of these delivery services
0:17:32 that they have.
0:17:34 So maybe like, we didn’t use DoorDash,
0:17:36 but DoorDash could be one of those, right?
0:17:39 It’s one thing to see like photos of just the food.
0:17:42 It’s another to see like real people enjoying the food.
0:17:42 – Okay.
0:17:45 – And so maybe that’s like a way to,
0:17:46 I don’t know the economics behind it,
0:17:48 but if they’re willing to pay $3 a photo,
0:17:50 clearly there’s the demand for this.
0:17:53 – Yeah, so that helps, that helps their average order value,
0:17:55 that helps their conversion rate of these apps or something.
0:17:57 – Conversion rate, probably, yeah.
0:17:58 – Interesting, okay.
0:18:03 I’ve got one that is related to software price increases.
0:18:07 I think you and me both share a frugality gene.
0:18:10 And so whenever some tool that I’m using
0:18:13 like jacks up the price, like it pains me a little bit.
0:18:16 And it pains me that the switching cost is so high.
0:18:19 It pains me that I feel like kind of powerless
0:18:19 to do anything about it.
0:18:22 And so it makes me want to like research alternatives,
0:18:24 like better, faster, cheaper alternatives.
0:18:27 The one that really hit me was lead pages recently
0:18:29 where to their credit,
0:18:31 they had not increased the rate in 10 years.
0:18:32 And so it was like, I understand like,
0:18:35 this is due for a rate, but it was such a shock
0:18:36 ’cause it was like, it almost doubled.
0:18:38 – Oh, did it, oh man.
0:18:40 – Really like, hey, I’ve been a customer for 10 years.
0:18:41 This is what you’re gonna do to me.
0:18:43 It was like spent the whole day researching alternatives
0:18:46 and try to migrate over to optimized press
0:18:47 for 25% of the price.
0:18:48 And so the service that I want to pitch
0:18:51 is like the software migration service.
0:18:53 And it didn’t have to be lead pages.
0:18:57 It could be anywhere you see people complaining
0:18:58 about a price increase.
0:19:00 It could be people looking for, you know,
0:19:02 fill-in-the-blank product alternative,
0:19:03 like Zapier did this a couple of years ago,
0:19:06 or they really increased their rates.
0:19:07 Anytime you see people complaining about that,
0:19:09 like there may be an opportunity to be like,
0:19:11 hey, you know, I’m a specialist in migrating
0:19:13 from this thing to this thing.
0:19:15 And maybe you build some tool to help you do it.
0:19:18 Like, I don’t know, there’s probably a way to do it faster.
0:19:20 And the thing is a lot of these are kind of proprietary
0:19:23 closed off software systems.
0:19:25 Like maybe it’s a little more challenging than that.
0:19:27 But if you get good at it,
0:19:29 I imagine you can knock these out pretty quickly.
0:19:31 – You know, it’s funny that you mentioned Zapier
0:19:33 ’cause I can’t remember how many years ago
0:19:34 when Zapier doubled their prices.
0:19:36 I moved everything over to make.
0:19:37 – Yeah, me too.
0:19:39 – Oh, you did? (laughs)
0:19:40 It wasn’t called make.
0:19:41 They make acquired the company.
0:19:42 I can’t remember what it was called.
0:19:43 It was some–
0:19:44 – Yeah, it was like Integromat first.
0:19:46 – Integromat, that’s what it was.
0:19:48 – But yeah, because, and the challenge is
0:19:49 there’s a learning curve.
0:19:53 It’s like, well, how do you know how Zapier works?
0:19:54 Do I really want to do this?
0:19:56 Is it worth the time?
0:19:57 But it’s like, well, if I’m gonna have this
0:19:59 for another five or 10 years, then yeah,
0:20:00 it adds up every month.
0:20:01 – I like that.
0:20:03 You would have to specialize in something.
0:20:05 But yeah, that’d be really easy to do
0:20:07 ’cause people tend to complain on Reddit, right?
0:20:08 – Right, yeah.
0:20:10 – You could say, hey, I just use this to migrate
0:20:11 and it’s like your own service.
0:20:12 – Yeah.
0:20:14 – Right, I love it.
0:20:15 I like that one.
0:20:16 I like that one.
0:20:19 – Can I go again while we’re on the topic of Reddit?
0:20:22 So as you know, like the world of SEO has kind of been turned
0:20:25 upside down in the last year, year and a half or so
0:20:28 with Google really prioritizing both AI search results
0:20:30 but also sites like Reddit and like Quora,
0:20:34 kind of these user-generated content type of sites.
0:20:37 And so, and I’ve actually met somebody doing this,
0:20:40 but they’re providing Reddit marketing services
0:20:43 where we’ll create these different accounts
0:20:46 and we’ll kind of build up their Reddit credibility.
0:20:48 So it’s not like they’re just coming in and spamming links
0:20:50 but they’re kind of like strategically
0:20:52 and intentionally highlighting your brand
0:20:57 in kind of an organic Reddit approved way in a lot of cases
0:20:59 where you could start, well, if Reddit is, you know,
0:21:01 all of a sudden siphoning off a bunch of my traffic,
0:21:03 like how can I get in front of that traffic
0:21:06 in a way that at least from the outside looking in
0:21:09 appears to be authentic and playing by those roles?
0:21:12 – Yeah, you know, those gamification services
0:21:15 started happening almost immediately after.
0:21:18 Have you been approached by the Reddit services?
0:21:19 – Not by anybody serious that I can tell.
0:21:21 – I mean, I’ve been approached
0:21:22 and I always thought it was spammy,
0:21:26 but like the people who’ve approached me, but yeah,
0:21:28 there are companies paying lots of money for this service.
0:21:30 So yeah, absolutely.
0:21:32 – I mean, it’s basically a ghostwriting service
0:21:34 where they’re taking your content, your ideas
0:21:35 and putting it up there.
0:21:37 Like you’re probably not going to get the same traffic,
0:21:38 the same traffic value,
0:21:41 but it’s a way to get your message.
0:21:43 – It’s funny, our mutual friend, Spencer Hawes,
0:21:46 I think tried one of these services.
0:21:47 And he had some good results.
0:21:49 I know you probably had him on this podcast at some point.
0:21:51 – Yeah, we’ll have to catch up with Spencer for sure.
0:21:54 – Okay, so my next idea has to do with the fact
0:21:57 that we recently moved my mom into our neighborhood
0:21:59 and she was moving from a gigantic house
0:22:01 to a little teeny tiny house
0:22:03 ’cause you know, housing is so expensive over here.
0:22:05 Anyway, she had to get rid of a lot of stuff.
0:22:09 And you know, if you go to these estate sale people,
0:22:12 it’s all like a super sketchy industry.
0:22:15 Like they can’t give you prices on anything
0:22:17 and they just kind of give you this check
0:22:20 and they don’t even give you like an itemized list
0:22:22 of what was sold and for how much.
0:22:24 They just kind of hand you this check at the very end,
0:22:25 which I found really sketchy.
0:22:28 And we interviewed a whole bunch of these services.
0:22:31 But so I was thinking, there’s a lot of people moving, right?
0:22:32 And they need to get rid of their stuff.
0:22:36 So why not just put like an above board
0:22:39 sort of selling service where you’ll offer
0:22:42 to just eBay all of their stuff.
0:22:43 And it’s completely transparent.
0:22:46 You show them the auctions, you just go in, you take photos.
0:22:48 For some reason, I could not find a service
0:22:51 that was willing to come to my mom’s house,
0:22:53 take a full inventory and just list everything on eBay.
0:22:54 – Oh, okay.
0:22:55 No, I like this.
0:22:58 Lots of, it taps into the trend of, you know,
0:23:01 empty nester, baby boomer, baby boomer is downsizing.
0:23:04 And it’s typical, I mean, what’s it a state sale fees?
0:23:08 They take 40, 50% of everything they sell.
0:23:09 – Yeah, they pretty much take half,
0:23:12 but it’s the lack of transparency that bugged me.
0:23:13 Like they can’t make any promises
0:23:16 and they don’t even give you the itemized list
0:23:18 of everything, at least the ones that I interviewed
0:23:19 in Maryland.
0:23:21 And I could not find a place that was just willing
0:23:23 to eBay everything and come to the house.
0:23:25 Like you can bring all your stuff to them
0:23:26 and they’ll eBay, I found those services.
0:23:28 – I had met a guy a couple of years ago
0:23:31 who was doing something similar.
0:23:32 It wasn’t, maybe some of it was eBay,
0:23:35 but another segment of his business was like
0:23:38 a dedicated auction site,
0:23:40 like almost a dedicated estate sale type of site.
0:23:41 It’s like, I’ll manage the whole thing for you.
0:23:43 Partnered with local real estate agents
0:23:46 who kind of knew the customers as they were selling
0:23:48 their house and knew they were gonna need to get rid
0:23:49 of some of this stuff.
0:23:51 And it was all on consignment, it was all on performance.
0:23:53 Like, well, whatever sells, we’ll take a cut
0:23:55 and we’ll pass on the rest.
0:23:57 – Yeah, I mean, the key for me was transparency.
0:23:58 – Yeah.
0:24:00 – I like to see the auctions and whatnot
0:24:01 and sure, you can take your cut,
0:24:03 but at least in Maryland, the estate sale people
0:24:07 that I went through, it just felt like kind of dirty to me.
0:24:09 – Mm-hmm, yeah, I really like this one.
0:24:12 And then I do that realtor partner angle
0:24:14 or start with friends and family
0:24:15 who are going through this process,
0:24:18 get a few reps under your belt and figure out
0:24:21 how to streamline that process and then provide that.
0:24:23 It’s kind of the anti-positioning.
0:24:26 It’s like you position it as we’re transparent,
0:24:31 we’re the homeowner advocate, there’s different ways.
0:24:33 It’s like, when you see cruelty free
0:24:36 on a shampoo or any product or something,
0:24:39 you’re like, well, now I automatically assume
0:24:42 that every other thing is filled with cruelty.
0:24:43 – Right.
0:24:44 – And you’re like, well, that’s an interesting
0:24:45 anti-positioning.
0:24:47 – Yeah, just the fact that you can see the auctions
0:24:50 that they’re conducting and what the actual selling price is,
0:24:51 that’d be good enough for me.
0:24:52 – Cool, cool, cool.
0:24:53 Do you have an aura ring?
0:24:54 – No, I do not.
0:24:55 – Yeah, me neither.
0:24:58 And the reason I don’t is I believe the sleep score
0:25:00 is largely irrelevant where it’s like,
0:25:03 I’m gonna wake up today and I gotta be the best version
0:25:06 of myself, you know, whether I slept well
0:25:08 or whether I slept poorly, I still gotta show up,
0:25:11 I gotta be a dad, I gotta do all the things,
0:25:12 I gotta go crush the day.
0:25:14 And so it’s like, you know, maybe there’s an opportunity
0:25:16 for the aura ring that just shoots back, you know,
0:25:19 98s, 99s, like all the time.
0:25:21 It’s like, you nailed it last night, you know,
0:25:24 you might feel tired, but no, the data says you did great.
0:25:26 You might as well, you know, go out and crush your day.
0:25:28 Something that’s kind of been on my mind.
0:25:30 It’s like, you know, sleep is getting a lot of attention
0:25:33 lately with recognizing like how important it is
0:25:36 for brain recovery, like, you know,
0:25:38 all sorts of different health consequences.
