The Side Hustle Snowball: How to “Erase” Your Expenses with Extra Income Streams (Greatest Hits)

0:00:03 Here’s an oldie but a goodie from the archives
0:00:06 from the Side Hustle Show Greatest Hits Collection.
0:00:07 What’s up, what’s up, Nick?
0:00:09 A Loper here, welcome to the Side Hustle Show
0:00:12 because when your non-job income
0:00:15 exceeds your monthly expenses, you’re free.
0:00:17 And it’s exactly that freedom
0:00:18 that I wanna talk about today,
0:00:21 except we’re gonna tackle it a little bit differently.
0:00:24 Often the case on the show is exploring
0:00:27 one specific business model and then reverse engineering
0:00:30 the path it took to earn five, 10, 20 grand a month.
0:00:33 Today, I actually wanna start a little bit smaller
0:00:37 and use Side Hustles, broadly defined here,
0:00:38 since not everything I’ll talk about
0:00:40 is super entrepreneurial in the traditional sense,
0:00:44 but using Side Hustles to erase your expenses.
0:00:46 How do we zero out your personal expenses
0:00:48 with extra income streams?
0:00:51 Of course, that’s the end game for a lot of Side Hustlers.
0:00:53 Like how do I build something up to the point
0:00:56 where I can leave this soul-sucking job?
0:00:58 And I think that’s a worthy goal,
0:01:00 especially if your job really is
0:01:02 of the soul-sucking variety.
0:01:04 But that can also kind of be
0:01:06 an intimidating place to start from.
0:01:09 So what I wanna propose instead as an alternative path
0:01:12 is what I call the Side Hustle Snowball.
0:01:15 How this works, and this might sound familiar to Dave Ramsey
0:01:18 fans, is listing out your monthly expenses
0:01:21 from smallest to largest.
0:01:24 For example, you might have things like Netflix
0:01:27 or your cell phone bill toward the top of the list,
0:01:29 and you might have things like your rent, your mortgage,
0:01:33 or childcare, or property taxes down at the bottom.
0:01:37 In this episode, I wanna walk through some real-life examples
0:01:40 of how you can start erasing expenses.
0:01:43 First, to allow yourself to celebrate those many wins
0:01:45 along the way, like instead of,
0:01:47 well, shoot, I only made 50 bucks this month,
0:01:49 it can be reframed as awesome.
0:01:52 I made my car insurance free this month.
0:01:55 And second, to build some positive momentum.
0:01:58 Hopefully we get this little snowball rolling for you,
0:02:01 and it turns into this income avalanche.
0:02:03 I think of those fundraising bar charts
0:02:06 where they get filled in as more and more people donate,
0:02:09 and you can watch the progress until it’s overflowing
0:02:11 out of the goal number at the top.
0:02:14 I think you can do the same thing with your income,
0:02:17 your expenses in this Side Hustle Snowball framework.
0:02:20 This one little reframe is definitely helpful in our house.
0:02:22 It’s something we talk about all the time,
0:02:24 and I hope it is for you too.
0:02:26 Notes and links to all the resources mentioned
0:02:30 are at sidehustlenation.com/snowball.
0:02:31 Ready?
0:02:32 Let’s do it.
0:02:35 (upbeat music)
0:02:38 So we’re gonna go from smallest to largest in this episode
0:02:40 with some personal examples.
0:02:41 And in making this list,
0:02:43 I was reviewing our credit card statements
0:02:44 and bank statements.
0:02:46 I’m looking for, okay, what are the recurring costs
0:02:47 that we have?
0:02:49 And one of the smallest ones that I could find
0:02:52 is my Dollar Shave Club membership.
0:02:54 I gotta keep this head looking smooth here,
0:02:58 but it’s like $7.65, but it only ships every three
0:02:59 or four months, so I’m gonna round it up
0:03:02 and call it a $2 monthly expense.
0:03:04 And yeah, I said, we’re gonna start small.
0:03:05 So how can we erase this?
0:03:08 $2, starting with very low dollar amounts.
0:03:11 One easy way is with cashback apps.
0:03:13 I’ve got several of these on my phone,
0:03:16 including Fetch, Ibotta, Dosh,
0:03:18 they all have funny names, and it’s super easy
0:03:20 to accumulate a couple bucks worth of points every month
0:03:23 to erase that Dollar Shave Club, in my case.
