The Side Hustle Show

This week — in what has become a Thanksgiving tradition on the show — we’re diving into 10 creative side hustles that make real money. This is the 4th installment of the series, so I encourage you to go check out the other episodes if you like this format -- those are episodes 310, 363, and 420. Tune in to learn about how real people are making real money from everything from tarantulas to luxury...

From hating photo booths to seeing an opportunity in the market and taking her photo booth side hustle to 6-figures in 18 months… That’s the story of today’s guest, Cat Bloch. Cat told me you would never “catch me dead” using a photo booth at a party. That was until she came across a modern photo booth, and it completely changed how she looked at this popular wedding venue and Gala attraction. Cat...

Can you really make money flipping phones? To find out, I sat down with pro cell phone flipper Jeff Duhon from the Smart Flippers Facebook group . In a typical week, Jeff resells 20-30 used iPhones with a target profit of $100 per flip. If if you did half that volume, you could be earning $1000 a week. Flipping phones for profit can be a lucrative side hustle or grow into a full-time income stream...

Struggling to come up with a side hustle or business idea? To help get the creative idea juices flowing, I’ve invited Joel Hansen, a member of the founding team of Kern.al on the show. Kern.al is kind of like Reddit or Product Hunt, but for business ideas that don’t exist yet. Just a few minutes on the site definitely sparked some creativity for me so I encourage you to check it out. In this episo...

Like it or not, we’re all marketers. Whether we’re selling ourselves in a job interview, pitching our product or service, or trying to get people to pay attention to our content — we’re all marketers. And you should know this is one of my all-time favorite topics. So, how do we solve the awareness problem? How do we position ourselves so the right people can find us — and the wrong ones leave us a...

At the end of nearly every episode of The Side Hustle Show, I ask my guests for their “#1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.” There’s always a great variety of responses, and I wanted to take some time today to go through some of my favorites from the past 50-ish interviews. This has become an annual tradition on the show, which is now almost 8.5 years old and recently passed 17 million lifetime download...

Where there’s pain, there might also be profit… That was the case for today’s guest, Pete Mockaitis. Pete was seeing some traction with his podcast, the HowToBeAwesomeAtYourJob Podcast, but was struggling to keep up all the off-air tasks — the show notes, the editing, the social media. For Pete Mockaitis, that pain turned into AwesomePros.co , a niche drop-servicing company that he co-founded with...

One challenge that most new businesses face is the awareness problem – nobody knows you exist. To help erase this problem, I’ve invited Dustin Lien from JumpXmarketing.com back on the show. Dustin first appeared on episode 251 back in 2017. Back then, he was just ramping up JumpX after shutting down his own physical product business. Since then he’s grown it into a 6-figure operation and built it...

Ever thought about turning your expertise in an everyday subject or topic into an online business? For Delilah Orpi, her expertise was on taking care of her curly hair — and starting as a side hustle, she turned that into an online business earning around $8k a month at HolisticEnchilada.com . Delilah has some interesting strategies she used to grow her audience, build her email list, diversify he...

There are tons of ways to make money online — the root of all of them comes down to helping people. Two common ways entrepreneurs help a wide audience is by packaging up their knowledge and experience into an online training course or a membership program/community. But which model makes the most sense for your business? To find out, it’s time for another Side Hustle Showdown. For the debate, I’ve...

We’ve been on a bit of an audience building kick lately in our conversations with Dickie Bush about Twitter , with Tori Dunlap about TikTok . Today you’ll meet a long-time listener of the show who built her audience on Facebook. Chantal Lavergne is the founder of FunSensoryPlay.com , which started as a Facebook page in early 2020 — and that’s important because that’s years after the supposed death...

Tired of toiling away on social media for lackluster results? Tori Dunlap earned her first 200,000 TikTok followers in just a couple weeks, and has added another 1.4 million since then. All that attention has helped her turn a healthy 6-figure business into a multi-7-figure operation.  Tori is the founder of HerFirst100k.com and host of the Financial Feminist podcast , where she helps women become...

If you’re looking to add some time-leveraged cash flow to your bottom line, two of the best options are investing in rental real estate and buying small businesses. Both are viable options, and to help you figure out if either or both of these investment options are right for you, it’s time for another Side Hustle Showdown. For the debate, I’ve invited back two Side Hustle Show favorites: Chad Car...

Online arbitrage is the process of buying inventory from one site to resell on another (usually Amazon). To help school me on this side hustle is Chris Grant, a longtime Amazon seller and the founder of ClearTheShelf.com and OAChallenge.com . Chris has been involved in the online arbitrage space for the last 10+ years and is currently selling $75,000-80,000 per month. In this episode, Chris explai...

Few words will get as polarizing a response among freelancers and side hustlers as Upwork. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a fantastic platform to connect with well-paying gigs and quality clients … or it’s a hopeless, desperate race to the bottom, overly-competitive bloodbath with no chance of success. Like a lot of things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and a lot of your ou...

Today’s guest has gone from zero to almost 50k followers in the last 12 months and has turned that newfound attention into a 6-figure online business. This is impressive in itself, but what’s even more impressive about this story is that Dickie Bush has built his audience on Twitter. You know, that social media platform that's always just ... been there. One of several platforms that I’d kind of w...

What's the best way to write a bestselling book? Ask a hundred people and you'll get 100 different answers. Sure, I've had some book launch success before , and have certainly learned a lot about self-publishing since my first title in 2012. But there are always new and different tactics to try, and you never really know how audiences and algorithms are going to react. You can check out my latest...

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...

Some ideas just won't die. This project was one of them. My latest book is called $1K 100 Ways , and it features 100 case studies from the Side Hustle Nation community on how to earn an extra $1000 or more in your spare time. The first flicker of the idea came into my head way back in early 2015. This is the story of how it finally came to life. Full show notes

Today we’re diving into the easy wins — the quick updates you can make to your websites to drive more traffic and sales. To help me out on that topic is Mushfiq S., a side hustler who has been building, buying, growing, and selling websites since 2008, all on the side from his full-time career. During that time he’s done over 175 transactions and has a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to make...

Want to drive more organic traffic to your website? I’m sure you do. At the heart of organic traffic is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The better optimized your site is for search engines, the higher you’ll rank for your target keywords, and the more visitors you’ll get. For everyone interested in SEO, I have an excellent round-up style show for you today. To help you get up to speed with the...

If you’re starting an online business, you’re almost certainly going to create content. But should you focus on written content on your blog, or video content to try and tap into the massive YouTube audience? Which is better to focus on for audience growth, monetization, and for the best ROI on your limited time? To help you figure out which type of content is best for you, it's time for another S...

It’s time to dive into the ol’ listener mailbag and answer a few questions in this week’s edition of The Side Hustle Show. I’ve had quite a few interesting questions come in since the last Q&A episode, and picked 20 to talk through in today’s show. Click here to join Side Hustle Nation for free ! The questions: How I can use my knowledge for a blog or a podcast or affiliate marketing? How have...

Royalties from book sales is one of the most passive of all my income streams . After you create a book, with print or digital distribution handled by Amazon,  you can collect royalties for years. And while I enjoy the writing process and have published several titles myself, I have yet to venture into the world of children's books.  (Despite having the outlines of a couple kids books on my phone...

What advice would you give your 18-year-old self? Here's my actual valedictorian speech from 20 years ago!