0:25:40 And it’s like, yes, do all the things to make sure
0:25:43 you try and get the best night’s sleep possible,
0:25:45 but it’s kind of silly, like, oh, I’m not gonna do
0:25:47 what I plan to do because I only got a 73.
0:25:49 You’re like, well, really?
0:25:50 Like you still have to go do your day.
0:25:54 So this is like a positive reinforcement type of ordering.
0:25:55 – Yeah, I like that.
0:25:56 – That cheers you on.
0:25:57 – You don’t have to be connected to any data.
0:25:59 Like it just has like fake looking Bluetooth
0:26:01 or something, gag, gag gift.
0:26:03 – You know, I’d considered getting the aura ring
0:26:05 because I know like what you eat has a lot to do
0:26:07 with how well you sleep.
0:26:10 So by just eating certain things and then taking,
0:26:13 you know, the score, you can, ’cause I know like,
0:26:15 for example, if I eat something super greasy,
0:26:18 like Chinese food, for example, like the night before,
0:26:19 I don’t sleep that well.
0:26:21 And it’s taken me years to figure that out.
0:26:24 Whereas maybe something like that ring could have told me.
0:26:27 So maybe more like an application-specific type of ring
0:26:30 where you enter in what you ate and then you get the data,
0:26:32 you know, to see if there’s any correlations.
0:26:34 – Some of those simple things,
0:26:36 and maybe it’s just like a reminder in the morning,
0:26:37 Carpe Diem, you know, it could be something simple,
0:26:39 like a simple push notification, like,
0:26:40 hey, today’s the day, go get it.
0:26:42 You’re not getting any younger.
0:26:44 We had some guys on the show years ago,
0:26:46 that was their app, I think it was called We Croak.
0:26:49 It was just like a daily death reminder.
0:26:52 And it was, you know, like the Memento Mori thing,
0:26:55 it was like, hey, just a, you know, I don’t know,
0:26:58 1 27 PM, hey, just a heads up, you’re gonna die someday.
0:27:01 And it’s like, well, shoot, I better go get after it.
0:27:02 – Nice, nice.
0:27:05 So this next idea is, I hope Tony doesn’t get mad at me,
0:27:07 but what was funny about this next idea
0:27:10 is I got it from her during Seller Summit.
0:27:12 So Seller Summit’s the annual e-commerce conference
0:27:15 that I run, and hilariously, at the last event,
0:27:17 she was actually helping some attendees
0:27:20 optimize their dating profiles.
0:27:22 ‘Cause there’s these guys that they come to Seller Summit
0:27:23 every year and they’re still single.
0:27:28 And we just struck up this conversation like, yeah, you know,
0:27:30 how do I improve my dating efficiency?
0:27:32 So Tony looked at their profile and they’re like, oh,
0:27:35 okay, you need to change this, this, this, this, right?
0:27:36 – Yeah.
0:27:40 – So now, with a whole bunch of these AI image tools
0:27:43 and whatnot, and AI just in general to help with the copy,
0:27:45 you can easily put together a profile
0:27:47 that at least gets your foot in the door,
0:27:49 and then it’s up to you to screw up the date or whatnot.
0:27:52 But so Tony was helping people with their dating profiles
0:27:53 for at least two or three people at the event.
0:27:55 I was like, Tony, you should do this for a living.
0:27:57 – To our next business, to our next side hustle.
0:27:58 – Exactly.
0:27:59 And there’s all these AI tools that can touch up
0:28:01 your existing photos to make you look better
0:28:04 from an existing photo that you upload too.
0:28:07 – Yeah, no, I had a friend who recently did an AI
0:28:10 LinkedIn headshot, kind of they fed in
0:28:11 a bunch of existing pictures, like, hey,
0:28:13 this was a lot faster and cheaper
0:28:14 than hiring a photographer.
0:28:16 I mean, of course, once people all start doing this,
0:28:18 you’re not gonna be able to believe anyone’s profile,
0:28:21 but at least it gets you in the door.
0:28:23 – Yeah, I mean, how many of these dating profiles
0:28:26 are completely honest and truthful to begin with?
0:28:27 – That’s true, that’s true.
0:28:29 But it’s very easy to screw up one of these too,
0:28:31 ’cause certain people are looking for certain things, right?
0:28:36 – Yeah, my brother’s role was anybody who had,
0:28:39 anything Seahawks related was like an automatic out.
0:28:40 He’s like, I don’t care about football.
0:28:43 Anybody who’s like holding a beer is like automatic out.
0:28:44 He’s like, is he sober?
0:28:46 And it was just, you know, it’s kind of interesting.
0:28:48 Like everybody has their own different filters
0:28:50 and criteria where for somebody else who’d been like,
0:28:52 hey, you know, you’re drinking beer,
0:28:54 watching football, it sounds like my kind of person.
0:28:55 – Exactly.
0:28:56 But the conference shows that a lot of people
0:28:57 need help in this department.
0:28:59 So there’s clearly a demand for it.
0:29:02 – I mean, that taps into some other trends too of,
0:29:05 you know, people postponing a lot of major life decisions,
0:29:07 getting married later in life, having kids later in life,
0:29:10 like, you know, the loneliness epidemic,
0:29:11 like this is a real thing, like help people
0:29:13 find their partner.
0:29:14 I mean, that taps into a big, big market.
0:29:16 – That is until AI becomes that partner,
0:29:18 but that’s a topic for a different episode, Nick.
0:29:19 – That’s another episode.
0:29:21 Recently it was like, I interviewed my AI self,
0:29:26 like RoboNik, it just prompted ChatGPT to respond as me.
0:29:29 And it did surprisingly well.
0:29:32 It was like, hey, that’s kind of the answer I would’ve given.
0:29:35 And you know, it only made up a few facts,
0:29:37 which were a little weird, but it did surprisingly well.
0:29:39 I was like, are you trying to take my job?
0:29:40 – You published it on your podcast?
0:29:41 No, I haven’t tried that yet.
0:29:42 That sounds like a very interesting episode.
0:29:44 – Yeah, I mean, ’cause you’ve got, you know,
0:29:46 this 10-year body of work out on the internet too,
0:29:48 where, you know, it absolutely could respond to Steve.
0:29:51 – Link that episode up, I wanna listen to that one.
0:29:53 That sounds like a great idea, by the way.
0:29:53 – Yeah, love it.
0:29:55 – All right, I’ll send that one to you.
0:29:57 – We’ve got more business idea giveaways with Steve
0:30:00 coming up right after this.
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0:32:05 All right, what’s next?
0:32:06 Is it my turn?
0:32:07 – It’s your turn, but I got a couple more too.
0:32:12 Next one for me is in the world of content creation.
0:32:14 And I’m calling this, I’m feeling lucky
0:32:17 for podcast editing.
0:32:19 And so what we’ve learned over 10,
0:32:21 almost 12 years of podcast editing,
0:32:25 it is at least as much about what you don’t say
0:32:28 as what you say, like what you don’t air.
0:32:31 And so my job as the host is to cut the fluff,
0:32:33 cut the stuff that doesn’t add to the conversation
0:32:35 or like, you know, we went off this tangent
0:32:37 and didn’t really go anywhere
0:32:40 or that question kind of landed with it, like, okay, fine.
0:32:42 And so my job after recording
0:32:43 is been to go through the transcript
0:32:45 and find those little sections, you know,
0:32:47 just to try and tighten that up
0:32:49 and maybe we’ll record for an hour
0:32:51 and try and find the best 50 minutes.
0:32:53 And maybe there’s a sliding scale on this,
0:32:55 you know, I’m feeling lucky editor.
0:32:57 I think this is going to rely on AI.
0:32:58 You feed in the transcript,
0:33:03 you feed in examples of past episodes that you really like.
0:33:06 And my thought is this is going to make suggestions
0:33:08 on where to trim the fat.
0:33:10 What could you cut out of this
0:33:13 and not lose the overall message and takeaways,
0:33:15 but just make it a tighter listening experience?
0:33:18 – I’ve been waiting for a tool like that
0:33:19 as long as I’ve been podcasting.
0:33:21 (laughing)
0:33:23 I think the closest thing that I’ve used for that
0:33:26 is a tool called Opus Clip.
0:33:27 Have you tried that tool?
0:33:31 – No, this is like the, we’ll make AI shorts for you.
0:33:32 – Yeah, it’ll make shorts for you,
0:33:34 but it actually does a reasonably good job of picking out
0:33:36 like something that you can just cut to the front,
0:33:38 you know, to get that hook and the attention.
0:33:39 – Okay.
0:33:40 – But something like that,
0:33:44 more along the lines of what you just described,
0:33:46 I would definitely pay for a tool like that.
0:33:47 No questions asked.
0:33:50 – This is where I love being a podcast guest
0:33:52 where I just show up and as soon as the recording is done,
0:33:53 like my work is over,
0:33:55 but as the host, it’s like, well now,
0:33:57 now I gotta review this whole transcript
0:33:57 to figure this out.
0:33:58 – I know.
0:34:00 – And you thankfully have an editing service
0:34:02 to help you to perform those actual cuts,
0:34:04 but even just a starting point, you know,
0:34:05 maybe that’s what it is.
0:34:08 It’s like, okay, we want to end the sliding scale is like,
0:34:09 you know, I want to, you know,
0:34:10 how strict did you want it to be?
0:34:13 And like, okay, it’s only going to keep the best 15 minutes.
0:34:14 I think that would be really, really hard.
0:34:17 But if you’re just, I want to trim 10%, you know,
0:34:19 give me the bottom 10% of this episode
0:34:20 and maybe it will make suggestions on that.
0:34:23 – So all these ideas that I’ve given you
0:34:24 are just ones that I’ve come up with
0:34:26 as a result of things that have happened in my life.
0:34:28 So as I mentioned before,
0:34:30 my mom just moved in our neighborhood.
0:34:31 And, you know, as you get older,
0:34:33 you want to spend more time with your parents, right?
0:34:35 And what I’ve discovered just hanging out
0:34:38 with my mom a lot more is that she has all these stories
0:34:40 to tell that you don’t know about,
0:34:41 that you probably wouldn’t have asked
0:34:43 when you were younger, right?
0:34:44 – Yeah.
0:34:47 – And so there was this service that we used a while back
0:34:50 where the company basically just emails your mom
0:34:52 or your parent a list of questions,
0:34:54 and then they compile their answers in a book for you,
0:34:55 right?
0:34:57 But I was thinking of taking that one step further.
0:34:59 So this is a book that sits on my shelf that I treasure now
0:35:01 ’cause it’s all stories, but.
0:35:02 – What service did you use for that?
0:35:04 – I forgot what it was called,
0:35:06 but I can find out for your listeners if they want.
0:35:07 – Okay.
0:35:08 – The problem with that service though,
0:35:11 was like the parent or whatever has to do a lot of writing.
0:35:12 – Yeah.
0:35:13 – And it’s actually quite burdensome for them,
0:35:15 especially if English isn’t their first language.
0:35:18 So what I was thinking about doing
0:35:20 was taking that one step further.
0:35:21 All you have to do is you come with the questions
0:35:24 ahead of time and then you just take a film crew
0:35:26 and you just go interview that person.
0:35:27 That way you have it on video.
0:35:29 I think that would be much more valuable.
0:35:31 I love the book, don’t get me wrong,
0:35:34 but it was just kind of hard to make sure it got written in.
0:35:36 Whereas with video, if you send a film crew there,
0:35:38 you know, it’s just off the cuff
0:35:40 and it’s actually your parents speaking,
0:35:42 which is a valuable keepsake for anyone to have.
0:35:44 – Yeah, and then they can turn it
0:35:46 into like a documentary style.