0:03:26 Next on my list of expenses is Netflix.
0:03:28 This is $13.99 for us.
0:03:30 This is crept up a little bit over the years.
0:03:31 And don’t tell Netflix this,
0:03:34 but I know they can see our data and the kids watching,
0:03:36 you know, their octanots every afternoon.
0:03:38 They could realistically charge way more
0:03:41 before we’d even start to shop around or blink.
0:03:43 But one way that I like to mentally cover small expenses
0:03:47 like this is to buy shares of dividend-paying stocks.
0:03:51 Now, of course, none of this is investment advice,
0:03:54 do your own due diligence, all of that legal stuff.
0:03:56 But I’ve been building what I call my cash flow portfolio
0:03:58 over the last five or six years,
0:04:00 and it started with this snowball idea.
0:04:03 Jeremy from gocurrycracker.com,
0:04:05 he’s on the podcast years and years ago
0:04:07 about, you know, his early retirement stuff.
0:04:09 He had this article called Free Coffee for Life,
0:04:11 Free Starbucks for Life or something like that.
0:04:15 And the punchline was to go buy enough stock in the company
0:04:16 to cover your habit.
0:04:18 I thought that was a really cool framework.
0:04:20 We’ve done the same thing for Target, actually.
0:04:23 So how you do the math on Netflix,
0:04:24 and I don’t think Netflix pays the dividend,
0:04:27 but you can just substitute some other company that does.
0:04:29 So you could say, okay, 14 bucks a month,
0:04:32 168 bucks a year, then go look for some dividend-paying stocks.
0:04:35 And I’ve got a personal bias toward those companies
0:04:38 with a long history of not only paying,
0:04:40 but growing their dividends over time.
0:04:43 And then if you divide the expense you’re trying to erase,
0:04:45 168 bucks for Netflix in this case,
0:04:47 by the forward dividend, I think it’s called.
0:04:50 Basically, what does this pay per share on an annual basis?
0:04:53 It will tell you how many shares you need to buy.
0:04:56 And of course, dividends are always subject to change.
0:04:57 There’s a lot more to this
0:05:00 than I have the expertise or qualifications to explain.
0:05:03 But I will say this has become a growing source
0:05:05 of household revenue,
0:05:06 which, again, started with the goal
0:05:09 of just making some of these small,
0:05:10 little expenses disappear.
0:05:14 It’s been really motivating to watch that grow over time.
0:05:16 And if you’re looking for a better yield,
0:05:18 like oftentimes dividend yields
0:05:20 are in the one to 4% range,
0:05:22 if you’re looking for a better yield,
0:05:24 I’ve got a whole list of other interesting
0:05:28 alternative investment options for you on Side Hustle Nation
0:05:31 with varying degrees of liquidity on those.
0:05:34 I’ll link up that for you in the show notes for this episode
0:05:37 at sidehustlenation.com/snowball.
0:05:40 Our next recurring monthly expense is life insurance.
0:05:44 And even though I fully trust Brynn is gonna be just fine,
0:05:47 financially, without me, I did set up this policy
0:05:50 before our first little hustler was born.
0:05:51 It’s a super small policy.
0:05:52 It’s like 14 bucks a month.
0:05:55 There’s this old Jeff Foxworthy bit about life insurance.
0:05:58 So he says, okay, you wanna make sure that you have enough
0:06:00 that your loved ones are taken care of,
0:06:03 but not so much that you’ve got a bounty on your head.
0:06:05 I’m probably airing on the low side here.
0:06:08 But I can almost guarantee you’ve got something lying around
0:06:11 in the garage, in the attic, in the closet
0:06:14 that is probably worth $14 or whatever your premium is
0:06:18 to somebody on eBay or a Greg’s List or Facebook Marketplace.
0:06:22 Over the years, we’ve sold books and cooking supplies
0:06:25 and clothes we don’t wear anymore and furniture
0:06:28 and toys and other baby stuff that they outcrew,
0:06:29 a standing desk recently.
0:06:32 I think that was on Facebook Marketplace.
0:06:34 Now, one rule that I have that I’m admittedly
0:06:36 not always great about enforcing
0:06:39 is that every time Amazon shows up at the front door,
0:06:41 there needs to be an equal and opposite sale
0:06:43 or donation out the back door.
0:06:45 And of course, you can scale this up all you want.
