The Side Hustle Show

Nagina Abdullah turned her weight loss blog, MasalaBody.com, into a 6-figure side business. By day, she works for a large consulting company, and with a busy work schedule, a young family, and limited time to work on her side hustle, Nagina has been very smart about her marketing and pricing.

After struggling with her weight for all of her adult life, she finally hit on something that worked and dropped 40 pounds! With friends, colleagues, and neighbors asking how she did it, she started her blog to share recipes and tips.

But she soon discovered that people didn't want recipes; they wanted to lose weight! Quickly, Nagina adapted and used her own success story as a catalyst to begin helping other women make some serious lifestyle changes.

Her sales funnel process is applicable across a broad range of industries and business models, and I think you'll find a way to put some of her tactics and strategies into practice for your own hustle.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Steal This Process: A Step-by-Step System to Consistent $10k Months

As a private label seller on Amazon, Andy has seen his revenue grow from $400k in year one, to $900k in year two, and he is closing in on $1.8 million for year three!

I last spoke with Andy "Slamazon" Slamans on episode 84 of The Side Hustle Show. Back in 2014, Andy was wrapping up his first year as a full-time Amazon seller and on the podcast he shared all his best tips for product research and getting started as an FBA private label seller.

I was excited to have Andy back on the show along with his Amazon FBA business partner Liran Hirschkorn. Both Andy and Liran are now running 7-figure Amazon private label businesses!

In this episode, they share how the FBA landscape has changed over the last couple of years, and how they have moved with the changes to build successful businesses.

Tune in to hear Andy and Liran explain the process they are currently using to perform product research so they know they are sourcing products that will sell. You'll also learn how they create “bundles” and unique products that separate them from their competitors, and how they launch their products and gain initial traction within the Amazon search engine.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Amazon FBA Private Label Strategies for 2017 – Featuring Two 7-Figure Sellers

This episode is packed with everything you need to know to start your own FBA private labeling business or start taking your business to the heights that these guys are at.

You can find out more about how they run their businesses at AmazingFreedom.com/hustle.

Josh Bauerle is the CPA on fire at cpaonfire.com. Josh specializes in tax preparation, tax planning, booking keeping, and general consulting services to take the accounting side of your business to the next level.

Just 30 minutes with Josh about a month ago saved me thousands of dollars, so you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode and see if you can put some money back in your pocket too.

In this episode, Josh goes into detail about the tax implications with each type of business entity you can form, as well as how you can potentially save thousands of dollars by registering as an S-Corp.

Josh also covers which expenses are deductible to your business, how to include health insurance as a tax-deductible, and how you can reduce your tax bill by investing more into retirement accounts. He also spends some time explaining the often confusing issue of how much sales tax FBA sellers should be paying and under which state tax laws, as well as recommending a service to automate the process.

Tune in as Josh answers several questions from the Side Hustle Nation community and shares some of his best tax saving tips and advice. This isn’t another one of those dry conversations around tax, it’s packed with actionable tips and advice to help you put more money back into your pocket.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Pay Less Taxes - Your Side Hustle Tax Questions Answered

Thomas Frank is the College Info Geek and you can find him at collegeinfogeek.com.

Thomas also has a podcast, and a YouTube channel with an impressive following of over 400,000 subscribers and over 14 million views.

Thomas’ blogging journey started back in 2010 when he applied to join a team of writers working on a blog in the college/student niche - but he was unsuccessful. He decided to publish his post on his own site, started introducing different forms of multimedia over the years, and stumbled across a love for producing entertaining YouTube videos.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of really compelling content for how to study, how to take tests, how to read text books, all the kinds of questions students were asking me about as a blogger.” Thomas told me. This was an open door for him to produce high-quality informational videos in his niche and provide the kind of content his audience wanted.

Thomas is now a “YouTuber”, and although he has many income streams his YouTube channel ad revenue makes up a large portion of his monthly income.

Tune in to hear how Thomas grew his YouTube channel to 400k subscribers in 2.5 years. He shares his marketing hacks, tips he used to write more compelling titles that perform well in YouTube’s search algorithm and attracts more clicks, and how he developed a lead magnet that not only attracts email subscribers but earns decent revenue too.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Use Video and YouTube to Grow Your Business

I’d like to introduce some of the characters in my latest book Buy Buttons, and also give you a sample of the audiobook version I recorded.