0:35:48 – Yes, yeah, and maybe that could be an extra service.
0:35:50 You turn it into, you do the editing
0:35:52 and you turn it into a documentary type thing.
0:35:53 – I think this would be really cool
0:35:55 ’cause you’re exactly right.
0:35:57 You’ve looked into some of these parent story
0:36:00 capture services and you’re exactly right.
0:36:02 It’s like, it’s a gift.
0:36:03 That’s what we were looking at for Christmas gifts,
0:36:05 but it’s like, no, this is just a lot of work.
0:36:06 Like, you know, all of a sudden every month
0:36:08 you got to answer all these questions
0:36:10 and you know, for what real benefit,
0:36:12 like you already know these stories.
0:36:15 This is more of a gift for us, but it was challenging.
0:36:19 And it kind of first came to mind with my grandpa
0:36:20 on my dad’s side.
0:36:22 So listen to the hardcore history,
0:36:24 like 18 hour saga of, you know, World War II
0:36:25 in the Pacific.
0:36:26 And I know we served there.
0:36:28 Is there like, you know, Navy quarter master
0:36:30 or something in Northern Australia?
0:36:32 You know, that’s like all I know,
0:36:35 but it’s like, what else, you know,
0:36:36 what was your level of involvement here?
0:36:38 Like, did you see combat?
0:36:39 What was it like being shipped off
0:36:41 in 20 years old across the world?
0:36:44 Like, all that kind of stuff is gone now.
0:36:46 And I think this is a really powerful one
0:36:47 to potentially capture some of that
0:36:48 for future generations.
0:36:50 – And this is instantly why I interviewed
0:36:52 my mom for the podcast.
0:36:54 It wasn’t for my listeners, you know,
0:36:56 it was more so I could have her on the episode.
0:36:59 So you could do the same thing just audio wise too,
0:37:00 just over zoom.
0:37:02 It’d be, you know, kind of informal.
0:37:03 And if you’re good at asking questions
0:37:05 and getting extra information out,
0:37:07 like me and you are, for example,
0:37:09 we could turn this into a service.
0:37:11 – This is on SNL, like with the son is interviewing the dad
0:37:14 and then they, you know, get super vulnerable, you know,
0:37:15 just have these conversations
0:37:18 because all of a sudden you put mics in front of their faces
0:37:20 and then they turn to the camera
0:37:22 and do like a Squarespace ad read.
0:37:27 – I haven’t seen that episode off to check it out.
0:37:28 – It was, okay.
0:37:31 So that’s kind of the end of life or approaching end of life.
0:37:33 How do we capture some of these stories?
0:37:35 You know, it’s like the movie Coco, you know,
0:37:37 and Ector is fading away.
0:37:38 Like, oh, he’s being forgotten, right?
0:37:40 How do we, how do we remember the people who came before?
0:37:42 I think that’s a really cool idea.
0:37:45 And like that, you know, professional filmmaking.
0:37:48 So like to rent out even freelance professionals
0:37:49 to do this for a day, it’s not going to be cheap,
0:37:52 but it’s not going to be like over the moon expensive.
0:37:54 Then the one I have is the opposite of that,
0:37:56 not end of life, but beginning of life.
0:37:59 I’m going to call this the digital baby service.
0:38:02 We’re going to secure your kid’s domain name.
0:38:04 We’re going to claim their social media handles.
0:38:08 We’re going to register their Gmail account.
0:38:10 And for this, we’re going to charge you,
0:38:11 I don’t know, a hundred bucks a year.
0:38:14 Like, you know, there’s going to be a decent margin
0:38:15 because basically the domain,
0:38:16 all this stuff is free except for the domain,
0:38:19 which maybe costs 10, 12 bucks a year to renew.
0:38:21 But we’re just going to secure this for you
0:38:23 so you don’t have to worry about it.
0:38:26 And so when your kid becomes old enough
0:38:27 that they care about this, you know,
0:38:30 all of a sudden we have that lockdown for you.
0:38:32 This is something that I did when the kids were born.
0:38:34 I would better go, you know, register their domain names.
0:38:36 Just in case, you know, we wouldn’t want anybody else
0:38:37 to have that.
0:38:40 So it’s something that would probably be,
0:38:42 there might be a market for that as a service.
0:38:45 – Yeah, actually there’s a lot of things that you could do.
0:38:47 But yeah, it would be a service where you just locked down
0:38:49 the names for any relevant service
0:38:51 that you might not be able to think about, right?
0:38:53 Besides the obvious ones.
0:38:54 – Yeah. – Yeah, I like that idea.
0:38:56 – Kind of along those same lines.
0:38:58 My next idea is a little bit,
0:39:00 well, it more caters to like the personalities
0:39:02 of the younger folks these days.
0:39:05 So I kind of got this idea after reading an article
0:39:09 about how people are paying money to rent venues
0:39:11 for social media.
0:39:14 So for example, a lot of these make money online guys
0:39:17 literally rent a jet set.
0:39:18 So it looks like you’re on a private jet
0:39:20 when you’re really not. – Okay.
0:39:22 – And I think that’s just like a reflection
0:39:23 of where society has been going.
0:39:25 But you could profit from it by just creating
0:39:28 a bunch of these sets, whether it be a private jet
0:39:32 or a luxury hotel suite or a botanical garden
0:39:35 or just something cool where it’s literally just the set
0:39:38 for Instagramming or doing lives from
0:39:40 and then just rent that time out to people.
0:39:41 – Wow. – I might have a problem
0:39:43 with this one, but I thought of it
0:39:45 ’cause people are paying for these services.
0:39:48 – Yeah, I think there’s probably something to that.
0:39:50 And yeah, you have a warehouse space
0:39:52 where you have like four or five of these set up.
0:39:53 – Yeah. – Have people come in
0:39:55 or you’re two hour block, you know,
0:39:57 they come in and knock out a bunch of reels
0:39:59 or a bunch of videos and you’re set.
0:40:02 – This is very pervasive in China actually.
0:40:05 So if you see like a TikTok video of a factory,
0:40:08 of someone like, you know, making stuff,
0:40:10 chances are it’s fake.
0:40:11 Like literally it’s just like a table
0:40:14 and just like the backdrop of it with this machine
0:40:16 and like rotating the same products over and over again.
0:40:18 – Okay. – So I’ve been just seeing
0:40:21 a lot more of those, you know, debunked.
0:40:24 ‘Cause you know, people wanna look like they’re successful
0:40:25 or doing these things.
0:40:27 And maybe it’s just like a sad reflection
0:40:29 of where we’re going, but you know,
0:40:32 there’s a market there for renting out these services.
0:40:34 – Yeah, this was a speculation for years
0:40:36 or certain influencers like, oh, you know,
0:40:39 they’re standing in front of the rented Lamborghini.
0:40:40 They don’t really own that.
0:40:41 Like that’s not really their life.
0:40:44 It’s like, I don’t know, I guess maybe a certain demographic
0:40:46 that appeals to, it’s like, who cares?
0:40:48 – It’s the younger folks.
0:40:51 ‘Cause we’re old and crotchety now, Nick, you know.
0:40:52 – Get off my lawn.
0:40:54 No, but this is cool.
0:40:56 And I do love me a rental business.
0:40:59 We’ve talked about, you know, the photo booth business.
0:41:01 We’ve talked about renting mobility scooters.
0:41:03 We had a guy renting out, you know, reusable,
0:41:05 like moving boxes or, you know, plastic storage bins,
0:41:06 basically.
0:41:09 And so here’s another example of something.
0:41:11 Hey, build it once or build that set once
0:41:12 and get paid for it over and over again.
0:41:13 – What do you got?
0:41:14 You got a couple more?
0:41:17 – I’ve got, I think one more.
0:41:20 And this is around a personal pain point of mine.
0:41:23 And I’m, you know, curious to get, you know,
0:41:25 your take on this as a prolific YouTuber these days.
0:41:29 What I struggle with is the scripting, right?
0:41:30 That’s kind of the bottleneck for me.
0:41:33 And we’ve got this huge body of content we’ve seen
0:41:37 in my mind, like people stating very obvious things.
0:41:39 Like, hey, have you ever thought about this as a side hustle?
0:41:41 Like, really?
0:41:43 Like that is getting a hundred thousand views.
0:41:45 Like, that’s like the most basic idea ever.
0:41:47 But it’s like, it’s all in this scripting.
0:41:51 It’s some sort of video scripting service or, you know,
0:41:53 maybe it’s an AI or maybe it’s a human
0:41:55 where it’s like, just, just tell me what to record.
0:41:58 Like do it in my voice, you know, load it up.
0:41:59 I could fire up the teleprompter or I could just do
0:42:01 the voiceover and we’ll, you know,
0:42:02 lay over some other imagery.
0:42:05 But just that’s like the big bottleneck
0:42:07 in producing more video content for me.
0:42:09 – If you find such a service,
0:42:11 I would sign up in a heartbeat.
0:42:12 You’re absolutely right.
0:42:15 The scripting is where it’s the most time consuming.
0:42:17 I’ve got it down now where I can script something
0:42:19 with the help of AI in about 90 minutes
0:42:21 for a 10 minute video, right?
0:42:23 – Yeah, that’s still 90 minutes though.
0:42:25 That’s helpful to hear that it’s not instant for you.
0:42:26 – Well, if you think about it this way,
0:42:28 I used to spend a lot more time on a blog post.
0:42:31 I used to spend like three or four hours on a blog post.
0:42:33 And what I like about YouTube scripting
0:42:35 is it doesn’t have to be grammatically correct
0:42:38 nor does it have to have the proper punctuation either.
0:42:39 And so that’s why it’s faster for me.
0:42:41 But yes, I’ve tried so many things, Nick.
0:42:44 Training AI to talk like me.
0:42:45 And we have enough body of work
0:42:49 between the two of us now that it’s pretty easy to do that.
0:42:53 But I don’t think it’s just hard to find that replacement
0:42:54 from what I’ve seen.
0:42:57 – What’s a typical process for you going from
0:42:59 something that you maybe have written about.
0:43:02 It could be years ago, but it’s still relevant
0:43:04 to turn that into a video version.
0:43:05 ‘Cause it’s like, there’s a different formula, right?
0:43:07 You can just read off the blog posts
0:43:09 and have that be compelling.
0:43:10 – You know what’s funny is
0:43:11 that’s how I started my YouTube channel.
0:43:13 I just read the posts and you’re right,
0:43:15 that doesn’t work well.
0:43:18 I can corroborate that.
0:43:22 So you can just feed it into chat you BT or Claude.
0:43:24 And I have a prompt for this,
0:43:25 ’cause I do less of this now,
0:43:30 but I had a process for this where you give it a prompt
0:43:31 and since we have enough workout
0:43:35 that you can say in the voice of Nick Lover or Steve Chu.
0:43:36 And it comes out with something
0:43:38 that you can modify into a script.
0:43:40 And then you also have to make changes to it.
0:43:42 So it’s not, it still takes time,
0:43:45 but it makes things much faster.
0:43:46 ‘Cause there’s a whole big difference
0:43:50 between SEO written blog than there is,
0:43:51 a compelling YouTube video.
0:43:52 – Well, speaking of YouTube,
0:43:55 you’re closing in on half a million subscribers
0:43:57 over on the My Wife Quit Her Job channel.
0:44:00 Well, what kind of videos do you find do well?
0:44:01 Like help me out on the,
0:44:03 I’m gonna pick your brain for some free coaching here.
0:44:04 – I can, yeah.