0:06:48 I mean, check out my interview with Stacy Gallego
0:06:49 from last fall.
0:06:52 She shared all about flea market, flipping business,
0:06:53 where she sources inventory,
0:06:57 how she finds inexpensive ways to ship really bulky stuff.
0:07:00 She had earned, I think, 7,000 bucks in profit
0:07:04 the month before we recorded as episode 406
0:07:09 of The Side Hustle Show or sidehustlenation.com/flipit,
0:07:12 but taking advantage of this declutter in profit thing
0:07:16 to cover some small expense on your budget.
0:07:18 The next expense on my list is our cell phones,
0:07:23 which are at 20 bucks per line per month with Mint Mobile.
0:07:26 So first of all, there’s this substitution game
0:07:28 you can play with some of these expenses.
0:07:29 When you go through your list, you might find,
0:07:31 oh, do we really need that?
0:07:34 Or do we really need to be spending so much on that?
0:07:36 Like we have switched mobile providers
0:07:39 from Verizon several years ago to Ting,
0:07:43 and then in the last year or year and a half to Mint,
0:07:45 and each time saw significant cost savings.
0:07:47 Actually, I don’t know, our costs on Ting
0:07:51 kind of kept creeping up mostly based on data usage.
0:07:52 So that’s where Mint has definitely been
0:07:56 a cost saver, sidehustlenation.com/mintmobile
0:07:58 is my referral link for that.
0:08:01 I think I get four gigs a month or something for 20 bucks.
0:08:03 I don’t know, I use just a small fraction of that.
0:08:04 But how do we pay for it?
0:08:06 Well, one of the longest running
0:08:11 snowball income streams for me is Fiverr, F-I-V-E-R-R.
0:08:15 And lately have been averaging 20 to 50 bucks a month
0:08:17 over there, mostly from digital product sales,
0:08:20 gigs I created years ago, and it’s 100% organic.
0:08:22 I don’t do anything to promote these gigs.
0:08:27 We’ve got several excellent Fiverr episodes in the archives.
0:08:28 But what’s cool about the platform
0:08:31 is how you can rapidly test different offers,
0:08:35 which is something that Mike Zima talked about in episode
0:08:38 375, I think we called it rapid gig prototyping,
0:08:40 rapid side hustle prototyping.
0:08:42 Fiverr forces you to think in terms
0:08:45 of many productized services.
0:08:48 Like what’s one deliverable that you might be able
0:08:50 to help someone out with?
0:08:53 If you have this broad menu of different offerings,
0:08:56 like, okay, how do I peel off just one little item from that?
0:08:58 So it’s probably not about coming up
0:09:01 with some grand marketing strategy,
0:09:03 this long-term consulting thing,
0:09:06 but maybe it’s about setting up Google Analytics for somebody,
0:09:08 which I think was maybe one of Mike’s first gigs.
0:09:10 And because there’s always new software,
0:09:13 new trends, new demands, the search volume on Fiverr
0:09:15 is constantly shifting.
0:09:16 So it’s easy to put up different gigs,
0:09:19 test where the demand is, see what kind of reaction you get.
0:09:22 You can take a look at the navigation categories.
0:09:24 They’ve got a bunch of different kind of freelance
0:09:27 categories for some inspiration there.
0:09:28 I think Fiverr’s still worth a look.
0:09:30 It’s definitely come a long way
0:09:32 from being the $5 marketplace,
0:09:34 that it maybe was eight or 10 years ago,
0:09:37 lots of room to command premium prices on there,
0:09:42 and still tap into this big established audience of buyers.
0:09:44 We don’t have any car payments, thankfully,
0:09:46 but we do have some vehicle-related expenses,
0:09:49 including gas and insurance.
0:09:51 Gas is around 50 bucks a month for me,
0:09:54 maybe double that if I include Bryn’s car.
0:09:56 One cool way to make this disappear,
0:09:59 well, one cool way would be to buy an electric car.
0:10:02 And there’s actually probably some math to do on that front.
0:10:07 As a side note, I’m over 1,150 miles on my e-bike now,
0:10:09 and that’s in just under three years,
0:10:11 mostly transportation miles to and from school,
0:10:15 to and from downtown, as opposed to recreation miles.
0:10:17 That’s been a great purchase.
0:10:21 I know I’m not at the break-even point on gas savings yet,
0:10:23 but I’m getting closer with every trip,
0:10:24 and it’s a lot of fun too.