I knew I wanted to create an audiobook for this title, because Audible is yet another “Buy Button” marketplace for me to test out, and because I’ve heard audiobooks can actually perform really well for authors.

Note: If you’re new to Audible, you can get Buy Buttons and another title of your choosing free!

But even for someone who’s been editing audio for the last 3.5 years on this podcast, it was quite a challenge to get the book recorded and approved for sale. In fact, it was rejected by Audible 4 or 5 different times for various reasons. 

Just reading my own words without messing up and with intonations that made sense was hard enough! 

That put a little damper on my timeline, as I’d hoped to get it out much closer to the launch date of the Kindle and paperback editions. Still, now that the audiobook is approved, it’s already been selling well with very little promotion.

In this episode I share the full introduction to Buy Buttons plus you’ll meet a few of the side hustlers I connected with during the writing process.

As you know, most business books follow a familiar format: big picture thesis, supported by case studies and examples. Feeling no need to reinvent the wheel, Buy Buttons follows this formula as well. The big picture thesis is that the fastest way to earn extra money is to go where money is already being spent: the hundreds of peer-to-peer marketplaces.

I was able to source several stories from The Side Hustle Show archives and the blog archives to back that thesis up, but still had a bunch of gaps to fill in.

For those, I turned to HARO, the Side Hustle Nation Facebook group and email list, and even reaching out to the marketplaces directly to see if they had any successful sellers I could potentially feature.

Full Show Notes: Go Where the Cash is Already Flowing

Gabe Arnold is the founder and chief pencil sharpener at CopywriterToday.net, a subscription based article writing service. In his early 20’s Gabe saw his construction business hit by the downturn in the property market to the tune of a $1 million bankruptcy, and began freelancing to support his family. One common hold-up on his website projects was the words to paste into the pages, which gave him an idea. Tune in to hear how he took that idea from zero customers to $20k in monthly recurring revenue.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: From a $1 Million Bankruptcy to $20k in Monthly Recurring Revenue: A Productized Service Case Study

As a small business attorney, Elizabeth Potts Weinstein helps entrepreneurs, small business owners, coaches, artists, etc, get all their legal affairs in order so they can focus on their businesses. In this episode, Elizabeth agreed to answer some legal questions from members of the Side Hustle Nation Facebook Group. We cover disclaimers, business registration requirements, entity selection pros and cons, trademarks and copyrights, and licensing.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Your Legal Questions Answered

Nothing gives me a shot of inspiration more than when I look at my podcast feed and see episodes like “Zero to 20K a Month” or “Building a Multi-Million Dollar Ecommerce Brand on the Side.” Those are some incredibly sexy and enticing titles, aren’t they? Then, you dive deep and you listen in. You hear Jon Haws say, “Once a book is out there, you’re always making money,” and think to yourself, “Damn, Why aren’t I doing that? Why him and not me?”

Full Show Notes: How to Stop Just Listening to The Side Hustle Show and Start Taking Action

Erin Chase is a busy mother of 4, a former teacher, and today runs 5DollarDinners.com and the 5dollarmealplan.

Back in 2008, after some number crunching, Erin was excited at saving 50% on her grocery bills. She shared how she did this on her family blog, but with a low amount of interest she decided to start her own blog to help others make savings on their own grocery bills.

You may have heard the saying, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” – well there is such a thing as free meal plans. Erin carried on publishing free meal plans and tips how to feed your family on a budget and her viewership kept growing.

In this episode, you will hear how Erin capitalized on the momentum of viral social media posts to set up paywalls and start generating more income. You’ll learn how she transitioned from ad networks and affiliate income to selling directly to her audience, and how she set up membership programs for recurring revenue.

Today, her online empire brings in a healthy 5-figure monthly income.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: Blogging for Recurring Revenue: Turn Readers into Members

Related: Want to start a blog of your own? Check out my free guide on how to start your blog.

In 2011, Joshua Lisec landed his first freelance gig--on Fiverr of all places. He said he wound up making $1.67 an hour from that job, but it sparked his entrepreneurial journey. Since then, he's gone from "dumpster-diving for clients" to consistently landing 4- and 5-figure contracts and earning $167 an hour on one recent project, effectively 100x-ing his hourly rate. In this episode, we take a deep dive into what I'll call the OPA Plan: borrowing other people's audiences to grow your business, a strategy that's earned Joshua $9000 in just the last couple of months.

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: The OPA Plan: How to Borrow Other People’s Audiences to Explode Your Sales