0:44:07 It’s been a struggle, it’s been a struggle, Nick.
0:44:11 So I teach e-commerce and what I found is that
0:44:14 if I just go and teach e-commerce on that channel,
0:44:16 it gets like no views, right?
0:44:17 Because that’s not what people want.
0:44:21 Like the common folk does not want e-commerce strategies,
0:44:23 which is unfortunately my specialty.
0:44:26 I mean, that’s what I like creating content about.
0:44:29 So the struggle is mixing that content,
0:44:31 my teaching content with something
0:44:34 that the mainstream viewer actually wants to see.
0:44:37 So it’s basically dumbing down the content.
0:44:39 Maybe that’s not the right word.
0:44:42 Making it more appealing to the masses, that’s the secret.
0:44:45 – Any videos that have done particularly well for you?
0:44:46 – I mean, I have a whole bunch of videos
0:44:48 that have gotten over a million views
0:44:50 that when I published the time were topics
0:44:51 that were in the news too.
0:44:54 So recency helps too, what people are searching for
0:44:56 and wanting to look about, read about.
0:44:57 And right now, if you think about it,
0:44:59 I feel like the world is in chaos right now,
0:45:01 at least the US is in chaos.
0:45:02 There’s tons of topics that people
0:45:03 are searching for right now.
0:45:05 – Any criteria you use, like a TubeBuddy
0:45:07 or a vidIQ to come up with?
0:45:09 – I use vidIQ.
0:45:10 – What’s the metric you’re looking for?
0:45:13 Like minimum search volume or minimum score there?
0:45:15 – I don’t actually even look at search volume anymore.
0:45:17 I mean, I do as a last step.
0:45:19 I should say, I shouldn’t say I don’t look at it at all.
0:45:21 But I’m just trying to create topics
0:45:25 that I know I can do a good job writing a good hook for.
0:45:27 And then keyword research is actually secondary.
0:45:29 It didn’t start out that way, but now that’s how I do it.
0:45:30 – Hook first, keyword research?
0:45:32 I got one more idea for the audience before we go.
0:45:35 This is something that once again,
0:45:37 I got from talking to with my mom,
0:45:38 ’cause we hang out a lot more now
0:45:39 if she lives right down the street.
0:45:42 This is what I call like a forgotten skills
0:45:43 online course series.
0:45:47 So my mom, you know, back in the old days,
0:45:48 she was telling about all these skills
0:45:50 that she had to do from first principles.
0:45:53 Like there’s a lot of things we take for granted now, right?
0:45:55 That everything’s machine made and whatnot.
0:45:57 But back in the day, they did stuff by hand.
0:46:01 And so we’re talking about skills like Asian calligraphy,
0:46:03 Morse code, how to read a map.
0:46:05 Like, I don’t know if…
0:46:07 I don’t think my kids know how to read a map, right?
0:46:08 ‘Cause it’s a skill that you don’t need anymore
0:46:10 ’cause you have GPS and whatnot.
0:46:12 Metalworking, old school photography
0:46:14 where you’re developing photos with the chemicals
0:46:16 and everything, just a way to document
0:46:18 and teach all those old school things
0:46:19 and put them in one place.
0:46:22 – I mean, what’s the point of learning Morse code
0:46:23 at this point?
0:46:24 You try to send somebody a telegram?
0:46:27 – Well, so the idea is there’s a bunch of people
0:46:30 out there that, like for me, as an example,
0:46:32 who would wanna just learn these things
0:46:33 from first principles.
0:46:36 Like my personality is such that I don’t like,
0:46:39 depending on services handling everything for you.
0:46:40 – Yeah.
0:46:42 – Because once something goes down, you’re in trouble.
0:46:44 So I actually would like to learn these things
0:46:47 from first principles and I can’t be the only one out there.
0:46:47 – Fair enough.
0:46:49 How to read a map I’m on board with.
0:46:53 Metalworking has not been relevant to my life
0:46:54 ever since like Metalworking, Merit Badge
0:46:55 or something when I was 12.
0:46:58 – Well, these are just examples for me, right?
0:46:59 Like Asian calligraphy, you know,
0:47:02 artistic things that are not as big of a deal now,
0:47:04 but they’re still beautiful.
0:47:06 And I think the art should be carried on
0:47:08 to future generations, that sort of thing.
0:47:09 – That’s fair.
0:47:11 All right, those are all the ideas that I’ve got.
0:47:12 You got anything else?
0:47:14 – I think that’s pretty much it.
0:47:16 Yeah, we’ve covered a lot in this episode actually.
0:47:17 – Yeah, this was a ton of fun.
0:47:20 Some really good ones out there that I hope
0:47:22 you as a listener will go and run with.
0:47:23 Like I mentioned, this is our third round
0:47:25 of business idea giveaways.
0:47:28 If you like this format, go check out the other two.
0:47:32 Those are numbers 530, episode 530
0:47:35 and episode 563 in your archives.
0:47:38 You’ll be able to scroll down in your podcast app
0:47:39 and find those.
0:47:41 Again, my wife quitherjob.com.
0:47:42 You can find Steve over there.
0:47:45 Check him out on YouTube by the same name.
0:47:46 My wife quit her job.
0:47:48 Big thanks to Steve for sharing his insight once again.
0:47:51 Being a repeat guest, big thanks to our sponsors
0:47:53 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:47:55 You can hit up sidehustlenation.com/deals
0:47:59 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:48:00 That is it for me.
0:48:01 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:48:03 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:48:05 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:48:08 So fire off that text message to that friend of yours
0:48:10 who’s always kicking around new business ideas.
0:48:12 I know you got somebody like that in your life.
0:48:13 Until next time, let’s go out there
0:48:14 and make something happen.
0:48:16 And I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:48:18 of The Side Hustle Show.

0:00:06 I call this the easiest online side hustle ever, but it’s still a viable path
0:00:10 to extra income. We’re about to find out what’s new with the Amazon influencer
0:00:13 program since we first covered it a couple of years ago on the show.
0:00:18 This is the program that allows you to upload short product review videos and
0:00:22 earn a small commission when somebody buys the thing on Amazon after watching
0:00:26 your video at that time, pretty low production quality,
0:00:30 relatively low competition and the best part, you didn’t need to drive any of
0:00:34 your own traffic. You just kind of sat there on the product pages and if somebody
0:00:37 watched it, you earned a little commission, very much said it and forget it.
0:00:41 Probably as close to passive income on the internet as you can get to date.
0:00:46 I’ve earned over $2,000 as an Amazon influencer, very,
0:00:49 very part-time, very passive, but which is great.
0:00:54 But that pales in comparison to today’s guest who’s earned over $130,000 as a
0:01:00 product reviewer, uh, lately around $5,000 a month on the side from his day
0:01:04 job, which I think is pretty cool from creator side income, Tyler Christensen.
0:01:06 Welcome back to the side hustle show.
0:01:08 Thanks. Great to be back.
0:01:10 A lot has changed since we last chatted a couple of years ago.
0:01:13 So it’s fun to be back talking about Amazon.
0:01:18 Yes. So, so catch us up now, whatever the proverbial fruit is as low hanging as
0:01:21 this, it tends to get picked over.
0:01:23 At least that’s the trend that we’ve seen over the last 10, 12 years of the
0:01:25 show, but catch us up.
0:01:27 What’s been going on in the Amazon influencer world for you?
0:01:32 Well, so the Amazon influencer program is largely the same as it was two years
0:01:36 ago, the idea that you can just film a video on your phone, uh,
0:01:38 of some product and upload it to Amazon.
0:01:41 Like you mentioned, a very low hanging fruit.
0:01:45 You can, at least in theory, do that in two or three minutes, take a one minute
0:01:50 video, upload it, tag it, and, and you’re done, which means if you work really
0:01:52 hard, you could do hundreds a month.
0:01:57 Yeah. Two years ago, hundreds of videos a month would result in thousands of
0:02:00 dollars a month in earnings for the influencer.
0:02:02 That is no longer the case.
0:02:06 However, I agree with you that it’s still the easiest side hustle that’s out
0:02:09 there, no startup costs, really easy.
0:02:12 You don’t need to have fancy equipment or anything like that.
0:02:16 You can’t make quite as much money now, but you can still make really good money.
0:02:18 So that part hasn’t changed.
0:02:22 Is that a factor of more players in the space or commission rates getting cut or
0:02:25 visibility of the videos getting diminished?
0:02:25 What’s going on there?
0:02:26 Yeah.
0:02:31 So there’s some speculation that there are caps or, or that Amazon might
0:02:33 throttle you if you have too many videos.
0:02:35 There are a lot of theories out there on that.
0:02:39 What we do know for sure is there are definitely way more players in the space.
0:02:41 And so you just have more competition.
0:02:45 When you put a video up for a product, if there’s already 20 videos for that
0:02:47 product, it’s just less likely that someone will see yours.
0:02:52 Whereas two, three, four years ago, you could review almost anything and yours
0:02:54 would be the only video up for that product.
0:02:56 And, and that’s just no longer the case.
0:02:56 Okay.
0:03:01 So maybe prioritizing the ones that are newer products, maybe they don’t have a
0:03:05 ton of videos out there yet, just because well, even if you get, even if
0:03:10 everybody cycles through evenly, you’re still only going to get one 20th of the,
0:03:14 of the views and it may not even be that case where maybe they’re going to
0:03:17 prioritize ones with better watch times or better conversion rates or whatever.
0:03:18 Maybe.
0:03:18 Yeah.
0:03:21 The challenge with that is you want trending products.
0:03:24 You want products that are popular right now that are best sellers, but of
0:03:27 course, if they’re best sellers, then a lot of people have them and make videos.
0:03:32 So there’s a sweet spot where they’re popular, but not too popular or new, but
0:03:32 not too new.
0:03:34 And you kind of have to muddle through.
0:03:37 There are some software programs that can help with that.
0:03:38 There are some extensions.
0:03:40 I don’t use any of those things.
0:03:44 Um, just because I’ve been in this long enough, I’ve kind of found my own system
0:03:49 for finding products, but the cool thing is even with things that aren’t best
0:03:53 seller, I got a sponsored video this week where somebody sent me a power station
0:03:55 and it costs $3,000 on Amazon.
0:03:59 So while they’re paying me to make the video, they’re paying me $80.
0:04:03 If, if a single person buys one of those power stations, so it doesn’t have to
0:04:06 be a huge seller, but if I get one cell, that’s like another 50 bucks.
0:04:12 And so, and if it does do really well, if that video, um, helps people make
0:04:15 decisions and a lot of people buy the power station, then potentially
0:04:17 that’s a nice source of income and moving forward.
0:04:19 What’s, what’s a power station?
0:04:21 Like a generator, you know, you just plug stuff into it.
0:04:24 But if your power goes out in your house, you can plug in your refrigerator,
0:04:25 stuff like that.
0:04:25 Okay.
0:04:29 That was one of the themes from the last conversation was focusing on the higher
0:04:34 ticket items because you’re only going to make two to 4% of the sales price.
0:04:37 And so if you’re selling a $10 thing, it’s going to take the same amount of
0:04:42 time to review it as it is going to take to review the $100 thing or the $200
0:04:42 thing.
0:04:46 And so all else being equal, focus your energy and attention on the, the
0:04:47 higher price products.
0:04:50 Although you can still make good money with low end products, especially
0:04:51 if you’re making a lot of videos.
0:04:55 So if, if you have tons of videos out there and they only make six cents
0:04:59 each time you make a sale, you know, enough of those added up, just like
0:05:00 any other investment, it adds up.
