The Side Hustle Show

What if you could make $300 an hour filming short videos with your phone … and you didn’t need a single follower to get started? That’s the side hustle Megan Collier carved out for herself with UGC (user-generated content). Think of it as getting paid to create authentic-looking social media content for brands, even if you're not an influencer. And she’s not alone. Brands are hungry for this stuff...

Josh Belk is a full-time college student, he works full-time in web design, and in what little spare time, he’s started a $6,000 a month mobile detailing business with his younger brother. This idea came about when Josh connected the dots between obsession and opportunity. On the obsession side, Josh would always see his brother out in the driveway cleaning his car. On the opportunity side, he rec...

Cody Berman is no stranger to selling digital products. He’s known in the side hustle world as the "printable guy" and co-founder of Gold City Ventures, but when Internet skeptics told him the Etsy market was "too saturated now" compared to when he started in 2018, Cody accepted the challenge. And proved them wrong. From zero to $1,000/month in 116 days with a brand-new Etsy shop, with no follower...

I can almost guarantee you've heard the phrase the "money is in the list." And all the experts, myself included, extol the virtues of building your email list, right? Because it's the platform that you own and control. But the question is, are you building an email list of buyers?  Subscribers are great, but you're not buying groceries on subscribers alone. Pete Boyle is the founder of growthmodel...

I’m not usually one to fall for those flashy, too-good-to-be-true money hacks. But when someone tells me they’re making $200 an hour in their underwear just opening bank accounts? You bet I’m curious. That someone is Dylan Sexton from dylansbonuses.com, and he’s been pulling in consistent weekly income by playing the bank bonus game. No shady stuff. No switching your entire financial life around....

Vending machines are a classic passive income source that continues to be profitable today. We had Mr. Passive himself, Mike Hoffman, on the show before to talk about how to scale up his vending machine business. And one of his mentees is here today. Anthony Kolodziej from H&H Vending scaled his vending operation from zero to over $50k per month in just 16 months. That’s 30+ locations, thousands o...

Most people look at a golf glove and see, well, just a golf club… white, plain, forgettable. But Randall Pulfer and his co-founder Tyler, with zero experience in manufacturing, no background in design, and a full-time day job, sold $100k worth of golf gloves as a side hustle. ChippGolfCo.com is now a brand that’s making waves in the golf scene. Randall breaks down how he pulled it off from coming...

It’s easy to get caught up in the habit of spending without thinking. But the good news is, it’s totally possible to break the cycle. In this episode, we’re going to share simple, practical ways to stop spending money and start saving. These strategies come from real experience and expert advice, so you know they actually work. Full Show Notes: How To Stop Spending Money New to the Show? Get your...

"Changing the world with chess" and making $100,000 per year on the side. That’s the story of today’s guest, Jeff DiOrio from EliteChess.net. Jeff went from earning $17/hr working in summer camp chess programs teaching kids how to play chess, to running his own camps and earning five times as much. He then transitioned to an online recurring membership model, in part due to the pandemic, while als...

Back in the day, you needed someone technical (or paid someone technical) if you wanted to build any kind of software. Today, with the popularity of AI tools, not so much. Pete McPherson from doyouevenblog.com is earning $100k by using AI tools to help build a series of small-ish web apps, usually built to solve a very specific problem for a very specific customer. And he's here to share with you...

Heff Gerlach started The Keeper League Podcast on the side from his teaching job. It's not about football, not just about fantasy football, but about a very specific flavor of fantasy football for Australian Rules Football. That’s a niche within a niche within a niche — where fans don’t just draft players, they build teams that last for years. And now it serves as the hub for player data, draft to...

It’s time for another round of business idea giveaways, and to help me out is a long-time friend and friend of the show, Steve Chou, a serial entrepreneur who built not one but two 7-figure businesses starting both as side hustles — MyWifeQuitHerJob.com and BumbleBeeLinens.com. It’s becoming a tradition; this is our 3rd round of business idea giveaways. If you find you like this format, make sure...