0:10:26 But with the car, how do we make up
0:10:29 this $5,200 monthly gas expense?
0:10:31 How do we make that go away?
0:10:34 One interesting way that’s accessible to almost everybody
0:10:37 is market research studies.
0:10:38 I’ve got a full list of companies
0:10:42 that facilitate in-person and online focus groups,
0:10:44 paid research studies.
0:10:47 And these are often in the $50 to $200 an hour range,
0:10:51 so pretty decent hourly rate for just giving your opinion.
0:10:54 And a lot of that depends on the level of industry expertise
0:10:56 that the researchers are looking for,
0:10:59 because naturally a study targeting
0:11:01 some super specific job role,
0:11:03 it’s gonna be hard to find those people,
0:11:04 so they’re gonna pay more
0:11:07 than general population consumer study.
0:11:09 I’ll link up that list in the show notes for you
0:11:12 at this episode at sidehustle nation.com/snowball.
0:11:13 A couple of my favorites off the top of my head
0:11:18 are userinterviews.com and respondent, respondent.io.
0:11:21 Just this month, I did a user interviews study
0:11:23 about my video editing process,
0:11:27 entering 50 bucks in the form of an Amazon gift card,
0:11:28 which like, okay, we know we’re gonna spend it,
0:11:30 so it’s about as good as cash.
0:11:32 I’ve done a few studies like this.
0:11:35 I don’t know, they’re always interesting conversations.
0:11:36 I think it’s a fun way to help shape new products
0:11:38 and get paid in the process.
0:11:41 Now, a lot of these expenses have definitely changed
0:11:44 since this original 2021 recording,
0:11:48 but the broad strategies and the tactics to erase them,
0:11:49 I think they held up pretty well.
0:11:52 And we’re gonna keep that side hustle snowball rolling
0:11:53 right after this.
0:11:57 And the next vehicle related expenses,
0:11:58 the car insurance expense,
0:12:01 which for us is around 90 bucks a month for two cars.
0:12:04 And yes, 15 minutes did save us 15% or more.
0:12:06 But again, on the substitution game,
0:12:09 check out Gabby GABI as a quick and easy way
0:12:14 to compare rates, sidehustle nation.com/gabbygabi
0:12:17 is my affiliate link for that.
0:12:21 Users report saving an average of 960 bucks a year
0:12:22 or something crazy like that,
0:12:25 and they don’t sell your information to third parties.
0:12:28 This is like the dirty secret of the car insurance industry.
0:12:29 Your cars are worth less every year
0:12:31 because they keep depreciating,
0:12:33 but the insurance company keeps charging you
0:12:35 the same amount as if nothing ever happened.
0:12:39 The side hustle that you erase this in our house
0:12:40 is print on demand.
0:12:43 Two platforms that we’re playing on right now
0:12:45 are Merch by Amazon and Redbubble.
0:12:48 There are full episodes dedicated to this topic,
0:12:49 but on a high level,
0:12:51 how it works is you upload a design,
0:12:53 in our case, mostly T-shirts,
0:12:56 and I say R because Bryn’s really taken the lead on this,
0:12:59 but you upload your design, you create this listing,
0:13:01 and after that, everything else is hands off.
0:13:03 When somebody else orders Amazon
0:13:06 or whichever other company you’re listed with,
0:13:08 they handle the printing, the shipping, the fulfillment,
0:13:10 the customer support, everything.
0:13:12 And then you earn a little royalty
0:13:14 that you get to set up front on that sale.
0:13:19 Merch has paid us between $50 and $400 every month this year,
0:13:23 and what’s kind of fun is now Bryn has a reputation
0:13:25 for doing this among our friends and family,
0:13:27 so she’ll get like custom design requests.
0:13:29 Definitely a fun little side hustle
0:13:31 that helps erase some expenses.
0:13:33 The challenge that I see with Merch
0:13:36 is how quickly copycats can come in.
0:13:39 Even if you have an original idea,
0:13:41 if it sells, it’s not gonna take long
0:13:43 before some software sniffs that out
0:13:46 and creates an almost identical looking product.
0:13:49 So the people that I see having the most success here
0:13:51 and really taking it beyond a hobby level
0:13:54 are the ones like Michael Essek from episode 402,
0:13:57 who, you know, they’ve got thousands of designs,
0:13:59 and he was even working on some offline licensing deals
0:14:02 to expand his distribution.