0:05:01 Yeah.
0:05:04 Some of my best sellers kind of are on both ends.
0:05:09 One is the green bin food compost bags, which is probably a $10.
0:05:10 I don’t, I don’t even know.
0:05:12 I was like, Hey, you know, we’ve, we’ve tested a few of these.
0:05:14 These are genuinely the best that we found.
0:05:15 This is the, this is the one you want, right?
0:05:16 It’s a no-brainer.
0:05:20 And then on the other hand, it’s like, we have like an electric car charger
0:05:22 thing in my parents’ garage.
0:05:25 He was like, well, might as well quit, shoot a quick video review.
0:05:27 Cause this is like a several hundred, several hundred dollar item.
0:05:31 And so that one is on the higher end where when it does sell, it’s a much
0:05:36 bigger commission rate, but so those are a couple examples of high sellers for me.
0:05:40 Now, one of the new things that Amazon introduced just in the last six
0:05:43 months is, well, actually it’s been around for longer than that, but they’ve
0:05:46 started promoting it is the creator connections.
0:05:47 Are you familiar with that?
0:05:50 No, this is definitely one area that I wanted to talk to you about.
0:05:52 Schoolless about creator connections.
0:05:53 Okay.
0:05:57 Creator connections is really interesting because I think what Amazon is trying
0:06:00 to do is they don’t want to pay more money to influencers.
0:06:02 And so they’re getting the brands to pay that.
0:06:07 And the way that they’re facilitating that is they’ve made this new area where
0:06:11 if you’re in the influencer program, you can go through a directory of products
0:06:13 that brands have signed up for and they have a budget.
0:06:18 Uh, and what happens is if you have that product, or if you purchase that product,
0:06:22 or in some cases the company will send you that product for free or even pay
0:06:26 you to review that product, instead of getting the, the typical commissions
0:06:30 from Amazon, which are very low, half a percent to four percent, the brands
0:06:35 will pay you up anywhere to 20% for commissions on, on sales of their products.
0:06:40 And so one of the things that has helped me lately as there’s been more
0:06:43 competition for products is finding things on those creator connections.
0:06:47 And, and most of those things were things I reviewed anyways.
0:06:50 So it’s simply a matter of checking the box to say, I want to be part of this
0:06:51 campaign.
0:06:55 And that’s all you literally, all you have to do is just say accept on
0:06:57 things you’ve already reviewed.
0:07:01 And then you can link the, the video that you’ve posted, uh, whether it’s on
0:07:03 social medias or on the Amazon platform.
0:07:06 And then anytime there’s a sale on that, you get a higher commission.
0:07:09 So that has helped with, uh, creators quite a bit.
0:07:15 But then for me, uh, I had one product that I found, uh, we bought it over
0:07:19 the summer thinking that it would be a good Christmas present for our, our kids.
0:07:25 And it was a higher ticket item and it paid a, a 10% commission instead
0:07:26 of a 1% commission.
0:07:27 Yeah.
0:07:30 And so every time it would sell, we would make 30 or $40.
0:07:36 And that one review has resulted in about $5,000 in the last six months.
0:07:40 So you can, you can really strike at rich, uh, if you find the right product.
0:07:43 From one review, you think about the hourly rate of that.
0:07:49 So where do I go to find these creator connection invites or possible products and brands?
0:07:49 Yeah.
0:07:54 So if you’re in your associates, whatever that’s called, where it shows you all
0:07:58 your information, your reports and stuff, I’m in like a creator hub right now.
0:07:59 Yeah.
0:08:01 There is a tab that you can pull down.
0:08:05 You have to be on the offsite portion of the tab.
0:08:10 So you can log in to either your onsite profile or your offsite profile.
0:08:16 If you get onto your offsite and just scroll down the tags, then there’s a little
0:08:17 button for creator connections.
0:08:22 Now I do believe that they did send out invitations, but anyone that’s in the
0:08:26 influencer program can join just by finding that tab and signing up.
0:08:29 Okay. Well, dig around and be on the lookout for that.
0:08:31 I think that’s a really interesting angle.
0:08:37 Now has Amazon, since we last connected, provided any additional guidance as to
0:08:42 the influencer program application requirements, like, you know, size of the
0:08:46 file, because they want you to plug in your Instagram, YouTube, TikTok.
0:08:49 Like they want to have some level of social following, but they never, at least
0:08:53 at that time said, well, the minimum threshold is 2000 followers or something
0:08:53 like that.
0:08:55 They haven’t said anything.
0:08:57 They are as mysterious as they’ve always been.
0:09:02 However, just through Reddit groups, Facebook groups and others, there is a
0:09:05 general sense of what’s required to end its engagement.
0:09:10 So rather than having a real big following, 10,000 followers or whatever,
0:09:15 you can get in with as few as like 50 followers as long as there’s legitimate
0:09:19 engagement that they’re commenting on your videos, that it’s not just friends and
0:09:22 family, but that you’re putting something out there and having people engage with
0:09:23 it on social media.
0:09:26 So that seems to be what’s working best.
0:09:32 The other good news now is it used to be really, really hard to get first accepted
0:09:36 into the program as an influencer, but then you have to upload three videos and
0:09:37 they have to be approved.
0:09:42 And a lot of people were getting their videos rejected during a time of growth
0:09:46 for Amazon, but over the last six months, it seems like they’ve lessened the
0:09:47 threshold for that.
0:09:51 And so a lot more people are getting in now, just with the same requirements
0:09:54 that we’ve always had, that you just have some kind of social following.
0:09:58 A lot of people are doing it through TikTok right now, but you can do it on any
0:10:03 platform. And the videos aren’t being rejected as often.
0:10:07 That threshold to actually put something for onsite commissions.
0:10:11 You have to have your three videos approved and people are having more
0:10:12 success now with that.
0:10:17 Okay. And when you say onsite versus offsite, onsite is what I think I’m most
0:10:20 familiar with was like the video was shown on the product page.
0:10:23 Somebody watches it. They ultimately purchase, you get a commission.
0:10:26 What’s, what’s the offsite piece of that?
0:10:30 Yeah. So onsite is the thing when we talk about the Amazon influencer program,
0:10:34 that’s all onsite offsite is what we’ve had for years and years with the
0:10:40 Amazon affiliate program, where you simply create an account with Amazon.
0:10:43 Anyone can do it. There, there is no requirements.
0:10:46 You just have to go through the process, Google, Amazon affiliate.
0:10:48 And when you sign up for that,
0:10:52 they’ll make it so you can get a link for any product that you have.
0:10:57 And like, if you have a YouTube video, you put that link on your YouTube video.
0:11:00 It directs people to Amazon. So that’s why it’s coming from offsite.
0:11:02 And you make a commission.
0:11:07 And actually the commissions for offsite are better than onsite commissions.
0:11:10 They’re, you’ll get a higher percentage, plus they have better incentives.
0:11:13 My little brother’s crushing on offsite.
0:11:15 So while his onsite has gone down,
0:11:19 he’s actually making more than ever through Amazon because his YouTube channel
0:11:21 has done better. Okay. So in your case,
0:11:24 this would be the reviews of cool stuff YouTube channel.
0:11:26 That’s like the primary offsite driver. Yeah.
0:11:29 And you can do it on any social platform.
0:11:31 So if you’re a big Instagram or a TikToker,
0:11:35 you can put those links anywhere and drive traffic to Amazon. Got it. Got it.
0:11:40 You just have to go in and kind of pull that specific tracking link versus it kind
0:11:43 of automatic in the onsite version. Right. Okay.
0:11:44 Many videos. So you have two now.
0:11:47 I have about 2,300 total videos.
0:11:49 So I did about 800 last year,
0:11:52 which was down from the year before where I did about 1,200.
0:11:55 So I was doing a hundred a month. I’ve kind of,
0:11:58 now I’m only doing about 50, 75 a month. Okay. Yeah.
0:12:01 For the sake of comparison, I did eight all last year,
0:12:05 but still made 700 bucks. Like it was really, really passive. Yeah.
0:12:08 So it’s almost this volume game and you can, you know,
0:12:11 play with these different metrics of like, well, are there already, you know,
0:12:13 other videos out there? Is it a high price?
0:12:15 Probably like to try and prioritize your, your work there,
0:12:18 but it, it does seem to be, I mean, there’s an 80, 20 to it,
0:12:22 but a bit of a volume game where the more videos that you have,
0:12:23 the wider a net you can cast,
0:12:27 the more likely you are to pick up some views and some sales. Yeah. Well,
0:12:32 and the one thing I will say is I’ve always treated this kind of as a real job
0:12:35 that I have to consistently show up and put videos,
0:12:40 but where in 2023 I was spending maybe 20 plus hours
0:12:44 a week with it. Now I’m still doing those 50 to 75 videos a month,
0:12:46 but I’m doing it in two or three hours a week.
0:12:51 So I’ve really reduced my time in creating videos because I’ve gotten better
0:12:55 at it, but also just because I’m not doing quite the volume I was doing before.
0:12:57 More with Tyler in just a moment,
0:13:00 including his take on production quality, video thumbnails,
0:13:05 getting paid by brands to do sponsored videos, monetizing on YouTube and lots
0:13:06 more right after this.
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0:14:17 presenter asked this question, are you working on your business or are you
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0:14:30 So when I got back home, that’s when I made my first full-time
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0:15:32 Have you seen a step up in the necessary production value or it was still
0:15:36 kind of like really rudimentary shot with your phone, a quick voiceover type of stuff?
0:15:40 Because of the saturation of the market, what we’re finding is in certain
0:15:44 segments for certain kinds of products, the quality does matter.
0:15:47 So if you’re doing mostly technology products, you’re competing against
0:15:51 people who are professional reviewers, you know, tech reviewers.
0:15:53 And so you do need to up the quality for that.
0:15:58 If you’re reviewing a granola bar, you need to just eat the granola bar and talk about it.
0:16:02 You really, there’s no need to, to scale up those videos.
0:16:08 However, that being said, I do feel like if you want to protect yourself as a
0:16:12 product reviewer, where it is getting harder and harder to make money on site
0:16:17 with Amazon, YouTube does value higher quality videos.
0:16:22 And so if you’re only going to film at once and edit at once, I am starting to put
0:16:27 more time and energy into certain kinds of videos, hoping that they’ll do well
0:16:30 on YouTube and drive traffic to Amazon.
0:16:33 And those same videos seem to be doing a little bit better on Amazon.
0:16:36 It’s not a huge difference, but it does make a little difference.
0:16:37 Okay.
0:16:40 So across posting the same content on both channels, right?
0:16:45 Film at once, improve the production quality a little bit, targeting that YouTube
0:16:51 traffic that offsite commissions with the understanding that, hey, it’s a higher
0:16:55 quality video, so maybe Amazon’s going to prioritize it on the onsite side as well.
0:16:59 To go along with that, one of the things that’s really changed the game a little
0:17:04 bit in the last year is the popularity of the TikTok shop, which are vertical
0:17:08 videos and Amazon has wanted to compete with that as YouTube shorts has wanted
0:17:09 to with vertical videos.
0:17:15 However, what we found in on Amazon is while those get a lot more clicks, they
0:17:16 don’t get more sales.
0:17:18 The vertical videos don’t do really well.
0:17:23 However, a lot of people who do product reviews are finding that they’re doing
0:17:24 really well on TikTok shop.
0:17:29 So, and I’m including that, that I’ve recorded more vertical videos that are
0:17:34 punchy, that are quick edits, they’re shorter videos, but they take a lot longer
0:17:36 to make just because of the editing process.
