The Side Hustle Show

A lot has changed in Ryan's "buy low, sell high" business built on Amazon's FBA program.

This week’s episode is a “where are they now?” show as I catch up with Ryan Grant from OnlineSellingExperiment.com.

Ryan first appeared on the show back in 2014 on episode 61. Back then he had just quit his $50k a year job to sell online full-time using retail arbitrage.

(He’d started out flipping textbooks in college and then got into Amazon FBA retail arbitrage; buying low from stores locally and re-selling on Amazon.)

Fast forward 3 years and Ryan’s business has grown at an incredible pace.

He’s had some pretty impressive media exposure off the back of a Reddit AMA and is on track to sell more than $4 million worth of stuff in 2017.

What were the driving forces behind this accelerated growth?

“I wanted to make it a true business,” Ryan said.

He now has a team of 11 people working for him, has put processes in place to find more items in retail stores, has started buying at wholesale, and can now use his own time more efficiently to work on growing his business and finding expansion opportunities.

Ryan’s success is proof that retail arbitrage is still a viable side hustle. In this episode he explains what he’s learned over the last 3 years, and how the retail arbitrage landscape has changed for new sellers.

Tune in to hear Ryan explain how he grew his business into a multi-million-dollar operation, how he grew his team and developed processes to scale up, and what he’s focusing on in 2018.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: From Flipping Textbooks to $4 Million in Sales: How to Scale Your Amazon FBA Retail Arbitrage Business

This week’s show is a roundtable episode on the topic of YouTube, and specifically how 3 different channel hosts have gone about growing their presence and profits on the YouTube platform.

My esteemed panelists are:

They explain how and why they started using the free YouTube platform to grow significant followings and income streams, and share some actionable advice on how you can do the same.

They each raise some interesting points as they have very different approaches to how they publish content and monetize their channels, proving there are many ways to turn a YouTube channel into a side hustle or a full-time business.

Jon uses what he calls a “spray and pray" strategy for content creation. Pete’s DIY videos are edited down from 3-5 hours of footage to just 8-12 minutes and he releases one a month, while Matt publishes once a week (usually interviews) to, “try to get the weekend crowd.”

On the monetization side, Jon has opted to go ad-free for a better viewer experience and earns $4-5k per month from affiliate income part-time.

Pete has taken a different approach making around $1400 a month from YouTube ads, but has several other income streams including courses, affiliate offers, sponsorship deals, website ad revenue, and direct donations.

Matt makes $10k a month funneling his subscribers to his money-making videos selling a digital marketing course, and $3k a month from YouTube ad revenue.

With more than 450k subscribers between them, this episode is packed with actionable tips to grow and monetize a YouTube channel that has worked for Jon, Pete, and Matt.

Listen in for actionable advice on how to grow and monetize your own YouTube channel.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: YouTube Roundtable: How 3 Video Creators Built an Audience and a Business on YouTube

It's like owning a parking lot, Jefferson Lilly explained. And you can earn 20% cash on cash returns too.

That got my attention, though those returns are coming from a surprising real estate niche: mobile home parks.

Jefferson Lilly is a mobile home park investment expert, educator, and industry consultant who has been featured in the New York Times, Bloomberg Magazine, and on the ‘Real Money’ television show.

Through his company Park Street Partners, they currently own about $50 million worth of mobile home parks coast-to-coast.

Jefferson is also the host of the Mobile Home Investors podcast, so it’s fair to say he knows this niche inside and out.

The mobile home park niche doesn’t fit the typical real estate guidelines. It’s a shrinking market and offers some interesting and unique investment opportunities if you know where to look.

In addition to the shrinking supply, the tenant turnover is lower than other real estate niches, and most tenants own their own homes -- meaning lower maintenance costs.

Tune in to hear how Jefferson went from purchasing his first park after receiving 58 "no's" from banks when trying to raise the capital, to forming Park Street Partners and boasting a rapidly growing portfolio with more $50 million invested in mobile home parks.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: 20% Cash on Cash in Mobile Home Park Investing? The Real Estate Side Hustle You Probably Hadn’t Considered

You might know Michelle Schroeder-Gardner from her super-popular blog MakingSenseofCents.com where she gets hundreds of thousands of readers and makes 6-figures a month.

Around $50k of that monthly revenue (or more) comes from affiliate marketing.

Michelle’s online journey started in the summer of 2011 when she decided to start blogging about paying off her student debts, “I didn’t know what blogs were at the time… I literally didn’t know that you could make money with a blog,” she said looking back.

It was when she made her first $100 six months later with a sponsored post that she knew she wanted to build an online business.

“It became super addicting,” Michelle said.

Fast-forward just two years and Michelle had become a full-time blogger making money through affiliate marketing sponsored posts, working as a freelance staff writer and selling display advertising.

She started to focus on affiliate marketing, and with her most profitable post making more than $400k to-date it's fair to say she's nailed the right way to do affiliate marketing.

The secret to her success?

Listening to her audience and providing relevant content that solves a pain point.

Sounds simple, right?

Tune in to hear Michelle explain how she finds the right affiliate products to promote to her audience, as well as her tips to maximize conversions, increase your social media following, diversify your traffic sources, and much more.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: How Michelle Makes $50,000 a Month Selling Other People's Products

Don't have a blog yet? My free video course will help you get started!

In my annual member survey, one of the 3 most common obstacles I hear is the money needed to start a business. As in, "I don't have enough money to start a business."

(The other 2 are time and ideas.)

It's kind of a chicken vs. egg problem: you need money to start the business and you need the business to earn the money!