0:14:04 TV and internet is next for us, Comcast, oh man.
0:14:06 People like to hate on Comcast.
0:14:08 I don’t know, man, I think it’s a pretty reliable ISP.
0:14:09 I couldn’t run my business without them,
0:14:11 so I’m not gonna badmouth them here.
0:14:12 For us, that’s 75 bucks a month.
0:14:16 I think you could erase that with one freelance gig,
0:14:17 one small freelance gig.
0:14:19 I didn’t do a ton of this,
0:14:21 but I did some freelance writing a few years ago.
0:14:26 I made $75 for articles that were in the 752,000 word range.
0:14:29 Could you do something similar?
0:14:32 Could you set it up as a recurring monthly assignment?
0:14:33 Could you do an article a week
0:14:36 and blow past this expense number?
0:14:37 Could you do something local?
0:14:39 I mean, we’ve had awesome episodes
0:14:42 about mobile detailing, knife sharpening,
0:14:44 cleaning services, pet waste removal.
0:14:46 Members of the PsiDoscelNation community
0:14:49 are doing pressure washing, lawn mowing, gutter cleaning.
0:14:52 Shoot Dustin Rieckman, who was on episode 391.
0:14:55 He sent me this video about how his kids made $850
0:14:56 in a few weeks,
0:14:59 cleaning out garbage cans in their neighborhood.
0:15:00 Pet sitting, dog walking,
0:15:02 there’s no shortage of opportunity out there.
0:15:03 Maybe even learn a new skill.
0:15:05 We have heard from lots of community members
0:15:08 who listened to episode 286, took action,
0:15:12 got their notary license, loan signing agents.
0:15:16 Can make this $75 Comcast bill go away in one signing.
0:15:17 And then you’ve got this skill
0:15:19 you can choose to put to work the rest of the month
0:15:21 or not, it’s up to you.
0:15:24 The next expense I’m trying to erase are our utilities.
0:15:28 This is gas and electric, water, garbage.
0:15:32 And for us, this is in the range of $150 to $200 a month,
0:15:35 all combined in the way that I have covered this
0:15:36 historically, or at least this year,
0:15:38 is with self-publishing.
0:15:40 The combination of Kindle, paperback,
0:15:44 and audio book royalties is usually around this level
0:15:46 or higher during promotion periods.
0:15:48 And speaking of promotion periods,
0:15:51 you can grab my latest book, “1K 100 Ways”
0:15:53 at 1k100ways.com.
0:15:54 This features 100 members
0:15:56 of the Side Hustle Nation community
0:15:58 on how they’re making extra money,
0:16:00 how they came up with their ideas,
0:16:02 how they found their initial traction,
0:16:03 and how long it took them
0:16:06 to reach that $1,000 profit milestone.
0:16:09 Again, 1k100ways.com.
0:16:12 Now, self-publishing comes in a lot of different flavors.
0:16:15 I have been focused on the non-fiction space
0:16:18 where outside of a few blockbusters,
0:16:20 it’s kind of an authority building play.
0:16:22 It’s an audience discovery play.
0:16:25 It’s a portfolio play rather than,
0:16:27 oh, I’m gonna make a fortune off book royalties.
0:16:28 And we’ve heard from others
0:16:29 in the children’s publishing space.
0:16:32 Matt Ralph was a guest recently,
0:16:35 and even the so-called low content publishing space,
0:16:38 which could be journals, notebooks, log books,
0:16:40 workbooks, all designed for a niche audience,
0:16:42 and all print on demand.
0:16:44 But again, it’s a business model I like
0:16:46 because I can create the asset once,
0:16:47 and it serves people,
0:16:50 and it works for you for years down the road.
0:16:53 I ran this report recently in KDP,
0:16:55 my Kindle Direct Publishing Dashboard,
0:16:57 and it now lets you run a lifetime report,
0:17:01 and it showed $66,000 in lifetime estimated
0:17:03 author royalties since 2011.
0:17:07 So on an annual basis, it’s not huge,
0:17:09 but I’m not gonna turn it down.
0:17:11 And top of that, it’s a lot of fun,
0:17:14 and it adds up to some significant cash over time.