I called the Amazon Influencer Program the easiest money I'd ever made online. I made $100 in my first month, over $1200 in my first year, and last year, still made over $700 doing almost nothing. Set it and forget it. The basic premise with this branch of Amazon Associates is to create short product review videos, and earn a small commission when your review convinces someone to buy. You do need...

Why go through the trouble of building your own cash flow when, with a little determination and a little hustle, you can insert yourself into some income streams that are already happening? That’s what Link Moser from linkmoser.com and his web design agency windhill.com have done, not once, not twice, but 5 different times, generating $200k a year in semi-passive income. He was on the show in 2022...

Service businesses can get a bad rap. After all, there are clients to deal with, and actual labor involved in fulfillment. They’re just not as glamorous as other more “passive” income models. But you should know that more Side Hustle Show guests started with a service-based business model than any other. This week’s guest has a unique approach to service businesses -- one that doesn't rely on your...

It’s 2025, and the line between reality and science fiction is getting more and more blurry every day. In this episode, I sit down with someone I’ve never met, but they know me pretty well. He even kind of sounds like me in an eerie sort of way. I was curious how well today’s AI models could pretend to be someone else, given a few simple prompts. The result is this chat with Robo-Nick, my AI alter...

Getting out of the rat race is simple, but not necessarily easy. To escape, all you need is monthly income -- from non-job sources -- that exceeds your monthly expenses. For example, if you spend $3000 a month, you'll need to bring in at least $3000 (after taxes) outside of your day job. Simple, but not always easy. In this episode, I'll break down: the most common rat race "escape routes" the pro...

In 2022, Summer Fisher discovered the world of renting out dresses. "Oh, well, I have all these dresses. Let me just put one up," she told Yahoo Finance. Now with a streamlined inventory of around 200 pieces, she made $150,000 last year using what she calls a "double-dip profit strategy" — renting dresses multiple times before selling them for more than she paid. (Check out her free masterclass at...

If you’re looking to turn LinkedIn into a money-making machine, you’re in the right place. Joe McKay has taken his LinkedIn ghostwriting side hustle from zero to a multi-six-figure business, generating millions of impressions along the way. And he's here to fill us in on how to make money on LinkedIn this year. We broke down the 3 types of posts you need to make money on LinkedIn, how to navigate...

Do you know how much cash flows through your hometown on a monthly basis? In this episode we explore how to get some of that cash flowing toward you! I'm joined by Nick Huber, co-founder of Storage Squad and host of The Sweaty Startup podcast. Storage Squad, a student storage service, has grown to over $3M in sales since starting it as a little part-time project back in 2011. I invited Nick on The...

How do you come up with a business idea? Aspiring entrepreneurs often get stuck in the business idea phase — that is, they’re confident they could run a killer business, make a ton of money, and live the good life — if they could only come up with the right idea. If that’s you — the idea seeker — I’ve got good news for you: coming up with new business ideas is actually pretty easy. It’s what comes...

Mike Ettenberg spent 10 years as a firefighter, but was constantly losing or breaking his sunglasses on calls. Frustrated, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Frontline Optics makes durable sunglasses for first responders with a no-questions-asked replacement policy. Despite having "no business experience," the Side Hustle Show listener took Frontline from side hustle to full-time ventu...

I want to introduce a concept I call The Side Hustle Snowball. If you’ve heard about Dave Ramsey’s “Debt Snowball” framework, this may sound familiar. Here’s how The Side Hustle Snowball works: You itemize out your expenses and then aim to come up with side hustle income to cover them, starting with the smallest and working your way up. Once you reach the bottom of your list, you don’t need your j...

The end of the year is upon us, which means it's time to reflect back on the side hustles that stood out — the ones that got people talking and that I was most excited to share. "Best" is always subjective. But what marks a good episode is when I hang up the call, thinking, "I need to drop what I'm doing and go do something else. I should totally do that." And I try and exercise some level of disc...

Why should your first online business be a directory? This is one of the most overlooked yet potentially lucrative side hustles out there. I've got a little bit of experience in this space (I actually built a virtual assistant directory years before), so this is something close to me. But my experience is nothing like John Rush’s from JohnRush.me, who is a master at quickly building and marketing...