0:17:38 And they’ll do well on TikTok shop.
0:17:38 Okay.
0:17:41 They don’t do great on Amazon, but they get a lot of clicks.
0:17:42 So it misses up all your data.
0:17:47 Is that also through the Amazon influencer program or is this would be
0:17:52 separate through a TikTok shop product separate on TikTok shop?
0:17:56 You have to have, I think right now they’ve changed it over the last year.
0:17:58 It used to be no followers.
0:18:00 Then it was 10,000 followers.
0:18:01 Now it’s like 1000 followers.
0:18:06 So you have to have meet this minimum threshold of followers to get accepted
0:18:07 into the TikTok shop.
0:18:11 Uh, and so their requirements are different from Amazon, but it doesn’t
0:18:15 take a ton of time to build up a following on TikTok shop.
0:18:19 So, uh, a lot of product reviewers are doing that just to supplement their
0:18:20 income and some are doing really well.
0:18:24 I know someone that made close to a million dollars last year with just
0:18:27 TikTok shop, because he found the right products, understood how to make
0:18:28 the right kinds of videos.
0:18:31 And so you can make a lot of money there as well.
0:18:35 But I know more people on TikTok shop that are making no dollars because it’s,
0:18:38 it seems to be harder to do, harder to learn than Amazon.
0:18:43 Yeah, it’s trying to hit that, you know, hit something viral that is at the
0:18:45 right price point and is it, you know, the right place, right time.
0:18:48 And yeah, you make a little commission on something that hits.
0:18:50 Dang, that’s kind of crazy.
0:18:54 I’ll go, well, maybe, maybe you sent me an intro and we could do a video about
0:18:54 that.
0:18:56 That’s something I never even really heard of.
0:19:02 But in the TikTok shop case, these are mostly products that you already own.
0:19:04 This is stuff that brands are sending to you.
0:19:06 Give me a sense of what you’re reviewing.
0:19:08 I think it is mostly stuff that brands send to you.
0:19:12 TikTok shop is very different from Amazon and the Amazon has all kinds of
0:19:16 products, anything that you would buy, you can pretty much find out on Amazon.
0:19:21 TikTok really focuses on viral trending products.
0:19:24 They’re usually really cheap products, things that you can just, you know,
0:19:26 spend 10 or $20 on.
0:19:30 And so the people who are having success are writing the trends.
0:19:33 They’re figuring out what’s going to be popular or what’s currently popular.
0:19:37 And rather than like on Amazon, you might make one or two videos for a
0:19:39 particular product on TikTok shop.
0:19:43 If you find something that’s trending and your video is doing well, then you
0:19:46 make 50 videos on that same product.
0:19:49 You just make a new video every week and kind of build on that momentum.
0:19:53 So it’s a very different strategy, different filming techniques.
0:19:54 It’s, it’s a little work.
0:19:57 And I haven’t gone full in on that just because it is hard.
0:20:01 Well, one type of strategy going back to the Amazon side of things was trying
0:20:06 to create, instead of just like XYZ product review, it’s kind of like this
0:20:09 product versus this product, like kind of a comparison, like trying to
0:20:13 help people make the decision for which one is right for them.
0:20:14 You experimented with anything like that.
0:20:15 Yes, absolutely.
0:20:18 And comparison videos do seem to do really well.
0:20:23 And, and again, talking about crossover here, those kinds of videos do really
0:20:26 well on YouTube and drive traffic to Amazon.
0:20:30 So if you have like seven of the same kind of product and you can do a big
0:20:34 comparison on YouTube, that’s going to bring traffic to Amazon.
0:20:38 On Amazon, just having two products, having, having a single comparison,
0:20:42 this or that, Amazon has ran some incentives because they want more
0:20:43 videos like that.
0:20:43 Okay.
0:20:46 And so maybe they’re even promoting those kinds of videos a little more.
0:20:50 But I found with the videos, I wasn’t part of that incentive program, but I
0:20:53 made those kinds of videos anyways, and they’ve done quite well.
0:20:59 So if you have, my problem is I don’t like to stock, hold products, right?
0:21:03 So if I have a lot of the same things, I get rid of them, but like, I, I
0:21:05 did a bunch of space heaters last year.
0:21:07 And if I had all of them, I’d make a bunch more comparison videos.
0:21:09 I just don’t have those.
0:21:11 And so just changes your strategy.
0:21:11 Yeah.
0:21:14 Are you, are you still like giving away stuff to your students?
0:21:14 Yeah.
0:21:15 Yeah.
0:21:17 That’s most of what I review for Amazon.
0:21:22 Cause I, you know, if you’re doing eight hundred products in a year, I probably
0:21:24 only have and have kept maybe a hundred of those things.
0:21:26 The rest I, I get rid of.
0:21:28 And, and a lot of them I get for free.
0:21:33 Last year I did 400 sponsored videos that products that company sent to me and I
0:21:37 got paid to make those videos, I get paid on the backend, but I don’t necessarily
0:21:38 need the product.
0:21:39 So I just give them away.
0:21:39 Yeah.
0:21:41 And the comparison videos are a little more challenging.
0:21:45 Cause it’s like, well, I just bought the one thing and I don’t have the other, I
0:21:48 don’t have, you know, the tier two thing or the alternative.
0:21:50 Cause that’s not what I decided to buy.
0:21:54 But yeah, if you end up getting both, or if you can have better yet to have the
0:21:58 brands send them to you and even better yet have the brands pay you to do the review.
0:22:04 Was that a factor of you building up this volume of work, this body of work on the
0:22:07 plan, and then they start to, Hey, this guy’s reviewing a lot of stuff.
0:22:10 We want to make sure that we get our thing in his hands.
0:22:10 Yeah.
0:22:13 It works a couple of different ways.
0:22:18 It, when you create an Amazon influencer account, you’ll have a storefront.
0:22:21 And on your storefront, you can link to your social media accounts.
0:22:24 You can’t link directly to an email account.
0:22:27 So if, if people want to find you, they have to leave Amazon and go to your
0:22:30 YouTube channel or your Tik Tok or your Instagram.
0:22:34 But if you have your contact information there, then they’ll find you.
0:22:37 And what I’m finding is because I’m putting all my videos on, on multiple
0:22:41 platforms, I’m having just as many people find me on YouTube as are finding
0:22:43 me on Amazon through my storefront.
0:22:46 And so I’ll get inquiries from companies.
0:22:50 I get about five a day that say, Hey, I’ve, they always say the same thing.
0:22:51 They’re, they’re mostly foreign sellers.
0:22:55 And they always say, I’ve been following for you a long time.
0:22:55 I’ve been following you.
0:22:57 I’m your biggest fan.
0:22:58 I love your work.
0:23:02 When you know, they, they saw one video and it’s similar to the product
0:23:06 that they’re selling, uh, but they always come with that, that pitch that I, I
0:23:07 love all your stuff.
0:23:09 Can we send you a product and you’ll review it?
0:23:14 And usually the expectation or the hope there for the, the Amazon seller, you
0:23:18 know, this foreign seller that’s kind of working as a broker is that we’ll
0:23:20 send you a product, you’ll review it.
0:23:21 You’ll put it on Amazon.
0:23:24 Maybe you’ll also put it on YouTube and that’s a win-win.
0:23:31 However, if as a influencer, I decide to return their inquiry and say, I’d
0:23:32 love to work with you.
0:23:34 I love doing product reviews.
0:23:38 I charge X amount to do a review and I put it up on YouTube and Amazon.
0:23:43 Then a small percentage of those initial inquiries will come back and say, well,
0:23:46 that doesn’t meet our budget, but we can pay you this amount.
0:23:48 Or they’ll say, yeah, that sounds great.
0:23:53 And so I, I almost only do paid reviews now and I’m, all my reviews are kind
0:23:58 of in the 30 to $80 range, but I have enough videos up that people find me
0:24:01 both through Amazon and through YouTube.
0:24:04 If it’s through Amazon, they still have to go to YouTube just to find my email address.
0:24:06 But that’s how they’re finding me.
0:24:10 And that’s an extra $1,000 a month, just having spent sponsored videos.
0:24:11 Okay.
0:24:14 I’m starting to see how all of these different revenue streams kind of work
0:24:16 together and compliment each other.
0:24:18 We’ve got these sponsored videos.
0:24:20 We’ve got the onsite Amazon commissions.
0:24:24 We’ve got the creator connections where we can increase the commissions by
0:24:26 working with certain products and certain brands.
0:24:30 We’ve got the offsite commissions driven from TikTok shop, from YouTube.
0:24:33 And it all kind of feeds together.
0:24:37 If you enjoy doing this type of product review content and starting with what
0:24:42 you already have, I mean, you can go and look at your own Amazon order history.
0:24:46 You can, we’ve had friends, you know, I’ve asked, well, what happens when you run
0:24:47 out of stuff at your house?
0:24:50 Like, well, I go to my friend’s house that I go to my neighbors, you know, it
0:24:51 is kind of snowball from there.
0:24:54 And as you start to build it up, now the brands start reaching out to you.
0:24:55 Hey, can we send you this thing?
0:24:57 And I don’t know, it’s, it’s a really interesting model.
0:25:02 The one income source that we haven’t talked about yet is also from YouTube.
0:25:05 Once you get enough videos there, you can monetize your YouTube channel.
0:25:07 So you also make money through AdSense.
0:25:09 So for me, that’s a small amount.
0:25:10 It’s about $500 a month.
0:25:15 But again, all those things add up and it’s a sizable income at that point.
0:25:15 Yeah.
0:25:18 And the 500 bucks a month, not anything to sneeze at when it’s work
0:25:19 you were going to do anyways.
0:25:23 Well, especially for a school teacher, $500 a month is life changing for most
0:25:24 of us.
0:25:25 So yeah, it is a good amount.
0:25:26 Income.
0:25:26 Yeah.
0:25:31 And one thing that I’ve noticed as an Amazon shopper, and it was actually a
0:25:35 former guest on the show who was like for a toilet or something.
0:25:36 We’re doing a bathroom remodel.
0:25:40 I was like, Hey, I know those guys, but they had a kind of a nice looking kind
0:25:41 of YouTube style thumbnail.
0:25:44 I don’t know if they were syndicating the same review over to YouTube.
0:25:47 It’d be kind of a random thing to have on their YouTube channel.
0:25:48 But who knows?
0:25:52 Have you seen like the importance of thumbnails type of shift as you’re
0:25:55 uploading to the influencer side?
0:25:55 Yeah.
0:26:00 So for the longest time, when I first started, I would do a thumbnail for
0:26:04 Amazon and for YouTube that would highlight the product, maybe outline it,
0:26:07 have an arrow, a little bit of text.
0:26:10 And I found that I was spending so much time doing thumbnails that I was
0:26:11 doing less videos.
0:26:16 And so I abandoned that strategy, started just taking screenshots of the product
0:26:18 and simply use that.
0:26:22 And I’ve, I’ve kind of stayed with that over the last couple of years.
0:26:27 However, again, I’m, I’m starting to see the value of offsite commissions.
0:26:32 And so I am spending more time with both thumbnails and with titles instead of
0:26:34 just a review for this bar of soap.
0:26:38 I’m saying this is the bar of soap that I’ve used for seven years.
0:26:43 I won’t try any other soap, you know, having more, not necessarily click bait,
0:26:46 but more enticing titles and same with the thumbnails.
0:26:50 And, and that’s not because it changes a lot on Amazon.
0:26:51 I’ve tested it.
