313: Making Money in Your Sleep – By Blogging About Sleep

“Everyone needs it, people tend not to get enough of it – so that’s how the site came about,” said Kieran.

Kieran MacRae is talking about sleep.

The site he started is called TheDozyOwl.co.uk, a UK-based site that Kieran has taken from $0 to $2.5k a month in revenue in its first 12 months.

Do you remember Alan Donegan from PopupBusinessSchool.co.uk in episode 306? He told the story of one of his students getting frustrated with the business generation process; they were having a hard time coming up with anything that really got them excited.

“I just really like sleeping,” they said in exasperation.

And for a while, Alan didn’t have a great response. That is, until he learned about Kieran, who was earning a full-time income blogging about sleep and sleep-related products.

Tune in to hear how Kieran came up with the idea for his site, how he creates the content, and how the site makes money – without a server-shattering volume of traffic.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Making Money in Your Sleep – By Blogging About Sleep

312: 6 Rules to Scale any Side Hustle

If you’re still doing all the work in your side hustle or business yourself, you’re limiting your growth.

This is an episode about getting out of your own way–about the transformation from technician to business owner.

To help me work through the 6 Rules of Scale, I invited Sean Marshall from FamilyRocketship.com back to the program.

We last heard from Sean way back in episode 92 in early 2015. I think he’s someone worth paying attention to because he’s set up his business (an online marketing agency) in such a way that the day-to-day operations don’t require much of his direct involvement at all.

On the surface, his is a freelancing business, but Sean has avoided the common freelancing trap (or ceiling) of trading his own time for money.

In doing so, that affords him and his family a pretty cool lifestyle. Last time we caught up they were living in Cozumel Mexico, and today, he and his wife and 3 daughters are spending several months in Scotland.

Before we dive into the 6 Rules with Sean, he proposed two questions to ponder as pre-requisites:

1. Why did you start your business in the first place? What do you want out of it? How big do you want it to be?
2. What’s the highest and best use of your time? To achieve that ultimate why from question #1, what things do you need to do to get there, and equally important, what are the things you need to stop doing.

So those are 2 questions to keep in mind as we go through this episode.

Full Show Notes: 6 Rules to Scale any Side Hustle

311: How to Create Your Own Niche—and Your Own Income

Her escape plan was an interesting one.

April Whitney was staring at a future of pharmaceutical copywriting, and wanted out.

Today, April is the leading voice in the niche of petite fitness.

Where the story gets exciting, is that it’s a niche that for all intents and purposes, April invented.

Nobody was searching for this stuff, which would normally be a huge red flag. But when women came across April and her content, something resonated.

Starting a little over a year ago, she’s built a tribe of over 10,000 followers, raised $8,000 on Kickstarter for her first product, and now sells $1000 worth of that product on autopilot every month.

April built most of her tribe on Instagram, a platform that’s saturated with fitness-related content and notoriously difficult to convert followers into customers.

Tune in to hear how April found her tribe, converted them into followers and customers, and the products and services she created that ultimately funded her quitting that cubical job to do something she loves.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Create Your Own Niche—and Your Own Income

310: 10 Creative Side Hustles that Make Real Money

In this episode of the Side Hustle Show I’ve put together a round up of creative side hustle ideas that people have shared with me over the last couple of years.

Here are the 10 creative side hustles I cover in this episode:

1. Flyer Distribution Business

2. Moose Poop Art

3. Tumbleweed Sales

4. BabyQuip 5. Subleasing Airbnb

6. Snuggling

7. Waiting in Line

8. Penny Posters 9. Funeral Cryer Service 10. The Death Reminder App

Full Show Notes: 10 Creative Side Hustles that Make Real Money

309: Side Hustle Coaching: How Can I 10x My Current Business?

Nikko Mendoza is one listener who’s taken a lot of action this year building his side hustle

He runs a really cool business in the 3D printing niche that today has 2 main revenue streams:

1. Selling digital files for masks and customer armor inspired by well-known comic book characters, where customers can print out their own physical products at home with their own 3D printers.
2. A Patreon campaign, where fans of Nikko pay him monthly for behind the scenes access and members-only content.

Currently, those 2 income streams combine to earn around $2k a month, but Nikko told me he had the goal of 10x-ing that income in the next year.

To help me brainstorm ways to get that done, I invited Don the Idea Guy back to the program for this special coaching episode.

As you listen in, we talk traffic generation and revenue generation for Nikko’s business, and I’m confident you’ll find some parallel opportunities to pursue in your own business too.

Full Show Notes: Side Hustle Coaching: How Can I 10x My Current Business?

Bonus: 5 Ways to Be More Effective Every Day

Busy doesn’t always mean effective!

It’s not just about getting more stuff done; it’s about getting more of the right stuff done.

So how can we be more intentional, proactive, and destination-driven with our days, instead of just reacting to everything life throws at us?

Today I want to share 5 ways — 5 key habits — I’ve found that will help you be more effective, excited, satisfied every day.

And because I’ve seen their power firsthand, these are the 5 habits I’ve baked into my brand new Progress Journal. (Official subtitle: A Simple Daily Planner to Make Meaningful Progress on Your Most Important Work.)

Click here to order yours on Amazon today!

Now let’s dive into those 5 ways to be more effective every day.

