318: Pinterest Marketing for 2019 and Beyond: How to Get More Traffic

With 250 million active users, Pinterest is a content discovery platform nearly every blogger and business owner should be spending some time on.

The Pinterest tactics shared on this podcast in late 2015 by Rosemarie Groner were extremely effective … for a while.

But I began to see declines in traffic, and today Pinterest brings in perhaps a quarter of the visitors it used to.

Still, I’m convinced I could be doing better on the platform to reach more people and help more people with my content.

Just like Google, a top-ranking pin can bring in consistent qualified traffic month after month after month.

But also like Google, there’s a certain science to the Pinterest algorithm.

To help me breathe new life into my account — and walk through how you can do the same even if you’ve never used Pinterest before, I invited Kate Ahl from SimplePinMedia.com to join me on the show.

She’s an expert on all things Pinterest marketing, and in this episode, she breaks down everything I’m doing wrong and what you and I should be doing instead to start reaching more people and driving more traffic.

Tune in to hear the right way to set up your profile, how to set up and optimize your pins and boards to increase your reach, and how to rank you content in Pinterest’s search results to drive more traffic to your site.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Pinterest Marketing for 2019 and Beyond: How to Get More Traffic

317: Licensing or Franchising a Business? How a School Nurse Started a 6-Figure Side Hustle

“It’s a business with training wheels,” Timika told me.

Timika Downes is a school nurse by day but was looking for ways to add income after hours, and ended up licensing someone else’s business idea.

Her side hustle is a lice clinic; a brick-and-mortar facility that helps parents and kids get rid of lice.

Not the most glamorous niche in the world, but Timika’s clinic did 6-figures in her first year, all on the side from her day job, and it now runs with little time investment from her.

The lice clinic is actually just one of several side hustles Timika has going on – she also co-hosts the House of FI podcast, blogs at ReluctantFrugalist.com, and she has 3 kids.

Her story is an interesting one. It highlights the differences between licensing and franchising a business, and Timika explains how you can leverage the support of a licensing company to get a business off the ground quickly.

Tune in to hear how Timika evaluated the risks and benefits of the licensing opportunity, how she drives business, and how she’s set this up to be a hands-off 6-figure business.

Full Show Notes: Licensing or Franchising a Business? How a School Nurse Started a 6-Figure Side Hustle

316: YouTube for Bloggers: From “Accidental” YouTube Channel to Full-Time Income

Meredith Marsh is a “total introvert with over 3 million views on YouTube.”

When Meredith started VidProMom.com she didn’t set out to be a “YouTuber”. She started a blog and YouTube channel because she wanted to help families better capture those classic, picture-perfect family moments.

What she discovered was “a pretty big gap in the whole video creation side of things for people who are creating videos for fun,” Meredith said.

She started creating a video series on how to use a GoPro and some of the software – and things quickly snowballed.

Her YouTube channel was getting more subscribers than all her other social media metrics and blog visitors added together – so it was obvious that YouTube was the ideal platform for her content.

A year after starting her channel Meredith left her day job, and her blog/YouTube channel that started as a side hustle is now her full-time job.

Tune in to hear how to set up your YouTube channel for success, how to master the YouTube algorithm to reach more people, and how to make money from your new video content.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: YouTube for Bloggers: From “Accidental” YouTube Channel to Full-Time Income

315: From Toy Guns to a Full-Time Business

“There was no safety net, it had to work,” Kelly told me.

Kelly Hardwick was talking about her business and blog, FemmeFataleAirsoft.co.uk.

It’s a site she built to write about her new hobby in airsoft, which Kelly described as a war games sport, like the Call of Duty video games in real life.

Kelly started playing airsoft regularly in 2014. However, she was disappointed with the lack of airsoft content online for women. “Be the change you want to see in the world, right?” she told me about why she started her blog. 

She started her blog along with an Instagram account, and it’s actually been her Instagram following that has become the linchpin of her business.

Her Instagram following has gone from 0-65k in less than 4 years, and it’s this popularity on Instagram that has helped her land paid guest posts, social media sponsorships, grow her social media management business, and secure other business opportunities.

Tune in to hear how Kelly has grown her audience from 0 to more than 60k followers, how she first monetized her blog, and how she develops profitable relationships with other companies in the airsoft space.

Full Show Notes: From Toy Guns to a Full-Time Business

314: The Simple Way to Finally Set up and Sell Your Online Course (And Scale to $40k a Month and Beyond)

After sitting in on a free webinar and seeing dozens of people buying a course about urban farming, Nate knew he could also create and sell his own course.

Nate Dodson of MicroGreensFarmer.com began urban farming initially to take greater control over the food he was eating and to combat Crohn’s disease.

But he soon found himself growing more than he could reasonably consume, so like any good entrepreneur, he started selling his produce – and specifically microgreens.

With a little bit of effort, he was selling $400 a week worth of microgreens to farmer’s market vendors, local restaurants, and home delivery in his town.

But Nate’s little side project has absolutely exploded in the last 2 years, and it hasn’t come from selling more produce. Instead, it’s come from teaching other people how to do what he did.

Today Nate is selling $40-50k worth of his microgreens business course a month, mostly on autopilot, and he’s followed a very straightforward path to get there that anyone can apply to their own business.

Tune in to hear how he created his product, how he drives consistent traffic, the simple sales funnel he uses to convert browsers into buyers, and the changes he’s made in his business to increase his revenue to $50k+ a month.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The Simple Way to Finally Set up and Sell Your Online Course (And Scale to $40k a Month and Beyond)

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?