0:26:54 And as far as click through and, and getting people to buy your products,
0:26:58 I don’t feel like thumbnails are a huge part of the equation right now,
0:27:02 but they are a much bigger part of the equation off for offsite with YouTube
0:27:03 and other platforms.
0:27:04 Yeah.
0:27:08 It’s one of these things where if you can build the system and do it relatively
0:27:11 quickly, it’s probably not going to hurt your click through rate, but, right.
0:27:13 And maybe don’t overthink it.
0:27:13 I don’t know.
0:27:18 That’s, I’ve been trying to pay a little bit more attention because kind of the
0:27:21 default is just like, it takes us random screen grab from your video.
0:27:24 You’re like, well, that, that is the best illustration of what we’re talking about.
0:27:28 So I don’t know if this will have any impact on the views that my stuff gets,
0:27:32 but like trying to add easy to install or worth it.
0:27:34 Kind of like question mark type of stuff on the thumbnails.
0:27:35 We’ll see, see what happens.
0:27:36 Right.
0:27:42 And for me, the part of the workflow is that I grabbed my product and as I fill
0:27:45 in the video for the first five seconds, I just like point to it and make a funny
0:27:46 face or whatever.
0:27:48 And that’s kind of my style for thumbnails.
0:27:54 But then I can just take a screen grab from that on off of the video, save it as
0:27:55 a separate file.
0:27:59 So it really only takes me an additional five seconds, but then I can really
0:28:03 feature the product how I want to, I can have it closer to the camera and things
0:28:03 like that.
0:28:07 And so that has made a bit of a difference for me, I think just because it’s very
0:28:09 clear what the product is.
0:28:09 All right.
0:28:15 Anything else that, you know, newcomers or people who, you know, maybe are going
0:28:19 to revisit the Amazon influencer program should know about this year.
0:28:21 That’s changed over that time.
0:28:24 Obviously we’re going to look up this creator connections type of thing to see
0:28:29 if we can increase the commissions from what we’re already doing, but just kind
0:28:33 of going through and getting reinspired to create some new video content.
0:28:38 I think most of what makes you successful as a product reviewer has remained constant.
0:28:40 You have to, it’s work.
0:28:41 You have to put in the time.
0:28:43 You have to be fairly consistent.
0:28:47 There were a lot of people who started around the same time I did who worked
0:28:53 really hard for six months, made 500 videos, made $20,000, $30,000 off that,
0:28:55 but then just burnt out.
0:29:00 And so I think the best advice I can give anyone now is set manageable goals.
0:29:05 You know, do five videos a week, but do that consistently over a period of several
0:29:07 months, and then it starts to compound.
0:29:12 And if you’re only making pennies in the beginning, just know it’s a numbers
0:29:15 game and you know, it might not be my, my best product review.
0:29:17 I did a review in my first year.
0:29:22 I was about six months in and, and I was starting to figure out what
0:29:24 things sold better and what was trending.
0:29:28 And I found something that popped off and it made me $17,000.
0:29:31 And I have not had that kind of success since them.
0:29:35 However, that product still makes me a few hundred dollars every single month.
0:29:40 And if I had only done my first 400 videos, I never would have had that product.
0:29:45 And so it’s just being consistent, looking for different things and improving over
0:29:49 time, as far as your product selection and as well as the style of the videos,
0:29:50 things like that, you just get better at it.
0:29:55 And that’s what’s kind of cool here is the videos can have a really long shelf
0:29:59 life where, like I said, only uploaded eight last year.
0:30:03 None of them were necessarily great sellers, but, you know, the stuff
0:30:05 from the previous year will still make it sales.
0:30:09 And so if you get something that, that sticks and hopefully
0:30:12 doesn’t get flooded with a lot of other videos or for whatever reason,
0:30:13 yours is the one that gets shown.
0:30:17 Like you said, it can drive this passive income really for, for months or years.
0:30:20 Yeah. And that’s the amazing thing.
0:30:25 If, if I stopped making videos today, I’d probably still make at least $25,000
0:30:27 this year, just because I have that catalog.
0:30:31 And that’s really cool to think, you know, maybe I do need to take some time off.
0:30:34 Maybe I’ve never taken more than two weeks off.
0:30:37 But if I took a whole month off, it probably wouldn’t matter at all.
0:30:40 I’d still be making about the same amount of money.
0:30:42 So I love that about the program.
0:30:44 I mean, that’s, that’s my philosophy on a lot of stuff.
0:30:47 Like I want to create these evergreen digital assets, like plant these little
0:30:51 money seeds, whether it’s, you know, a piece of long form content, podcast
0:30:56 episode, YouTube video, blog post, where it can hopefully help people and
0:30:59 attract traffic and views and revenue for, for years, right?
0:31:00 It’s still going to be relevant.
0:31:00 Right.
0:31:04 And I think there’s, there’s an element in the influencer program
0:31:06 that, that speaks to me because it’s, it’s similar.
0:31:11 And I kind of like that versus trying to be, you know, the next viral hit.
0:31:13 And that’s like, I don’t know, haven’t cracked that code yet.
0:31:17 Which I would happily take it if it, if it came, but well, it’s very good.
0:31:22 The Amazon influencer program, we will link up all of our resources, all the
0:31:26 notes that I think we’ll just update our, our previous page for that with
0:31:29 Tyler’s and tips for, for 2025 here.
0:31:35 We’re going to move on to round two, which is donate a business idea or
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0:33:45 All right, we’re back with Tyler from Creator Side Income for round two,
0:33:46 which is donate a business idea.
0:33:50 This is something that you might start if you had more time.
0:33:53 This is an opportunity that you see that side hustlers can run with.
0:33:54 What do you got for us?
0:33:59 Yeah, so I’ve been thinking about this because when we talked about the Amazon
0:34:02 Influencer program, you probably noticed I referenced YouTube over and over and
0:34:04 over that things are moving.
0:34:07 That’s a huge platform and they’re growing and they’re adding different
0:34:09 monetization streams.
0:34:11 And so I love YouTube.
0:34:15 Well, with my students, I’ve been talking to them lately.
0:34:17 So I teach future teachers.
0:34:18 I’m at the university.
0:34:21 I teach people who are preparing to become elementary school teachers.
0:34:23 And I teach a curriculum class.
0:34:27 And my students are always asking, how can I practice creating curriculum?
0:34:29 How can I do this in a more authentic way?
0:34:33 And my answer to them has been started YouTube channel.
0:34:38 And it doesn’t matter what you talk about, consistently create videos about any
0:34:41 topic and you’ll become more expert on that topic.
0:34:42 You’ll have to do research.
0:34:43 You’ll gain expertise.
0:34:47 But then the cool thing, and this is why it’s a business idea, is as you gain
0:34:52 expertise, as you gain credibility as an expert, then just like the Amazon
0:34:56 influencer program where people are reaching out to you to review products,
0:35:01 people will reach out to you for your knowledge and ask you for questions.
0:35:03 Maybe you’ll be on a podcast.
0:35:04 Maybe you’ll speak at a conference.
0:35:07 Maybe it’s just something fun.
0:35:11 I just created a YouTube channel about collecting things from the 80s and it’s
0:35:12 just a blast for me.
0:35:17 But the cool thing about all of that is as you start building out your catalogue
0:35:21 of videos, now you have something that people are coming to.
0:35:24 So you can monetize your YouTube channel and make money that way.
0:35:30 You can become an affiliate and start sending people to Amazon and making
0:35:33 money as an affiliate for products that you talk about on your channel.
0:35:37 But then there’s other doors that open up where you might have opportunities
0:35:41 to speak, to attend an event or a conference.
0:35:44 And the list goes on and on.
0:35:50 So my business idea is create a YouTube channel about anything and make a bunch of videos.
0:35:54 Now, outside of this 80s collectibles, if you could talk to me about that channel
0:35:59 or maybe a different channel that you might say, let’s talk about the collectibles.
0:36:02 Yeah, so I’m having a lot of fun right now.
0:36:07 So my channel is called Chasing Junk and during my childhood,
0:36:11 that’s referred to as the Junk Wax Era for baseball cards,
0:36:13 where they way overproduced all the baseball cards.
0:36:18 They’re not worth anything, yet people my age, us middle age, 40-year-old guys,
0:36:21 we we go back and we find our old childhood collections and we’re like,
0:36:24 I wonder if this is worth anything and it’s not.
0:36:26 Yeah, I got a shoebox all right, right in the closet back there.
0:36:28 Right. So it’s really fun.
0:36:32 But what I found is I started going back and I bought old packs of baseball cards
0:36:35 to open with my kids and it was super, super fun.
0:36:39 Just to go through that experience, relive my childhood.
0:36:42 It was very nostalgic and then I started thinking, well,
0:36:45 now I want to complete that set that I started when I was nine.
0:36:49 And so I’ve started chasing this baseball set.
0:36:51 And I’ve done that with you might see in my background,
0:36:55 I have some thundercats, action figures and other things from the 80s.
0:36:59 Music, I like still collect CDs and vinyl.
0:37:01 And it’s just been fun for me as a collector.
0:37:04 We get your Atari T-shirt. Right.
0:37:07 So I collect stuff and I’m documenting my journey.
0:37:12 I don’t have a lot of videos up yet, but I’m starting to just unbox packs of cards.
0:37:16 I’ve actually filmed like 200 videos. I just need to upload them.
0:37:19 But I’m just having so much fun reliving my childhood,
0:37:23 involving my children in the process and then talking about, you know,
0:37:26 what it means to me to be a collector,
0:37:28 but also to collect something that’s worthless to everyone else,
0:37:30 but has some sentimental value to me.
0:37:33 And I have already had some people reach out with,
0:37:36 here’s a way to display your cards. We’ll send it to you.
0:37:37 Just put it on your channel.
0:37:42 And so it’s already opened some doors, even though I think I have like one
0:37:45 long form video and five shorts or something like that.
0:37:46 So it’s really in its infancy.
0:37:49 Okay. Yeah. Well, there’s certainly precedence for that.
0:37:53 I mean, look what Pat Flynn has done with the, with the Pokemon channel.
0:37:58 It’s like absolutely blown up. So something in that electable space.
0:37:59 Certainly an interesting one.
0:38:04 I like the idea of getting the kids involved because they watch a lot of YouTube
0:38:06 and then trying to edit their first video.
0:38:11 There’s a newfound appreciation for like what it really means to be a content
0:38:12 creator. And it’s kind of funny.
0:38:16 We get there like elementary school yearbooks and they ask the fifth graders,
0:38:17 you know, what do you want to be? What do you grow up?
0:38:20 They’re like, I want to be a doctor and a YouTuber.
0:38:24 And I want to be a veterinarian and a part-time YouTuber.
0:38:26 It’s like really, really common to see that.
0:38:28 It’s like, well, how many videos have you made, right?
0:38:30 Like start doing the work now.
0:38:33 You realize you build up that, you know, first of all,
0:38:35 that creative habit of coming up with something consistently,
0:38:40 but also like the skills and appreciation for like what it takes to make
0:38:41 this stuff happen, make it look good.
0:38:44 The other thing that I love about that is I’ve done just like you.
0:38:46 I have a bunch of different side hustles.
0:38:48 Some of them make money, a lot of them don’t.
0:38:54 But the more that you look at developing a skill like a video editor or
0:38:57 storytelling or creating thumbnails, those all compound.
0:38:59 And so when you start another side hustle,
0:39:02 it’s easier and you’re more likely to have success.