0:17:15 Now, if writing isn’t your thing,
0:17:17 maybe you make an online course,
0:17:19 even though it’s been almost seven years
0:17:23 since I created my primary Udemy course,
0:17:25 which actually is on the topic of self-publishing,
0:17:28 it still brings in 50 to 130 bucks a month,
0:17:31 U-D-E-M-Y.com.
0:17:33 It’s this peer-to-peer education marketplace,
0:17:35 millions and millions of students on there.
0:17:37 You can think of these like mini search engines,
0:17:38 Udemy being one of them,
0:17:40 Fiverr being another one of them.
0:17:41 Where can I put my buy buttons?
0:17:44 Where can I make it easy for people to do business with me?
0:17:47 Where can I go where the cash is already flowing?
0:17:49 All right, the expenses are getting a little bit bigger here.
0:17:51 We’re going up to groceries now,
0:17:55 which are in the range of $600 to $800 a month for us,
0:17:56 for a family of four.
0:18:00 For me, I would love to snowball this expense away
0:18:01 with YouTube ads.
0:18:04 I’m currently around 500 bucks a month,
0:18:07 but it’s been as high as $1,200 a month.
0:18:11 And I haven’t done a great job of prioritizing YouTube,
0:18:13 building dedicated systems
0:18:15 around producing consistent content,
0:18:17 but that’s almost what’s crazier here.
0:18:20 Even with my current half-hearted lackluster,
0:18:23 admittedly not super cinematic YouTube effort,
0:18:25 it still brings in hundreds of dollars a month.
0:18:26 And it feels like free money
0:18:28 because I would probably do it anyway.
0:18:29 Don’t tell YouTube that.
0:18:31 I like doing the quick interviews.
0:18:35 I like trying to make videos to compliment existing articles.
0:18:37 I like throwing podcast episodes up there.
0:18:40 And when revenue comes back, that’s like an awesome bonus.
0:18:43 So trying to erase the grocery expense
0:18:45 with the YouTube ad money.
0:18:49 The next expense on my list here is preschool/daycare for us.
0:18:50 That’s been, for most of this year,
0:18:53 we’ve been paying around 1200 bucks a month
0:18:55 for two kids to go a couple of days a week.
0:18:58 We found that to be a good combination of focus time.
0:19:02 For me to do work, because again, I like doing this stuff
0:19:06 and they get some pure socialization time as well.
0:19:11 When I first drafted the “Side Also Snowball” post in 2016
0:19:13 that this episode is based on,
0:19:17 I mentioned podcast sponsorships were my daycare eraser.
0:19:19 And at that time, I noted that the show
0:19:22 was earning around 300 bucks a week after production costs.
0:19:26 And it’s really rewarding to revisit that now five years later
0:19:30 because even though production costs have remained similar,
0:19:32 the revenue has grown by quite a bit over that time.
0:19:35 More than enough to cover the cost of preschool.
0:19:37 Of course, if you need to make money quickly,
0:19:39 starting a podcast would be pretty low
0:19:41 on my list of recommended actions.
0:19:44 But if you have a little bit of a longer time horizon,
0:19:47 I still think there’s a tremendous opportunity
0:19:50 in the world of podcasting to reach a target market,
0:19:53 to build a business from these helpful conversations.
0:19:55 So overlining on the preschool expenses,
0:19:57 that should be a line item that’s going down.
0:19:59 You know, when our oldest starts kindergarten this fall,
0:20:02 which is just not steady starting kindergarten already time,
0:20:04 seriously does fly.
0:20:07 Now alternatively, we could look at Brinn’s photography business
0:20:10 here and say that every wedding that she and Brooke shoots,
0:20:12 you know, that covers a month and a half of preschool
0:20:14 or something like that, maybe two months.
0:20:17 And that’s a common reframe in the personal finance space
0:20:20 instead of looking at the price of an item in dollars,
0:20:23 instead consider the price of the item in time.
0:20:25 So if you make $25 an hour
0:20:27 and you’re contemplating this $100 purchase,
0:20:29 yeah, you can afford it, but is it really worth
0:20:31 trading four hours of your life for?
0:20:34 Or even more, when you take taxes into consideration,
0:20:36 the sticklers will notice I’ve been ignoring taxes
0:20:38 this whole time, so if you want to get really technical
0:20:40 about it, yes, you’re going to need to factor in
0:20:42 your marginal tax rates and all that jazz.