But the truth is that most side hustles these days don't take a ton of cash to get off the ground. In fact, most of the businesses I've started have cost less than $500 to start.

In this episode I'll share 8 business models that have no startup costs, and one of them even has a "better than zero" startup cost -- meaning you can get paid to acquire your inventory.

The 8 Models:

Tune in to hear my examples of real businesses making it work under each of those models. It's sure to get your creative juices flowing on what kind of side hustle you could start!

Stick around to the end of the show and I'll also share the actual startup costs for all of my businesses over the last 20 years.

Full Show Notes: Bootstrapped Business Idea Brain Dump: 8 Business Models You Can Borrow w/ Zero (or Better than Zero) Startup Costs

By day, Bryan Orr helps runs an air conditioning company in Central Florida, and by night he’s a father of 9 -- yet somehow he's found the time to build his HVAC School podcast into a 5-figure a month business in less than a year.

And it might sounds like an overnight success, but Bryan's actually been side hustling for quite a while, mostly in the podcasting and freelance audio production space.

Tasked with training technicians at his day job, he had the idea to put it into an on-demand audio format, and that's where he found his side hustle sweet spot.

It was on a whim he decided to publish the content online and make it available to a wider audience. “In the process it just exploded, I never thought there would be an audience like the audience that I found,” Bryan said.

With 1000 downloads in the first 48 hours and synergy with his day job, Bryan started allocating more time to his show.

As his audience grew he started negotiating sponsorship deals with large companies in the HVAC niche.

Less than a year into this new side hustle, he's built an email list of over 7500 subscribers, generated more than 500,000 podcast downloads, and is earning $11k a month in sponsorship revenue.

Tune in to hear how Bryan promoted his show to gain that initial traction, how he worked with influencers in his niche for extra exposure, and how he secured sponsors to monetize his show.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Finding Your Sweet Spot: How Talking About Air Conditioning Turned Into a 5-Figure a Month Side Hustle

“You have a skill, but you’re not using it correctly."

That the tough love advice Vincent Pugliese's father gave him.

Vincent was working what he thought was his dream job as a photojournalist. He'd just won the most prestigious award in his industry (International Sports Photographer of the Year), and he and his wife Elizabeth had a baby on the way.

Yet the newspaper job didn't pay well. With the impending arrival of their son, Vincent took a hard look at his financial picture: he was in his mid-30s, 6-figures in debt, and earning $15 an hour.

Not great.

Something had to change, and something did.

Four years later, the family was debt free and self-employed, thanks to the success of their freelance photography side hustle.

I met Vincent at Podcast Movement and invited him on the show to share his inspiring and relate-able story. With a growing trend toward freelance workers, his transition is one many people will need to make over the next few years.

With his newfound time freedom, Vincent has kept busy with a number of new projects including his upcoming book Freelance to Freedom, and an online course teaching parents how to take better sports pictures of their kids.

(Even though Vincent had no "audience" of his own to sell to, the course did over $30k on launch day, giving us the hook for this episode.)

Tune in to hear how he and his wife got it done and how you can apply the same strategies to the skills on your own resume.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Freelance to Freedom: From $30k a Year to $30k in a Day

Quit my job? “That’s stupid,” Kim Anderson said.

But she eventually did, and it turned out to be a really smart move. Together with her husband Cressel, they paid off $93k in debt in less than 2 years, setting themselves up for a life of “financial flexibility.”

They did it through a combination of conscious spending, creative side hustles, and having a clear goal in mind. And perhaps what’s more exciting is what that new time freedom has allowed: starting a family, starting new businesses, and most recently even “retiring” Cressel from his engineering job.

In this inspiring episode, Kim and Cressel break down their path to financial freedom, which I think will get your gears turning on how to do the same.

Full Show Notes: Your Escape Plan: How to Make Early “Retirement” a Reality

Would you trade $1000 for $2000? How about $10,000 for $18,000?

If you're anything like me, I'll make those trades all day long!

Well, Deacon Hayes is doing exactly that every month through his blog, Facebook ads, and affiliate marketing.

Although he'd been blogging for years, his traffic and revenue had kind of stagnated.

Inspired by the success of The Penny Hoarder using a similar strategy in a similar niche, Deacon decided to jump in and throw $1000 toward his new Facebook Ads experiment. Within a month he'd effectively doubled his investment.

Ten months later he's built a beautiful machine that combines compelling helpful content, affiliate relationships, and the massive reach of Facebook.

In this episode, you'll hear the type of content Deacon has found most profitable to promote, the types of ads he runs, and how he's able to get his costs per click down to around $0.05.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Facebook Ads Arbitrage: How to Drive Consistent Profitable Traffic to Your Blog

Dustin Lien from StrategicSauce.com reached out to me with an interesting pitch for an episode.

Dustin had experienced a side hustle failure and wanted to know if the Side Hustle audience would be interested in hearing his story.

I threw the idea out to the Side Hustle Facebook Group and received an overwhelming amount of feedback saying, “Yes,” they wanted to hear the “other side” of a side hustle when it fails.

In this episode Dustin lifts the lid on a business he invested a large chunk of time and money into, only to pull the plug on it a year and a half later.

He designed a great product that solved a pain point for people in the fitness community.

So, what went wrong?

Tune in to hear exactly what did and didn’t work for Dustin, and why he decided to throw in the towel on this project.

Dustin shares what he would do differently if he had to start over, as well as what he's working on today. He's loaded with valuable insight for anyone starting a new venture.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: When a Side Hustle Fails - Lessons, Pivots, and Next Steps from a Less-Than-Successful Side Project