0:39:06 And certainly for me, I have a vested interest because the better I get at
0:39:10 video for any platform, the more effective I am in teaching my online
0:39:12 students through video.
0:39:16 And so I’ve learned a lot just through researching YouTube that has made a big
0:39:18 difference for me as a school teacher.
0:39:20 So I love that those things can all work together.
0:39:20 Yeah.
0:39:24 You can’t take too much YouTube advice for me because you look at my channel
0:39:28 and it’s not, you know, growing particularly fast, but it is this planting
0:39:30 these evergreen digital assets type of content.
0:39:35 One thing that we’ve seen work well on that channel and work well for certain
0:39:39 guests is focusing on Q and A content rather than trying to, you know,
0:39:42 play in the entertainment space of the Mr.
0:39:46 Beasts and the Dude Perfects of the world is, you know, trying to solve
0:39:51 specific problems and, you know, answer people’s questions and target that,
0:39:55 you know, search intent where, and we’ve, I’ve got videos where it’s like
0:39:57 answering very specific search query.
0:40:01 It might be eight, 10 years old at this point, like still getting views.
0:40:05 And so that’s something, or if you can build a, build a body of work around
0:40:07 that in your niche, absolutely.
0:40:10 You start to get opportunities, companies reaching out, people asking for help.
0:40:14 We’ve done the entire episodes around, you know, Q and A content around
0:40:15 a specific software tool.
0:40:19 I feel like, you know, you just, you showed me how to do it myself, but like,
0:40:20 I just can’t be bothered.
0:40:21 Can I hire you?
0:40:24 Can you be my consultant on this and just do it for me?
0:40:27 You get people to reach out for services based on that.
0:40:28 Absolutely.
0:40:28 All right.
0:40:28 That’s round two.
0:40:30 Donate a business idea.
0:40:34 Start a YouTube channel, become a content creator rather than just a consumer.
0:40:36 Round three is the triple threat.
0:40:40 And we’re going to start off with a marketing tactic that’s working right now.
0:40:42 It could be influencer related or something else.
0:40:43 Yeah.
0:40:47 So we talked about this earlier, talking about the influencer program, but one
0:40:53 thing that I just started a month ago is when I’m creating videos, instead of
0:40:58 saying review of product, I’m trying to create intrigue in the title.
0:41:02 And the interesting thing has been, it works.
0:41:06 Like I really was skeptical that it would make any difference, but my
0:41:11 videos on YouTube for just normal product reviews, YouTube is starting to promote those.
0:41:14 And I’m seeing that instead of, you know, in the first 30 days that it’s
0:41:23 getting six views that over 50% of my newer videos are getting 50 to 300 views for
0:41:27 those same kinds of products, the same quality of videos, simply just changing
0:41:30 the title a little bit to add a little bit of intrigue.
0:41:33 I’m sure that helps with the click through and stuff like that.
0:41:38 So, so my, my marketing tactic is simply put a little bit more thought
0:41:41 into how you label things and how you title things.
0:41:42 Do you have an example?
0:41:43 This is great.
0:41:43 Well, let’s see.
0:41:46 I just uploaded 12 videos today.
0:41:50 One of them was for a necklace.
0:41:52 We were comparing two necklaces.
0:41:54 Uh, so we had, they were just gold chains.
0:42:00 And rather than say comparison of this necklace and this necklace, say, I think
0:42:04 I said something like, this is why we decided this necklace is the best.
0:42:07 So not a huge change, but just changing the language a little bit.
0:42:08 Okay.
0:42:10 Leaving some element of curiosity.
0:42:13 Well, I want to figure out why they said that.
0:42:17 We’ve seen similar, like the ads I used to run for my shoe business were like,
0:42:22 don’t buy this shoe until you see, you know, our insider price or, you know,
0:42:27 watch this first, you know, before you buy, you know, kind of, we see that type
0:42:32 of video title or, or hook, I guess, an element of intrigue.
0:42:36 You probably asked chat GPT for some intrigue, uh, generating ideas for, uh,
0:42:37 for whatever product it is.
0:42:37 Yep.
0:42:37 Yeah.
0:42:38 This is the next one.
0:42:42 This is a, a favorite new or new to you, uh, tool that you’re loving.
0:42:43 Yeah.
0:42:47 So one of the things that I’ve always done as I generate ideas for different
0:42:52 side hustles is I’ve used my, just audio recorder on my phone to record notes.
0:42:56 So I’ll get done with a walk or a run and I’ll just transcribe notes into my
0:42:56 phone.
0:43:01 I didn’t realize that there was so much AI out there that could transcribe those
0:43:03 for me that were free.
0:43:08 And the one that I’ve started using a lot lately is the AI studio.
0:43:09 Dot Google.com.
0:43:14 So Google has a free AI thing just like chat GPT, but it’s called AI studio.
0:43:18 And it’s awesome because you can upload a video.
0:43:22 You can upload an audio file and they will summarize it for you.
0:43:24 They will transcribe it for you.
0:43:27 They will give you other things that are similar to it.
0:43:30 It’s a really powerful tool and I’m just scratching the surface right now,
0:43:33 but I love it because I can just transcribe all my notes.
0:43:37 And now I have text files to go along with the audio files, but then I also
0:43:42 use that to summarize it, to create descriptions for product reviews and,
0:43:42 and do other things.
0:43:44 So it’s been a really powerful tool for me.
0:43:45 Got it.
0:43:45 Okay.
0:43:48 So you can plug those into the YouTube description versus trying to remember
0:43:50 what you said or write something from scratch.
0:43:51 Yeah, it’s been awesome.
0:43:55 But I, I use that for a lot of my other kinds of videos where I’m giving,
0:43:59 I’m doing a whole episode like this show where we could put the whole video for
0:44:02 this show in the end, then it will summarize it.
0:44:05 It’ll be like in this episode, we covered this, this, this and this.
0:44:07 And it does a really good job with stuff like that.
0:44:08 All right.
0:44:10 AI studio.google.com.
0:44:11 That’s a new one for me.
0:44:13 And we’re going to wrap this thing up.
0:44:16 The final part of the triple threat is your favorite book from the last 12 months.
0:44:17 Yeah.
0:44:20 I don’t read as much as I used to in, in 2020.
0:44:26 I read 200 books because we were stuck at home and, and I love to read, um,
0:44:27 but then I think I burnt myself out.
0:44:30 And so I’ve been very strategic in the last few years.
0:44:36 And the one that I found about a year ago was a book that was written in 2017
0:44:39 called the power of moments by Chip and Dan Heath.
0:44:44 And I love this because for my own research, for things like chasing junk,
0:44:48 I’m really interested in nostalgia and how to create moments.
0:44:52 But as a parent, I’m especially interested in how to make the most
0:44:56 of my time with my children and our oldest just left home.
0:44:58 And so we’re kind of still in mourning with that.
0:45:02 But we have four kids and we want to maximize our time with our children.
0:45:08 And so this book is great because it talks about how we can elevate different
0:45:15 things, how we can create moments out of fear or maybe out of creating connection.
0:45:20 And it gives you a lot of good, um, just suggestions for how to maximize
0:45:22 the time that you already have.
0:45:26 I’ve certainly used this as a classroom teacher thinking about how do I improve
0:45:30 the hook of my classroom so people are engaged right at the beginning of class
0:45:33 that we have another moment somewhere during the lecture and that it always
0:45:35 ends in a strong point.
0:45:40 So what the book does is it brings in all the science behind how to create
0:45:44 meaningful moments and then uses a lot of different stories to illustrate.
0:45:47 And that’s been super helpful for me as a parent, as a teacher.
0:45:51 And it’s even improved my YouTube videos and my product reviews.
0:45:52 Okay.
0:45:53 The power of moments.
0:45:54 That’s a new recommendation on the show.
0:45:55 Thanks for sharing that.
0:46:01 I remember reading Made to Stick, maybe it was the Heath Brothers earlier book
0:46:03 a long time ago, but the power of moments.
0:46:05 Well, we’ll have to check that one out.
0:46:07 We’ll link that up in the show notes for sure.
0:46:10 Now you’re, you mentioned, oh, I read 200 books.
0:46:15 Is there a place in the influencer program for reviewing those books?
0:46:19 Like, hey, this is such a, you know, I read Malcolm Gladwell.
0:46:22 I read this latest title and here’s, here’s what I thought.
0:46:25 What we have found is book reviews, there is a place for that.
0:46:29 You can review just like any other product and you put it, the book listings
0:46:32 are slightly different from other product listings on Amazon, but they
0:46:36 still have a space for videos and you can still make money.
0:46:40 But if it’s an old book that you love, you’re not going to make much.
0:46:42 It has to be a popular book right now.
0:46:47 So if you did like Atomic Habits, you know, I reviewed that a year or two ago
0:46:51 and it got enough sales that it paid for the book, but it didn’t make me rich.
0:46:56 And so I wouldn’t, if you’re going to hone in on one niche with product reviews,
0:47:00 Amazon and books aren’t the best combination, but you can still make
0:47:01 a little bit of money here and there.
0:47:05 I’ve probably done like 30 book reviews and maybe made a few hundred dollars.
0:47:06 Not, not a lot.
0:47:09 Okay. Good to know, you know, there’s like anything else, you know,
0:47:11 it’s a low, lower ticket type of thing.
0:47:14 And the best sellers probably already have lots of reviews on that.
0:47:18 The one fun thing about that is like, if I review buy buttons,
0:47:20 it’s just cool to review your friends books, right?
0:47:23 And, and so I like to do that anyways.
0:47:26 When I get a new book that I know the author, I’ve
0:47:29 thrown up anyways, just because then it helps sell the books.
0:47:31 So there, there are opportunities for that.
0:47:34 And I love that we can do that as reviewers.
0:47:34 That is kind of cool.
0:47:36 And I guess that’s probably a good point.
0:47:38 I should probably at least make videos for my own books, be like,
0:47:42 hey, I’m Nick, I’m the author, you know, if you have any questions,
0:47:45 reach out or, you know, as a, another little touch point.
0:47:47 However, that might not work.
0:47:49 I’ve reviewed a couple of my books and I think they weren’t
0:47:53 approved just because it was under the same Amazon name or something.
0:47:56 And so, so you might not be able to do that.
0:47:56 All right.
0:47:58 You know, a little too close to home.
0:48:01 Sometimes, you know, that algorithm may, may bite you.
0:48:02 No, no, no, no, we’re not going to allow this.
0:48:03 Well, very good.
0:48:04 Creator side income.
0:48:08 You can find Tyler over there on YouTube creator side income.com.
0:48:09 Check him out over there.
0:48:13 Really appreciate you stopping by and schooling us on all of the things
0:48:17 that are new, all of the world of opportunity in creating little product
0:48:21 reviews as a side hustle, do an earning great income on the side.
0:48:25 And kind of reinspired me to go and try and make some more videos here.
0:48:29 See if I can do more than eight this year and improve my passive income
0:48:30 from the influencer program.
0:48:32 Again, creator side income.com.
0:48:34 Big thanks to Tyler for sharing his insight.
0:48:37 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:48:42 You can hit upside hustle nation.com/deals for all the latest offers
0:48:44 from our sponsors in one place.
0:48:46 Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
0:48:48 That is it for me.
0:48:50 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:48:54 If you find in value in the show, the greatest compliment is to spread
0:48:55 the word to share with a friend.
0:48:58 So fire off that text message to that friend of yours who buys a lot
0:48:59 of stuff on Amazon.
0:49:01 I don’t know, maybe they need to hear this until next time.
0:49:03 Let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:49:07 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show hustle on.