0:20:44 But put another way, this was actually
0:20:46 in Tanya Hester’s book, Work Optional,
0:20:50 every extra dollar that you add to your monthly budget
0:20:54 in expenses is another $300 that you need to save for
0:20:57 in retirement to cover that expense in perpetuity.
0:20:59 Definitely makes you think twice
0:21:03 about these seemingly innocent little lifestyle inflation
0:21:05 decisions that we make every month.
0:21:08 And the last expense on this list, this is the big one,
0:21:11 this is a rent, maybe it’s surprising that we’re renting
0:21:13 right now, it’s actually been, I think,
0:21:15 a very profitable move for us on a lot of fronts
0:21:17 for the last seven, eight years.
0:21:19 We talked a little bit about some reasons
0:21:23 why that might make sense in 10 unconventional money rules,
0:21:25 which was my episode with Rich Jones
0:21:28 from Paychecks and Balances last fall.
0:21:31 Now, for personal and emotional reasons,
0:21:34 much more than financial ones, we’re buying a house.
0:21:37 It’s actually supposed to close at the end of the month.
0:21:38 This is going to be a big move for us.
0:21:41 Excited about it, I’m nervous about it,
0:21:43 but we’re looking forward to starting a new chapter.
0:21:45 It’s going to be tough to say goodbye to this place.
0:21:47 I mean, this is where we brought our babies home.
0:21:49 This is where we started our businesses.
0:21:50 That little corner of the living room
0:21:53 is where the side hustle show started, you know?
0:21:54 But for almost everyone,
0:21:57 this is going to be the biggest line item on your budget.
0:21:58 So let’s say you’re trying to, again,
0:22:00 side hustle snowball your way up
0:22:03 to eliminate this rent or mortgage expense.
0:22:05 And one distinct advantage of buying over renting
0:22:08 is that eventually that mortgage does go away.
0:22:11 Property taxes, another story, and how much in cash
0:22:14 it costs to make that mortgage go away, another story.
0:22:16 But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
0:22:19 Now, on the side hustle show in Hunt Side Hustle Nation,
0:22:23 we’ve heard dozens of ways to earn $2,300 a month or more,
0:22:25 whatever your mortgage or rent is.
0:22:28 It could be selling printables, driving for Instacart,
0:22:31 teaching online classes, real estate investing,
0:22:34 renting out portable hot tubs, you name it, we’ve covered it.
0:22:37 But if you break down all of those different business models,
0:22:40 the most common denominator I think you’re going to find
0:22:44 is that they help other people in some meaningful way.
0:22:45 You can get everything you want in life
0:22:48 if you help enough other people get what they want.
0:22:53 It’s exactly right at the rent/mortgage level of income
0:22:55 or rather level of expense.
0:22:58 We’re solidly in the entrepreneurship territory
0:23:01 here versus downloading a cashback app
0:23:02 where we started this episode.
0:23:05 And that means thinking about who you can help
0:23:06 and how you can help them.
0:23:08 Fall in love with the problem, right?
0:23:10 Not necessarily the solution, because the solutions
0:23:11 might change.
0:23:15 So if I’m trying to get to the $2,000 plus level of income
0:23:18 today, and I need to do it quickly,
0:23:21 I’m thinking about freelancing, consulting.
0:23:23 I’m thinking about the software with a service model
0:23:27 we talked about with Brad Rice in episode 441.
0:23:29 If I’m OK with a longer time horizon,
0:23:32 I’m thinking about the drop servicing model
0:23:36 we talked about with Anthony and Janilka Hartzog in episode 438.
0:23:38 Their residential cleaning service
0:23:42 was bringing in $25,000 a month in revenue
0:23:43 without them doing the cleaning.
0:23:46 Built to grow, built to scale from the beginning.
0:23:48 I think the same model could be applied across a ton
0:23:52 of other local fragmented home services niches.
0:23:54 I’m thinking about starting a newsletter.
0:23:56 I’m thinking starting a YouTube channel.
0:23:57 I’m working in public.
0:24:00 I’m thinking about starting a new website,
0:24:04 probably from an aged or already established domain.
0:24:06 But if I’ve got a longer time horizon,
0:24:08 I’ve got a few more options.
0:24:10 And in my case, I’m really grateful to cover the rent
0:24:12 with affiliate marketing.