308: How to Start a Knife Sharpening Business

Every house in the country is a potential repeat customer…

Matt Rowell set himself the goal of generating an extra $5k over 5 years to fund some passion projects, and he’s well on his way.

Matt runs AmericanEdgeSharpening.com on the side from his day job as captain of a research vessel. It’s a knife sharpening business, which was up to $250-500 a month when we spoke and is earning him $30-60 per hour.

He saw an ad while posted abroad with the Navy that gave him the idea for his business. 

And then he took action. Matt:

• Picked up a knife sharpening kit
• Taught himself how to sharpen knives by watching YouTube videos
• Offered to sharpen knives for family and friends for the practice
• Found paying customers

The best thing about the knife sharpening business?

“If you drive down the road, every house that you pass has a bunch of knives in it,” Matt said. That means an almost limitless number of potential customers.

Tune in to hear how Matt got started with this idea while he was deployed in Djibouti, Africa, including his equipment, how he learned how to do it, and how he’s marketed and priced his service.

Full Show Notes: How to Start a Knife Sharpening Business

307: Online Arbitrage – How to Find Amazon FBA Profit from Home

Can you find Amazon FBA profit from the comfort of your couch?

Amit Desai of CreditCard101.us has built a business doing exactly that, and now he’s on track to sell $250k worth of stuff this year – all on the side from his day job.

We’ve covered Amazon FBA and retail arbitrage before on the Side Hustle Show, but Amit has a unique angle in that he sources most of his inventory online.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Finding Amazon FBA Profit from Home

Amit’s side hustle background is actually as a travel hacker. He’s one of those guys that racks up a bunch of points and frequent flier miles, so he can go on awesome trips for free.

It was at a travel hacking conference where one of the speakers presented about his Amazon business, and how he was racking up tones of credit card points by buying inventory for his business that a light bulb went off for Amit.

Flipping Items for Profit on Amazon

Amit realized that if he could figure out a way to flip items on Amazon and breakeven he could step up his travel game. However, he soon found out there was real profit out there, not just from credit card cashback offers and free flights.

He shares some interesting examples of how he’s stacked cashback and other discounts on the items he’s flipping to effectively increase the ROI on his products while being able to sell them at a competitive price.

You’ll hear where you should be spending your time if you’re starting out in the FBA space, loads of cool apps, websites, and tools that have helped automate most of his business, and the criteria he uses when sourcing goods.

Tune in to hear Amit’s favorite tools for sourcing profitable inventory, his buying criteria, and how you can stack different discounts and rewards offers to improve your margins and get a leg up on the competition.

306: How to Start a Business You Care About — With No Business Ideas and No Money

From no business ideas and no money, to making your first sales in 2 weeks.

It’s not a far-fetched goal according to this week’s guest.

Alan Donegan from PopUpBusinessSchool.co.uk specializes in guiding people through this transformation, and he says that everyone has a profitable business idea in their heads – and he knows how to find it.

He does this through in-person workshops that are free to attend by forming partnerships with government bodies in cities across the UK, and he’s bringing his workshops to the US soon.

Alan is adamant about bootstrapping and not taking on a load of debt to start a business because he saw his family go through a multi-million dollar bankruptcy and doesn’t want anyone else to have to experience the same fate.

He preaches starting a business around a passion or something that excites you. Because running a business you’re passionate about sets you apart from the competition and makes the process so much easier.

He shares how he teaches his students to pre-sell and validate their ideas before putting down cash for stock that might end up collecting dust in the garage, and he outlines what makes a successful pitch.

Alan also shares how he practiced what he preaches when he sold his first PopUpBusiness workshop to a housing authority in the UK selling his highest priced package right out of the gate, and his business has been gaining momentum ever since.

Tune in to hear how Alan pulls business ideas out of people who don’t think they have any, how he has his students quickly and cheaply validate those ideas, and what makes for a successful pitch.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Start a Business You Care About — With No Business Ideas and No Money

304: The $5k a Month Part-Time Girl Scout Blog

Jodi Carlson has been running her blog LeaderConnectingLeaders.com part-time since 2014 and has slowly built it up to $5-6k a month in revenue.

The earnings come from a combination of mostly digital product sales, as well as advertising, and affiliate relationships.

The surprising thing – to me at least – is that she’s done this in a niche that theoretically doesn’t have any money.

Her readers and customers are almost all volunteers and they’re donating their time to local non-profit groups – in this case, Girl Scout groups.

On the surface that makes it seem like it’s as tough a niche as any to tackle, which makes Jodi’s results even more impressive.

She brings more than two decades of experience in Girl Scouts to the table, as a scout, then as a troop leader, and even though the blog didn’t start out with dollar signs in mind she’s turned it into a substantial income stream.

“I actually started it to help myself, and to then help troop leaders in my community,” Jodi said.

Jodi started documenting the activities she was doing with her Scout Troops in her blog and making PDF books so she could refer to them again in the future, and shared her articles with a small circle of other leaders in her community.

It wasn’t long before Troop leaders further afield started asking for her activity books. This sparked the idea to start selling her books and growing her blog.

Tune in to hear how Jodi comes up with product ideas and prices those, how she made her first sales, how she’s grown her traffic to more than 100k pageviews a month, and income to $5k + a month – all while working full-time and raising a family.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The $5k a Month Part-Time Girl Scout Blog

Related: Check out my free video series on how to start a blog.