0:24:15 This has been my bread and butter of side hustle income
0:24:18 going back to even before I quit my job.
0:24:20 Affiliate marketing is a fancy way
0:24:23 of saying helping other companies sell their products
0:24:26 or services online and helping customers find the best product
0:24:28 or service for their needs.
0:24:28 You’re in the middle.
0:24:30 You’re playing matchmaker there.
0:24:33 Check out our episodes with Tammy Smith, with Debbie Gartner,
0:24:36 with Alex and Healey from Finn vs Finn,
0:24:38 all getting paid to essentially answer
0:24:40 people’s questions online.
0:24:41 There’s a lot of technical stuff.
0:24:43 There’s this SEO learning curve.
0:24:44 There’s this strategy to learn.
0:24:47 But that’s what a lot of it comes down to,
0:24:50 helping people make informed decisions.
0:24:52 As an example, an affiliate example,
0:24:54 I wrote a post originally years ago,
0:24:57 promoting Udemy’s New Year’s Sale.
0:24:59 So every year, they’ve got this big discount
0:25:00 at the start of the year.
0:25:01 Start the year off right.
0:25:02 Get your learning on.
0:25:03 Get a big discount.
0:25:07 And anticipating that, I compiled a list of the courses
0:25:10 that I thought would be most helpful and most relevant
0:25:11 for my audience.
0:25:13 Some of these were guests on the show.
0:25:15 Some of these were things they had already bought
0:25:17 through the magic of affiliate link tracking.
0:25:19 And on the surface, this post was
0:25:21 a pretty blatant affiliate play.
0:25:24 Probably had 100, 200 affiliate links in there.
0:25:27 Some of them were doubled up, which I openly admitted,
0:25:30 yet I had people thanking me in the comments.
0:25:31 And why is that?
0:25:33 Because it was helpful to them.
0:25:36 And I didn’t call it Udemy’s New Year’s Sale.
0:25:39 I called it the much more clickable and content-heavy,
0:25:43 the 101 best Udemy courses for entrepreneurs, freelancers,
0:25:44 and side hustlers.
0:25:48 And over the course of five-plus years of that post’s life,
0:25:51 it’s earned $30,000, $40,000.
0:25:54 The reports inside of Rakuten Linkshare,
0:25:56 whatever it’s called now, don’t even let you go back that far.
0:26:00 But it has been a significant asset for the business.
0:26:02 And it’s been helpful for the people who visited that page
0:26:06 as well, helping people make informed decisions.
0:26:08 As you’re contemplating the extra income stream
0:26:12 that’s eventually gonna erase your rent or your mortgage,
0:26:15 you gotta ask yourself, what does success look like?
0:26:18 If I pursue the thing that I’m thinking of pursuing
0:26:21 and it goes well, what does life realistically look like?
0:26:23 Three to five years down the road.
0:26:26 And I think the best lens into that future
0:26:29 is to find somebody who’s already done that thing
0:26:31 who has been reasonably successful at it
0:26:33 and see what their day-to-day looks like.
0:26:35 What are they stressed out about?
0:26:36 What interviews have they done?
0:26:38 I love to soak up the information from people
0:26:40 who are just a little bit ahead of me
0:26:42 because they know what’s coming.
0:26:43 They know what’s coming down the road.
0:26:46 I hope this episode gets your side hustle snowball rolling,
0:26:49 picking up some steam and turning into that income avalanche
0:26:51 because covering your expenses
0:26:52 is of course just the beginning.
0:26:56 I want you to have some financial margin in your life,
0:26:57 some financial breathing room
0:26:59 for the unexpected bumps in the road.
0:27:02 And we’ve certainly seen our share of those lately
0:27:04 but you’re awesome, you’ve got this.
0:27:06 There’s this whole community of other side hustlers
0:27:08 and entrepreneurs who’ve got your backs.
0:27:09 You don’t have to go out alone
0:27:12 if you have found this helpful, tell a friend.
0:27:15 That’s the best way to spread the word
0:27:17 and if you can convince someone else to take action,
0:27:19 now you’ve got a direct accountability partner
0:27:20 for your journey.
0:27:23 Once again, you’ll find links to all the resources
0:27:24 and mentioned in this episode
0:27:27 at sidehustlenation.com/snowball.
0:27:28 That’s it for me.
0:27:30 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:27:33 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
0:27:34 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:27:36 of the Side Hustle Show.